Big thanks to my hubby for helping me out! (only real men will help their wives fluff out tissue paper pom-poms in the middle of a coffee shop!)
I love using these pom poms to decorate. (I first saw them when I was helping decorate for a baby shower) They're so easy to make. I have instructions on how to make them in my baby shower post, but you can also check Martha Stewart's website for a more official tutorial (she's where my friends got the idea from in the first place). 
I even saved the scraps of tissue paper I cut off the ends and used them as a kind of confetti...I think they look like fallen flower petals.
I need to get more tissue paper and make more of these for decorating on the day of the craft fair. The flowers/pom-poms are taking the place of the paper lanterns we had up for the winter show...since they have a springy feel and the spring show is during the day instead of in the evening.
This is Kim's oldest, Lydia, with one of the baby goats that was just born this weekend!
CJ made the 4x4 boxes, we set them where we wanted them, I put down some anti-weed garden cloth/plastic inside the boxes, and we filled them up with garden soil. Each box took 4 large bags of garden soil to fill.
We thought three boxes is enough to start a decent vegetable/herb garden without getting in over our heads. On my list of things I want to plant are...There's probably a few more things, but that's what I have in my head so far. Next Saturday we're probably going to go shopping at a nursery for plants. My friend Amy lent me a book called "The Square Foot Garden" that's being very encouraging and helpful.
This is the bud on the lilac bush I planted a few weeks ago! It's gotten bigger!
We needed a new design that would catch kids' eyes. I think this cute monster will do the trick!
I thought "Hey, that dog kind of looks like Luna." and then realized "Hey! That dog IS Luna!" It's from the last photo shoot I did with Ashley when I had Luna with me. It's funny...you can't even tell she's a small dog by looking at that picture! My Dad said it makes her look like a wolf. It's a gorgeous picture though.
I was thinking it would be funny if both pictures placed in this week's contest. So far, Ashley's picture has 7 votes and mine has 10. The highest rated photo so far has 12 votes...a picture of a mama bulldog carrying her pup in her mouth. (I'd post a lnk, but the pictures get cleaned out every week... so check the Contest Pictures before the week is up, or check the Photography Contest Winners Blog at the end of this week. I'm sure it's going to be in the top 3.)
Cedar bush (I'm not sure if it's actually a bush or a tree, but I'm calling it a bush)
(I found that pictures of plants are so much more interesting if they include the dog!)
That stick is one of the Rose of Sharon bushes. My mom has a couple of big ones on the side of the garage at her house...and when the blossoms fall off at the end of the summer, where some of the blossoms fall will plant new bushes. Mom doesn't want any more bushes there, so that's why she let me dig two out. She has a bush that blooms purple and two that bloom white...I'm not sure which kind I got. I'm hoping I got at least one white...since I already have a sizable purple one next to our driveway (my car got covered in fallen blooms at the end of last summer).
Mom also let me have a itty-bitty lilac bush that was also starting to grow on the side of her garage. It already has buds on it. I hope it survives the shock of being transplanted (as I hope for everything else I planted this weekend) I planted it way on the back edge of our land in order to compromise with my hubby and be merciful to his allergies.
Here's a view from the property corner cedar bush. My house is the yellow one on the right. if you draw a line from this bush to between the two garages, you can visualize our property line. It's only slightly less than three quarters of an acre, but it feels like a ton of land to an ex-city-dweller who is used to living in an upstairs apartment. It's not very wide, but it is long, and I think it's the length that makes it feel like we have so much. It just feels cool to actually own land and to do whatever I want with it. And so much of it in the back is just like a big. grassy, blank canvas. I never imagined I'd ever get into gardening...but I'm finding that it's so satisfying.
I've also discovered that we have wild daffodils in the back in the woods that bloomed this week. I'd like to transplant them closer to the house.
Luna says "I'm helping!"
"Dig dig dig dig dig..."
Then, yesterday, while at my parents' house for Easter dinner, my mom told me that someone down the street from their house had a cedar bush on the curb that they had dug up and were discarding. So CJ went and put it in the bed of our pickup truck and we took it home and planted it last night.
Leave it to me to get plants out of someone's trash! "Waste not, want not"... right? "One man's trash is another man's treasure!"
This is the view of our back yard. Our property goes all the way to the back. That small dark dot toward the center of the picture is the bush we planted. It marks the corner of our property. I also planted two Rose of Sharon bushes and a lilac bush, all dug up from my parents' house. The other bushes I planted are too small to be seen from this far away.
