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There are only 3 months left until Halloween, not that I'm counting! At this time every year I start to think about Halloween and the fall. I dream about comfy sweaters and baking and spooky movies and books. This year, inspired by our favorite Gravity Falls episode Summerween, we decided to carve a watermelon, dress up in costumes and watch Spooky shows. It turns out that carving a watermelon is much easier than carving a pumpkin and the red watermelon color is perfect for a Spooky face, not to mention that watermelon smells a lot better than pumpkin.  Happy Summerween!

Our summer scrapbook. This is our second year doing this picture project. Last year I bought this Instax Camera with cute vintage inspired case and scrapbook with black pages. I wanted to involve the kids in creating a summer family album. They took turns taking the pictures and we decorated the pages with paint markers and stickers. By the end of the summer we had a scrapbook full of pictures and drawings  This year we are going to use an Instax photo album and I can't wait to see all the pictures we take on our summer adventures this summer! Happy Summer Adventures!

Summer vacation has officially kicked off! The kids are done school and I'm on summer work hours.  We have some good activities, outings and a vacation planned.  At the start of each summer I like to make a kind of bucket list to be sure to take advantage of all the activities in the area. It doesn't have to be expensive activities, one summer we made a point of trying out different parks and different splash pads and community pools. This year I plan on taking advantage of local beaches and spending as much time outside and in the water as possible.  I hope you enjoy your summer activities and get to take advantage of time outside. Stay tuned for some summer ideas!

Little Misse's birthday just passed and she asked for an easy Bake Oven. I never had one but I thought it was a good idea but the down sides are that they are big and expensive and the refills are expensive for what they are. The thing is that Little Miss already bakes with me. I did want to get her something that she could use by herself but that would be more useful. I found this pink, heart shapped waffle maker at Canadian Tire. It makes mini waffles and Little Miss loves waffles (who doesn't?) Along with the waffle maker I found a pack of 4 little Mason jars.  I wanted to make little single serving waffle mixes that she could use as you would an Easy Bake Oven mix. To do this I measured our 1/2 of our favorite waffle mix and split that into 4 portions. I made different flavors, birthday cake (by adding sprinkles) brownie (by adding 1 tsp of cocoa.)  When we made the waffles mixes we added 1 egg 1/4 milk and 1tbs melted butter. Along with...

I made these favors for a Mother's Day event but I never got around to posting this, besides, I think this would be a great party favor idea for an engagement party or a birthday party.  What you need: ● 24 carnations (or other colorful flowers) ● Tissue paper (I chose pink, gold and purple) ●Ribbon, twine etc.  ●Kraft gift tags ●Vases (one per table) 1. Open the packaging to separate the bouquets. Since the vases I was using were short, I cut the flowers to fit.  2. I opened the packages of tisue paper and the package of twine, separate the Tissue paper and cut 24 length of twine or ribbon. 3. Taking one flower at a time, choose one or two peices of tissue paper, gather the paper in the middle, place the flower in the paper and attach the paper with the twine.  You can prepare the flowers a few days ahead of time, keeping them in vases with fresh water, making sure bot to fill too high.  For our gathering I placed 5 flowers in each vase....

My little Miss is getting to the age where she doesn't play with her play kitchen as much anymore, unless there's mud involved! I moved all her kitchen toys and playfood outside, the result is so much fun to see. She is rediscovering the toys that she hasn't played with for months.  When I was looking up ideas for mud kitchens Isaw a lot of beautifully muddy wooden kitchens that handy people had built. I went in a different direction, I decided to repurpose the toys we had in the house, most of which we've had since Little Man was this age. There was a corner of our backyard that had been a garden but the animals kept eating it so I gave up on that thought. We put down some mulch and some old fence panels for Little Miss to sit on. We used some old planters to hold the dirt, mud and water.  since our backyard is a bit of a wind tunnel I made sure to secure everything to the fence with bungee cords. Putting the mud kitchen next...

I don't usually start setting up my fairy garden until May or sometimes June, depending on the weather but this year we had an unseasonably warm April so I set it up early this year. Over the years I have shared the different incarnations of my fairy garden. This year it looks similar to other years that we've lived in this house. I like my little spot next to the front door. It adds some whimsy to the front of our house.  My new addition this year is this slate "welcome to our gnome" sign. I made a small slate sign that read "gnome sweet gnome" a number of years ago. It has survived through many seasons and has a bit of character now but it still looks good. I haven't decided if I am going to replace the little one with this big one or simply have two. Can you ever really have too many gnome signs? Oh, my husband says yes!  I made my new gnome welcome gnome sign on a slate shingle given to me by a friend. It used to b...