Pinterest milk jug watering can

Have you all seen the watering cans made from milk jugs?  

They are quick, thrifty and easy to make.

Just rinse out your finished milk jug.  Heat up a big needle or nail with a candle or lighter and melt holes in the milk cap.  

It pours out a fine stream that won't damage tiny plants.  

And children just love refilling it and watering anything they can with it.  

I used a gallon jug but when it is full,  it is too heavy for 2 and 3 year olds.  I am going to save my current 1/2 gallon jug to make a smaller one.  

April Thrift Store Finds

Yard sales are getting started in my town but I have not been to any  for  this season just yet.
you know I will though!
I shopped at my favorite thrift store this morning and am very happy with my purchases.
this first picture is a stack of play clothes tops and dresses for Elizabeth

play shorts for Elizabeth

shorts and swimsuits for Gavin
if you can see the price tags, most of the childrens clothes  were 50 cents.

and 2 shirts for Gavin

Gavin picked out the baby board book -
I got the Wee Sing book, it is popular poems and songs with  motions for toddlers.  

4 Aunt Chick cookie cutters in a big bag full of assorted cutters, this set sell for $20 on one site that sells Aunt Chick.

Aunt Chicks has a really fun company history if you want to read about an Oklahoma homemaker and food columnist and her cookie cutter business.

 many of the cutters will  be used with  play dough.
I'm putting some in my with my collection - can you see the little Scottie dog and duck?
There is also a smaller doughnut cutter,  several biscuit cutters and the 4 card suit emblems.

I got all the cutters for $2.50.
and now I want to bake some cut out cookies.  

8 cloth napkins in red and aqua gingham checks
$2 for all 

Gavin wearing his 25 cent Texas Rangers batting helmet.  

It was a very good thrift store visit!

Have you been thrifting or to yard sales this month?

linking up with Rhoda's party 
Southern Hospitality - Thrifty Treasures 

Garden update

we are having what must be perfect weather for gardens to grow.  

Those tiny tomato plants we planted a month ago are growing so fast!  

there are even a few tiny tomatoes already set on.
The bell peppers are just starting to produce tiny little buds too.  

Gavin standing beside the Catalpa tree that Jeff planted last year.
It was tiny start that my dad brought us from his yard.
My grandmother had a Catalpa tree in her yard and I always thought it was pretty.
So I am really glad that this tiny tree survived the hot, dry summer of 2011 and came back even bigger this year.




 plants and trees aren't the only things growing in this family.
Remember how tiny  this baby was just 7 weeks ago?  

Andie is happy and growing,

getting stronger and sweeter every day!  

Her legs were so thin and frail looking when she was born,  they looked like broom sticks.

Look at them now!  

one of my favorite verses

Romans 1:20

New International Version (NIV)

²⁰ For since the creation of the world God’s invisible qualities—his eternal power and divine nature—have been clearly seen, being understood from what has been made, so that people are without excuse.

Romans 1:20

King James Version (KJV)

 ²⁰For the invisible things of him from the creation of the world are clearly seen, being understood by the things that are made, even his eternal power and Godhead; so that they are without excuse:

Romans 1:20

New Living Translation (NLT)

²⁰ For ever since the world was created, people have seen the earth and sky. Through everything God made, they can clearly see his invisible qualities—his eternal power and divine nature. So they have no excuse for not knowing God.

No big bang theory for me.  I don't remember ever not believing in God and that He created everything.


Grandson Gavin spent the night with us last night.  When he woke up,  the first thing he said was "Grandma,  I dreamed about God.  He loves me."
is that sweet or what?  

a quick post before Church

Kathy requested the recipe I use for freezer biscuits,  I thought I had blogged about it before but I can't find it so here it is.  I have made many batches of these.

Freezer biscuits  - I either double or triple it when I make it

3 C flour

1 T baking powder

1 T sugar

1 t baking soda

1/2 t salt

mix all these dry ingredients together.  Then cut it

2/3 C shortening.  

I use a  pastry blender.  

When it looks like fine crumbs,  stir it

1 C buttermilk - 

( I usually use regular or powdered milk mixed with a little lemon juice)

Turn dough onto a floured surface and knead lightly until it comes together.

Roll out to 1/2 inch thickness and cut into biscuits. 

Now,  you can bake them in a preheated 450 degree oven for 10-15 minutes.  

Or,  you can freeze them.  I put them on a wax paper lined cookie sheet and freeze until solid.  

Then I bag them up in a freezer bag, squeezing out as much air as possible.  

To bake,  preheat oven to 400.  Bake biscuits 20-25 minutes until golden.  

When I just bake a few frozen biscuits,  I use our little toaster oven and it works great. 

 Much thriftier than heating up the big oven.  

remember that I dug up a few of the boxwood bushes?
Well,  the lady and her teenage son did come and dug up and hauled off the rest.
yea!

2 Knockout rose bushes that I planted last year

one lone Iris blooming
This is what it looked like Friday
but I think after all the rain Friday and Saturday night,  it is probably laying down now.  

the wind blew the lid off the turtle sandbox
Can you see the box and the lid are both full of water
and this is just from Friday night's rain!

Jeff assembling our first ever composter
it was a big job even for a very experience mechanic.
I think it would be very difficult for someone with no tool experience.
I am just hoping it makes lots of good compost.  

 Hope you all have a wonderful Sunday!  

Psalm 118:24:

   ²⁴ This is the day the LORD has made. 

      We will rejoice and be glad in it. 

some scenes from last week

My daughter and went to Oklahoma City to do our monthly grocery shopping last week,
Before we went,  I cleaned out our fridge and found some sad looking apples.
So I peeled them, put them in a crockpot with just a little sugar, cinnamon and cloves.
They cooked all day and turned into.....

Apple Butter~
see the yellow lid?  that is from a mustard jar.
Did you know that some peanut butter jar lids and some mustard lids fit perfectly on  standard canning jars?

I did not actually can this apple butter,  just put it in jars and will store it in the fridge until we eat it.  

Gavin helped me make a triple batch of ....

freezer biscuits.  They are even more delicious with apple butter.  

Daughter Nina embellished this tiny onesie for Andie for Easter.
She also did a shirt for Elizabeth.
Nina used her Silhouette machine - I don't know much about them  except Nina makes really cute things with it.  

Isn't this yellow rose pretty?
it bloomed so early, on a $3.97 Aldis rose bush.  

my 3 sweet little Easter Bunny Grandchildren

Do you belong to Kraft First Taste?  

They send out coupons for  new Kraft products a few times a year.  

In March,  they sent me  a free coupon for their new product that is flavored bread crumbs and grated cheese that you mix together to bread meat, then bake it.  

  With the free coupon, I got a package of

 KRAFT FRESH TAKE - CHEESE BREADCRUMB MIX - CHILI LIME & PANKO 

the instructions say it will coat 6 pieces of meat.  I was cooking 4 smallish pieces of chicken so I just used half the bag.  

this is what chicken looks like coated with the cheese and breadcrumbs.  We thought it was delicious and tasted like a restaurant entree.

In fact,  we liked it so much, that I used the second half of that bag the very next night to coat tilapia filets.

It was delicous!

Have you tried any of this Kraft cheese and breadcrumb coating?  it comes in 6 flavors but we have only tried the chili lime one.

What Happened?

4 freshly dug up Boxwood bushes on our sidewalk

What happened?  that is the question Gavin and Elizabeth both asked when they got here this morning.  

They aren't used to seeing bushes and so much dirt on our sidewalk.  

There has been a row of boxwood bushes along the front of our house since before we moved here.  

I never have liked them but just got around to doing something about them.  

A woman from our area Facebook FreeCycle group asked for bushes, trees, bulbs, etc to move to her yard.

I asked if she wanted the boxwoods and she does.  

I did not know how hard they would be to dig up. My stepson offered to bring his very large John Deere tractor over to pull them up.

But I like to do things myself so I got a shovel yesterday and tried digging them up.  

I softened the ground with water,  then used more water to wash off the roots once I got them up.  

See - I dug up 4 of them all by myself!  

It was hard, dirty work but doable.  

The lady from FreeCycle is coming over later with her 15 year old son to finish digging them up and to move them to her yard. .    

yea!  

I will be so glad to have these bushes move to a new home.  

After we do some dirt work,  I want to plant KnockOut rose bushes and zinnias where the boxwoods were.  

I think that will be much prettier,  don't you?

hodge podge of weekend pictures

our backyard garden
tomato and pepper plants doing fine
seeds for herbs, lettuce, cukes and squash - not yet sprouting

start at composting
if we are going to garden, we need compost and Jeff is reseaching ways to "cook" it in the backyard.
in the meantime, I got a big bowl from the junk pile waiting for the yard sale, and put the weekend scraps in it
peels from veggies and eggs and coffee grounds
starting somewhere!

bread

mixed in the bread machine and baked in 2 Pyrex pans

watching your son being a really really good daddy
priceless!

Baby Andie getting posed in Grandpa Jeff's Stetson
on the left is photographer Emily and Sheena -
Emily took 400+ shots of Andie and her parents
she posted one on FB and it was wonderful - I can hardly wait to see the rest  

some more of the photo shoot props
fun tutus, hair bows, outfits!

Nina brought over baby things that Elizabeth had outgrown to pass on  to Cousin Andie
Elizabeth wanted to take everything out of the tubs and show it all to Sheena in the driveway.
See her handing off so much stuff that Sheena can hardly hold it?


I've got a dirty house after a very fun weekend.  So I am off  to work on that for now.
hope you all had a fun weekend too!

toddler towels inspired by Pinterest

Gavin and Elizabeth have outgrown their baby hooded bath towels.  I've been looking around at tutorials and found this one and Nina liked it too.  She got the bright colored towels at Target and I sewed them up.  They sewed up fast but these towels turned out too too big for an almost 2 year old and a 3 year old.  

I was in Walmart looking at their towels, looking for smaller bath towels but did not find any.  I did find this inexpensive beach towel and decided to give it a try.    It is narrow enough,  just 27 inches but had more length needed.

My toddlers were not here when I was sewing so I used a long sleeve shirt that is a size bigger than Gavin to measure how long to cut the beach towel.  I cut off about 15 inches from the 58 inch length,  leaving the body of the towel about 43 inches.

From the 15 length strip,  I had plenty to make the hood and the 2 triangle pockets for the hands.
I used white thread that blended it really well,  and a zig zag stitch to seal up some of  the raw edges, others got turned under twice and then zig zagged,  There was a even a square of towel left to make a small wash cloth.

I could of cut the top of the hood straight but I cut it n the diagonal.  I think the point looks sort of cute and elf like.  But Nina said it reminder her of a KKK hood - but those guys don't wear sunshine yellow stripes, do they?

Here is Gavin modeling the new towel.  He liked it very much and Elizabeth did too, she was here at a different time and I did not get her picture.

So,  I will be buying several more beach towels to sew up more hooded towels to have here and their own homes.    I think they will be nice for bath time and after a swim in the wading pool.
This striped beach towel comes in several colors - I think there was a hot pink, grass green,  bright blue too - and they sell for $3.97.