Mom-made

Oh my gosh... can you believe how amazing these new duds for Grace are? Made by my Mom, this incredible cardigan... so very adorable, so perfect for cool summer days and these hints of fall, and just the right size for now with enough growing room to hopefully make it last a long time!

And how about this romper? Could it be cuter?

This little'un has received all sorts of wonderful handmade things from both of her grandmas in this first year. She also has worn for her baptism a beautiful dress handmade for me by Auntie Gigi. I'll try to put pictures together sometime. She's not the only one, of course, Owen has been sporting his Party shirt and dragon costume by G'ma Steves and quite a few amazing sweaters from G'ma Terri.

Lucky kids... lucky lucky dearly loved kids

Man-made

B. has been busy in the backyard this summer building stuff. Now I don't usually give him enough diy credit and have had the tendency to dwell on the "incident" years ago that involved the words... toilet, whittling and emergency-room.

Anyhow, to put that behind us (or try to again...) he has put together some new steps in our back yard to overcome the mudslide that previously defined the transition to our backyard.Nice eh? I even got a planter box out of it! A chicken-coop (complete with Hop support) to round up the birds and free up our garden.There is a dragon in the garage that was too huge to actually decorate the coop, so we painted it with blackboard paint and may put it on the fence outside of Owen's room. And today, a chicken food/water holder so we do not have to bushwack, duck and reach awkwardly to care for the birds. Thanks B! The garden continues to flourish. Today we harvested potatoes, shallots, bushbeans and zucchini that we enjoyed with a cabezon B. had in the freezer. Yummy. On the vine are more bush beans, more zucchini, pumpkins (we hope... we may have some hybrid, I tried saving seeds from last year, they are huge for sugar pumpkins... pumpkini? Zuchin?), pole beans,

japanese cucumbers

triamble squash (so excited about this one) & tomatoes!

Woo hoo! Owen has also been picking our alpine strawberries (that are looking and tasting kinda stressed this year... too many coffee grounds?), bluberries, huckleberries and our new raspberry canes (only a few this year).