Fresh Eggs Are FINALLY Arriving!!

After what seemed like waiting FOREVER and a day, we finally have our first fresh egg!! Yay!!! Robert had a meeting to attend for the evening, so Halie and I went down to the barn to let the horses out for the night and there it was laying on the ground next to the water trough. : )

It was fairly small, but perfectly formed and a perfect orange color and tasted oh so yummy!

I found this one on Tuesday and yesterday Robert found a 2nd one that was slightly larger. So they're finally starting to lay! Woo Hoo!!! I cooked up the second one this morning for breakfast and the difference is so amazing between the store bought and fresh eggs. I scrambled them and the store bought was so pale it was almost white once scrambled, but the fresh was BRIGHT yellow/orange. I was thinking about this while sitting here listening to "Bucky" and the other roosters welcome the dawn and I concluded that I love farm/ranch life!

Grandparents Day

For Grandparents Day Halie and I did a little project that was in her High Five magazine. I cut out a frame out of thin cardboard (the back of one of my scrapbooking paper packs), and then tore up some extra scrap pieces of paper to decorate it with. She had great fun with all the scraps and picking out which color went in what place. She loved being able to paint the glue on and getting her hands all sticky.

One of the frames in the making.

We also made "homemade" wrapping paper. I let her use markers to create a masterpiece on white tissue paper. : )

We made two frames, one for each set of grandparents, but my dad was out of town on a trucking trip and my mom needed to sleep all day in order to work that night, so we only got pictures with Papaw and Meemaw Cantrell. But Nana and Papaw loved theirs too. : )

So proud of her frame.

I'm so very thankful for both sets of godly grandparents in her life who set a good Christian example for her to follow. We love you all!

The House is Ready for Fall!

One of my most favorite things in the world is decorating, and I love re-decorating for the Fall and Christmas seasons. I would do the entire house if I had the money and the space to store everything!! As it is, I only have room for 2 Rubbermaid containers of Fall decor so I have to limit myself. I still enjoy it so much though, it makes the whole house look different and new, and the colors of Autumn are so warm and welcoming. I just wish we had the cool crisp air and beautiful colorful foilage to go with it. Even so, I thought I would share my love of decorating and of Fall with you.



I also love quilts and have a huge container full of them, and more that don't fit. The problem is our house is so small I don't really have a way to display all of them, but I do use the old ladder against the wall to display one and I change it with the seasons. This particular one I think came from my mom's best friend, who we refer to as Aunt Carol.



The large picture on the wall used to be my Papaw's, and on the truck it says Middletown, OH which is where they lived when they were alive. Dee Dee made the smaller frame in the middle of the shelf.

Someone with good eyes might notice the "Baby in Bloom" frame on the side of the fridge....no, I do not currently have a baby in bloom, lol! It's an ultrasound of Halie that I leave up there because I love to look at it and remember just what an amazing miracle she is.

I even put a little decoration in the laundry area! : )

I bought this rug on clearance 2 years ago for $2 I think.

The front door area.

My mom gave me this big glass jar a few years ago. I threw this whimsical display together with leftover things I hadn't used in the house, plus some sticks from the yard.

Birthday Presents

I finally got pictures of Halie's birthday presents. I knew she would love having her own table and chairs and I kept searching and watching for the right set. We found a similar set at Bed Bath and Beyond that we were going to get that was $35 and it came with 2 chairs, but by the time we got around to actually purchasing it they were sold out! So I had to start searching again. I found this set on Craigslist for $20 and it came with 4 chairs (the green one is hidden under the quilt). She LOVES it. The first day I brought it home I didn't have to do anything with her the entire afternoon and evening, she entertained herself completely with the table and chairs for hours! It will also come in handy when we have guests over for dinner who have children as our dinner table isn't very big.


Her other present was unplanned. I have wanted one of these swings for her for a long time, but I'm too cheap to pay $25 at Wal-mart so I've been keeping an eye out at yard sales, thrift stores, and Craigslist. When I went to Ft. Myers to buy the table and chairs I decided to make the most of the hour trip and stopped in a huge thrift store that was on the same road. I found this swing in perfect condition for $3! She LOVES it too, probably even more than her table and chairs!

Our huge Oak tree is just perfect for it and Robert's dad had some extra rope so we didn't have to buy any. : )

Mega Busy Birthday Week!

Tuesday after story time at the library, we went next door to the waterpark. Halie is really beginning to enjoy it. Before when we've gone she hasn't been quite sure what to think and wasn't very brave with running under/into the water. Now she's loving it!

One of her new friends, Micah.

This is Wednesday, her actual birthday. She started the day off by choosing Fruity Pebbles for breakfast. She doesn't yet say her "f's" perfectly, they sound more like "p" so according to her these are "poopy pebbles." : )

I made one of her favorite meals for supper, meatloaf, mashed potatoes, and green beans, but she was so excited about her present and her birthday cake that she didn't eat much.

She doesn't usually get much candy, but I put a bag of ring pops in her gift bag. Can you tell she's just a little bit excited?

We just did little Dollar Tree gifts and picked up her actual present later in the week. It was a little table and chairs and also a swing, although I don't have pictures of those yet. She loves them though.

My mom had given me little individual cake pans a long time ago and I had never used them so I decided to make Halie her own little "happy birt-day cake" (as she calls it). This isn't the greatest picture, but Robert was trying to run the camera while I did the camcorder as well as us trying to keep her from touching the flames. We had to just take what we could get.

She never did eat any of the cake, just the frosting and sprinkles. : )

Then on Friday my Aunt Ruth and I had planned a surprise birthday party for Dee Dee's 40th. Martin was in on it, and we had my parents take them out to eat for her birthday dinner. As soon as they left we came in and started decorating and getting things set up. We brought 3 different desserts and just had an after dinner dessert party. Robert parked all the cars in the backyard.

They made it so that she would be the first one through the door and we turned on the lights and yelled "surprise!" She had NO clue about any of it and she SCREAMED and threw her arms over her face! She was so shocked she started crying.

Grandpa and Grandma DeLamarter

Aunt Ruth and Aunt Becky

Halie and her cousin Angelica

My cousin Roger and his wife Melisa and one of their 3 kids, Randy

Mom and Dad who also celebrated their 41st anniversary that week!

Gina, Bob, Robert, and Martin standing around chatting.

I was a good girl and didn't plan an all black, over-the-hill, old fart prank gift kind of party. I kept it bright and cheery and colorful..............but I just had to throw in one gag gift! : )

Whew! So that was Friday night. Saturday was Halie's party with the family and a couple of friends. We did a farm animal/barnyard theme because she loves animals so much. The party was at Meemaw and Papaw's house aka The Cantrell Ranch. I decorated the front porch so it would look cute walking in. My cousin Cyndi let me borrow her antique tractor. It looked so cute. I was so excited when I found the cow print balloons online. They were adorable and added so much to the theme.

Here is the buffet/food table. I found the red checkered tablecloth on clearance at Walmart for $1! Thanks to Gina, Mom, Dee Dee, and Cyndi for helping me out with making food!

I tried to make the majority of the food farm themed. Not all of it was, but most of it. I made little name cards to go with the dishes that were themed and took pictures of a few of them.

The plates and napkins the theme was based on.

Chicken Feed - Chex mix and candy corn. Mom kept all the tin buckets from my wedding so I borrowed them back and used a few.

Deviled egg chicks (Dee Dee's clever idea) - raisins for eyes and little carrot triangles for beaks

Pig's Tail Pasta Salad - used curly/spiral pasta for it : )

The dessert table. The black checkered tablecloths are from my brother's wedding rehearsal dinner 13 years ago!

The cake I really really wanted to have was just too expensive to have made, so I decided to do cupcakes and I ordered adorable little barn cupcake picks. When I received the order they had sent me the wrong picks! They were farm animals, but not the ones I wanted. It was too late to fix it so I had to just use what I had and they are supposed to be giving me a refund. I had Publix arrange the grass and hay cupcakes in the shape of a big 2.

Thankfully the picks were still cute, they just weren't the ones I had ordered.

Pig Muck - chocolate pudding

Hay Stacks - crunchy noodles and peanuts with a butterscotch coating

Playing Pin the Tail on the Cow

Enjoying some frosting! Once again, she didn't eat the cupcake, just the frosting. : )

Another game I had the kids play was from an idea I found online. The original idea was too complicated for toddlers so I adapted it for the younger age group. I took about 20 or so pink balloons and drew pig faces on them. I used Gina's squirrel cage as the pig pen. I told the kids the pigs escaped from their pen and they needed to round them up and put them back in their pen. Then we scattered them all over the yard and the kids had a blast chasing them down and bringing them back to the cage.

Halie had SO much fun with this game and wanted to play it over and over again!

You can kind of see the pig face in this picture.

The next game we played was with ducks in a tub of water and the kids had to fish a duck out and give it to me and they got a treat bag full of goodies. I'm sure the water felt good after getting all hot and sweaty chasing down pigs.

Cyndi also let me borrow the wash tub and the ducks.

Opening presents!

By using what we already had, borrowing things, finding things on clearance, and having great family willing to help me make food, I was able to give Halie a really cute and fun party on a relatively small budget. Thanks everyone!



Sunday - Dee Dee and I both wanted the girls to wear their Easter dresses one more time before summer was over and before they outgrew them.

Cute cousins!