Farm store day 🚜

It’s our favorite biweekly activity—visiting the local farm store!

We always get a dozen cider donuts, deli meat, local bread, lollipops, and a plant or two for me 😄🪴.

Today, we noticed the store is getting ready for the fall. There were a few new fall decorations out on display.

Yes, I was tempted to buy some of the fall decor 😏, but I will remain patient and wait until mid-August. Lol 😊

I love these cute fabric apples. 🍎🥰

I bought two small houseplants marked down to $2.99. I couldn’t pass up that good deal! 😅🪴

A couple of years ago, I tried to grow prayer plants in my house, but fungus gnats devoured my poor plants. 😭 I had the hardest time getting rid of the nuisance gnats.

Since then, I have learned how to properly care for plants I buy from the farmers market or local stores.

For instance, before, I didn’t know it’s important to give your store plants a proper potting mix separate from the soil they are placed in at the store.

Caring for the eight houseplants I have now (5 pothos and 3 snake plants) and outdoor gardening has taught me more basic plantcare skills, so I am ready to add these two new plants to my indoor plant collection. 😊🪴

The kids also helped scoop a pound of raw peanuts. We like to feed the squirrels at a nearby neighborhood park we frequent. 🐿

Picking out their favorite lollipops.
I need this vintage sign for my kitchen. 😂

Great visit to the farm store today! I just might have to go back and get two more small houseplants. 😄🪴

Do you have a favorite local shop you like to visit regularly?

💜 XO


How was your weekend?

A weekend of museum visits, Mass in the city, and a family picnic.

Baby cucumbers 🥒

We have baby cucumbers! 🥹 I discovered about 10 cucumbers growing in our back patio garden.

Why is it such a thrilling feeling to discover your fruit and vegetable plants have started to produce food? I had the biggest smile on my face when I saw the tiny cucumbers. ☺️

A couple of weeks ago, I was worried the cucumber flowers weren’t going to get pollinated because I hadn’t really seen any bees in our patio garden.

But last weekend, I noticed a few honeybees flying back and forth to the cucumbers. 🐝 I felt relieved.

Gardening is teaching me to be more patient and have more trust.

And I loved showing the kids the little cucumbers!

They were excited to search through the big leaves and count how many cucumbers they could find.

I can’t wait to harvest our cucumbers once they’re ready! I told the kids we’re going to use the cucumbers to make homemade dill pickles. 😊

💜 XO


Happy Friday

Three things to reflect on in honor of September 11th.

Drawing with the kids 👩🏽‍🎨

Today, I enjoyed a calming activity with the kids—sketching and coloring flowers. 🌸 The flower activity was part of a science lesson for the kids to draw, color, and label a flower with pollen.

I turned on a jazz playlist to help us focus on our artwork, and as we were creating our sketches, it started to rain.

Perfect timing! 🌧☺️

We discussed shapes we could see in the image of the flower.

One shape that stood out to Zaya (5) and Zephaniah (8) was the middle of the flower reminded them of a hexagon.

So, together we sketched a hexagon shape onto our sketch pads.

Surprisingly, drawing a hexagon is not as easy as I thought it would be! It took me several tries to finally get the six sides connected to form the shape. 😆

Next, we discussed the vibrant yellow color of the pollen and its purpose. We also made connections to the flowers and vegetables growing in our garden.

There was something unexpectedly joyful sitting at the kitchen table with Zaya and Zephaniah, drawing and coloring together.

Keep in mind I am not an artist 😅.

However, the children told me they thought my purple flower looked amazing, and really, that’s all the recognition I needed. 🥰

💜 XO


Happy Friday!

Four fun things for Friday, including a new art exhibit I’m excited to see.

Somewhat clear skies

We’re still under an air quality alert (because of the wildfire smoke), but today the atmosphere was much better than last Wednesday afternoon.

And the temps were a little cooler with a nice breeze.

We’ve been able to get out and enjoy the park again.

I just love visiting parks tucked away in neighborhoods near our house. The neighborhood parks feature a playground with paved walking paths good for walking and riding bikes or even skating.

One of my favorite features is how the walking paths go around the playground making it easier for us to keep an eye on the kids while we walk.

It feels good to see people out jogging, walking, riding bikes, and playing at the playground again.

Last week’s thick smoke made everything look like a ghost town because no one was out walking in the neighborhood or at the parks. Traffic was even lighter than usual.

I know the kids are thrilled to be back at the playground.

They’ve had the best time going to the park three days in a row. They asked me if we can go everyday. Lol 😅

Travis and I enjoy walking together while the kids play at the playground, so I think we just might make evening walks part of our nightly routine! ☺️

💜 XO


An unexpected visitor 🐣

We have an unexpected visitor living in our patio garden—a Robin chick! 🐣

Apparently, the baby Robin landed on our herb shelf after a storm knocked it’s nest out of the tree onto our patio. 🥺

Every morning, I open the curtains to my patio door, and I scan the back garden to make sure all is well with the plants and no critters (i.e. pesky squirrels) got into the grow bags.

The squirrels love to tear up my marigolds sometimes. 😏 Just the other day, a squirrel dug into one of my strawberry bags and pulled out the entire plant. 🍓😭

As I was looking over the patio garden, I noticed on the herb shelf a little head peeking out of my petunia flower pot.

“Well, you weren’t there last night!” I said aloud to the baby bird through the screen door. 🐣☺️

That’s when I noticed the nest tipped over on its side on the shelf, and I immediately understood what had happened.

What I didn’t know, though, was how the chick got into the flower pot. Did it by chance literally fall into the pot, or did the mama bird gently move it to the flower pot?

My next question was, does the mama bird know the chick is here? Did she abandon it?

So, I stood back from the patio door and waited patiently to see if a Robin would show up. Within about 20 minutes, the mama bird swooped into the garden and landed onto the petunia flower pot.

Excitedly, the chick perked up and started chirping. It stretched it’s neck up and opened it’s beak wide.

Mama bird plopped a wiggly worm into the chick’s beak, and then flew off.

Whew! Well, that’s a relief, I thought to myself.

I really didn’t want to become an adopted bird mom 😅🐣, but I would have definitely figured something out if the chick needed help.

We did check the ground to see if there were any other chicks. Unfortunately, there was a second baby bird, and it didn’t survive the fall. 😥

So, now we have a baby Robin living in my petunia flower pot on the herb shelf! Hopefully, the bird does okay in the pot. 🐣

💜 XO


Tattoo collector

American traditional tattoos—I love the classic, vintage imagery and bold colors and lines.

A front porch garden harvest 🫑

One of the things I love about growing food in a small space is I can walk out onto my front porch and harvest foods we need for the next meal.

This morning, we harvested from our front garden a green bell pepper (first one of the season!), two jalapeños, a banana pepper, and black seeded simpson lettuce.

Zaya (5) harvesting a green bell pepper on our front porch! 🫑👧🏼
The jalapeños needed just a little more time, but Travis said they still tasted good with his tacos. 🌶🌮

And from our back patio garden we harvested romaine lettuce, cilantro, oregano, and sage.

It wasn’t a big harvest, but it was the perfect amount we needed to make tacos for dinner! 😊

It makes me happy to grow a simple kitchen garden. At first, I didn’t think it would make much of a difference because we don’t have a regular sized yard.

But this gardening season has taught me it doesn’t matter if you have acres of land, a big back yard, or just a small patio, you can grow something!

Zaya said we needed to take a selfie to show our little harvest. 📸😅

If you have a small space, you can focus on growing kitchen ingredients like peppers, lettuce, herbs, and carrots for home cooking. You can even grow these plants on your front porch (like I do)!

Every little bit helps, and it will bring you so much joy! 😊

💜 XO

📸 feature image taken by Zaya 🥹


Attack of the ravenous cabbage caterpillars 🐛

I discovered cabbage caterpillars in two of my broccoli grow bags. 🐛😫

I can only blame myself because I literally saw those white butterflies flying around my brassica plants, and I didn’t even bother to cover the plants with protective netting until a couple of weeks later. 🤦🏽‍♀️🙃

Lesson learned! Cover the plants right after you plant them!

The caterpillars ate up the broccoli leaves good, too! Wow!

So, I put on my gardening gloves and handpicked all of the caterpillars out of the grow bags

It was hard to find some of the cabbage caterpillars because their green bodies blended in with the broccoli leaves.

I think my broccoli plants can be salvaged. I immediately covered the plants with tulle for protection.

I used the kids’ construction straws to make hoops for the taller plants. Hey, sometimes you just gotta use what you have on hand! Lol 😅

Saved me about $15 so I didn’t have to buy a box of garden hoops on Amazon. 🙌🏾

Thankfully, only five out of the twelve broccoli plants we have in the garden were affected by these ravenous cabbage caterpillars.

💜 XO


The old journal

A visit to an art thrift store leads to a journal discovery.

Air quality

It felt eerie seeing the swings empty at the park today. Usually, this park is bustling with families playing at the splash pad and playground, but not today.

With the wildfires happening in Minnesota and Canada, our state’s air quality is unfortunately considered unhealthy right now.

We spent all day inside the house. I only went outside for about 15 minutes to water a few plants in the garden.

We still went to Thursday evening Mass, and we made sure to wear face masks when we were outside.

(After Mass, we stopped by the park real quick so I could snap a few photos of the smoky skies.)

My older daughter Mj was very kind and stopped by after she got off work to bring us these face masks.

Zaya and I decorated ours with fun stickers. 😊

Even the traffic in the evening wasn’t as busy as it usually is on the weekdays. It was almost like a ghost town.

Zaya (5) asked me if tomorrow we’ll be able to go back to the pool. I explained to her, unfortunately, we won’t be able to play outside just yet, but we’ll do our best and find something fun to do indoors.

Praying for everyone directly affected by the wildfires. 🙏🏽

💜 XO


Pool day ☀️

It was another hot day, so the kids and I spent some time at the pool today. The temps reached 94°F, but i think the weather app said it felt like 102°F! 🥵

I’ll be honest—for most of the summer, I kept putting off going to the pool because I don’t particularly like wearing a bathing suit. 🫤

But once we got in the pool and started swimming around, I really started to enjoy myself! 😄🏊‍♀️

It made me realize I need to just relax and take a break sometimes, stop being so hard on myself.

I mean, it is summer after all. Lol ☀️😊

Mj (24), my oldest daughter stopped by to hangout with us at the pool after she got off from work.

She has her own apartment in our neighborhood—just three minutes walking distance from our house.

It’s nice having my daughter live in the same neighborhood as me. I really enjoy having her live so close by to us.

I’m so glad we went to the pool around 1 p.m. and hung out for a couple of hours because the weather unexpectedly got bad later in the day.

All of a sudden, around 6 p.m. the air quality became hazy and unhealthy because of the wildfires in Canada. 😲 (We live about 40 minutes from the Canadian border.)

The atmosphere became very smoky outside as if the entire neighborhood had finished shooting off fireworks. You could even smell the burning wood!

I’m keeping Canada and all U.S. states affected by these wildfires in my prayers! 🙏🏽

💜 XO


Productive Monday 😎

I deserve an ice cream treat because I got SO much accomplished today. Lol 😄

Daily walk, laundry (wash, dry, fold, AND put away 😲👏🏾), cooked three homemade meals, cleaned both bathrooms, made my bed, helped kids tidy their room, AND we completed homeschool lessons.

After all that we accomplished on this busy Monday, we took the kids to the splash pad for an evening cool down. It’s supposed to be another super hot week this week. 🥵

While Travis stayed with the kids at the splash pad, I enjoyed a short walk to the public library. I wanted to check out a few DVDs and story books for the kids.

Beautiful cone flowers at city hall. 😍🌸

I never realized how nice it is to walk in our city’s main park/public library area. I definitely need to walk here more often!

💜 XO


6-7 chicken nuggets

The new addition to the “6-7” trend—chicken nuggets! 😂🐔