The Weekend in Pictures

I have seen other blogs feature a "Wordless Wednesday" or other days where they just post pictures on their blogs. I thought I would start that on Sundays. I will post pictures from our weekend. If you have any questions about what was going on in the picture, or where the picture was taken...just leave me a COMMENT! Have I mentioned that I love comments? I check for them several times a day :) Here we go!

Have a great week!

One Small Change for March

It's that time again...the end of one month and the beginning of another. That means it is time to reflect on my One Small Change for February. February's change was to switch from plastic water bottles to reusable stainless steel. You can read about it here. This change has been successful, but not as easy as January's change, which was surprising to me. The hard part for me is having to wash my bottles every night. I was trying to get by with only buying 2 bottles. I had three, but one makes my water taste funny, so I'm down to two. I am not a fan of washing dishes. It ranks up there with putting away clean laundry and emptying the dishwasher...shudder. I get tired of scrubbing my water bottles every night, but I have done it! I have not drank out of a plastic water bottle except for when we went to my cousin's son's birthday party. They had bottled water for guests. I plan to continue with this change, but I will have to add a couple of more bottles to my collection. That way maybe I can just wash every other night!

So I have been thinking about a change for March, and I decided my change will be to use reusable bags for shopping. I do this already...sort of. I have a good collection of bags, but I always seem to leave them at home or even in the car! My plan is to use them everywhere I shop, not just the grocery store.



I bought 5 of the Earth Saver bags off of eBay a year or so ago. I looked there today, but the seller does not have anything listed right now. I get compliments on them from store clerks because they stand up when they are open. They are made of a burlap material and have a waterproof lining. They hold a lot! I also have a couple of bags I bought at Publix during Christmas. I feel weird taking Publix bags into other grocery stores. Should I worry about that? Is it bad manners? Comments??

Scrub a dub dub

I finished! I finished my first knitting project. It is by no means perfect...very imperfect actually, but I finished! I am now the proud creator of a misshapen, slightly holey, knitted washcloth!

Take a look for yourself...



You can see I made a few mistakes, and I forgot whether I should be knitting or purling a few times, but it just makes it that much more unique...don't you think?

Now, I just wish I had known I was supposed to weave in the yarn tails! I tied them in knots :) Maybe that is my next lesson.

For the Birds

We had beautiful weather this weekend. Although I am not a big "outside person" I finally decided to get off the couch and go outside with AK this afternoon. She was anxiously awaiting the return of her friend EG. He and his Daddy had gone to ride motorcycles and had promised to call when they got home. While she made grass salad in the bird bath, I tried to get a few pictures of my little feathered friends. I was more successful today than I was during the Backyard Bird Count. I caught this little guy several times...




There was also a pair of house finches hanging around, but they were pretty wary of me and wouldn't come to the feeder until I was far, far away. I did zoom in and get a few shots of them in the tree...




I heard this guy before I saw him. He kept his back to me, but you can see his black and white markings in this shot. He is a downy woodpecker...



All of a sudden I heard squeals of joy! AK had seen EG and his daddy drive by in their truck.



EG came over to play and I got this cute shot of these to BFFs.



After this, my bird photography session was pretty much over. I was held hostage in the backyard and put in "jail" until Aunt Pammy came to the rescue and took my place. I did witness a bird party going on at the feeders. It was rudely interrupted several times by a red-bellied woodpecker who was enjoying swinging from one of the feeders as he munched and crunched. I wish I had gotten pictures, but maybe next time!

Pinkalicious!

Today was a Relay for Life fundraiser day at our school. The theme was to dress as your favorite storybook character. AK couldn't decide who to be because I had forbidden Hannah Montana or Ariel because it's cold and the costumes she has are pretty bare. This caused a bit of turmoil on the drive home from school yesterday, but we finally compromised on Pinkalicious. For those of you who do not know Pinkalicious, she is a little girl who ate so many pink cupcakes she turned pink! She had to eat green foods to turn back to her normal color. I felt it was pretty appropriate for my pink loving sweets snacker. So here she is...all in pink.



I'm not too good at pigtails, but she looked pretty cute :) Some of the other characters in her class were Bad Kitty, Goldilocks, and the Gingerbread Girl.

My class had a few characters today. Here they are...can you figure out which characters they are?

Backyard Bird Count

I decided to participate in the Backyard Bird Count again this year. However, I ended up with a serious crick in my neck all weekend. It was impossible to turn my head in any direction without severe pain until Monday. I did count birds for a few minutes on Saturday because they were having such a good time at my feeders. I tried my hardest to get some good pictures, but it's like they knew I was watching them and they didn't want to participate.

I got a couple of shots where if you look very closely you can see the bird through the leaves.


There's a tiny chickadee right in the middle of this shot. See him??


You can sort of see the House Finch on my feeder here.


This was taken through my dirty living room window.


Mostly I saw this guy hanging by his toenails as he cleaned out all of the sunflower seeds!



This was a common shot. I stood very still a few feet away from the feeder. The birds would approach and grab a snack, but then fly away quickly before I could push the camera button. Hmmmm...what could have caused their fear?

I believe this was the culprit...



We had fun though :)

Six More Weeks of Winter

Even though General Beauregard Lee did not see his shadow on February 2, I think Winter will never end. We got 2-4 inches of snow here on Friday. This is the 2nd (or 3rd?) snow/ice we've had this year. That's a lot for Georgia. They predicted snow for this morning, but it never showed up. Now the weather report shows snow for Friday! AK has a good time in the snow. Her friend MM came over Friday afternoon and they played until their hands were numb. On Saturday AK and her daddy built a very leafy snowgirl. She is slowly loosing inches off her waist as we speak!



These were taken Friday.

The next pictures were taken Saturday...you can see it warmed up a bit!

Signs of Spring

Look what I found today...

Ah...pretty flowers. Unfortunately, I did not find them blooming outside. They're on the little African Violet in my living room. Spring will be here soon. I keep telling myself this while it is 25 degrees and very windy outside. Soon...

Hugs and Kisses

AK and I started on a Valentine's Day adventure this morning, and finally wrapped it up this evening with a little shopping in between. I had decided to make these cookies for her teachers this year. Now, keep in mind I am no baker. I can do brownies out of a box, but that is about as fancy as I get. However, in my quest to be crafty, I ran across this blog that was link from who knows where because I've read so many great blogs these days! Here is our journey...



Here are the ingredients. You can see I already got flour everywhere before I even started mixing and stirring. That was my first warning.



How could I forget this?



My little helper. Notice the flour on her forehead. Warning number two.



Mix and stir!



There was flour flying everywhere! Third warning.

And here is where we ran into trouble...



This is some seriously thick dough. I didn't know if it would ever come off of the beaters, but my handy spatula came to the rescue!

Here is the dough ready to be chilled for 2 hours.



After the dough chilled, I got ready to roll out the dough. Well, it was hard. The dough, that is. After I mashed on it for a while it softened up nicely. Instead of rolling (because I don't have a rolling pin...I told you I'm not a baker) I pressed out the dough. I used our cute little fondant cutters to make circles (hugs) and squares (kisses).



And here they are cooked.



Nice and golden brown on the bottom!

We added the finishing touches...



And here they are!



I plan to package them in these cute little boxes once the icing is dry. Hope they like them!



I forgot to say we had a wanna-be helper...here's Kramer :) He was waiting patiently for something yummy to fall to the ground.