This is my mystery squash. It turned up right in my row of sunflowers and I’ve no idea how it got there. I recognized it as some sort of squash, let it grow, and now it’s threatening to invade china. Anyone know what it is?

(same squash, different angle)

I shoudln’t be allowed to plant anything that hangs. Only things that have access to the timer released drip irrigation watering system.

I’m sorry. Please forgive me.

overflowing cherry tomato plants, both of which need staking desparately. Still producing prodigiously.

fruit of my labor.. too bad i let the zucchini overgrow

After 3 years, my hydrangea finally produced 2 blooms. This is the one that shows.

We’re all (and by “all” I mean James and I) getting a little crazed in the panders household. Why, you ask?

Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows.

I am so excited I can barely contain myself.

I am so sad and depressed that this is it, this is the end, damn.

If you don’t really care about Harry Potter, then you should stop reading now.
If you haven’t read the last 6 books and don’t want to hear possible spoilers, then you should stop reading now.
If you don’t want to hear theories and thoughts on the possibilities of book 7, then you should also stop reading now.

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My grandmother was a quilter.* My mother is a quilter. She makes beautiful quilts.

Our trip to Utah in May/June included a long weekend camping in souther utah, near Moab. My entire family was there, with the exception of my sister’s husband. All five of my siblings, and all of their kids were there. There’s kind of 2 waves of grandkids. The older kids, and the younger kids. My niece Susan is the oldest of the older kids, at almost 16 and it ranges down to my nephew Eric, who is 9. There are 5 younger kids, aged 5, 4, 3, 3, and 3. Ethan is the oldest, and Jocelyn is the youngest of the younger set.

Anyway, I got kind of side tracked there – my point is, a nice time for our family, having everyone there, and especially for my folks who got to see all of their grandkids. We’re usually the weak link in family get togethers, as we live on the east coast and no one else in my family lives further east than Colorado.

So for our camping trip, my mom got those cute LED head lamps for all the older kids, and for the younger kids, she made each one a camp blankey.

Here are Ethan’s and Jocelyn’s blankeys. (I took these at night, so while I tweaked the white balance so the colors look OK, some of the pictures look a little washed out.)

Ethan’s camp blanket

Ethan’s camp blanket

Ethan’s camp blanket

Jocelyn’s camp blanket

Corner button

Close up of stitching

-amy

Because today is POP TART DAY at California Tortilla!

Head over to your local California Tortilla and they’ll give you a pop-tart. Isn’t July 18th WONDERFUL? It’s POP TART DAY! And, hell, get a burrito, nachos and darn tasty queso while you’re there. I highly recommend the crunchy barbeque ranch. Yum.

July 17th: Unbeknownst to the vacationing Pop Tarts,
they would all be eaten the next day.

• made french toast, yum!
• bought 2 boy presents for upcoming birthday parties
• somehow prevented ethan from opening/ playing with/ otherwise molesting said birthday presents (james receives due credit for this feat as well.
• cleaned out office/guest room closet (#2 hardness rating on scale of 1-5, 5 being the hardest)
• bought new hardware for kids’ chest of drawers, the same chest of drawers that james had in his room growing up (hardness rating, #1)
• installed very cute new drawer pulls/knobs (#1)
• realized that a great deal more work will be needed to install new slides (#3)
• abandoned ‘fix kids’ dresser’ project, got thee to ikea for new dresser and shelf above dresser (#-137, oh so fun! ikea! yay!)
• 90% completion of putting together new dresser (#3, just on pure tediousness and time consumption)
• cleaned out 2nd walk in master bedroom closet (#4329, OMG I’D RATHER HAVE GOUGED MY EYEBALLS OUT)
• harvested small bowl of cherry tomatoes (2nd bowl sitting on the counter that i need to do something with
• harvested HUGE zucchini that I had no idea was actually growing on the plant. oops.
• harvested FIVE RASPBERRIES.
• convinced ethan to try one (jocelyn was a no-go)
• did not let children drown while swimming over at kurt and ann’s (au contraire, much fun was had by all, cute kid stories on that later)
• took beautiful pictures of blankies made by mother, and given to the kids when we were on our vacation in utah
• saw harry potter and the order of the phoenix (… eh.. did they READ the book? yeah, didn’t think so..)
• procured babysitter for next friday night, when james and i will buy the VERY LAST HARRY POTTER BOOK AT MIDNIGHT OMG I’M FREAKING OUT AHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!
• learned all about queen/pharaoh Hatshepsut, damn one ballsy woman.
• drank a little too much …. and wrote this entry. wheeee!
• i know i should link some things in this entry, but NOT GOING TO. DEAL.
• once again, WHEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE!

• My wallpaper art didn’t come yesterday. MAYBE TODAY!
• I’ve decided that the guest room will need some red in it. I hankering for a cuckoo clock painted glossy red, how yummy!
• my design/ decorating/ interior blog reading has reached new obsessive porportions that even frightens me a little bit. I woke up this morning from a dream that involved curtains, artwork and paint chips after reading casapinka’s blog all the way through from the first entry last night.
• I lost the lens cap to our camera. Luckily it was the cheap lens. Does that make it any better? I’m hoping it will show up, but since I ALWAYS stick the lens cap into my bra, and it wasn’t there when I was through with the camera nor anywhere in the only two rooms I was in during the camera’s use, I have no choice but to look facts in the face. My bosoms have eaten the lens cap. James would do well to beware.
• I got out the camera last night because James was out boozing and whoring with people who have absolutely nothing in common except the facts that they all own the same kind of car*, and I got to stay home and play with the kids by myself.

  This is more of a challenge than you might think. If you just play with Ethan, then Jocelyn is left out. If you just play with Jocelyn, then Ethan is left out. So we all played together in a big roleplay of getting Cinderella to the ball. Since I actually took pictures, I’ll wait until they are accessible before giving you the whole story, but I will tell you it involved cinderella, of course, construction machines, race cars, a my little pony and a police helicopter. More at 11.

-amy practices for the bubble yum olympics

* I guess they also have the penis thing in common. Will have to ask if any girls attended STI gathering.

Just about every blogger has done this, some make it a regular thing.. I’ve resisted because.. well… it wouldn’t have been that interesting.

But in looking through my stats, a search phrase popped out that I just HAD to share.

But I’m going to milk a whole post out of this, so we’ll start with the boring ones.

cheap fake tutus
— for a second when I saw this I thought, ‘fake ta-tas? sorry honey these are all real!’

happy mokes
mokes
baby mokes
cute mokes
— i always have some sort of mokes search in my stats. it’s a standard. ironically, i’ve no idea what a moke is. i just know something with that name does exist.

impatiens little black bugs

vigamox eyedrops
putting eyedrops in toddler’s eyes
administering eyedrops to children
how to give eyedrops
can i give my child eyedrops
sulfacetamide sodium opthamalic solution
child blinks and rolls eyes
how long to give eye drops for pink eye
— if you’re us… forever..

how to harvest seeds
— i get this one a lot, actually. It’s easy and fun.

and here we go.. the search phrase that led me nay, FORCED me to post this…

can you sew the placenta to the uterus

Um. I have no idea. Nor do I think I want to.

I’m hoping that this square of wallpaper I purchased last week arrives today:

It is going to hang in our guest room, whose walls, painted a medium brown shade (I call it, ‘Melted Chocolate Ice Cream’) I’m totally digging on more and more.

I am going to keep my eye out for a light blue vase to go on the bedside table.

This is all part of my decorating plan of “getting a clue BEFORE buying shit.” I often see things that I like or think I like and subsequently purchase, all to get it home and realize that I’ve no idea where to put it or if it even goes with what’s in the room already. I end up sticking it somewhere that doesn’t really fit it and pondering on what my style IS EXACTLY ANYWAY and wondering how other people manage to do this so easily. As such, I’m starting to build quite the design/ house/ decorating blog list. It’s my new obsession.

As such, I think colors are the place to start. I’ve been thinking a lot about colors to go on the walls of our main level. It’s all very open and connected, so I think 1 main color with some accent walls will work best. I currently in love with the brown/blue, brown/red, brown/pink, brown/green combinations (although I don’t want a pink wall, I just don’t have that kind of chutzpuh).

I’m pretty content to just mull it over for a good long while and make sure it’s what I want. The blue and brown of that newly purchased artwork however — I’m leaning toward it for our living room, except with maybe a deeper brown.

Seriously, how could you not love brown?

-amy

raineyamy: hi
jameseypooh: hi
raineyamy: how’s it going? how’d they do?
jameseypooh: good
jameseypooh: kids did good this morning
jameseypooh: Ariel and Batman, that is
jameseypooh: I don’t know who Ethan and Jocelyn are
raineyamy: LOL