The title pretty much says it all. I have a lot of things to say (but what else is new) on various topics, so I thought I’d divide everything up into categories.

Home & Garden

Mid-morning my youngest sister, Zoe, decided to take it upon herself to cut the watermelon up. The watermelon juice was literally all over the counter. Can you guess what we had for lunch? Yup, we had watermelon and homemade bread with peanut butter and apple butter on it. Strange? Maybe. Excellent lunch on a 90ºF summer day? Definitely.

After lunch, the Boybarians were getting rambunctious and kept being naughty and getting into trouble. So as to prevent further chaos, I quickly donned an apron and we marched out the back door to the backyard. At least once a day, they decide that they need to spray each other with the garden hose. To prevent that, I showed them the little pea pods on the plants [in our garden].  They got a little bored with that, so I marched them over to the tomato plants. They weren’t too impressed and started biting the leaves off. Plan, um… I lost count back a Plan E.

They spied a Ladybug. They asked, “What’s dat?”  I told them that was a type of bug called a Ladybug. They look interested so I went on to tell them that it was a good bug [that helps our garden]. I gave them the run down on good bugs, bad bugs, and the difference. Their eyes lit up. Thank you, God, for bugs that save the sanity of all sisters and mothers of boys.

I noticed the lettuce was going gangbusters on us, so I led them over. Then again, we saw a bug- a worm. I told them that it was a bad bug and showed them how to get it off the lettuce. They were enthralled. Bad worm gone, I showed them how to pick the lettuce and what size to get. I told them that we would get lettuce from our garden instead of the store this year. Josiah promptly asked me, “Hannah Lou, why doesn’t ______ have a garden?” to which I replied “Well Sweetie, I guess ______ gets his food from the store.” Josiah then said “That’s so silly!”

We ended up getting one colander full of lettuce!

Casa Braboy

(That’s the name of our house-to-be.)

We are just getting the house listed with our realtor. We are still cleaning and touching up like crazy, though! It’s madness here somedays. Yesterday was one of them.

I believe we have the house plan we are going to use. We aren’t set on it, but the one we have our eyes on is this one. My [oldest of my younger sisters] sister, Alli, have been researching decorations on a budget and the like. We’ve also come up with an idea for closets [instead of normal ones]. See those two bedrooms in the second story? Our idea is to not build the walls or put in the doors for the eave storage and closet spaces. Instead , we would be putting a rod and curtains where the front closet wall is. That space would be used for a closet/studio/school space for both her [Alli] and myself (we share a room). We are thinking we could put cubby holes back there instead of dressers. Also, if more people need to share that room, you could take the rod and curtain out (and possibly make that space smaller or do away with it) and use that for bed space. Just our ideas…

Graphic Design

‘Tis true. I am no longer pursuing graphic design. I really needed to make a choice as to which to pursue: photography or graphic design. I have chosen photography. It fulfills the creative need in me the best; plus, it incorporates a tad of graphic design without the coding. Bleh!

Blogging & Social Media

I have run across some really beneficial articles in the last week! I can’t wait to share them! Some of them are about photography, blogging and social media (some on mommybloggers working for free), and the home (one is a list of books daughters should read). The gals that write this stuff are brilliant! I am so honored to call them my friends!

So, what kind of olio has happened on your frontier this week? I’d love to hear about it in a comment, an email, or a blog post (linked in your comment). Really. I love hearing from you guys!