rainbow crayons

I hit up a few garage sales with some girl friends and found these silicone heart and star molds for ten cents. Perfect. I made the alphabet crayons a while ago but they were hard to get out of the molds, and my guess is that they were hard to color with....though they were adorable and I will still make them again and again :)

I had my nieces over on Saturday and decided it was time to get crafty. Mara used the Ikea cheese grater to grate the crayons really fine. Sonna helped take the paper off of the crayons, and I used the super sharp knife to cut the crayons into small pieces.

Full instructions on how I made these crayons can be found on the Alphabet Crayon post. More fun than making the crayons was coloring with them when they were cooled from the freezer. Each crayon was filled with so many colors.

We decorated envelopes and played mailman with our mail slot, a highlight for all visitors-of-a-certain-age to our house.
Unfortunately, this mailgirl left one of the crayons in her pocket and her mom did a huge load of laundry with that crayon tumbling around in the dryer. Big Whoops.

around here

Around here we are enjoying the harvest from our garden. It is a two person vegetable garden, producing three ears of corn at a time, one eggplant every few weeks, tomatoes and cucumbers unstoppable, beans and sweet peas too. Perfect for just the two of us. And each morning there are just a handful of fresh raspberries to throw on my cereal.

Around here we are amused by Ivar’s favorite toy: his big green ball. He can roll in back and forth with one of us, or he plays by himself army scooching to catch it and roll it again.

Around here we are really loving Toonces’ new room in the basement. We can’t hear him at night and it means we all are sleeping much better. Can’t believe it took us so long to figure that one out.

Around here we can't stop playing Sara’s new album. Yesterday I was singing a song from her last album and Rory said, “no. only new stuff. You only can sing from this new album now.”

Around here we are adjusting to Ivar’s vigor for feeding himself. He is a sticky mess after he’s done eating. He loves ground turkey, banana, peaches and cheerios. Recently when I went to wash his arms he was sticky in his arm pits. No idea how he got banana in his pits, but he did. And therefore he got a bath.

Around here we are inspired by yard projects again. Rory is building a compost bin for the driveway and using all sorts of cool tools in the garage. Ivar loves hanging out with his dad out there, sitting in his stroller, eating cheerios and watching him drill and saw and hammer.

Around here there are so many monarchs in our neighborhood. One neighbor wondered if these aren’t the ones that end up in Mexico. They are everywhere!

Around here my sister is moving into a house with her family...that really, truly is around here! Like 15 minutes away, around here!

Around here we are remembering why we love the midwest and the change of seasons. We love summer, but fall is starting to sound nice too. Cozy things like long sleeves, soup, fires in the backyard and lit candles in the house all seem to sound lovely and perfect right about now.

true story

We spent yesterday afternoon with the whole Groves family on a pontoon on Prior Lake. The following conversation took place on that boat:

Lisa: Becca, is that your new camera! Let me see it!
Becca: It is. I love it. I researched for a long time and found a great point and shoot.
Lisa: Oh this is awesome. Way nicer than mine. Mine is old and way less megapixels.
Rory: Lisa, you don't have to put your camera down to make your point. Becca is always self-deprecating like that.
Becca: Wait a minute. You just Becca-deprecated to show Lisa that she was self-deprecating!
Rory: Well, why do you guys do that? Why can't you just say, "this is a nice camera."
Becca: I don't know, but you don't have to wife-deprecate to make your point. (long pause) Maybe I just like deprecating.

one year ago today.

It's my most popular blog post ever. Most discussed of all my writing. And it all happened one year ago today. If you've got the time, take a moment to read or re-read our adventurous move from Omaha to Minneapolis by clicking here.

And if you have read it before, can I tell you the absolute craziest ending to this story?!! Around January I got a blog comment from one of my favorite friends from high school and college, Heather. She told me she was catching up on my blog, had just read about Story City and couldn't believe we were at the Comfort Inn because her in-law's own that hotel in Story City. What in the small world?!!

And, you might also be interested to know that I did send Al a birth announcement. He was such a nice guy!

more Sara Groves: Invisible Empires!

I got an email this morning for all of the pre-release goods for Sara's new record. You can get the package above for $25 or a $10 download of the album. I think the best part of the deal above is the download with the commentary edition. It's Troy and Sara talking over the album sharing a lot of behind the scenes, how the music was chosen and the stories behind the songs.

If you're interested, head over to http://www.saragroves.com/ and get your new music! It's so good!