Monkey See, Monkey Do

Peachy is such a little imitator these days. When I am frustrated I often make this grunting/groaning sound. Guess who also makes this sound now? I guess it is better than a naughty word. Here is a picture of Peachy during a recent playgroup.

Where do you think she picked this up?

Tutorial Tuesday: Baby Blanket with Ric Rac

Have I ever expressed to you my love of ric rac? Take something a little bit ordinary, add some ric rac, and you've got extraordinary! (I am really sorry. I will stop using these corny sayings any day now.) Elisabeth at Growing Your Home has a baby blanket tutorial posted that uses ric rac. It is so easy, but yet so darling. When I came across it yesterday I just knew I had to give it a whirl. However, I only got through steps one and two before I called it a night last night. I will definitely be posting the pictures when I am all done, but for now here are some of Elisabeth's.

Aren't they just darling? I can't wait to finish mine up!

From Drab, To Fab!

Okay, so this picnic table was never really drab, just in need of some TLC in the form of a can of paint, but I have always wanted to use that saying! Remember when I wrote about this pink wonder that I picked up off the side of the road? After sanding, priming and painting it is sporting quite a new look and Little Peachy loves it! (Okay, Peachy could care less what color her picnic table is at this point. She just liked having a table to sit at, or, to sit at and get off and want to sit at again. She is into up and down these days. However, her parents, this one in particular, are happy to have the Pepto Bismal Pink replaced with a lovely Cranberry Red. I even bought enough paint to paint the front door, but we need to purchase a storm door first, says Mr. Cherry. Something about doing it the "right way." Engineers! I tell you!

Foodie Friday: Pizza Paninis

I decided to use a few fresh ingredients from the garden for a recent supper. Here are the results.

Ingredients:

-French bread, sliced

-pizza sauce

-fresh basil leaves

-sliced peppers (from our pepper pot)

-Mozzarella cheese (sliced)

-sliced pepperoni

-olive oil

-garlic powder

Directions:

1. Spread one side of bread slices with pizza sauce. Top with basil, peppers, cheese, and pepperoni. Place another slice of bread on top.

2. Drizzle top of sandwich with olive oil, sprinkle with garlic powder and cook in a panini press.

All Hands On Deck

When we had our home built two years ago we opted out of the deck option. It was a way for us to save money at the time and it is also something that we knew we* could do on our own down the road. Well this summer is the summer to build the deck.
*(Please note my use of the word we here does not by any means denote an equal partnership. Instead it is more like 99% Mr. Cherry and 1% me.)
The first step was to decide what we wanted in a deck and design it. We opted to go with a fairly simple and small deck. Mr. Cherry was able to use his computer designing skills to draw out the plan via the computer.

After presenting our plan to the city inspector, the next step would be to dig the footings for the structure. Since half of our year here is spent under a blanket of snow, we have to go 5 feet deep on our footings. Mr. Cherry was determined to dig the 8 footings on his own with a post hole digger. (If you haven't been reading this blog for two years, you may not remember that Mr. Cherry also graded our yard pulling a railroad timber contraption around behind him.) And not only did he succeed in a weekend, he also found a sledge hammer buried in the yard in the process. Bonus!
This past weekend found him pouring the footings. (That is after he used the shop vac to drain the ground water that had seeped in over the week.)

After many hours of hot sweaty work, so many trips to Menards that Peachy even recognizes the place, 34 bags of cement at 60 pounds each, and 3 we have 8 cement filled holes in the ground.