showeredwithgrace

Rose Red's self portrait.  That's her name she wrote at the top.   I particularly like how disconnected her ears are from the rest of her face ~ she is very into drawing the ears on (or should I say 'off') things lately.

And the rest of the family  .  .  .

Dad, Mom, Oldest Brother (Thor the Mighty), Rose Red, Middle Brother (River - formerly Wide Receiver but no longer playing football so now he is River).  River, I guess, only has one eye and looks suspiciously like an amoeba . . .  but Dad looks right on!  I'm a little concerned about the whiskers I apparently have growing out of my chin . . .

So there you have it ~ our new family portrait.

It has begun . . .

the monsoon season is upon us.  Our first storm brushed by us last night ~ mostly wind and dust down here in the valley with just a splattering of rain. 

Look whose busy cleaning today.  By the looks of it she means business (she even put her apron on) !

I don't know how google reader works but I'm sure I'm messing with it ~ so sorry!  I'm cleaning up some things on my blog today and republishing all my entries  : (  .

Done.

There is nothing perfect about it ~ but it satisfies.

"For every time there is a season and a reason under heaven . .  ."   and for every season, this first year of preschool,  Rose Red and I will be setting up a seasonal space to bring a little of our outdoors in to investigate and admire.  This is our summer space.  Our colors our gold and teal the colors of the sun and the cactus found in abundance here in our Sonoran desert.  We have our Audubon "cactus wren" here (which when you squeeze him sounds exactly like the abundance of cactus wrens we have here).  Our fire element is displayed reminding us of the heat (as if we need a reminder) and our water element is our hopeful promise of the cooling monsoons.  Seed pods aplenty litter our desert floors now and what fun would summer be without a handy bug catcher!  So far we have caught an inchworm but the scorpion we left alone.

While I was slurping up my coffee and skimming through blogland Rose Red was having fun this morning creating food art.  Can you see the face?

She claims those cereal flakes by the strawberry eyes are the cheeks and the two nectarine slices above the strawberry eyes are the eyebrows while the top two nectarines are hair.  The nose and mouth are more obvious and dare I say it .  .  .  I think this fellow is sporting one pierced ear (but that's just my own observation).  All in all rather fun and clever for early in the morning, wouldn't you say?!

I'm sadly addicted to Minkee and silk.  For those of you who don't know, I speaking about fabric.  Two of the softest, silky fabrics in existence.  They are brutal to work with but I can't help myself.  With any luck I'll finish this quilt today ~ just in time for my son's girlfriend's birthday . . .

 

Rose Red's favorite simple and frugal bacon and egg breakfast:  Fry up a couple strips of bacon until crispy.  Remove bacon.  Throw in leftover rice and fry up a bit.  Add cooked bacon cut up and other items of choice like frozen or leftover veggies or meat.  Season with a bit of soy sauce to taste and continue cooking until all cooked through.  Add a couple beaten eggs to rice mixture allowing eggs to set a bit before fully incorporating into the rest of the dish so you have large bites of egg.  Voila!  Yummy fried rice for breakfast.  We love it.

Our basket of open & shut items always delights.  You can pick up these little items anywhere.  It always surprises me how challenging some of them are to open and shut for our wee ones.  Rose Red has gotten quite good at them now. 

Things that brought me joy this morning.

 

Things to love about summer;  cool velvety breezes on warm summer nights ~ blissful.

I found myself completely out of scouring powder today and thought I'd take the opportunity to whip up a simple homemade scouring powder ~ flexing my eco ~ frugal muscles.

First I took equal parts of Borax, salt and baking soda and mixed them together.

Sink before:

and After .  .  .

Impressed?  Me either .  .  .  it all washed away nicely leaving none of the chalking coating that is left over after using Ajax or Comet ~ but I don't think we could call this sink 'properly scoured' can we?  I had such high hopes ~ sigh.   

One of my favorite things about  June ~ picnic breakfasts!  We've been sneaking out of the house in the early mornings to breakfast with the birds.  It's the only time we can beat the heat.

Yummy! Sweet summer berries.

And new summer haircuts