Garden Update

My little garden is a bit weedy, but doing well! I have onions, carrots (that need to be thinned out), cilantro, basil, peppermint, oregano, tomatoes (heirloom, patio, cherry, and more), and peppers (jalapeno and bell).

So fun to watch it grow from this.

See the little peppers growing? They are right in the middle of the photo. I know, you can't really see them, but I'm so proud of them I just had to include them.

Strawberry plants that we just put in this year - no berries till next year though.

A giant sunflower that the squirrels planted for us, a huge mum that comes back each year, and lots of weeds growing around it. The tall stuff behind the daisies includes a lilac bush and a butterfly bush. We have a bird feeder tucked in there that is pretty close to the window and the girls enjoy watching the birds and squirrels that come to it. The butterfly bush attracts lots of butterflies and one hummingbird who comes each year when it blooms a bit later on.

My beautiful lavender - I just harvested some yesterday and am drying it in the basement. I love having this right by the front door, it smells great and blooms wonderfully.

There are six tiny lavenders along the sidewalk. We just put them in this year but they aren't growing much. My tomatoes in pots got overwatered during a big storm we had so they aren't too happy, but they have a few little tomatoes growing anyway. There is a zucchini plant between the first two tomato pots, something keeps eating the zucchini before I can pick it though. The other zucchini plant on the right didn't make it. The other big tall thing? I don't know.

That's my weedy, fun yard!

Green Mountain Wee Woolies - Product Review and Giveaway

My girls are both at a stage where they enjoy dressing up. We have playsilks, necklaces, purses, play cell phones, and a few other props they enjoy using. Recently I went searching for a wool felt crown to add to their dress up play. I searched and searched... found a few options for making one, but nothing I was in love with.... until I found Green Mountain Wee Woolies! Valerie has the most wonderful assortment of natural wool and wooden toys and her crowns are absolutely the best I found! She agreed to send us one for review and is giving away an adorable little gnome to one of my readers.

The crown is just as wonderful in person as it looks in her shop! Its soft and just a bit stretchy, so it easily fits both girls. Valerie does wonderful work, the little rosebuds are adorable and such a nice touch. This definitely looks like a true princess' crown. I love that its made with wool (natural fibers) - the other items in her shop are made from natural materials as well. She even makes a blue crown with leaves on it that would be great for a boy to wear as a prince.

We'll definitely be visiting Green Mountain Wee Woolies in the future for Christmas and birthday gifts. There are quite a few things on my wish list here...

a gnome house that opens up and includes little gnomes,

a felted play mat with a pond, path, and garden,

an absolutely gorgeous doll to use when story telling,

and this is just the coolest toy! A wool felt car and road that travels nicely in the included pouch. I think this is such a creative and fun toy. Instead of filling up my blog with photos, go check out her store here for wool play food, soft felt play balls, wool soakers, a little doll family in a purse and more.

Valerie had this to say - "Thank you for your interest in Green Mountain Wee Woolies. My name is Valerie and I love working with natural fibers. I have been handcrafting since I was a small child. I have a passion for knitting and love making wool soaker diaper covers. I also enjoy spinning and felting. " Green Mountain Wee Woolies is a family business on a small family farm in Vermont.

I have an adorable little blue 8" tall gnome, knit from a soft cashmere wool blend yarn, stuffed with wool roving to giveaway! If you'd like to enter the giveaway please leave a comment on this post including your email address OR have your email contact enabled in your blogger profile. If you happen to purchase something from Valerie's shop, let me know that in another comment and you'll be given another entry for doing so. I'll leave the giveaway open until July 31st at midnight. Thanks for stopping by!

**Giveaway is now closed. Random.org chose comment #17. Thanks for your interest.**

Fun Birthday Gift

Lucy turned 4 on June 23 and Julia will turn 2 on August 2nd. We recently had a family get together combined birthday party for the two of them. One of the favorite birthday gifts was a bird book from Grandpa! He took pictures of all of the different birds that come to their bird feeder and birds that he saw up at their cottage and put them all in a photo album labeled with their names. He has pictures labeled as male and female with one photo of each type. I thought this was such a wonderful gift and one that should be posted to my blog! ;) Lucy has enjoyed looking through it and can name most of the birds. We'll have fun taking more bird pictures and adding to the book.

My Father's World Kindergarten - Organization

I saw a great blog post recently about how someone organized their Kindergarten homeschool supplies and it was a huge help to me. I've finally finished organizing our school cupboard and thought I'd share the results.

I cleared out a cupboard in the hallway, moving some things to the basement and trying to creatively find new places for what was previously stored here. Lucy is excited that she can reach the drawing paper on her own now and I love having all of our school supplies stored in one place and ready to go for the fall.

On the top shelf I have plastic shoe boxes labeled (from left to right) - "play-doh", "play-doh toys", "pens pencils colored pencils", "stickers", "crayons markers", and "scissors glue paint". Each bin is labeled on both ends so that it can be put back with either end facing front. We have a good assortment in these bins including window markers, fat markers, skinny markers, crayon rocks, finger paint, watercolor paints and more! I love having a huge array of art supplies available for the girls to use and they always have fun when I pull out something they haven't used in awhile. Other art supplies like pom pons, brads, cardboard tubes, baby food jars - things like this for special projects are stored in a cupboard in the basement. On top of the play-doh bins are some extra plastic containers of homemade play doh. (For more play-doh ideas see my post here.) The small plastic boxes in front of the bins have crayons in them.

Second shelf - (from left to right again) I have a box labeled "My Father's World" that holds plastic bags of the ABC game, short vowel song, ABC chart, and bingo cards, alphabet flashcards, the number cup, and anything else we use daily. The box underneath is labeled "school supplies" and has pieces to our big calendar, HWOT music cd, HWOT chalk boards, MFW music cd, fundanas for our nature studies, and more. The Cuisinaire rods are stacked on top of these two boxes. Beside that is a roll of fingerpaint paper and a paint shirt. The three drawer set holds handwriting paper and the HWOT wooden pieces, a small pad of colored paper, and white paper. I was disappointed that my large pad of colored paper didn't fit in the drawers, so it is stacked on top of the drawers along with some watercolor paper and more drawing paper. These were all to wide to fit in the drawers. Beside the drawers I have my teacher's manuals, HWOT workbook, Cuisinaire rods workbook, and a dry erase board.

Bottom shelf - way at the back I have a large pad of fingerpaint paper that didn't fit anywhere else. The ant hill is stored here as well. I'm going to get a big binder with page protectors to hold all of Lucy's worksheets and projects throughout the year. (Art projects that are too big for the binder will go in a big plastic bin in the basement. Each girl has their own bin.) That binder will sit on this bottom shelf. Lastly, I have my file box with the alphabet puzzle on top of it.

My Father's World K goes through a series of themes: sun, moon, etc. I have a file for each week containing any ideas I come across, the student worksheets, and other things related to the theme (songs, fingerplays, etc). The calendar, hundred chart, and blend ladder are in the first weeks folder right now and will travel to whichever week we're working on at the time. After weeks 1-26 I have a file labeled "Music and Fingerplays" including the MFW music idea sheet and some fingerplay and song ideas. The "Nature Studies" file has some ideas copied from the back of the book "Pocketful of Pinecones" and other nature studies ideas I may come across. I have a file "Holidays and Seasonal Ideas" with holiday ideas that I want to use (a snowman poem, turkey coloring page, Christmas ideas, etc). "General Information" has a MFW catalog, speaking cds of David Hazell, a few parts of my student worksheets that I didn't need yet, etc. "Preschool MFW" contains the idea booklet and papers from the preschool kit and some other things I printed out that we used last year. My last file is labeled "HWOT" and includes the laminated cards that go with the wooden letter pieces.

I hope some of that is helpful to you! It actually took me quite a while to figure out how to best organize this and some of it may even change as we go. I always enjoy seeing how other people have organized various things and it sparks ideas of my own. Be happy I'm only showing you the one cupboard, you definitely wouldn't want to see the rest of my house in all its chaos. Maybe as the nesting instinct hits I'll become a bit more organized. Thanks for stopping by!