Raised beds

Just after planting some starts and seeds in our new garden it snowed.

That's some cold bok choy.

Banging Wall

I'm currently reading The Creative Family by Amanda Soule and I absolutely love it. It's all about bringing creativity in to every day family life, in a thrifty sort of way. Now that's a parenting style I can get behind! We really liked the idea of a banging wall (check it out here), and decided we ought to make something like it for E. We went to Goodwill this morning to pick out some things, then came home and did a some painting and building (with free spray paint and scrap lumber) and came up with this:

I'm pretty happy with the end result, and so is E.

Swing set!

Ever heard of Freecycle? Thanks to Freecycle, we got a swing set for the kiddo for $0. It needs a bit of love, but we're not complaining. 

Amazingly, it only took one trip in Gertie to get it home! (We'd already taken the swing and ladder out of the back before we remembered to get a photo.)

We had to disassemble it and put it back together. I was surprised at how fast we did it though. It only took about 2 hours total.

Voilá! It started snowing when we were finishing up. 

Brrrrr

The Spring weather left as quickly as it came. Snow has been falling regularly, although it doesn't seem to stick around for very long, the past week or so. Yesterday morning was very Nebraska-like, cold temperatures and windy. No wind today, so we went on a nice walk this morning.

E and Molly the dolly.

Molly the dolly is based on a free pattern, Sally the eco fairy, from Knitty. It took quite a bit of fudging to work this pattern since I didn't have enough yarn to follow the pattern exactly. (I used leftover scraps from my yarn stash.) She's wearing permanent orange leg warmers and her feet and hands are different than the pattern also. E has become quite attached to her doll. Eventually I'll make Molly some clothes.

This is the park near our house. The toddler area of the park has a nice fence around it. Although she doesn't walk on her own just yet, she's perfectly happy to crawl around, over and through the playground equipment. Off to the right is the spray ground, which won't open up for a couple more months.