Operation Stay Home: Sweet summer

Oh, I do love summer: park visits, cottage weekends, garage sales, farmer's markets and fresh produce! After being away for two weekends in a row, we stayed in town this past weekend. On Saturday, I did the grocery shopping (ALONE and, yes, it was amazing) and stopped by a couple of garage sales. Or rather, the same garage sale twice. Initially, I bought a little Fisher-Price foldout dollhouse for 25 cents and a pair of ballet slippers for a dollar. I noticed a sweet blue dress-up gown with a tiara, but I didn't have enough cash for it with me. I figured that if I couldn't get it out of my head after grocery shopping, I'd get some money out and go back for it. By the time I got there, they were packing up the garage sale and really just looking to offload a bunch of stuff, so I got the dress and tiara, plus a second foldout dollhouse and another pair of ballet slippers, for the tremendous price of 5$. Hey, I have two girls, I'll probably need doubles of some things. So, that's D birthday shopping done. The unfortunate thing about it was that I forgot to take the gifts inside until the next morning when we were going to church, so she caught sight of one of the dollhouses. I decided to let her have it now and keep the rest of the things in her present stash for October.

D's birthday prezzies...shhh, don't tell her!

The garden thing is working better for us this year, as Hubby took over and did an awesome job. There are zucchini, tomatoes, peppers and carrots in the nicely boxed-in garden he's made. While we wait for the veggies, the fruit is almost more than we can handle. Rhubarb is done for now (I'm hoping to get a second crop later in the season, like we did last year), but we've harvested so many raspberries that even D is getting sick of them. You know those huge Becel margarine tubs? We've filled at least three or four of those, and we're not done yet. I've been on the hunt for other-than-jam recipes to use them up, and started with Smitten Kitchen's raspberry breakfast bars. I used butter for once and loved the results.

Our raspberry bushes are unbelievably abundant this year!

How on earth do food bloggers take pictures of finished products with none missing?

The girls were incredibly patient with me while we ran errands this morning, so after lunch we played in the backyard. I cleaned off D's old swing to put M in, and filled up the kiddy pool. D found some daisies in the desert wasteland of our backyard, so I picked them and tried to remember how to make a daisy garland, with mixed results. It was cute, but had no staying power and was disassembled within seconds of the photo below. M, meanwhile, seized the opportunity to try out her standing skills on the swing. I'm not even mad. That's amazing. I mean, she was belted in and everything. (But I put a quick stop to it.)