Nesting and Gardening

Hooray! I finished another project in Mikey's new bedroom. These are the wall-mounted fabric book slings I found online and wanted to copy. A big shout-out to my friend Carol for helping me measure, level, and mount the curtain rod brackets for these three shelves. Had I done that by myself, it would have taken weeks (because I would have kept putting it off). And thanks also to Kevin for hand-screwing the screws into the studs when they were too hard for our drill and my weak arms to finish off. Carol helped me pick out the three fabrics two Saturdays ago when she was staying with me. We got fabrics with colors that coordinated with the stripes on Mikey's drawers (see them on the white bookshelf?). The sewing was the easy part... the pinning and ironing in between was annoying. I've never liked doing that very much! I think they turned out adorable, don't you?

The top two pictures in the collage are close-ups of the brackets and dowels so you can see how they're made. In the bottom two pictures, I did my best to get the whole wall in the shot, but you can see that Mikey's toddler bed is on the floor, not far from the wall. Just on the other side of his toddler bed (outside the pictured area) is a giant queen-sized loft bed frame. I haven't rearranged the furniture since my mom left, and the queen mattress is still on the floor. So I didn't have much room to stand and take the photo. The plan is to slide Mikey's bed on the floor underneath the loft bed, and the queen mattress would of course go on top of the loft bed frame. We're trying to figure out a way to make it more guest-friendly and accessible for grandparents when they come to visit. So, until we get that done, I can't take a picture of the whole room finished.

Here is what we worked on this Sunday. We picked tons of fresh produce from our garden! All the tomatoes in the top left picture are from our garden. This is after they had their skins removed for salsa-making. We have dozens more tomatoes and oodles more peppers where those came from... Just waiting for them to ripen and we will be making a LOT of salsa this summer and fall! The strawberries in the top right were picked fresh. We get about that many ripe ones every other day. They are delicious, and SO sweet compared to store-bought. The bottom left picture is of all the peppers from our garden: one red, one green, and one ivory bell pepper, along with several fresno chilis and anaheim peppers. Kevin roasted the anaheims on the BBQ and skinned them before we chopped everything up in the food processor for the salsa. This batch of salsa had a lot more kick than our first batch. The fresno chilis really add spice! And the final picture is our beautiful dinner of fried catfish (and trout from a previous fishing excursion), steamed veggies, mashed potatoes and corn on the cob. We were so proud of ourselves for having so many side dishes... we usually eat like college kids and just have a main dish with nothing on the side. And just so you know, this was my first time eating catfish and I REALLY enjoyed it! Kevin caught some yummy morsels for us from the Colorado River, and the flavor of the fish was so mild. The way he fried and seasoned them was perfect. I don't think I've enjoyed fish that much in a long time! Thanks, Hubby!

Here's Mikey looking at dinner before it got filleted and fried. Mikey normally eats fish really well, but we weren't able to interest him in the catfish last night. I think it was because he was still napping when it was hot and fresh. He took a long, late nap after church and wasn't too interested in eating when he woke up at 6 PM. He liked looking at the fish before they were cut up, and he kept pointing at them and talking in his cute jibberish language.

One more shot, just for fun. Sometimes when I tell Mikey that we are going outside, I say "Go find your shoes!" And more often than not, he finds some of mine or Kevin's and puts them on. Cute little guy. We love him. P.S. He turns 18 months in a few days, and he is now officially in nursery! What a happy time for Mom and Dad.