A holiday style outdoor mud kitchen!

We moved a few things outside to a readily muddy area near a place where we can keep an eye on grand-girly. I was inspired by a mud kitchen  my blogger pal over at Messyfish, had made for her son. Of course, she tries to use mostly all natural elements, but I have a bunch of plastic here, which I used so that we could get it going much quicker! She must have spent at least 3 hours out there!  When her brother got home from school, he joined her. This is such a hit! We do have to have  one rule though.....the holes dug in the dirt must be filled at end of playtime.    No broken hips for this grandma!!!!
Note the beautiful mud cake "dough" in the cooler, with floral ingredients! Beautiful. She was delighted mixing it up!  We put Christmas lights and balls on the jasmine covered gate as well, for a well lit holiday kitchen at night!  Tomorrow I will go through my pots and pans and find some old ones for her, and we are keeping an eye open for a free coffee table to add, that we can paint burners on the top, for a stove.  I believe this will be a fun activity for Donovan (age almost 8) to paint.
If you have any young people around....give an outdoor mud kitchen a try!!!  It is truly enchanting for them!
                              

My new holiday bouquet!

When I cut my Black Knight bushes (to keep them bushy), I brought in the cuttings and arranged them in a mug (the only place the grandkids normally can't reach).....and between the deep purple stems and leaves, and white puffy balls, HELLO CHRISTMAS!!!!!!!

My little tire garden today.

I just got outside to water and take a few pictures of my garden at start of our best gardening season ((Oct.-April). It is alive with color right now. You can see all the zinnias, which are blooming their fool heads off right now, the roses, some succulent shots, and how full the Black Knight has gotten and covered in blooms! The puffs are at each branching along each stem.....you can trim them and still have millions of blooms! Incredible. I love them all so much! My mum is shaggy right now, but is covered in more buds, so hope to see more flowers soon.  The one picture of two tiny flowers were weeds just handed to me by Emily, my 4 year old granddaughter, and of course i needed a shot of them!  The one picture of a restaurant we visited in Okeechobee, Florida, was called Cowboys. It was pretty cool. Our steaks were not all that great, but I feel they are doing a lot of things right, as it was packed on a Monday night.....clearly the place to be for food in this town!

Getting into the Christmas spirit already!

My husband and I spent the night across the street from Downtown Disney at Disney World, Orlando. We walked from  one end to the other, and it is beautifully lit. We ate at Fultons Crab House, on a paddleboat (absolutely devine food, if you go there), we saw multiple amazing musicians along Pleasure Island, and it was cold and breezy out.....very invigorating!!!

The drawn Christmas tree is one I scribbled out on a paper tablecloth the other night at a restaurant back home. We all decided to draw something while we waited for our food, and a Christmas tree popped out. Strange.

We also attended Santas arrival at our local mall, with a dance party with the reindeer, elves, Santa himself, and a snow queen ((all on stilts).

I wish I could be a kid today....it is all so magical!  I get to be a grown up kid, and sometimes the magic stll gets to me.

Hope everyone has a magical holiday season!

Embroidered Penny's Bird!

I had mentioned a few months back about something I was working on for a blog pal. I couldn't show it because I wanted it to be a sort of surprise. She gave me permission to embroider one of her birds that she had drawn. I fell absolutely in LOVE with this guy, and felt I HAD to embroider him.

You can see her original drawing HERE, at Penny's blog, called With My Boots and Sketchbook. To get her drawing onto my fabric, I held natural muslin up to my computer screen and copied the bird with pencil. It worked out fairly well, but there were areas that had to be changed up slightly due to the muslin having slipped one way or another as I was penciling it out....but it really added to the quirkiness of the whole thing. I also decided to give the bird red toenails, which, to me was the icing on the cake! I sewed the piece into a homemade envelope pillowcase, which was cut from a fat quarter, and I thought it looked like chicken feet had walked all over it to create the pattern! This project just started with the inspiration of her really amazing bird, and after embroidering it, I knew it had to be put into something (pillow)...and Penny likes it. It really was the journey that was the fun part of this. Thank you, Penny, for allowing me to embroider your cute bird, and for the picture of the finished project, as I had sent it off to her, not remembering to get a photo before it shipped all the way to Australia!!! That's how I roll !

CHRISTMAS crafts starting on a Halloween table cloth!

Well, ain't this something? Surprise, my lazy self has not taken our Halloween stuff up, before starting a neat Christmas craft with the grands! We cut up pieces of magazine pics in different color groups, and I drew out a crazy looking big old Christmas tree with packages underneath. I cut out strings of pearls from the magazine and we used them for garland, and drew a star on top to fill in, and round ornaments. Emily (age 4) is using colored pencils (her choice), as the mosaic doesn't seem too interest her too much. The whole family is getting in on the act, and adding whatever we wish. It is a lot of fun for them, and of course, it will be hung with pride, when completed. When I was a kid, one of our neighbors had a large picture frame, and it had a felt Christmas tree as the picture, with beautiful old costume jewelry ornaments and I can still remember how beautiful it was in my eyes! I have always wanted to make one. Do any of you have something like that (in your past)that you wish you could also re-create?

Today.....Zoo Miami

My daughter and I took the grands to Zoo Miami. It is a huge place,  and the one mistake we made was to NOT rent a surrey. Things are so spaced out there, there is a LOT of walking!!!! We ended up, after 5 hours, not being able to see any of the Asian area. It was an impressive zoo, and we plan to go back next week to do it again with a surrey!

We did get to ride the monorail though, which was on the kids list of things to do!

The one picture of the metal eagle statue, was HUGE! It must have been 10 ft. from bill to tail. It was so beautiful in front of the water.

Love the elephants bottom as you are leaving the zoo.....dear daughter had to pose with it!!!!!  Lol....
Too good!!!

The coolest animal (and believe me, they were all spectacular), in my book, was the 6 ton black rhinos! Incredible.

Xoxo, Julie

A few interesting things at the Mounts Botanical Plant Sale on Saturday!

First, I cannot remember which vendor it was, but they were showing off this cute cactus feller!!! I thought it was genius to carve the face into the prickly pear!!!  It will live and grow like that.....hehehe.

Then we discovered this hairy caterpillar in a bunch of bamboo! It was moving, or I would have thought it was a cocoon of sorts, or a gall. I wonder what he will be when he grows up.....I am going to guess a moth!!!!   Not sure, but will do more research one of these days!

The Mounts Botanical Garden is located in West Palm Beach, Florida. They also had their annual hibiscus blooms show, which is always fun to see.

A new gardening journal

I was suddenly hell bent on finding a perfect garden journal. I looked online for already printed, perfect books, but found they were expensive, and not exactly what I was needing. I wanted one that I could put anything into, without restriction....plus gardening in south Florida is way different from the rest of the country. I couldn't use most of the grafts and charts that are in most pre-made journals. I saw one that had soil warmth levels for individual plants!!!!!  I got a chuckle out of that, since it is always warm enough here!!!!
I finally found a "planner", and it was on sale at Target for $2.68. A designer print on front and back, that I felt kinda had a plantesque look. It had a monthly calander, and then daily entry spots for garden observations. Perfect.
I started writing in it yesterday, but noted when the painted buntings arrived from the north.....on Oct. 17.
Here are a few photos of my new journal. I plan to add art, plant tags, etc. This should be fun, eh?????

P.S. The Garden Journal page came from Terroir Seeds.  They have a neat garden journal that you can print out for free. Look under RESOURCES along the top banner. I would like to thank them, because I did use their print inside my journal. They offer a lot on their website (a newsletter, which I subscribed to, and recipes, etc., so give it a look see.
Have a great weekend everyone!!!
Xoxo- Julie