Getting messy with crafts

Last year I found The Crafty Crow. It is a great site that hosts many different bloggers' craft ideas. Avery and I have taken advantage of some of them and enjoyed getting messy.


Paper mache bowls. We used a glue and water mixture to cover a bowl with tissue paper.


The finished bowl. Avery was quite proud of it.


Painting on plexi-glass. Once the painting is done, you can take another piece of paper and make a print of the paint.


He told me he was washing himself with paint. It's on his face because he tried to sniff it and got a little too close.


Sticking various things to contact paper and then covering it up. It makes a nice window display. It's also great for dexterity. He would put things on and then pull them back off.

We used the last container of freezer jam......

Yesterday I enjoyed my english muffin covered with homemade raspberry freezer jam, like I do most mornings. However, there was a brief moment of panic when I realized that I was eating the last of it. We made our strawberry jam this year, but with moving and all the other busyness summer brings we never got around to picking our raspberries and making jam. I love the strawberry jam, but raspberry is my favorite. Since the summer berries were long gone, I thought I wasn't going to have any more this year. However, I discovered through a little searching that there are fall bearing raspberries! There are raspeberry bushes out there that bloom continuously until the first frost. So we packed up the family and headed to the closest farm that had fall bearing raspberries. Because it was later in the season, we were also able to go to the apple orchard and pick honeycrisps! It was a fun day and we were all tired out by the end. But... I have my jam!


Golden raspberries! We didn't even know they existed. We ended up picking both varieties and I think golden are even better than the traditional red ones. They are much sweeter.


Picking his first apple. He loved running to the trees to help fill our bag.






Here's the new ride- with an expanding family we had to find something to accommodate 2 kids, a dog, 2 ferrets, and all of our things so we decided on the Mazda MPV. I never thought I'd be a van mom, but there really aren't many options when you need the room. Oh well, Avery loves playing with the automatic side doors.

I realize there aren't any pictures of us picking raspberries since that is what this whole post is about, but we were really busy picking enough pints for a whole years worth of jam! I do wish I had taken a picture of Avery when we were done. He loved picking the berries since they were at his level. He was covered in raspberry goo by the end of the day.

Alzheimer's Walk

This weekend we joined The Wunderlin Walker's for the Alzheimer's Walk in memory of Grandma Wunderlin. We braved the rain and walked to help raise money for the cause. There were over 200 walkers there and a total of over $32,000 was raised. Grandpa walked again this year and we were all so proud of him. He's doing well for having had a stroke a few months ago and for nearing his 87th birthday. I enjoy this walk because it's a chance to get together with family and celebrate Grandma and Grandpa and the family they started.

From the mouth of a two year old...

Now that Avery is talking more and more he's been entertaining us with his thoughts. I thought I would share a few of his humorous moments.
Because we're in full swing potty training we seem to spend a lot of time in the bathroom no matter where we are. Avery seems to have fun commentary with each trip to the public restroom.
One of those times he happened to be in a public restroom with me. We walked in and of course he thought he should comment on the smell since there was a lady in the stall adding to the already great smell in the bathroom. Our conversation went something like this:
A: Smell it mama.
B: Yes, Avery we're in a bathroom.
A: Smell, giraffe.
B: No, there aren't any giraffe in here.
A: See, giraffe. Avery wants to see the giraffe!
By this point I'm really trying to hold the laugh in so I don't embarrass the lady next to us, who apparently smelled like a giraffe to Avery.

Another time Scott and Avery were in the bathroom. He loves going in with Scott so he can use the urinal. On this particular trip, he quickly noticed something was missing from it and yelled out, "No cake there!" I guess this urinal had no urinal cake in it.

The last one happened at dinner last night. We were saying grace before the meal and I stopped and said, "What are you thankful for, Avery?" He said, "thanks for elephants........... and hugs." Both of which are very important to a little boy!

Labor Day fun

For Labor Day weekend we met Grandma and Grandpa Davis in Sand Point Michigan. It's another beautiful area of Lake Superior near the Pictured Rock National Lake shore. The weather was perfect for enjoying the lake.


Avery's favorite part of the beach was when Scott dug him holes


Enjoying s'mores


We took a ride in Grandpa's inflatable kayak. It was a profitable trip as Scott found $10 on the bottom of the Autrain River.


Scott's still learning to swim, so we got him extra big arm floaties. Okay, those are actually the inflatable kayak seats but they made perfect floaties.


Enjoying a moment in the hammock


Happy Birthday Grandpa! We enjoyed a fantastic graham cracker cake that Grandma made.

Vegetable Lesson

Which one is good to eat? And which one is like licking a butane torch?




I was at Super Target yesterday and saw some banana peppers. My family grows sweet banana peppers in their garden and as I stood there I reminisced about that garden fresh crunchy sweetness I loved as a kid. I decided to grab one to snack on. For dinner last night we had chili and I eagerly tossed a handful into my bowl and cut a bunch up for Avery. Little did I know that Super Target didn’t know the difference between sweet banana peppers and hot Hungarian wax peppers. Since Avery loves peppers, he grabbed one as I was setting his plate down and shoved it into his mouth. He had barely finished swallowing when this mystified fear overtook him. Not really a pain, but definitely not pleasant. With his limited vocabulary he cried out SOUR!! and attempted to wipe his lips and tongue off. So we accidentally introduced him to a new sensation……HOT….SPICY HOT. He did good overall, drinking lots of milk and eating handfuls of cream cheese helped as did the ice cream. I didn’t know what was going on until after I had eaten about 4 slices myself. So we had a milk/cream cheese/ice cream party together.

(Hot one is on the right)

One tiring, fun filled day....

I've never been to a state fair before so we thought we would take Avery this weekend since the fair is in town. We had a lot of fun seeing all there was to see and enjoying the rides and fair food. My favorite place was the animal birthing center. I almost got to see a calf be born, but just as the cow was ready, Avery decided he'd had enough and we had to leave. It was a great day, but when it was all over I've decided that I like the little county fairs better. At this fair there were too many people which meant you couldn't really see anything unless you stood in line for awhile and because of the size of the fair, you couldn't possibly see all there was to see. Aside from that, it was a fair and fairs are fun, especially if you like food on a stick.

Cake in a mug

If you're looking for a fast, fun dessert to make with your family try cake in a mug. I came across this recipe on another blog. Avery enjoyed helping but insisted on eating the dry ingredients.

dry ingredients
4 tbs sugar
4 tbs flour
2 tbs cocoa

wet ingredients
1 egg
1/4 c milk
1/4 c oil

Mix the dry ingredients together and the wet ingredients together and combine the 2 in a mug. Cook in the microwave for 3 minutes. Dump the cake into a bowl and top with whatever frosting you would like. It is fun to watch the cake grow taller than the cup. The cake was a little spongy but great for a 3 minute cake. I'm sure Scott will try to improve on it.

Super Hero for a day

This summer Avery and I have enjoyed the puppet shows and crafts that our parks and rec department have put on. Today was the last show and craft ending the summer with a super hero theme. It's been awhile since he's worked with glue so when it was time to glue things to his mask, he thought he was painting and wanted to cover the whole thing with white glue. I think I need to pull out the glue again at home and let him glue away. Here's our super hero. I asked him to pose like a super hero and these are the two poses he did.

Because all super heroes need a moment for deep thought


this looks more like he's being held up

Ready or not....

Last week Avery decided that he no longer liked wearing his diaper and refused to let us put one on him. We were a little concerned about the looming wet floors but this last week has gone well and he's only had a few accidents (all outside). I think it helped introducing him to the potty from 9 months on, just to get used to it. He also ran around the house a lot without diapers on when he was little (thank goodness for hardwood floors!). One week down, I hope our luck continues. Here he is being excited about wearing "big boy underwear".

Avery's 2 year old pictures

Bayfield craft fair

This last December Scott and I started a new hobby. We both love rocks and have been avid collectors of rocks since we were both little. One of my favorite rocks is the opal and that love started early on since it is my birthstone. Okay, so back to our hobby. Through a series of events, we decided to try to cut, shape, and polish opals so we bought a lapidary machine. It is a machine with 6 diamond cutting wheels with various grits. Once we get the opal to look like we want, we turn it into a piece of jewelry. This weekend we went to Bayfield to a craft fair to sell the opals.


Avery is showing off his mad cabochon skills with the lapidary.


Most of our opals come from this mine. We have a gentleman who is one of the only American's in Australia who owns and operates his own mine. The rocks he sends us are from the Koroit opal field in Queensland Australia. If you want to learn more, the website for the mine is koroit.com. We mainly work with an opal called a boulder opal. It is an opal surrounded by iron stone. The opal makes beautiful patterns in the stone.

Here is one of our finished products. The opal part you see is the blue color you see in the stone.

This one isn't a boulder opal, but a solid opal. We also did this one, but I think after the fair, we've decided to work with just boulder opals.




At the fair- I'm wearing one of our opals. Many people wanted to buy it, but it is a special one and I wouldn't budge!


As you can see, Avery had a blast with Grandma, Grandpa, and Laura while we worked at the 2 day fair.


I think the backhoe was his favorite and it gave Grandpa another chance to get it out.

Random summer pictures

Kissing a cow


He kept saying, "no picture!"


Celebrating the fourth with friends


Enjoying a BBQ with more friends


When he first squirted this and saw how far it shot up, he said "wow, squirt gun, cow!" He had just learned how to use the term "holy cow" when something amazing happens, except he forgot to say holy.


We were feeding the geese. Yes, I know he needs a bigger hoodie.