A couple years ago I received some iris rhizomes from a friend, as well as more from Freecycle. I knew almost nothing about iris, other than they need to be planted fairly shallow, so I planted them and hoped they’d do well. This year they’re gorgeous.

This is my favorite of all the irises in the garden. Isn’t it gorgeous?

A look inside. . .

This is the first year this darker iris has bloomed. It’s a nice contrast to the rest of them, which are mostly a paler purple like this one:

There are some really persistent weeds in this garden, so I’m hoping to dig everything up after they flower this year. The weeds are too established to get by hand (have I ever tried!), so hopefully separating and replanting the iris will help. We’ve been mulching our flowerbeds as we’ve redone them, and so far it seems to be doing better. My iris are so pretty now – hopefully they’ll look fantastic next year!

Samuel turned six today. He was awake just after 6:30 this morning, and was bouncing all over the house. He was so excited. He informed me that he feels older and bigger now that he’s six. ;) Crazy kid.

He wanted chocolate cake with blue icing, so that’s what I made him. He didn’t seem to care that it wasn’t perfect or that it leaned quite a bit (I really need to work at my cake leveling skills!). He loved it. It was a small cake so we wouldn’t get sick of eating it by the end of the week.

How is he six already? It seems just like yesterday that we got the call, “Are you ready? Because I’m in labor!”

Samuel is such a special little boy. Over the years, we’ve lost contact with his birth mother. Sometimes I wish I could just send her an email and some pictures that says, “Look at this amazing boy and how he’s grown. Thank you for letting him become my son.” I can’t thank his birth mother, but I do thank God for him. I am so blessed.

Happy Birthday, Samuel! We love you!

I was out taking some pictures today of my flowers and took this. My dad does an amazing job with macro photography and some of that has rubbed off on me. I’m not sure I got too much of his talent, but his love for it sure did rub off!

Our church’s Mother Daughter banquet is Saturday at lunch, and I need to bring a dessert. It needs to be something special, and I’d like it to be something healthy (or at least healthier). Any ideas?

Here’s our menu plan for this week. We’re working on cutting back even more on refined, processed foods and sugars. The more I read about diabetes, PCOS, insulin, and general health, the more I’m convinced we need to eat better. We did low carb for a while, and it worked well, but we ate a lot of artificial sweeteners and processed meats then as well. Now I’m trying to remove the sweeteners and processed just about everything. It’s proving to be quite the challenge.

Sunday: leftovers

Monday: Samuel’s birthday dinner. He requested pizza and birthday cake. (He originally asked for tuna sandwiches, but then changed his mind.)

Tuesday: chicken artichoke casserole, brown rice

Wednesday: tacos

Thursday: chicken pot pie

Friday: date night

Saturday: stir fry (not sure what type of meat yet)

The meals without veggies listed we’ll just decide then which veggie to eat from the freezer.

Breakfasts are smoothies, eggs, oatmeal, biscuits, and scones.

Lunches are sandwiches, wraps, macaroni and cheese, and leftovers.

Snacks are cheese, baby carrots, nuts, and fresh fruit.

You can read more menu plans over at Orgjunkie.com.

We took the kids to the zoo for Samuel’s zoo animals unit. My best friend and her daughter came with us. We had a blast.

All four of the kids together – the only halfway decent picture we got!

My monkeys watching the monkeys

The boys thought this tortoise was pretty neat. Samuel wanted to ride one. Good thing we found a substitute!

My favorite part of our trip was feeding the lorakeets. Caleb didn’t care for the birds getting that close to him, but Samuel really enjoyed it.

We were having so much fun that I forgot to take very many pictures. I can’t wait to go back!

Last week I made Anna a new dress for her to wear for our field trip to the zoo. It was supposed to be quite warm that day, so I wanted something that wasn’t going to be too hot for her. I also wanted something really long – even though she can wear sunscreen, I wanted as much of her skin covered as possible to protect her fair skin.

I followed this peasant top tutorial, and lengthened it.

Trying it on for fit – the sleeves were so roomy before adding elastic that they reminded me of wings

It fit her pretty well, but wasn’t roomy enough through the diaper area and in the legs. It also looked too much like a nightgown at this point to just leave it. I cut the skirt part off, added in some pink gingham stripes, and some lace with embroidered butterflies at the hem. I LOVE how it turned out.

I think it would look even better with a little pink band at the waist, but I ran out of time to add it.

Anna was too busy rolling around the floor to get a very good shot of her in the dress, but here’s a couple of attempts:

Caleb kept running around yelling, “CHEESE!” when I was trying to take these. :)

It sewed up a lot faster than I expected, and was really easy to make. There’s so much that could be done with those basic instructions. . .

I decided to put my household notebook site on Facebook. Just for the fun of it, I created a coupon code to get a notebook download free, but the code is on Facebook. Come check it out!

With the Fruit of Her Hands Notebooks and More

The code is only good through Saturday, so don’t wait. If you’ve ever wanted to see my notebooks, now is the time.

Most of the time I don’t do memes, but I saw this over at Susan’s blog and thought I’d do it here.

1. Do you have magnets on your fridge? Almost all of them are plain craft magnets, but they’re mostly to hold my monthly menu plan and missionary prayer cards in place.

2. Do you have a calendar in your kitchen, if so, what’s the theme of it? It’s just a basic calendar from a nearby nuclear plant. The theme is usually nature.

3. What is your favorite kitchen gadget? Probably our Magic Bullet knock-off. It gets used almost daily.

4. Are you lucky enough to have a pantry of some kind? Maybe some day, but not right now. Instead, we use a large bookshelf. It’s not the most glamorous but it works well.

5.What is your favorite appliance? Definitely my coffeemaker. Nothing else really comes close.

6. Do you have an eat in kitchen (table in it)? No.

7. Do you have a bread box? No.

8. Do you have a picture of your kids on the fridge? Just one of Samuel. He made it one year in Sunday School for Mother’s Day for me, and it’s been on my fridge ever since. I love it. He’s three in this picture.

(Behind the magnet is a freezer inventory that I need to redo)

9. Do you ever cook breakfast in your PJs? Usually. We try to eat fairly early, and between trying to read my Bible before the kids are awake and nursing the baby first thing, I usually end up making breakfast in my PJ’s.

10. Do you have a favorite cookbook that you use? Not really. I have a Betty Crocker one but the one I use the most is just a 3-ring binder of printed recipes.

11. Are you lucky enough to have recipes that were passed down from your mom or grandma? Yes – many. A lot of them I wrote down when I was in Junior High for an Awana project. Then I copied down a lot more the summer I got married. I also have one of my grandma’s cookbooks. She and Mom both made quite a few foods from it. I love seeing all the stained pages – it makes it easier to find which recipes she made often. ;)

12. What’s your favorite food? Chocolate, and then bread. I’m finding with my PCOS that I really have to limit my carbs in general to keep my weight down and generally stay healthy, and it’s so HARD for me. I LOVE bread and love to experiment with coming up with the perfect recipe for something.

13. What’s your favorite thing to cook? I don’t know. I prefer baking over cooking, though I do like both.

14. Is your coffee pot electric or stove top? Electric programmable coffeemaker. LOVE it. I love hearing it start up in the morning.

15. Do you ever make your own bread? Several times a week. My current project is finding the perfect recipe for soft 100% wheat bread. It’s proving a harder challenge than I anticipated.

16. Name one thing that you have hanging on your wall in your kitchen: Not much. I have very little wall space. There are some verses taped to the wall above my sink that I’m working on memorizing.

17. Is there a clock in your kitchen? Yes.

18. Do you have a bowl of fruit sitting on your table or counter? Yes. It’s on the counter. If it were on the table Caleb would take it as an open invitation to throw the fruit. In fact, “Don’t throw the citrus!” has become a family joke because he’s thrown so many oranges and grapefruit across the room thinking they were balls.

19. What type of canisters do you have? Basic Rubbermaid sets from Walmart. I bought the sets one at a time over the years.

20. Does your kitchen have a theme? Not entirely. My dishes have a country vine and heart pattern on them, and a lot of my glassware is cobalt blue. That’s about it.

21. What’s for supper tonight? Homemade pizza

22. Do you have enough cabinet space? Not really. I’m trying to make do with what we have. It’s a challenge to find a place for everything but keep it allg accessible at the same time.

23. Does your family use paper plates? We never used to. Now we use them a little bit. It helps me stay on top of things a little bit better while I try to juggle everything (I’ve been working on implementing a new schedule/daily routine but that’s a whole different blog post).

24. Do you have a good set of china? No. I found a set at a thrift store for $25 about 7 years ago. Right now it’s packed away so the boys don’t break it. It’s missing some pieces (like dinner plates, lol) so it’s better suited to a small breakfast or something. I’d love to start using it more but since it’s lacking dinner plates I just haven’t.

25. Do you wear an apron to work in your kitchen? Not as much as I should. I’m a pretty messy cook.

26. Name one thing, if anything, that you would like to change about your kitchen. I would love to have my cabinets redone, or at least the bottom ones. They’re not in good condition, so I have to be careful about what gets placed on certain shelves. It would be lovely to have sturdy shelves in there.

Sunday: turkey tacos

Monday: grilled chicken, tossed salads

Tuesday: pizza night

Wednesday: meatloaf, macaroni salad

Thursday: burgers on the grill (never had them last week)

Friday: broiled tilapia, brown rice

Saturday: family time over at Mom’s. Homemade ice cream will definitely be on the menu, who knows what else.

The meals without veggies listed we’ll just decide then which veggie to eat from the freezer.

Breakfasts are smoothies, eggs, oatmeal, and biscuits.

Lunches are hot dogs, mac and cheese, sandwiches, wraps, and leftovers.

Snacks are cheese, baby carrots, nuts, and fresh fruit (lots of grapes this week – found a great sale).

You can read more menu plans over at Orgjunkie.com.

We picked up a dozen Buff Orpington chicks on Monday. For the past few years we’ve raised Rhode Island Reds, Barred Rocks, and a cross between the two when we’ve incubated our own eggs. Stephen decided to raise the Buffs this year because they’re supposed to be good for eggs and meat. I’m thankful for our new shed because that means the chicks can stay out there under a heat lamp instead of being in the house.