Sunday: leftovers

Monday: grilled chicken breast over tossed salads. We have romaine and spinach ready in the garden – the salads were really good.

Tuesday: pinto beans and cornbread

Wednesday: BLT’s

Thursday: tilapia, brown rice, steamed carrots (if I can manage not to burn them this time. . .been burning carrots a lot lately for some reason)

Friday: usually pizza, but we have Ladies’ Prayer Band at church. I’ll most likely eat there, and I’m not sure what the guys will eat here.

Saturday: chicken pot pie

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.

Nuc entrance with worker bees and drones

Our beehives did not survive the winter. Unfortunately, this has been common for many of the beekeepers we know. We’re in the process of waiting to see if a beekeeper friend of Stephen’s has enough bees to split his hives for us, but so far, nothing.

In the meantime, Stephen set up a swarm lure to see if we could catch a swarm. We knew there was a feral hive somewhere around here, but we just don’t know where it is. Earlier this week, he noticed some bees flying around it checking it out. Thursday he heard buzzing, and discovered that a swarm really had decided to call our little nuc home.

On Friday Stephen moved the frames over to a slightly bigger hive body. He said they’re even building comb already. I don’t know that much about bees yet (though I have been reading), but it sounded pretty fast to me.

I like this picture that Stephen took – it’s so interesting to compare the differences between worker bees and drones.

The neat thing is we’d all been praying that God would let us catch a swarm. And He did.

. . .is that a little superhero can do his homework without taking off his cape. . .

Yesterday I was able to make a batch of strawberry jam. There were just enough strawberries from our garden. It’s more than we got last year, but it was really hard to keep animals from eating them! Between squirrels, wild rabbits, and the neighbor’s chickens, I’m thankful we got what we did. Now we just need to find a way to keep the animals out for next time.

I used the lower sugar pectin, and tasted a little when I made it. It tastes better than the regular kind since it’s not quite as sweet.

Hopefully later this summer I’ll be able to make more jam for the freezer. It’s so much better than storebought!

The quail have started hatching. They are so cute! As of this morning, there was one that had hatched out and another one working on its shell. They are feisty, tiny little creatures, but so cute!

Sometimes you just get a picture that makes your heart melt. This is one of them for me. It’s not perfect, but I just love the expressions on the kids’ faces.

After posting about dressing more feminine last week, I’ve been thinking about femininity in general. About what it means, how to apply it, how others apply it – it’s been interesting.

An internet search for Biblical femininity came up pretty sparse. It is sad that there are so few sites (or even articles) on true Biblical femininity.

A quick internet search for femininity in general was disappointing as well. There were more articles about how women can become more masculine and how men need to get in touch with their feminine side. . .also not what I was looking for (and most of what I found I also disagree with, go figure).

Webster’s Dictionary defines feminine as:

1 : female
2 : characteristic of or appropriate or unique to women “feminine beauty” “a feminine perspective” “feminine”

That wasn’t as helpful as I’d hoped. For now, I’ll be doing more searching. There might not be a lot of information out there on Biblical femininity, but I will be studying.

Sunny mentioned doing a weekly fashion challenge. I think it’s a neat idea. I’m not exactly knowledgeable in some fashion areas though – dressing modestly and for a good price is my forte, not finding things that look fantastic. It’s something I’ve been working on improving. I’d love to hear other ideas though!

Last week I was able to buy some new jewelry tools and supplies – things to start metal stamping. It’s something I’ve had my eye on for a while now.

Here are pictures of a couple necklaces that I made. The set I ordered didn’t come with a lot of necklace supplies, but I’ve already ordered more. This is getting very addictive, very quickly.

(this one is in my Etsy shop)

Right now it’s been fun to play around with the materials that came with the kit. I like the copper in the necklaces above, but eventually want to stamp sterling silver as well. I’d love to make miscarriage memorial necklaces, and have quite a few ideas already.

I thought it might get addictive (anything jewelry has that potential for me!), but this is more so than I anticipated!

Samuel received a Nerf gun for Christmas. We had so much fun with it that we went out and bought three more Nerf guns so we could all have one. We have had the most fun having dart wars!

Then the kids discovered another creative use for suction darts.

I mentioned the other day that some friends of ours renewed their wedding vows last weekend. It was an honor to be able to make an earring and necklace set for my friend.

It was a single strand of ivory freshwater pearls with Swarovski crystal accents. It was a lot of fun to make and an honor to give as a gift.