June & July Flip-a-gram

I absolutely love doing these little videos every month.  They highlight what we did, and where we went.  Kevin said the month of July is his favorite of the year so far!  Enjoy!

 June

 

July

Sunflowers

I have never been a huge sunflower fan, but that kind of changed this year!  After I grew the one in our yard, I had a new appreciation for the ginormous flowers!  Kevin has a good buddy named Matt.  Matt's dad is a farmer in KY, and he plants a 5 acre patch of sunflowers just for dove hunting every year.  Kevin was telling me about it, and I knew instantly I needed to go see it.  We drove by a couple weeks ago after we got off the river with Matt and his family, and I told Kevin we needed to go back asap and take pictures with the kids!  So, about a week later, that's exactly what we did!

Harvest & Landscape

Yard work, attempting to garden, and completing our front landscape has required us to spend more time outdoors than we have any summer previously!  I am not a fan of the sun beating down on me, mostly because I burn so easily.  I've tried to do the majority of my work early in the morning or in the afternoon when the sun is behind our trees. 

We planted a raised garden bed this year and didn't have much success with most of what we planted - but we did have great success with two zucchini plants!  So far we've gotten 24 zucchini and I'm sure it's not done yet!  I've made chocolate zucchini bread, zoodles, and I plan to try a new recipe for zucchini cake.  :)

Another plant I had a little success with was my mammoth sunflower.  I say "a little success" because I planted seeds in 6 areas, but only 1 survived the chickens and dogs.  It's in full bloom now and makes me smile every time I look at it!

And after almost 8 years of owning our home, we've finally completed the front landscape!  I can hear the angels singing now.  I mentioned a couple months ago that I laid the block wall.  It took many weeks to get our schedules to match our neighbors (who owns a back hoe).  He moved all the dirt into the landscape for us.  What would have taken us weeks, took him about 20 minutes.  I picked out and planted plants the day after the dirt was moved in (Kevin helped with the planting!)  Kevin and I also moved boulders out of our backyard and into the landscape, with the exception of one gigantic boulder our neighbor lifted with his back hoe.  A couple days later, the landscape was filled with river rock (with the help of Kevin and my dad - and they did more work than me, but I made a good effort!). 

I took this picture a little prematurely - we still needed to put rock in the back left corner - but it's 100% done now!

And my storks....... my mom purchased a blue one in Florida that I thought was so pretty.  A couple weeks ago, Kevin saw these at an online estate auction in Madisonville, Kentucky.  I knew I wanted them, and we paid what they probably cost new today, but they are the perfect addition to my landscape!  I had actually bought plants and arranged my landscape around them before even winning them from the auction.  Kevin made sure I won them - he's the best!!!

I should also mention we cut down the rusted basketball goal that was in the driveway.  And the dirt mound that was next to our house for the last year, was the dirt we used to fill the landscape with.  It's made a nice improvement to the curb appeal.  We are moving on to more outdoor projects - rebuilding porch columns, repainting (maybe replacing) shutters, cleaning out the barn... I love how productive this summer has been!!!

4th of July

We had a great time celebrating the 4th of July this year!  Saturday afternoon we started the festivities with a get-together with some of Kevin's family.  We fed cat fish, went fishing, let the kids play in a little pool, and the adults had a great time catching up with each other!

Krissy was really content sitting inside with the adults and playing in the play kitchen!

After the party on Saturday, we went to church and dinner with family.  After dinner, we made the last minute decision to head down to Newburgh's riverfront for fireworks.  We parked at my friend's house, and walked down to the top of the big hill where thousands of people were sitting.  We found an empty spot, and it had the best view! 

Austin on Kevin's shoulders

The kids watching the grand finale.

On Tuesday, we went to my parents house for dinner.  My mom had bought these cute star sunglasses.

Our dinner spread

Cupcakes I made

Baked beans I made

New recipe I tried for peanut butter fudge bars

We let the kids do some sparklers that their Mamaw brought.  When we got home from dinner, we watched neighbor's fireworks while Kevin tried to sleep (he had to be at work at 4am).  We all had a great time celebrating, eating lots of good food, and catching up with friends and family!  Hope your 4th was equally a great!

The Foundry - Preschool Art Camp

During June, I helped teach a preschool art class at The Foundry, formerly known as The Crossroads Worship Arts Academy.  One of my best friends and her husband reopened the building and are serving as directors - and they are doing a great job getting it back up and running.  (If you didn't know, David Rinehart, or church's former worship leader {that was killed in November by a drunk driver} had plans to reopen The Foundry under it's new name this past January.)  I felt honored to get to be a part of anything at The Foundry!  

My friend and I picked out 5 cute kids books and planned fun, messy crafts for the kids to do.  It was 9-11, Monday-Friday.  There were 5 kids total and 2 just happened to be mine :)  All the kids got along great together and had a great week!

These were 3 of the books we read/planned art actives from.  I thought they were so cute and I decided to buy them for our collection at home.

*Krissy & Austin*

One craft was making monsters.  We read "If You're A Monster And You Know It."  We squirted paint on the kids papers and they took a straw and blew the paint.  Once the paint dried, they went back and added eyes, mouths, antenna, arms, legs - basically whatever they wanted to!

*Krissy & Austin*

Another book we read was "I'm the Best Artist in the Ocean."  My friend colored elmers glue, we let the kids decorate their watercolor papers with it and then the next day, once the glue was dried, they used water colors to paint an ocean picture.  This was one of my kids favorite crafts. :)

*Krissy & Austin*

This elephant craft was used with the book "Elmer".  I cut out the elephants, and had pre-punched paper shapes.  We also left paper and scissors on the table for the kids to cut and decorate with.  They all spent a lot of time on this craft and really enjoyed making their elephants!

*Krissy & Austin*

When we read "Only One You," we let the kids pick out rocks and paint them like the characters in the book.  We also gave the kids a canvas and told them to paint a self portrait.  You can tell Austin wasn't as into this craft! Haha!  I love how Krissy's turned out - blue eyelashes and all.

*Austin & Krissy*

This craft went with "Beautiful Oops."  We let the kids color on these ceramic tiles.  Once they were finished, we took an dropped rubbing alcohol with an eye dropper on them.  It bled the colors together and the kids thought it was fun!  We clear coated them once they were dry.

In addition to the crafts, my teaching partner, Susanne planned lots of fun/messy things for the kids to do between activities!  The kids loved the shaving cream on the mirros, the water beads, and snack time!  On the last day, we let them each decorate a cupcake for snack.  They were a hit!

After our last class Friday, we had a little art show and the parents got to come and see all the things the kids created.  Hayden and Allie also went to an art/music camp at The Foundry the same week I taught the preschool camp.  They had so much fun and loved doing their music performance and art show on the last day!  

We also did fly swatter painting, we traced the kids and let them color themselves, they got to build clay statues... it was really a great week!

Hayden and Allie with their art displays!

If you are interested, there's still week long camps going on this month!  Hayden has also started taking guitar lessons once a week at The Foundry.  We are so glad they've reopened! :)