4th of July Weekend

4th of July was a wonderful! We had a backyard barbeque yesterday evening with some family members and later watched the fireworks from my backyard. We had the firepit burning and roasted hot dogs and made s'mores, plus feasted on chips and home made guacamole and salsa and other snacks. We hid balloons that contained coins in the backyard for the six kids that attended the party and they had a blast doing those little popits on the sidewalk in front of the house. By the time the fireworks were over we were all very tired but happy. It was a great night!
I went to the Marquette parade yesterday as my grandson and son in law were in the parade. I watched it with my daughter and granddaughter in the sun at temps reaching over 90 degrees. On Friday I went to a festival in downtown Ishpeming that had a lot of sidewalk vendors selling everything from carnival type toys, hand made crafts, wood carved items, beautiful framed photos, and lots of hot dogs, nachos, and cold water and pop. The kids enjoyed snow cones and ice cream bars and had a blast in the big bounce tent, blow up slide, and on the pony rides. They won some trinkets doing the fishing game and basketball game. Another nice time had by all.
Today was a quiet day, spending the morning cleaning up a bit after last nights backyard barbeque, then later took a ride to Munising and spent ample amount of time walking along the beach of Lake Superior on the way there. Once in Munising we found a little roadside park and found a spot high on a hill overlooking the water. I sat and read a book for about an hour, enjoying it immensely as I barely have time to read and it felt so wonderful to do so, there in the semi-shade with the view of lake superior, the water a green/blue today, the air so fresh, and no bugs biting me. And although I can hear the distant popping of fireworks in neighboring cities, I chose to forego fireworks tonight and get an early rest so I can wake up refreshed and get some work done tomorrow.
All in all it was a nice 4th of July holiday, the best part spending time with family and friends. Here's a few photos of my 4th of July weekend. He loved the festival and truly enjoyed the ponies!

It was a very hot day for a parade with temps reaching well into the 90s!

After the parade, she cooled off by spraying herself with water and loving every moment of it. So many smiles and giggles as she sent the soft spray of cool water into her face.

All dressed up in patriotic red, white, and blue to be in the parade!

One of my favorite evenings this weekend was spent watching the sunset at black rocks in Marquette at Presque Isle. It's so beautiful there on a warm, calm, summer night.

New Designs at Toddler's Place

If you've visited my Toddler's Place store in recent weeks you might have noticed that some sections are empty. That's because I'm revamping the entire store and at the present time I have many sections created for designs that I haven't yet added products for. I hope to have this store completed by mid July. In the process, I have added a lot of new designs in various categories including sports, miscellaneous, music, girl stuff, and animals. If you haven't visited our Toddler's Place store lately, check out some of the new kids, baby, and toddler T-shirts, bodysuits, tote bags, cards, stickers, magnets, and other items! You can find many of our designs are suitable for adults too, so we've added plenty of adult size t-shirts, hoodies, and sweatshirts to our store as well. It's only July, but certainly not too early to start thinking about cute back to school T-shirts, sweatshirts, hoodies, and school tote bags. We also have a lot of cute and colorful summer, surfing, and beach T-shirts and bags!
Can't easily find what you're looking for? Just type a keyword into the Search This Store bar in the left sidebar and you can easily find all the items in our store pertaining to that keyword. Pretty cool isn't it?! Need help adding a name or other text to an item? You can add it with the easy customization tools available to you, but if you would rather have me personalize an item for you, just email me at sales@peacockcards.com with your request and I'll be happy to send you a link to the personalized item!

BEACH African American Boy Tshirts and Gifts by toddlersplace
Create customized t shirts using zazzle

Animal Lover Boy T-shirts and Gifts by toddlersplace
See more Animals T-Shirts

Bugs Bugs Bugs Tshirts and Gifts by toddlersplace
Create personalized t-shirts at zazzle

Mermaid Blond Pony Tail Tshirts and Gifts by toddlersplace
Make a personalized tshirt at Zazzle

Frog Fairy - Blond T-shirts and Gifts by toddlersplace
Create Post cards at zazzle

Little Cowboy Tshirts and Gifts by toddlersplace
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Frog Baseball - Catcher Tshirts and Gifts by toddlersplace
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SOCCER - Brunette Boy tshirts and Gifts by toddlersplace
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The Campfire Tshirts and Gifts by toddlersplace
More Camp T-Shirts

My Garden

I bought a house in October after living in an apartment for a couple years. There were two big reasons I wanted to own a house versus renting. The first reason is that after renting for two years I realized I had spent close to $20,000 on rent which could have gone toward a house. Even though my apartment was beautiful, new, had great neighbors, was plowed for me in the winter, etc, I still opted to buy a house. The other big reason that I wanted to buy a house is because I missed having a yard. My apartment had only a small patio. I yearned for a lawn to mow, leaves to rake, digging my hands into garden soil and planting lots of flowers and having a veggie garden. And now, I'm happy to say, I have that!
If you scroll down you can see some photos of my gardens. The people who owned the house before me planted a lot of perrenials and I have to admit I fell in love with this house before I ever stepped foot inside it. In the back of the house we built four large garden beds/planters which are my vegetable gardens. I planted tomatoes, zucchini, beans, carrots, radish, beets, spinach, lettuce, green onions, and cilantro. I've given away bags of spinach and lettuce and onion greens several times and have eaten more than my fill of it. The salads I've made with the fresh spinach and lettuce are beyond good. Radishes are just becoming large enough to eat and yet small enough not to be too strong. I made salsa yesterday by simply adding lots of cilantro, some black beans, diced can tomatoes, shoepeg corn, pepper, and garlic salt to a big jar of storebought salsa. Yummy! Today I pulled out all the rest of the spinach as it had become overgrown in size and replanted. It's so early in the year a second crop is easily attainable. My boyfriend who is an awesome carpenter and handy man built me a wooden pump/water feature, which right now circulates into a big flower pot that I am going to cover with rock in the next few days. We went to a local greenhouse and bought two water plants this afternoon. The plants aren't in these photos as I bought them after I took the photos. I bought a fire pit yesterday and today we laid some circular blocks and pretty red granite rocks to put it on, and tonight we feasted on hot dogs and s'mores. I can't tell you how in my element I was to sit outside as the sun was setting and night falling listening to the chirping of birds, the running water from the water pump, and feeling the warmth of the fire in the fire pit as it cheered up the damp, dewy evening. Ahhh summer!







If you love being outdoors, love summer and vacationing, love gardening...you might like some of these cute summer and gardening theme T-shirts and gifts! Happy summer!

I Love Gardening by gardening
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Garden Goddess by gardening
See other Garden T-Shirts

Gardening by gardening
Many more tee designs available on zazzle.com

Plant Water Weed Enjoy by gardening
View the other tote bags made at Zazzle

Summer Rocks T-shirts and Gifts by toddlersplace
Make a custom key chain at zazzle.com

SUMMER - Brunette Girl Tshirts and Gifts by toddlersplace
Create a Magnet with Zazzle

Girl Little Gardener T-shirts and Gifts by toddlersplace
Shop the t-shirts section of zazzle

I Garden Tshirts and Gifts by stick_figures
Make a personalized sticker on zazzle.com

Crazy About Gardening T-shirts and Gifts by stick_figures
buy buttons from zazzle