Theme Thursday ~ Summer Fun

A quick trip to the park and a ride in the swing seems to be the magic cure for a cranky toddler.  I shot in continuous mode, but didn’t have the right focus, so here’s the only shot I felt I could salvage.  I just love his toothy grin and the giggle-squeal that I know accompanied this expression! 

For more summer fun, swing by Stacy’s.

Wordless Wednesday ~ Horsin’ Around

For more Wordless Wednesday, check out these cool sites!

Grape Salad & Great Fun

One of my all time favorite summer recipes is Grape Salad.  This quick and easy dish can be served as a refreshing sweet side dish or take the place of a dessert.  Enjoy!

 

Ingredients

2lbs seedless green grapes

2lbs seedless red grapes

8oz cream cheese (softened)

8oz sour cream

1/2 cup sugar

1 teaspoon vanilla

1 cup brown sugar

1 cup pecans (chopped)

Directions

Stem and wash all grapes, then lay them in a single layer on a towel to dry.

In a separate bowl combine cream cheese, sour cream, sugar and vanilla and combine until well blended.

Pour dry grapes into a 9×13 pan and arrange to make a “flat” top surface.

Top grapes with cream cheese mixture.

Sprinkle the brown sugar over the cream cheese mixture, and top with the chopped pecans.

Chill for at least 2-3 hours before serving, best if chilled overnight.

I imagine the cream cheese mixture could also be served as a fruit dip for various cut fruits, but I haven’t tried that yet.  Hope you enjoy this as much as I have!

My creative activity find as of late is spin art.  I’ve been scoping out garage sales and resale stores for an inexpensive salad spinner to take advantage of this great activity.  What fun have you enjoyed?

Best Shot Monday ~ Sweet Summer

I’m a big fan of the better-late-than-never mantra.  While I began this post well over 12 hours ago, our plans changed and well, here it is…

Perhaps it’s the pending arrival of another child that has me so reflective lately, or I suppose it could be the fact that I very recently *finished* Calder’s baby book.  Either way, I felt like sharing a few of my favorite shots that still don’t do justice to the amazing little boy he is becoming. 

Heading in after a tour through Papa’s Garden…

 

Sitting so well for his second official haircut, and getting the hang of his first sucker…

Last Thursday, when I believe the temps were well into the 90s and the humidity had to be at least 100%, Katie and I made plans to connect at Hawk Island County Park.  I fell in love with this place last fall when we had a cross country meet there - I just knew that it would be a perfect summer day escape for us!  My expectations were certainly met!  While I don’t have many pictures (I found it tricky to keep an eye on our belongings, stay within arms length of Calder and keep my camera dry) I did manage to snap a few to share our day.

Here’s one of the many gadgets that chill and thrill…(and for the record, the blast of these buckets nearly topples a toddler!)

Between shoving yogurt melts and crackers in his face sharing and trying to climb the back of the lounge chair, I managed to take at least one shot of Cooper and Calder just hangin’ out…

And my best shot for today, is this little gem.  In the larger version you can really see his furrowed brow as he studies his cracker, the few stray crumbs on his face, and the chubbiness of his little hands.  Beyond that, this picture reminds me of the blissful exhaustion that follows the perfect play on a summer’s day.

Splash on over to Tracey’s for more Best Shot Monday.

All better…

We’ve also successfully replaced the shelf and so far it’s still in tact complete with hanging clothes and all!  We plan to add another bracket which we have to pick up at the store tomorrow as today was spent celebrating my Uncle Chris’s 50th birthday and the completion of his Master’s degree.  I also spent some time with the nearly-weds, my cousin Greg and his fiance Jodie to finalize which song I will be singing in their wedding in a few weeks.  We wrapped up the evening by having pizza with my folks while they ran Calder so ragged that he was asleep about 5 minutes after we got on the road! 

With my baby asleep I settled in for some quality computer time, hoping to learn a little more, and learn I did!  While it’s but a small victory I have to say that in the past two days I have managed to successfully add buttons to my blog which has been a bit of a frustration of mine for a while!  And tonight I downloaded a trial version of Snagit and created a custom header.  I’m not sure that I adore it just yet, but for my first try I thought it wasn’t too bad.  Hopefully I’ll be able to try again soon and create one that isn’t so pixelated.  Any tips and suggestions from more experienced bloggers is greatly appreciated.

I’d also like to create little “flags” (if that’s the proper term) for the titles to my various sections (Calendar, Categories, etc.) like I’ve seen on other blogs.  I think I might know how to create those now using this program, but I’m not sure I know exactly how to plug them into WordPress, so again, any helpful hints you can toss my way are appreciated!