June garden

I decided to take some photos of my little container garden each month.  These are June's edition.

Solar light jar project

On a recent yucky weather day, we needed a fun art project to do so we made some solar light jars. It was a pretty easy & cheap project. 

Our supplies:
*jars (we used things that were old pasta sauce jars, an olive jar and a ball jar)
*paintbrush
*food coloring (we used Williams-Sonoma because that's what we have)
*solar lights (got ours from Target: $1 for little one on sale, $3 for big ones)
*Mod Podge (we used the outdoor variety and the glitter one)
*newspaper




Using newspaper to protect our kitchen table, painted on a mixture of Mod Podge and food dye.  Because ours is really bright, I just put in a drop of the dye. I would say we used about a 1/4 cup of mod podge for 2 jars but I didn't measure it.  We painted it on and let it sit for about 10 minutes. After that, we needed to add a 2nd coat. On the blue, yellow and purple jars, we took a paper towel dipped in our Mod Podge mixture and stippled on some more "paint" all over the jars. On the green one (which was made with the glitter Mod Podge), I just took my paintbrush with more more "paint" and did a swirl pattern.




While the jars were wet, the colors looked a bit obnoxious but they dried to a much nicer color. We let them air dry for 2 days and then they looked like this:




Our next step was to remove the stems of our solar lights. The tops fight just right on top of the jars so we super glued them to the jars. The blue, yellow and purple ones can go outside since we used the outdoor Mod Podge, but they hang out in our kitchen window. The green one has to stay inside and lives in our master bedroom. I love them. They have a pretty glow at night. I'm hoping to save up more jars and do a few more for our house.

An update

The past 2 weeks have been a whirlwind of activity. The kids have been out of school since their 1/2 day last Monday. I started my first graduate class last Monday. I'm taking statistics for social workers and it's really kicking my butt. Everyone I tell that I'm taking a stats class has only negative things to say about it but it's actually not that bad. Since it's tailored for social workers, I can see how it will apply to my future studies and career. It's a lot of homework though. Especially between Monday night to Wednesday night. It's really hard to get my homework done with the kids home. Tuesdays is the day that I to to therapy and WW so that makes it extra hard. I can't change my therapy appointment but I am thinking of changing my WW meeting.

This is how I spend my Tuesday mornings now...breakfast and stats reading.



Breakfast is typically a lot of fruit, a vitamuffin and turkey bacon along with my constant glass of sugar free peach ice tea (6-7 WW points for the whole meal).

In other news, I got new glasses which I love.



Abigail (she now prefers that over Abby) and I went to Build A Bear on Friday because that was the day that they released the pink Hello Kitty and I had to have one.




Abigail got a blue bear, but she was kind enough to groom both her bear and my Hello Kitty.



During out girl's day out trip to the mall, Abigail also had her photos taken for her 9th birthday (even though it's 6 weeks away).
She brought along her stuffed strawberry friend Berry to pose with her. Here are some of my favorites.









Josh and I also got to have a date night and go to our favorite restaurant.



And finally, yesterday we went to my aunt's surprise 75th birthday party! She had a great time and was truly surprised.