It's Friday (it was)!

In preparing for Wes' 29th birthday, I went to the grocery store to pick up ingredients to bake some of his favorite treats. In honor of my Grandmother who passed away almost one full year ago, I now fold all of my plastic bags.

Mema would fold each bag precisely. As a family, we all joked about her doing this but it is one of those things that made her the amazing woman she was! It is a small window into how she lived her life.



Organized and put together and in its place. Makes me happy :)

I made Wes his favorite lemon meringue pie (his mom's recipe). The last time I attempted this I had a hell of a time with the meringue. After going through a dozen eggs I just gave up. Yesterday I had sweet success! Hallelujah!

Gorgeous, fluffy and thick meringue! I feel like a won a war! Yes!
I also made chocolate chip cookies and they are oh so good. I found recipe on allrecipes.com. It was their #1 chocolate chip recipe with over 600 people that reviewed and gave the recipe 5 stars.
The recipe called for a box of pudding which I had never heard of. I think that is the secret to the deliciousness!

Yes, this post is quite random. I was walking around yesterday and just kept finding lots of random things to blog about and wa-lah! These are the eggs I used for baking Wes' treats!

My mom has always kept a compost pile in the back yard. When I was a kid she actually sent my sister and I to the circus that they were having behind our house with a wheel barrel & shovel to ask the carnies if we could have the elephant poop. They agreed and we scooped. I will never ever forget that. Ever. Never, ever. And then there was the time my home room class was having a banana split party and I eagerly collected all the banana peels and wheeled them home on my bike to one proud momma. Oh and we did worms and all sorts of cool and down to earth things!
I have limited space in my back yard I don't really have a good spot to keep an actual compost pile. I decided to google homemade compost bins and found a how to tutorial for this:
The instructions had me put screen over the holes but that didn't stay in place long after a few turns of the goods. I thought the compost would start seeping out of the holes without the screen in place but surprisingly it has not, yet anyway!
Lulu is very interested in the compost. See the yellow line on the concrete? This is where Wes and I are planning on removing the concrete to add more flower beds. We had a bad storm earlier this year and it took our huge shade tree down out back. It was heart breaking! I am desperate for some more greenery so we decided to try to DIY and rented a concrete saw, went through two blades and then decided we were going to have to hire a professional. :(

The green pots: I planted some morning glory seeds about a week ago

One on both sides of the gazebo

My goal is for them to climb the gazebo!
These are my neighbors morning glory's that drape over our fence. I love to see them blooming in the AM. My mom always had morning glory's too. I thought it was so neat how they bloomed in morning. She also had moon flowers that bloomed in the moon light and 4 o'clocks that bloomed around 4 o'clock!

And speaking of blooms, here is an update on the crepe myrtle! It is now blooming!




There are many more buds on the tree which hopefully means that I will get to enjoy many more blooms!


Big, beautiful pink (they were supposed to be red-- but I'll take the pink) blooms!