Food and Garden Festival

Last weekend we went with our family and friends to the Food and Garden Festival. It was at Fairchild Botanical Gardens in Miami. If you haven't been to the gardens you really need to go! They are beautiful! We went to our friend's wedding last year and it was amazing. The festival included tips on planting, farming, bee keeping, they had organic markets, local farmers markets, beer tasting, food trucks, cooking shows, and an amazing plant sale. Here are some of my favorite pictures from our fun filled day.

Amy and Dave

 Tim and I 

 Caitlin and Steve 

 Beer Tasting was the best!

The family.

 Soft shell turtles were everywhere!

 Mom and I

 Passion Fruit vine.

 Some of the gardens.

 The butterfly gardens.

 Satan himself?

It was a beautiful spring day. I will be going to the festival next year for sure! 

Molly the Mallard

We have temporarily welcomed a new member into our family! I was conned into taking care of an orphaned baby duck by one of my students (and her mom who works with me). The baby duck has a twisted foot and we were told by all the animal rescue places, that they put ducks down with messed up feet.. so depressing, I know. So here is our new animal baby. This is Molly, our baby Mallard.

Our plan is to try and raise her (It's too early to tell if it's even a her..but if we find out it's a boy later on it will still be Molly boy) in hopes that she will survive. They say a lot of ducks with broken feet don't make it but we are hoping to change that! Her foot doesn't look entirely broken, but maybe just twisted. She can move it, swim with it, and walk a little on it. I spent half the day researching baby duck care, learning what to feed her, and  learning how to provide her everything she needs.

Notice in the picture above Hunter and Joey watching her. Joey has met her but Hunter would make her his mid day snack. They won't be meeting except through her cage. 

She is a great little swimmer! 

So for now, all we can do is hope. Hope that she makes it and gets big enough to possibly be released into a pond by my work. There are lots of other Mallards so maybe they can adopt her into a family if she survives. If that doesn't work, maybe she will become an official Marcus? I don't think Tim reads my blog..if so..uhh hi Tim! Till then, pray for baby Molly and that she makes it! 

Garden in a Jar

The other day I FINALLY got to something I have been putting off for a while. Since Spring is here now, and thanks to my good friend Amy, I was able to make my very own terrarium!! I have been in love with them recently! They are everywhere now and the fact that you can keep them anywhere in your house is just so great! They are so easy to make and you can add any special things that you want to the inside. The terrarium took all of about ten minutes to make. You don't need that many supplies to make these little beauties!

You will need:

- A glass container (lid or no lid, I personally like lids to keep the moisture in. I got my container on sale at HomeGoods for $7)
-small rocks
-activated charcoal (can be found at Walmart or any aquatic store)
- small succulent plants
-moss
-potting soil
-any cute extra garden figures you would like to add

In order from bottom to top add rocks, charcoal, soil (about 4 inches depending on the container size), plants, moss, figures.

TADA! Your very own garden in a jar!

Mine is being used for a centerpiece on our dining room table and Amy used hers for a wedding shower she put on. Pretty cool don't you think?! The perfect spring time decoration!

Happy Easter

I hope everyone has a very Happy Easter. We are spending time with our families and friends this weekend. It's nice to sit back and relax with the ones you love. I hope y'all have a relaxing day! Here is what we had for breakfast this morning. Egg and avocado breakfast pizza...YUM! 

Enjoy your day! 

Here are some Easter photos I thought I would share. We went to my in-laws for dinner. We talked, fished a little, and had our good friends over for dinner. It was a wonderful Easter. 

Here is our friends baby, Kaleb.

                             Isn't he precious!

               Here we are watching the guys fish.

                                                 
               Flowers that have bloomed in our yard

                                         The guys fishing.

       He has risen! I hope everyone had a wonderful Easter and an amazing weekend!

Just a Pallet

I am absolutely addicted to Pinterest. It's really a serious, serious problem. I could sit here all day pinning my life away and have absolutely no care in the world. It is so bad!

 Lately I have been in love with all the amazing things you can do with a pallet! Who knew that precious, square piece of wood could do so many incredible things!?! Two weeks ago I decided I was going to make something out of one. I wasn't really sure what to do, I just knew I wanted it to be in the space on our patio. I told Tim some of my ideas and he hated most of them. Side note: My husband doesn't always see eye to eye with me on a lot of our house projects. I have a really artsy/creative/why not lets try it side and he has numbers/practical/man house work side. He thought it was "just going to look like a pallet sitting on the patio." I had all these images of colorful planting pots and flowers on my amazing pallet. We compromised and decided we were going to make some sort of potting table. 

This is what we started with.

We needed to take the whole pallet apart carefully without breaking any of the wood. That was the hard part. Tim ended up doing most of this part and it was also the part that took the longest! For-e-ver. 

After it was finally taken apart we matched up the pieces that we wanted to have on the top and the bottom. We wanted to have a bottom shelf to put baskets on and keep pots and small shovels in. We used dark nails to give it more of that "rustic look." After using all the skinny pieces of wood for the top and bottom, we used the two thicker pieces for the legs of the table. We wanted the table to have four legs, but we didn't have enough wood. Oh well it's just an experimental pallet table anyway.

 Here is how it turned out. it looked a little off at first in the garage, but once it was set up in the patio I thought it looked pretty cute! It still needs baskets on the bottom and some more color. 

Amazing what you can do with one pallet HUH?!

So Here It is.

I've always loved blogs. I love reading them. I love using new ideas. I love the helpful hints and tools you can pull from a blog. However, I've never had one of my own. So here it is! My very own personal blog about new beginnings, life, marriage, two dogs, our adventures, and all the crafts and random things I like to do on a daily basis. I WILL try to keep up with this. That is my 2012 goal ( ok..maybe it's a little late to say that but it works for me). It's is going to be random, seeing that I am in fact, a very random person. My life is packed full with too many things on my schedule, too many jobs, and not enough time to do all the things I need to. So why not add in a blog as well. Sounds like a good idea right!? Ready. set. Go!