Sometimes I actually accomplish things....

Summer feels like it's just getting going for me. The temperatures are super hot - which I never like - but it also means that July + August are almost here and lots of exciting things are happening! We leave for our glorious 10-day British getaway next Friday afternoon and I am itching to get started on packing! I love packing for a vacation, but always procrastinate unpacking once we get home. The opposite is true when moving - I don't enjoy packing up a home, but love the process of unpacking and setting up. I have been keeping an ongoing list of things to bring so as not to forget when it comes time to put everything into a suitcase; sure I'll remember my toothbrush and passport but I might forget to pack a spare pair of contacts or my jacket if I don't write it down.

Something that I really wanted to get before we left was a new DSLR camera. My Canon Rebel was fine, but sometimes the quality wasn't what I had hoped for in such an expensive camera. As it turns out, Dodd Camera was having a "buy your old equipment" event at the same time a really nice Nikon camera I now own went on crazy sale. I still have to learn how to make the most of it's capabilities. But I'm hopeful it'll live up to my expectations.

I tested it out for the first time last week after I'd had an unusually productive day in the "being creative" department. These days are few and far between, so it was worth documenting. First, I finally got around to making a pom pom garland for our front window. It cost me all of $2 to make in about 40 mins. I found the pom poms at the dollar store (2 bags of various colors) and then strung them together using a needle and some white thread. Simple!

This isn't exactly a huge achievement, but I also figured out a way to get some vegetables in my kids! They used to love them as babies but now I can't seem to persuade them to eat anything except maybe potatoes. It's the oldest trick in the book, but I decided to blend a ton of spinach into some homemade pasta sauce. At first the color was a bit brown so they probably would have passed on it based on presentation alone, but after adding a tin of tomato paste I was back to some basic who-knew-it's-full-of-green-veg spaghetti sauce. And they ate it all! Woo! I even got a smile out of Jack.

Today was spent less productively killing a ton of flies which I suspect are coming up from our basement. SO stressful. Although I guess I was successful if you count that I'm 20 for 20 in terms of flies and their squished little bodies.