A walk in the park...

Much apologies for not writing this Wednesday, we've had sickness, and some crazy extra stresses around this lovely household, so blogging was the last thing on my mind that day, but here I am this lovely "Fun Find Friday!"

Today I am gonna share some pictures of the beautiful gardens on campus. I was having a really rough night trying to get my little girl to bed this one night. I hit a wall, I was utterly frustrated, so instead of trying to fight her and "force" into going to bed, when she wouldn't, we went for a little drive and "found" the following. I thought it was so fun and neat, we went back for our 2nd Yr. Anniversary a week later and had fun walking around as a family.

So I hope you will enjoy as much I did, although the pictures will never do it justice, since it is so much cooler in person! So if you are in Rexburg, or happen to go by this way, you should check it out, and it would be a fun FREE walk in pure beauty!

Enjoy!

 This fun path went through tons and TONS of plants and flowers, and even more so, a yummy looking garden, to bad we weren't allowed to pick anything!

 Then there was an abstract section, where gardening students had to put together a garden display, here was a fun sink in the middle of it all

 This display was all about shoes, it was very unique and different, there were over 300 shoes used in this display

 This shoe display was my favorite :)

 Then this display was themed around a bedroom, here is the "toy chest"

 Then you have the "bed", "dresser", and "window" in the bedroom, I think the dresser is my favorite, very fun and creative!

 Then this random display was themed around bicycles, it had bikes all around in all sorts of different directions and such, let's just say it was very interesting...maybe some day I will understand abstract art

 Then we walked around the rest of the Gardens on campus, that are just maintained by the regular grounds keepers for the school (not up kept by art students) I love this little section, it makes me feel like I am in England, or Rome or something (even though I don't really know what those places look like :)

Then my all time favorite place: "Patsy's Porch", this is where my husband proposed to me. It has my favorite quote on top that says: "While in the pursuit of happiness, one should stop and just be happy!"

Some day, I will have my own little patsy's porch in my own backyard, except maybe I will call it "Whitney's Porch" or something more personal to me and my family.

Then to finish it all off, here is my lovely hubby and little girl, they had fun looking around at everything, she especially loved the water, she would have jumped in if we would have let her :)

Anyway, thanks for joining me this lovely Friday, I hope you have a wonderful weekend!

Until next time!. . . . .

I like to Party!

For this lovely Fun Find Friday, I found that it was my lovely friend, Maria's, Birthday and she invited me to her little birthday festiveness. She rallied up a bunch of friends and we played ball in the park and had some cake and watermelon (well not me, cuz I am allergic :( saddest finding of my life!)

 And I built her a cake or something :)

Happy Birthday Maria- thanks for giving me opportunity to get out of the house and celebrate the lovely great person you are!

Sorry for the short post today, but because of the lovely festivities my normal house cleaning got put on hold and I need to hop to it all now before the hubby gets home, but thanks for stopping by and I hope you have a lovely rest of your Friday evening. And don't forget to stop by for tomorrow's lovely Sun-up Saturday!

Until next time!. . . .

Oh Memories

Today's lovely "Fun Find Friday" is brought in great thanks to our local library. Our library has a bookstore section where they sell older, less used or unwanted books for really cheap. I have found some pretty good books for my little girl here for only 25 cents, so I like to browse around whenever I go. Well on this particular day I decided to browse a little more detailed than my normal quick glance and I noticed this lovely gold find in the video section:

Sorry, for the blurry, I took this picture with my phone

"Simply Magic"by Joanie Bartels. Let me tell you, this video really is simply magic. We had this video growing up as little kiddos and I have fond memories watching this show for hours and hours on end, and yes I would like another slice of silly pie (sorry, I had to throw that in there, it is in reference to one of the songs she sings).

Being so excited that I found this, I wanted to buy it right away, but stinkin bookstore still only takes cash, lame, I know, believe it or not, there are very few places in this world that still do things the older ghetto sort of way. I plan on going back one of these days with cash on hand to see if anyone else had fond memories that they snatched it too, and if so then I guess I might go the online way, cuz, yes believe it or not, I found out she has her own website: HERE. They are a little more pricey there, so I am hoping to still get my one dollar memory lane find.

Maybe my siblings, especially the ones that watched this with me for countless hours will be the only ones to appreciate this post, but if not I hope it has brought a little smile of happiness to your heart for letting you take a little glance down your memory lane too. And if you are really ambitious you could buy a video too and get an idea what I am referring to, although I am sure my childhood little self enjoyed this far better than an adult self would, but I imagine it would still be simply magical if you watched it anyway.

Anyway, sorry for the short but random post. I hope it made your heart smile and thanks for stopping by!

Until next time. . . .

A weekend of Blis

Well for my lacking "fun find Friday" that I didn't post last Friday, we were busy getting ready for our little trip. We "found" some great discounts and gift certificates and had a great weekend celebrating our 2nd year Anniversary (which won't be till this coming Sun, but who says you can't celebrate a little early?)

Here is some fun pics of our little get away, that was really made possible thanks to my sister April who watched our little girl so we could have a break and enjoy just us!

For most of Saturday we went to the Lagoon, which is a small amusement park, nothing like Disney land, by any means, but is defiantly a lot closer. And because I am BYU-I Alumni, we got $15 off for our tickets because it was Alumni Lagoon day- yeah for discounts!

The lovely train we got to ride that went through a zoo in the park

 Our feet dangling over the fun ski lift thing that went across the whole park. We rode this thing the most, it was nice to be a little lazy and not have to walk across the whole park

 The cool water fountains from up above

 The beginning of a long fun day!

 Can't forget the bumper cars!

 One of the roller coasters we got to ride! And we got the free BYU-I hat at the free alumni lunch, yeah free stuff! (we also got a chap stick that says BYU-Idaho on, wha-ho!)

 And of course we had to go on the meri-go round carousel too- we have some good memories with these things (we did go on the more intense rides too, we aren't total wimps- we just can't take pictures on those rides :)

 Then with some great benefits with Michael's work we got a gift card to stay at the Anniversary Inn in Logan. They have really fun decorated rooms. They are really really pricey, and we might not have gone if we hadn't got the gift card from his work. We stayed in one of the cheaper rooms: "Aphrodite's Court", and they have much more elaborate rooms than this one. But it was still pretty neat. I have always thought it was so fun how hotels fold and wrap their towels :)

 Filling up the lovely jetted tub- it was so wonderful after a long day at Lagoon. Like how the water comes out of the fish's mouth?

 They gave us some complementary Sparkling Apple Cider and some cheese cake (both of which weren't very tasty though- I was very disappointed for as expensive it was)

 And we must not forget the lovely fluffy pillows, there was a lot of them!

Enjoying the fun little water fall they have outside the Inn

 He's so handsome :)

It was a great "Fun Find!" to get to spend the lovely weekend with my best friend with complete and undivided attention!

Hope you have a great day and don't forget to join in my little giveaway for 15 free alligator clips, it ends this Thurs night at midnight! Because I am being a little delayed in my posts I will share the clips I have been working on tomorrow, and then I should be back on track in being more regular in my posting. Sorry for my delays.

Anyway, thanks for stopping by and until next time!. . . .

Kid Career Exploration and Recap!

So, much apologies for not posting sooner this week. The festivities of the beginning of the week really threw off my normal schedule and I just haven't been able to get around again until now, so here I am, back again for more sharing fun and I should be back to a more normal routine next week!

Since I am finally now posting this lovely Friday, for this week, I am gonna kinda forgo the normal "fun find" and share what I have planned today, and it will be more of a reflection day and just recapping, and then I still plan on coming back on tomorrow for a lovely "Sun up Saturday" especially since I didn't get one in last month. Again apologies for being inconsistent, I am trying to get better at this, we'll see. . . .
First off I thought I would do a little catch up of how some of these most recent sort of posts/ventures went and then share a little kid career fun, some things you could do with the little kiddos (or big kiddos too) if you are looking for some time fillers this lovely summer.

Remember my Father's Day post? More specifically, the puzzle I got my hubby? well we finally found the time and finished it, here is how it turned out :

I am a little annoyed that after spending $20 on this thing there are two pieces of the puzzle that absolutely do not belong, the two spots that need pieces are lighter looking and the only two left are pretty much black looking. . . so ya, they really don't fit- Yeah walmart, mehh

At least we still enjoyed it, I think my little girl likes it too, what do you think?

Then as promised, here is our little fam, wearing our matchy matchy fourth of July festive shirts

 Silly me, I am blocking both my shirt and my little girls shirt, oops! :0)

 Aren't they just precious!?

Like how is she is pointing to her shirt? I don't think she is doing this on purpose, but we can pretend that she is :)

Now for the Kid Career exploration. The following pictures are of some things I put together for my internship a year ago when I worked in the children's museum. The theme for the month was careers so we put together some things that kids could come in and play with and "explore" a little in that career (I did a little recap about this on my regular family blog HERE, if you care to read about it). The main reason for sharing this is if you have kids or work with kids and you need something fun to fill your time, any or all of these would be great fun and it wouldn't take much work to throw these things together.

 This was the cook's corner, all we did was paint an old cardboard box white and then wrote on the lines with a permanent marker to make it look like a stove. Then I pulled out some old pans we don't use very often, an old apron and a hot pad, this was a big favorite section, maybe because  alot of the kids could relate to cooking from watching their parents at home. And if the kids are older, they might enjoy making/decorating the box stove themselves.

 We were able to get the fire department to let us barrow a fireman outfit. Though this part might not be as easy to do at home, the box car would be. All I did was make the box empty or hallow, put straps on for the sides and then painted it while also adding some paper plate wheels. Depending on the age level of kids you are trying to entertain, they could maybe even paint and do their own thing here too, they might appreciate it more too :-)

Here we had a postal worker section, again we got the post office to let us barrow a mail carrier hand bag and hat, but for at home you could probably do any bag or any hat and they wouldn't really care. Then the actual mailbox we made by using an old cardboard tube that had paper wrapped around it (like an old wrapping paper or even paper towel thing works, depending on how tall you want it), then made a plate form from cardboard, painted black, and the top is just construction paper that we tapped in the round looking shape. With a little different sort of creativity you could use a shoe box instead.

Here was a little construction zone. I got the orange cones from the dollar store, and found the yellow hat and toy saw at the local thrift store for really cheap. I don't know if your local thrift stores are this supplied, but every time I go I usually see one of these hats. Then the construction zone tape is just yellow streamers that I wrote "Caution" on, or "Construction Zone", or you could put whatever you'd like. We weren't able to get it going, but I wanted to bring in some lumber or building blocks, so that the kids could actually "build" in this construction zone- so if this would be something you'd do with your kids, I hope it works out better for you :-)

Here is the little Doctors section, it was really simple, we just put down a white sheet, and then pulled out some basic medical sort of tools. Again I got lucky and found the stethoscope and blood pressure gage really cheap at the thrift store, but you could use other things like the thermoniter, maybe some Popsicles sticks or something of the like (we didn't use these for this because if might have been a little unsanitary at this more public area).

Here is some police box cars, same idea as the fire truck boxes.

We also go the police department to let us barrow their hats, but this wouldn't have to be a necessary part of the set up. But we made this little "Stop/Go" paddle from a ping pong paddle

I know it isn't much, and it only covers a very few amount of careers of the millions out there, but it's a start and it can also give you chance to start thinking and getting creative if you want to do more than some of this more basic stuff. Kids love dressing up and doing dramatic play, it is a great way for them to act things out and make sense of their world and what is normal to them, so even if it isn't career related- have fun doing some kind of dress up with them, I know they'll love it, and you just might too!

Anyway, that's all today, I'll be back tomorrow and thanks for stopping by!

Have a great day!

Until next time! . . . . .

Welcome to my Backyard!

As much as I absolutely hate, despise, loath, dread, and all the above for winters here in Idaho, I absolutely LOVE the summers here, especially right now! It rarely gets above 90, but usually stays within the 70-80s and it is green and beautiful everywhere. So on this fun find Friday, I thought I would share a little in my fun, yet gorgeous backyard. One day when we own our own home and become established, I want to be gun hoe like our landlords and create a beauteous backyard like this, but until then, I will absolutely enjoy it now especially since I don't have to put in any work in whatsoever for it to look this good, I just get to enjoy.

 It is kinda hard to see in this picture, but there are just tons of different beautiful flowers everywhere along that path

 These beauties are everywhere too

 They have already come and gone, but there is a beautiful row of lilacs, I melt at the smell of these, I wish they bloomed more than once a year

 They are so pretty!

 There are also tons of apple trees that produce lots of yummy ones in the fall, but right now they are blooming beautiful blossoms

 A little more close up of the beautiful flowers, and I love the little old fashioned wagon flower pot

 Some fun old wheels and an awesome little shed that our landlord uses for wood working sort of stuff

 The side of the shed and just above the their vegetable garden. Oh p.s., they have rhubarb growing and they said I am welcome to use any if I wanted to make a pie or something- I just might have to take them up on it one of these days

 Another shot of the shed, and a lovely cute blue chair.

Anyway, I know I didn't just "Find" this beauty, but I thought I would share since it is wonderful summer, finally!

On other notes, isn't this cute?

 I love watermelons, and I found this, isn't it adorable? It almost makes a little sad though, because I recently discovered I am allergic to watermelon- saddest day ever :(

And on other fun find notes- isn't this fun? Or more like scary, I just had to share.

And one last final touch, I finally finished our festive shirts- what do you think? I will have more pics next week of us actually wearing them :)

Anyway, hope you have a joyous holiday weekend and I prob wont post again until Tuesday, because I am gonna enjoy my lovely holiday- computer free!

What do you have planned for the fun weekend?

Anyway, thanks for stopping by, until next time!. . . . . . .