a pinterest winner

i love pinterest for several reasons but partly because of all the fabulous recipes that i have found. this cake appeared earlier in the week on my page and i knew it was a must pin kinda recipe! i whipped it up today making a few changes and oh my stars…….it is soooooo good!

layers of super moist chocolate cake, homemade chocolate buttercream frosting, chocolate chips and the ultimate mocha brownie mix in the center. it is rich and a little slice will conquer your chocolate craving. this is the where i found the original recipe. i chilled mine in the fridge for a few hours and it was easy to cut and held together well.

have a blessed day!
sarah

fathers day

no better way to start fathers day than spending the day in church as a family and hearing snippets of my husbands sermon while taking care of several little ones in the nursery. i am so blessed to be married to a Godly man who loves me and cherishes me. i am also so blessed to have him as the father of our children.

our children are blessed to have him as their father. he loves them and provides for them. he builds tree swings and gives great underdog pushes. he teaches them how to hunt and all about things in nature. he reads stories and takes them for ice cream treats. he does one on one time with them. our children adore their father. the list could go on forever as to what he does for them but i hope that more than anything they grow up to realize what a great example he was to them and how he showed them the love of God in every day moments.

my dear husband. there are no words in this world to say what you mean to our family. you are the rock that we lean on. the man that we look to for protection. the strong arm that we can cry on. the provider for our family. the great adventurer. the one who makes us laugh when we are mad. the one who brings joy to our days. thank you for all that you are and all that God has created you to be. early in our marriage i dreamed of being a mommy to some precious child and yet here we are today with four beautiful children. thank you for all four of these amazing gifts. i pray that God continues to guide you in being a Godly father to our children. thank you for what you do. we all love and adore you.

happy fathers day!
sarah

a walk through our yard

i  love summer and all the flowers that are in bloom. i love looking at all the beautiful gardens that are so full of gorgeous flowers. it is easy to think that you can just go out and plant a beautiful garden but it really isn’t that easy. it takes several years for everything to mature and fill in. today i thought i would show you a few glimpses of what is blooming here around my yard.

these beautiful dahlias were marked down at our local lowes for .50 each. they were so sad looking when i first got them but i brought them home and gave them some loving care and a little deadheading. they are all in bloom now and are so lovely…all 14 of them. i couldn’t leave any of them behind. :)

my newest flower addition is the white phlox. they are tall and in full bloom. if you can’t tell i do have a theme going on of red and white flowers with some blue flowers in the mixture. blue flowers are so hard to find in a true blue form. i simply love the way white and red look with the green leaves and then dark brown mulch that i use. the other flower is the white shasta daisy. a simple yet beautiful flower.

one of the newest additions this year is the butterfly bush. this flower is a huge attracter for the butterflies and bees. they are all over these plants and speaking of bees…..we had a little bee business going on yesterday and that of course led to a little science lesson for my children.

have a blessed day!
sarah

cedar log raised garden bed

I have been gardening at my inlaws house and have a rather large area but they live about 20 minutes away. I love to garden and would enjoy having something here at our home so my dear husband got busy. We have some land that he cut a few cedar logs off of and brought them home to build me raised beds. I am so excited!! I have two so far but the plan is to put one more in. They are 4x10 foot beds and with them being raised beds I am able to plant so much more in them compared to a traditional garden.

                                                                                               (cell phone picture)

My dear husband put so much work into these and I truly love them. They are easy to work around and I told him the other day that I didn’t know if I ever wanted to go back to the traditional large garden area. I am loving the ease of raised beds. Our cost to build them…free….other than the sweat and labor we put into them.

I was also very blessed to get two large truckloads of compost for free. Our town offers free compost twice a year from all the tree limbs and such that they compost all year. I mixed the compost with some garden soil and I now have a very soft loose dirt mixture. It didn’t take long for me to get busy planting vegetables.

Of course my garden area here is getting a much later start than most people already have but there was a plus side to that as well. I bought my tomato and pepper plants at a huge discount compared to what they originally were. Everything has been in the ground 5 days and has really taken off.

I planted this summer squash on Tuesday the 5th of June and it is already all poking up through the ground. I also have several green beans just below the dirt surface. I found it so interesting this morning that only one of these squash plants were poking through the ground this morning. We left to go to do some work at the farm and when we came back all of them had come up. I guess they all appreciated the drink of water that they received this morning. I have seen on pinterest where they grow squash in an upside down tomato cage and that is what I will be trying with ours this year. I am hoping for great success.

Happy gardening!
Sarah

family sign

I have been wanting to make a subway art sign for our family for quite some time now. I finally got around to putting it all together tonight with the words that I thought were fitting for our family. I am in the process of working on our family gallery wall and I have plans to use this as my inspiration when I go to painting the one I want on the way.  Life has been so busy here with gardening and other daily chores along with the many summer activities that I have neglected a lot of the home do it yourself projects that I love so much.  I hope to be back to regular blogging soon.

Have a blessed day!
Sarah