As of late

We had a baby bird in the bush directly outside our dining room window recently. According to the male Cardinal bird that attended (fed?) it, it is a baby Cardinal. The addition of a bird house (thank you, again, GrandMia & Papa!) and feeder to our front trees has been wonderful! Big Sister even went on a special 'birding' adventure with Daddy a couple weekends ago!

 I made myself a dress. A Simplicity Lissette in Option C, to be precise. This is my second Lissette dress experience, and I kind of adore them and want all the patterns and to make every single variation of each option.

While completely imperfect (forgive me for not pointing out each and every mistake I made), it's amazing how a real, true and lovely dress can come together for a relative beginner like myself.

The fabric is light, with a stretchy seersucker quality to it, and not at all see-through. I may be wearing this a lot this summer.

We are again in summer homeschool mode, and I am loving all this additional quality time with the girls being their teacher. They made a timeline of their lives last week. It was happiness to hear them recollect their favorite memories and best days, and to look through past photographs. It prompted me to have a couple more enlargements of their sweet faces made for our gallery wall; now to get additional frames.

Father's Day festivities included a picnic lunch, trip to the Science Center, a shopping trip to Costco (samples! pizza slices!) and the best, most amazing chocolate chip cookies in. the. WORLD. I kid you not.

Hubby, a baked good aficionado, grabbed one to-go after a recent lunch break at home. An adequate amount of time in which to assure you he didn't text while driving later, I received the following message:

That last cookie I grabbed while heading out was quite possibly the best chocolate chip cookie I've ever had. No joke. Perfect flavor, chip count, and texture. D#mn.

 

This will forevermore be my go-to recipe for chocolate chip cookies. I will reign Supreme Domestic Goddess at any and all future bake sales. Holla!

With regularity, I bust out the vacuum & Simple Green and go all neat freak on our beloved Odyssey. Especially before a road trip. Don't ask me why; it's a sickness.

But this time, I also had to duct tape a piece of the interior to itself, thanks to the physical enthusiasm with which a certain Jack Russell terrier tried to escape the van during a previous road trip, some bumbling adult legs and the breakability of nine year old plastic.

I think our van just went from budget chic to ghetto fabulous.