SIX!

oh my goodness, my baby girl is six years old today! can you believe it? remember when she was itty bitty and adorable?

and now she's all grown up but still just as adorable.

in honor of boo's sixth birthday we had a little party this evening, complete with homemade cake, presents and hello kitty decorations, of course!

i used to get juliet birthday cakes {and sophie once, too!} from a local pet boutique, but my last five trips or so to this particular store have been very disappointing. austin and i would stand at the counter waiting patiently for help and end up waiting for five minutes or more. the last time i went and we had to wait over five minutes, i finally just walked out. and i don't plan to return. point is, though, that i decided to make juliet a cake this year for the first time!

i think it turned out beautifully, don't you? it's a peanut butter and carrot cake with peanut butter icing.

here's the recipes i used:

peanut butter cake:

• 1 cup flour
• 1 teaspoon baking soda
• 1/4 cup peanut butter
• 1/4 cup vegetable oil
• 1 cup shredded carrots
• 1 teaspoon vanilla
• 1/3 cup honey
• 1 egg

mix all ingredients together, pour into a cake pan and bake at 350 degrees until a toothpick inserted into center comes out clean. for julie's cake, i halved the recipe, since we don't have any other pups to share with. also, the pan i used was a round dish with about a six inch diameter and took about 25 minutes to cook.

peanut butter icing:

• 8 ounces low fat cream cheese
• 4 ounces peanut butter
• 2 tablespoons canola oil

again, i halved this recipe and i used the food processor to whip the icing up to a nice consistency.

and juliet ate. it. up.

yum.

then we had present opening time. austin brought her a bear.

and then she opened her present from me!

a monkey!

even dinger was in attendance at the party.

and just for fun, austin decided he wanted to try boo's cake.

i don't think he liked it. but julie did, so that's all that matters.

happy birthday, stinky! we love you and you're the best puppy ever!

easter sunday.

happy easter to you all! i hope everyone had a great day and got awesome goodies from the easter bunny. this morning, austin and i started our day off by hearing an awesome message at church. i know lots of churches do huge productions of the death and resurrection of Christ, but the church we've been attending doesn't seem to do all the showy stuff and the pastor just gave a great sermon. the kids of the church, however, did do a cute little music performance and four people got baptised today! it was a great day and i'm glad we were able to make it there this morning.

right after church, we grabbed juliet and headed up the mountain to the heard's house. juliet was dressed in a nice springtime outfit, perfect for easter sunday, of course.

then we all got to open our baskets from the bunny! taylor and austin both got toy airplanes to play with and i got some gardening gloves and a little froggy for in the garden!

austin and taylor quickly got to work on assembling their planes.

look at the concentration on austin's face. this is serious stuff.

then we headed down the road a bit to taylor's farm, where we saw guineas.

and piggies {biiiig piggies}.

and even a turkey, his name is tom {naturally}.

we had a great time up at the heard's, but we had to head home to squirrel proof the garden!

and i added my new froggy to watch over our plants.

and, as always, juliet helped.

well that's about it for easter sunday. i'll leave you with a line from one of the songs from church that i hadn't heard before today...

"but this i know with all my heart, His wounds have paid my ransom."

happy easter everyone!

playtime. suntime. winetime.

just a few pictures to share tonight real quick.

juliet is super happy to have our rug back down on the living room floor {no more lava}. she pulls just about every toy out of her basket to play every night.

today was another beautiful day, so we spent some time outside around our nicely painted {if i may say so myself} table. when we bought chairs for the table a few weeks ago, i didn't realize we needed to buy extra chairs specially for juliet.

this is juliet's "aren't i cute and don't you have a treat for me?" face.

and yes, she is cute and yes, i had cookies for her, of course.

i mean, just look at this face!

and the whole time jules and i were lounging around, austin was doing manly things like mowing the grass and then building a fire. and what was i doing? sampling my freshly bought wine from the georgia winery, of course.

tomorrow is easter so austin and i will be heading to church and then up the mountain to his parent's house for a big dinner. i hope the easter bunny brings you all good stuff!

it's earth day, y'all.

in case you didn't know, today is earth day. and although we're not doing anything super "earthy" on this particular day i like to think austin and i try our best to be relatively earth-friendly on most days.

but since it is a beautiful day, juliet and i are celebrating earth day by enjoying a bit of the sunshine and warm weather. and i've got some updated pictures of our garden!

first, we've got potatoes growing in a pot on our porch, which is a technique we got from a gardening book austin bought a few weeks ago.

i think we're going to be up to our ears in potatoes...

here's an overview of our square foot garden we've been working on.

and yes, zoom in and you see that juliet has a way of sneaking into to all of my pictures...

anyway. things look like they're growing nicely, don't they?

but, if you look up close, you can see we're in a fierce battle...

...against squirrels. see that little green stick coming up out of the ground? yeah, that used to be a tomato plant but the darn squirrels have completely destroyed it. you can see we've tried string with bells {literally a midnight effort, with sarah's help} but i'm sure the squirrels probably just laughed at that.

currently, we're on cayenne pepper. if the squirrels eat our plants right now, at least they'll be on fire.

this weekend, however, we'll be getting some mesh fencing type stuff to go around the entire garden. i'm worried it's not going to look pretty, but i guess i'd rather have a productive garden that might not be beautiful than an empty garden...

so that's my little garden update. i hope everyone gets a chance to do something in honor of earth day today, even if it's a simple joy like rolling in the grass. or is juliet the only one who likes that?

{and p.s.- thanks to a tip from another sarah i am now able to upload all my pictures without the hassle of having to chop them down in size, which is good because i'm pretty lazy! thanks, sarah!}

lately.

ok. so you may be wondering {but probably aren't} why i haven't been posting much lately. and although austin and i have been up to lots here in the past few days, it turns out i take too many pictures. at least according to blogger. apparently, you only have so much photo space on their server and i have exceeded that, mostly because both of my cameras are so awesome {at least i think so} and make the picture size so large. so now, in order to upload pictures, i have to do a little bit of editing and resize the pictures to be fewer pixels. so now, with smaller pictures in tow, i share with you what we've been doing lately.

we did some copper-sitting one weekend when his people were both out of town. and copper took the opportunity to find his inner yogi and meditate a bit.

namaste, copper, namaste.

dinger has been soaking up all the fresh air he can get while the windows are open. and even attempting {and succeeding a few times} to sneak out the door when we come in and out.

one night, austin wanted to head to the driving range and hit a few golf balls and invited me to come with him. i, of course, instantly wanted to put on an entirely plaid outfit and one of those funny hats and be all fancy at the driving range.

but i didn't realized what kind of driving range we were going to...

but it's fine, they have a range and restaurant.

and interesting targets to aim for.

austin is actually pretty good at golf. me? not so much. and i was too annoyed by the millions of mosquitoes biting the heck out of me to try to learn. so i took pictures instead.

we ended up only staying for about 20 minutes and austin didn't even hit all the balls, because the mosquitoes were getting way too bad. and austin was getting way too angry.

also, i got a lovely new hanging basket of begonias for the front porch. lovely, yes?

and of course, we've all done our fair share of lounging and relaxing.

and jules does her share of being so stinking cute.

our garden is growing well and we've been working on a few other things around the house, so i'll have a few more posts coming soon. i know you'll all be waiting anxiously.