Cold morning

Woowee!  It's a bit chilly out there this morning!  Snow/ice last night and warnings of a hard frost tonight.  My kiddos suddenly have the urge to set up a stand on the sidewalk.  A water stand with the leftover water bottles that we bought for a camping trip.  They were thwarted in their attempts yesterday by mean old mom reminding them that school was more of a priority than selling water bottles for 6 dollars.  So, first thing this morning, they were out sitting on their camp chairs, with the cooler of water.  Who cares that it's barely above freezing and nobody is out?  Surely there should be a line of customers waiting to pay for cold water on a cold day.  They did drop the price to 3 dollars.  Maybe I am a mean mom...  Sure has been peaceful this morning...

I have been wandering around outside at various times of the day.  My landlady probably thinks I'm going nuts.  Walk out onto the patio, look around, nod my head, mutter something to myself, wander back into the house... repeat in an hour or two...

I'm not crazy though.  Since she gave me the go ahead to do whatever I want in the planters surrounding the patio, I've been trying to figure out the best strategy to use them.  The patio does get some sun, but it's also shady a lot of the day, so I'm trying to figure out where the sun shines the most throughout the day, and where it hardly shines at all.  Here's a picture of what I'm working with.

The planters are about a foot across and about 40 feet total in length.  The side on the right seems to get the most sun and the far left never gets any.  The majority gets sun from 10 till late afternoon, but I just don't know if I'll be able to grow anything besides lettuce here.  Guess I'll never know till I try.  I'm seriously considering cutting a few branches off of that pine tree to let in more light, but I don't know that the landlady will be that flexible.  I still need to put together my 4x4 foot garden bed.  She said I can do more... hmmm.  Hopefully I can get things together this weekend.

In other news, today is the last day of wrestling practice for my little man.  Thank goodness.  I know he loves it, but I'm done.  I'm ready to have my Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday evenings back. 

In a stroke of genius, or so I thought, I remembered to throw our aprons into the wash with the kitchen towels and cloth napkins.  It seemed like a good idea at the time.  They were very dirty.  Here's what I pulled out of the dryer.

That is four aprons hopelessly tangled.  Yup, I'm a genius.  Such a genius that I was able to get them back apart in (not so) record time.  But as I worked with the knots, I decided to show you our family wall of aprons.  I made all but mine.

Last Christmas, I made aprons for my two kiddos and one for my husband to grill in.  They were a big hit with everyone.  The kids feel official when they help me make cookies.  Mine is a plain red, not very cute, stolen from my mom's house, apron.  I've been planning on making myself one for a long time, but lack of inspiration (or a pattern) has kept me from acting.  Maybe if I had a cutesy apron, I would remember to wear it and save a few of my shirts from my crazy cooking style.  Maybe.