Snapshots: Sans Flowers

I'm just going to admit right up front that I have no photos of flowers in this post.

I know. It's shocking.

I actually have no flowers in my house right now, and did not get anything together for the altar at church this week. There are several reasons for this.

First, we always have school on the Friday after Labor Day, which means an uncharacteristic two-day weekend for us instead of our usual three-day weekend. And that means less time in general to do smaller things like flowers.

Also, three out of the six members of the family left yesterday for two different short trips. One son left at 4 a.m. for a day trip. A. and another son left in the middle of the day for an overnight trip. Both of these events required my involvement to make sure everyone had the appropriate clothing, food, and accoutrements. 

And last, I have been spending six or seven hours in the kitchen every day processing all the food that has come into my house in the past week (more on that Tuesday). 

It's been busy, I am tired, and I just didn't get any flowers gathered and arranged.

I still have plants in the house, though!

My indestructible pothos have finally gotten long enough that they were interfering with the kids' reading spots on the couch, so I put a hook there in the center and looped them up out of the way.

A. continued his bathroom heroics by tearing out our bathroom, which was in almost as bad a shape as the kids' bathroom.

This was where the leaking tub was. It will be a shower stall eventually. A. is building this whole thing himself from bricks and concrete or something, so I have no idea what it will look like in the end.

I don't really eat sandwiches regularly, but I do love BLTs. Only with homegrown tomatoes, though. That's why I always have one celebratory BLT in the height of tomato season. This year, that was last week.

Much-anticipated BLT on a bunny plate.

A couple of months ago, Poppy was suddenly taken with the idea of making a pinata. I don't know where she saw or heard about this, but she really wanted to do the paper mache thing. I didn't have any great objections to it--it's easy, if messy--but was somewhat stymied by the lack of newspapers to be had.

It never really occurred to me that the slow death spiral of printed newspapers is depriving a generation of children of paper mache, but it certainly does make it harder. 

However! While we were on the way to my sister's house in Colorado, we stopped at one of the big Colorado rest stops, and there found a stand with one of those free small newspapers that lists things to do in an area. I figured it would be okay to take a couple for paper mache purposes, so that is what we did.

Those papers have been kicking around the house for two months now, but yesterday Poppy again brought up the pinata thing. As it was a gray day outside and I was just working in the kitchen, I figured it was as good a day as any to do the paper mache.

Accordingly, I blew up a balloon, set her up to contain the mess as much as possible, and let her have at it.

It was fun at first, but she was tired of it by the third layer for sure.

I'm not sure she was too diligent about smoothing the excess paste off the strips of paper. It was so wet that when we hung it up to dry, it was dripping a little. I hope it dries within a few days, though, because Poppy's best friend has a birthday this week, and the plan is to ask their teacher if they can hang the pinata up in the cafeteria and whack it on her birthday. 

Which means, I guess, that I need to get some candy for the inside. Kind of funny to say it, but I'm not entirely sure if I can. I don't want to drive two hundred miles to the nearest store to fill a pinata. I hope the guy who owns the little store in the village is open this week and has something I could use. 

Or is there something I could make or bake to put in there that wouldn't break into a million pieces? Thoughts?

There you have it! My life, snapshotted.