Our Little Cottage

Cleaning My Kitchen {yet again} & Pics of Our Turtle Garden

Good Morning!  I hope everyone is having a good morning today. 

I was laying on the couch cuddling with Zach and Liam, to our surprise there was a knock at our backdoor.  YEAH, Daddy stopped by for a quick visit.  He had to pick up some cable stuff for work today.  Poor guy had to load these heavy reels of cable with his back still giving him problems.  He even came in to get some pain medicine after load his things.  Danny was only able to stay for just a little bit, but we are so happy he did stop in!

Before I get too far into this journal entry I wanted to add a photo just for aggiewife...

{I don't know if you can really tell, but Arlee's eyes are her hazel color still ~ trying to be a little artistic~lol}

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Yesterday, I took some time to clean my kitchen...I feel like I am ALWAYS cleaning my kitchen, LOL!  From what it looks like this morning...you'd never guess, though!

Ahhhhhh!  BUT, I do have proof that it was cleaned up yesterday!

Here is my old homeschool bookshelf.  I  now have a bigger bookshelf in the living room for all the homeschool things, so I decided to put some of our "pretties" on this one...

I know all our shoes arn't that pretty, but it gives us a place to put them that isn't in the middle of the doorway!

Here's my stove...

If you look way back in the right hand corner of the stove, that is not a smudge spot....

It's my kitchen moth...

See how nicely he matches my stove?

And here is my bowl of nuts I got from our Walnut tree...still researching what I need to do with them, lol...

And here is the rest of the counter space around my kitchen...

See that piece of paper sticking on the inside of my cabinet door?  That's my Sweet Cornbread Recipe!!

Did you see the basket with my coffee in it up inside the cabinet?  Makes it so easy to grab!

There's my beans cookin' in the crock pot!  Mmmm!

There is the bowl of cherry tomatoes.  Some are from our garden, and a few from our neighbors garden!  Yum Yum!

That's my "junk" cabinet.  It does have all our plates, bowls, and cups/glasses too, though.  I have a bunch of odds and ends in that brown basket up there, batteries, my dishwasher detergent, washing soda, and borax.

Oh, see...another recipe!  That one is for my Zuccini Bread!

I love that candle there too.  My MIL got me that for Christmas this past year.  It smells like sugar cookies!

Hmmmm, ever since I cleaned around the coffee pot...I've been thinking about making me some more...Time for a break, a snack, and a cup of java...

Mmmmm...that's better!

I don't think I've posted what the front of my homemaker's binder looks like before...

Under where {ha ha} it says Home Management Binder there are 3 sticky "diamonds".  Then the cute little kola bears which I put each of the kids' names under.  Then the quotes {I love quotes}...

"The darn trouble with cleaning the house is it gets dirty the next day anyway, so skip a week if you have to.  The children are the most impotant thing." ~Barbara Bush

"The tragedy of life is not that it ends so soon, but that we wait so long to begin it." ~ W.M. Lewis

"There's no place like home." ~Dorthy Gale

I'll have to get into what all is inside on another day.  I love my binder and use it just about daily.

When Danny got home, the kitchen was looking pretty good and the beans where done cookin'....

I made some of my sweet cornbread, but forgot to take a picture of it.

Before we ate, Danny and I went out the the turtle garden to let the moth go.

We took a walk back to our garden, which is looking better, but still pretty sad.  After all the rain and loss of some of the plants, we just didn't have the passion for our poor little garden as we did last year.  But we are trying to bring it back.

I did get a picture of a peach on our peach tree...

I can just taste the peach crisp already!

 In one of my groups, I had a request to see the turtle garden.  So this morning I took a bunch of pics of it...

This is walking up to the turtle habitat...

Those are strawberries running along the wooden fence for the turtles to eat.  And, that is Frosty's weather station he made in Boy Scouts.  You can't really tell, but behind the gray square is a turtle hut {or what's left of it, it's caving in from turtles climbing on it and such} that Danny made for the turtles for the winter months.

More strawberries along the fence.  And there are Danny and my chairs where we sit back here!

Here's the pond {and my hubby!}.

Another pic of the pond...you can sorta see the waterfall in the back.

Awwwww...Someone is in the pond!

This is toward the back.  We've left it very natural back there.  You can see the other, bigger turtle hut where some go to sleep.  They will use this area for hibernation too.  And it the bottom left of the picture is 2 of our girl turtles. 

Here is a little better close up of the girls...

Here is someone walking out of the bigger turtle hut.

Here is the smaller wading pool and waterfall.  Many of the turtles walk thru here to get a drink of water.  They will, for some reason, try their hardest to climb up the waterfall!

Here's Stubs...he's digging for worms...

Well, that's all I have for today!

Thanks for dropping in for a visit!

Hope to "see" you again here soon!