Life as we go it

Daffodils

Tulips

My favorite color of tulip

Gnomeo is keeping a watchful eye on all of the flowers

Hyacinth

And here's a cool metal flower I bought at a local craft fair a few weeks ago. The flower head is made from old rusty horseshoes. I wonder if the horseshoes will bring luck to our gardens this year?

"Girlffiti"

I mentioned in an earlier blog that I'm decorating a 3-foot tall fork for a local Meals On Wheels Fundraiser. Here was my prior post:

Well, I finished painting and decorating my fork on Monday night. I ended up making it all flowery and girly and artsy, as I kind of assumed I would.

I present to you my fork, titled "Girlffiti" (a combo of Girly and Graffiti):

We had a thrifty weekend.

We excitedly said YES to our neighbors when they offered us their beautiful playground set for our yard. It has swings, monkey bars, a rock climbing wall, a lookout tower and a slide.

It will be perfect for Liam to play on as he gets older! And the coolest part is that they just gave it to us. They didn't even want any money for it. They were just excited that Liam (and any other future Bremser kids) will be able to use it and enjoy it. We feel so, so blessed that they thought of us.

It's in pretty good shape. We have to anchor it to the ground yet, once we figure out exactly where we want it in our yard. We may add a few shingles on top of the lookout tower and a fresh coat of stain to the wood. I'm hoping to find a toddler swing (at a rummage sale) so Liam can swing in the sunshine this summer.

Liam is already enjoying playing with rock climbing rope and likes to crawl underneath everything. And he loves swinging on the swing with his mama :)



We also picked up a plastic swimming pool for free from our neighbors house! They had it on the curb, so we took it. Liam's going to love splashing around in it this summer.

Okay, and one more thrifty thing from this weekend: there's a church a few blocks away from us that had a huge baby & kids rummage sale on Saturday. They had crazy amounts of kids toys, bikes, books, clothes, etc. Matt and I rummaged through the 12 month and 18 month boy clothes and found some great finds for Liam. The best part is - all of the clothes cost us only $14. And that included a sa-weeeet pair of garden boots for me :)

Here are a few photos I took of Liam this afternoon in our backyard:

I love this little boy so dang much!

He finds random sticks in the yard and thinks they're the coolest things on the planet.

Exploring.

When Matt and I moved back to Wisconsin a few years ago we started writing on wine corks after we'd finish a bottle. We'd get a Sharpie marker and write the date and the occasion for which we were drinking wine. Occasions such as a great meal we were eating, or an anniversary we were celebrating, or the friends we enjoyed the bottle of wine with.

Fast forward a few years and we have an entire large, glass vase filled with these corks!

I'm pretty sure this is the first one we wrote on. Celebrating our new home back in Wisconsin.

Celebrating our 3-year wedding anniversary in 2010.

A friend visiting from Florida.

Friends visiting from Oregon.

Enjoying Matt's delicious homemade risotto.

This is probably too much information, but I think this may have been the night that we conceived Liam. Thank you Mr. Robert Mondavi!!

Not much wine was consumed during this time :)

Self explanatory.

Enjoying a tenderloin.

Some of our favorite wines. I'm glad we saved the corks :)

An assortment of wine and champagne bottles consumed on numerous New Years Eves.

Does anyone else keep their wine corks? What interesting things have you done with them? Any arts or crafts projects?

Spring is (kind of) here! I don't want to jinx it and say that Spring is full-on here, because this is what our weather forecast looks like after today:

It was sunny enough this morning to take Liam to the park

All smiles on this sunshiny day

Still bundled up, but no need to wear a winter jacket or mittens

There are green plants popping up in our flowerbeds!!! Gnomeo is really happy about this.

All of the snow has finally melted! Our favorite sledding hill is no longer white.

Spring welcome mats are now in place of Winter ones :)

And the trees reach for the sunshine