A present for me!

My husband's birthday was Thursday, so imagine my surprise when I saw this sitting on my kitchen floor when I got home from work.

As you can see, my kitties had already attempted to open the wrapped box for me.  A line from "Beauty and the Beast" ran through my head upon seeing this (you know, when Belle returns and the clock and candlestick are amazed? Yes, I am a mom to a five year-old.): "Could it be? Is it she?"

With a grin on my face, I started to tear away the newspaper that was protecting my missing wine rack.
Ta da! It is she!

Of course, no new piece of furniture or anything can go unnoticed without Splotch the cat investigating as you can see in the picture above.  I am so happy!!! Finally, the wine rack be be installed and the kitchen can truly be finished.  As soon as this pieces goes in, there is a large piece of crown molding that will go on top of this section of the cabinets.  The items that are being stored on our dining room and kitchen tables can go back into the cabinets for storage!  More organization can occur.  Wahoo! Can't wait to see how the installation goes! 

Butterflies!

Since I do not have any restoration stories to post at the moment, I thought I would switch over to some of the activities going on inside our dream home. With a child in the house, that means there is always something going on!

It is summertime in the south which means mama has to try hard to keep a very active five year-old occupied.  Last year, I purchased a butterfly kit and stashed it away for warm weather use. The little one found the box and reminded me, we needed to order our larvae!

The tiny larvae were shipped live to us in a cup with pasty food at the bottom. Not long after they arrived, they started to eat...and eat...and eat, which made the grow! Soon, the larvae attached themselves to the lid inside their individual chrysalis. We transferred the larvae lid to the pop-up butterfly cage. While the larvae started to turn into butterflies, we read about what was going on in the book I had ordered at the same time I bought the butterfly kit.

Finally, the butterflies began to hatch, one-by-one. While the butterflies gained wing strength, we made a flower garden for them in the bottom of the butterfly keeper.  With a dropper, we placed sugar water in the dish and along the flowers.  They knew exactly what to do!

Today, we released the butterflies.  One will stay with us until she passes on.  Unfortunately before I knew the butterflies had hatched, the kitties knocked the butterfly house to the ground and hurt the wing of one of the painted ladies. Thankfully, she is eating from the flowers we have dotted with sugar water and seems happy.  She just couldn't fly away with her sisters.  

My little girl seems to understand what is going on with our special butterfly. She put the butterfly house back in her room and said she would be a good vet to the little injured one. We will definitely order more larvae so we can enjoy the butterflies again soon! 

Happiness is...

For me, nothing says "happy" like red, white and blue.  My friend said that I am the most patriotic person she knows.  I am not sure about that but I must say, I do love Memorial Day and July 4th and I truly love Americana decorations.  I finally found stars and stripes bunting for the house locally so that I did not have to order it through the Internet.  Another perk?  It was all made here in the good ol' USA.  Just in time for Memorial Day, I was able to put up patriotic bunting along with my patriotic Glory Haus burlee.  I love this time of the year as many of the home owners in our neighborhood start putting up various styles of red, white and blue decorations.  Here is our front porch all decked out in our happy place!

Nothing says patriotic like huge bunting!

I love my Glory Haus Burlee.  It says, "Land that I love" and I
promise to take a better picture so you can actually see it!

Since this picture was taken, I have added small American flags to the planters
out front.  Goes really well with the princess pool on the porch, don't you think? :)