Our backyard hasn’t really been a priority since we moved here in August. It’s pretty plain with a small covered area, some grass, trees, and a flower bed that has sat empty. The kids spend lots of time out here so my goal is to give it some much needed attention and create a nice space to entertain and be proud of.

(Here’s a couple before pictures.)

I plan on rearranging the furniture, adding some more potted flowers, and maybe an an outdoor rug and curtains to hide the trash cans.

The first step we completed recently was to clean up this flower bed and plant our first garden. I decided to get brave and also plant some tomatoes! I figure since we now live in central CA where agriculture thrives, I should give it a try! (We’ll see, but so far the tomatoes are growing better than the flowers.)

In the past I’ve done lots of flower planting in pots only. Sometimes it stays alive and sometimes not…I am not an experienced gardener. It turns out planting in the ground is a lot of work! Manual labor work..Ha

I decided to do this mid April when my husband was still recovering from foot surgery so lugging bags and bags of soil and plants and all the digging was up to me!

I ended up picking up all my flowers and soil at Home Depot and Costco. Costco had a great deal on tomatoes this year..A three pack of small potted tomatoes for $7. I bought two kinds of tomatoes, some lavender, lots of annuals, two bougainvillea, a few small cucumber, and two hydrangea.

Not all of these survived planting. The lavender is about dead. The hydrangeas died right away and I returned those to Home Depot. The bougainvillea lost all it’s leaves immediately and I thought it died, but now it’s starting to come back. If you have any ideas I’d love to hear. This bed gets lots of afternoon sun. I’ve been feeding with Miracle Grow plant and vegetable food, and watering regularly.

I did have some help from some from tiny eager to help gardeners

Here is the garden as it is now about five weeks after we did all our planting. The tomatoes are a couple feet tall now and we added some cages. I’m so excited there are tomatoes growing on all of them!

I painted a few garden markers last week.

These are the “early girl” type of tomatoes.

Here are the “sweet 100s” type of tomatoes.

After five weeks the cucumber plants have grown lots, but are not yet producing…hopefully soon!

In case you didn’t see this is what I did with my herbs. Read the details here. It’s still going strong and I’ve been using the basil to make pesto and in mozzarella tomato salads

Now here is the real surprise! The hydrangeas I bought for the backyard died, but guess what has bloomed in the front yard!

I didn’t even know this bush was a hydrangea because we’ve lived in this house for about eight months. It just decided to bloom!

What a nice surprise, right?! Has that ever happened to you?

I love this quote and decided to make a little graphic for you.

Thanks for stopping by to visit my little garden. Stay tuned for some other fun happenings in my backyard!

Isn’t it exciting when strawberries are $0.99 a pint at the store?! I love it..and It means lots of strawberry goodness for the week,

This weekend we made these frozen strawberry treats and they were a big hit! My kids loved them and actually we all did. I’ve been making smoothies everyday since I received the Ninja blender for Mother’s Day…Love that thing. I found these cool ice cream looking Popsicle forms at Ross on Friday .My daughter begged for me to get them You know how that goes. There were cute, and inexpensive there so I did…

Tovolo freezer molds

Strawberry “Ice Cream” Treats by Lina Darnell

(These made 8 small pops, depends on your molds.)

Blend together :

1/2 pint strawberries

1/4 cup Vanilla Almond Milk

1/3 cup Greek style yogurt

Pour them in your molds and freeze for at least a few hours before you enjoy.

Look at my other cool “find” from Ross that day. I love it…just $24!

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Last week my son’s school had testing so this week we are celebrating Teacher Appreciation Day. We happen to have a great teacher right now who has been filling in long term for our original teacher who had a baby in January. Ms. Johnson is a new teacher and so full of enthusiasm and joy for these kids. I love being able to volunteer in class and with the home room parents. Our school has a tradition of decorating our classroom teacher’s door and bringing her treats and gift cards all week. This year we decided to do a Disney Tangled theme since our teacher is a big fan of the movie.

My part was to bring in the teacher and class a snack yesterday and I made these sweet little Repunzzle inspired ice cream cone cupcakes. I originally spotted these here, but with just a photo and no instructions. I kept track of how I made them so you can too!

First let’s talk about making cupcakes in ice cream cones. I read a ton of posts on doing this, and even asked my Facebook fans how they do it, and I decided to go with the method of baking them in muffin tins. It worked great! I will say that I threw away one batch because they sunk in the middle and looked yucky after baking. I’m not sure if it was my oven or what happened…. I then bought two boxes of Betty Crocker cake mix and they turned out great! Make sure to fill half way or a tiny bit over!

Now let’s talk decorating! I don’t have fancy cake decorating supplies so I went with these tubes of frosting for convenience. I also bought the 4 small corresponding Cake Mate tips. I thought they worked great for what I needed.

My first step was to make the door with chocolate frosting in a plastic bag by cutting the tip of the bag to pipe a thin amount.

For the hair I used the tip with the circle jagged looking edges. I made the hair sort of loop all the way down.

The vines are green frosting with a simple thin tip. Attach the flower sequins right away.

The buttercream frosting is this recipe and contains shortening so it’s stiff along with purple food coloring. This will be important in the transporting of these treats in the car! The last thing I did was pipe on the purple frosting to look like an ice cream cone. I do have a plastic Wilton tool I use for frosting cupcakes.

Not to shabby, right?! Now try making 27…That was a little time consuming! I did have a friend assisting me and we had fun.

I ended up transporting them in muffin tins placed in larger boxes. They did fall over in the car but since the frosting is stiff it didn’t hurt them too much. Plus those Cake Mate tubes dry stiff as well.

I wanted to show you the small double tiered cake I made especially for teacher. I baked it in two different sized small glass ramekin bowls. Here is how I do ruffle cakes.

This is the unfinished wood frame I painted to put a class photo in as a fun gift. The lizard is from the craft store too.

Another room parent made these cute wanted posters!

Our class and teacher were all thrilled to receive these treats and we all had some fun celebrating! Wouldn’t these be perfect for a Tangled theme birthday party?!

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Wednesday Party @ the 36th Avenue

Good morning friends! This past Mother’s Day weekend we relaxed and stayed home with the exception of dance and baseball. I made this tostada meal one day and it was a perfect warm weather meal because I didn’t heat up the kitchen. It was almost 100 degrees here! My husband loves “ceviche” at restaurants and this is good cheater way to get a similar taste with cooked shrimp.

My mom makes a similar recipe as a dip and serves with tortilla chips or saltine crackers. What a great summer appetizer to bring to a barbecue! You could use all fresh tomatoes, but I like the taste of fire roasted diced from the can and use those in salsa as well sometimes.

Mexican “Ceviche” Shrimp Tostadas by Lina Darnell

(This is a pretty large batch)

Mix together:

2 pounds cooked tail off shrimp

2 -14 oz can fire-roasted diced tomatoes

2 chopped fresh tomatoes

1/2 11.5 oz. can V8 juice

Juice of 2 limes

3/4 cup chopped cilantro

1 chopped small white or red onion

1 jalapeno chopped (omit if you don’t like spicy)

1 clove chopped garlic

1 teaspoon cumin

Salt & Pepper to taste

Chill for at least an hour…however the more you chill the better it gets!

***Mix in 2 large chopped avocados right before serving!

I served mine on top of store bought tostada shells.

My favorite tip: Top with some crumbled Mexican Cotija cheese. Cotija cheese (in Spanish, queso añejado, meaning “aged cheese”) is a hard, crumbly Mexican cheese made primarily from cow’s milk. It is so good and reminds me of all my previous vacations in Mexico! In my grocery store this can be found next to the Mexican sausage.

I hope you all had a great mother’s day as well!

These kid gifts are the best, aren’t they? I cherish each one.

My sweet husband got me a Ninja blender as a gift! I am so excited!

I had been dropping major hints about a Vitamix but we aren’t ready to drop $500 on a blender yet. I know I hear they are worth it…

But I am super impressed with my Ninja and have made myself kale berry smoothies and the kids individual smoothies this morning. It’s so convenient to clean…I appreciate that. Are you into juicing? I can’t wait to try more!

Thanks for stopping by to visit!!

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Remember how I’m managing/contributing to the Central Valley Moms website for the Fresno Bee? Well I think it’s going really well and I love the job!

They also recently gave me the opportunity to write an article this month for the Fresno Bee’s print lifestyle magazine Central Valley May 2013 issue.

I wrote the step by step process of my coffee table makeover using CHALK PAINT® decorative paint by Annie Sloan.

Read the entire article here. Hooray for freelance writing! This is very exciting for me….

I am particularly proud because the photography is mine as well!

Yesterday while waiting at a Dr’s appointment we found some excellent reading material it in the waiting room

Thanks for stopping by and all your love and support.

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Look at this cute, cute, cute, so cute handmade baseball outfit!! Ahh I can’t stand it…How fun right? My daughter’s fifth birthday was last week and she received this an awesome gift. This outfit will be perfect for her to watch brother’s baseball games in!

My husband has three amazing sisters, aren’t they so gorgeous?! I’ve never had a sister so having three sister in laws is pretty special for me. Even though we live in different parts of the country this is a close and fun group.They, along with my mother in law, are so supportive of me, my blog, our kids, my writing, and are always the first ones to “Like” a project of mine on Facebook. Ha..I love that!

Cory happens to be very talented at sewing and has her own sewing business called Sew Funky. She is always coming up with different creative fabric bags and accessories for sale.

Here are some great examples of what she can sew…I know it’s so great!

You can follow her on facebook as Sew Funky! Coryanne.net.

I love all her bags especially that big giant yoga bag. I am a lucky owner of one of her bags, a pretty camera strap, and key fob.

This is such a fabulous high end boutique looking embellished tank top. I was thinking it would look great in any summer fabric! I know some of you would be able to whip this out no problem!

Cory said this project involved fabric and bias tape, and lots of pins. She started by putting a piece of paper over the tank to trace a pattern and then cut out the baseball fabric. She then used doublefold packaged red bias tape around the entire piece of fabric and down the middle. Once that was done she ironed, pinned it down, and sewed the entire piece to the tank top and added buttons last.

The skirt has bias tape around the edges instead of hemming.

She knows my daughter loves elephants and made her two more super cute outfits with matching embellished tanks!

Thanks Aunt Cory, she loves it all and will definitely be wearing soon!

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Hi friends! This weekend my daughter turned five and we threw her a fun Olivia the Pig themed party at our home.

In case you are not familiar with her, Olivia is a book character and TV show, based on the book series by Ian Falconer,that my daughter LOVES. Olivia is a lovable,funny, and precocious little pig with a huge imagination who loves to dance, dress up, and gets in all kids of fun adventures.

Today I’m going to try and write this party post a little differently than I normally do. I want you to be able to take my easy tips and apply them to whatever theme or type of party you choose to throw. This could be a birthday or even a baby shower, wedding shower ect. Instead of just throwing up a bunch of edited party pictures, I want you to see that what I do anyone can do if you have the time, It took me a good week of planning and work to put this party together, and it’s something I genuinely like to do..kinda my thing. If party planning isn’t your thing I totally get it! There’s nothing wrong with that! I’m feeling a little backlash lately on moms who throw creative parties. I like this sort of thing and I realize it doesn’t make me a better mom  than the next. Throwing out some store bought cupcakes and balloons and calling it a day is great! I’ve thrown kid parties both ways

Okay so back to why you came here! Ha

Party Planning Tip #1: Use dollar store table clothes to decorate.

I folded and cut up tablecloths from the dollar store and taped them to the top of my hutch to make them look like curtains. My backdrop is gift wrap from the dollar store. Then printed out pictures of Olivia online and taped them up. The larger one is actually an engineer print from Office Max. They are pretty inexpensive from office printing places. All you have to do is bring in your image on a thumb drive to order it.

The boxes for party favors are from Amazon, also inexpensive.

Party Planning Tip #2: Wrap empty boxes with coordinating gift wrap and duct tape/ribbon and then stack them for an easy cupcake stand.

I found this wrapping paper at my dollar store and bought 5 rolls when I saw it. The duct tape is some I already had but you could use ribbon or whatever you’ve got on hand. Such a cute and cheap way to serve cupcakes that can be customized to the theme and colors of your party!

Party Planning Tip #3: Create a festive photo backdrop with wrapping paper and dress up items from the dollar store and your kid’s closet.

I went through my daughter’s dress up items in her closet and pulled out tiaras, fairy wings, glasses, pretend high heels, and bought some boas, scarves, and hats from the dollar store. The kids and parents LOVED it! We made our own piggy ears  by cutting out craft foam and gluing the ear shapes to foam tiaras. I also made the noses by gluing foam shapes to small dowels.Having a painted frame like I have here is also cute.

Below you can see how I cut out and glued foam shaped like ears to tiars and also made pig noses.

Look how cute the photos turn out!

Party Planning Tip #4 : Use store coupons and shop Amazon for party supplies.

This may seem like a no brainer, but I cringe when I see people buy full price things at stores like Michael’s and Jo Anne’s. Those stores even have apps for your phone to show the cashier at checkout. Also Party City has in store coupons all the time on their website that you can pull up on your phone or print. Last week it was 40% off any full price item.

This pinata is a good example. It was $20 full price at Party City and I showed the cashier a 40% off coupon from their website and received the discount. I went back a different day and bought the candy for 40% off too.

I made cupcakes and found these cute plastic cupcakes toppers on Amazon for just a few dollars. Together with the no fade Wilton cupcake liners they turned out great!

Party Planning Tip #5: Make your own party wreath for the front door or cake table.

For this wreath I used hot glue to attach a white boa to a wood wreath form and also painted and glued this craft frame. You could use a photo of your child or make a graphic on PicMonkey.com like I did. Then I used a couple of the piggy photo props I made for the kids and attached to the wreath. For some of my other DIY party wreaths ideas, check out my number flower wreath, felt rainbow wreath, and golf themed wreath posts.

Party Planning Tip #6: Make your own free personalized invitations and party graphics on free online editing websites like PicMonkey.

I made this invite using PicMonkey and this free chalkboard background jpg. You can then email your image or print and hand out as invites.

I also made this cute cupcake sign.

I hope you are able to use some of these ideas and make them your own

I used a little white bucket to hold my daughter’s stuffed Olivia’s doll and set it on a plate with some homemade chocolate covered strawberries.

My best attempt at a freehand Olivia the Pig on our chalkboard!

Here’s the birthday girl in a $10 Target dress and red petticoat skirt we already had.

My hubby is the best. I’m sure he’ll love me including this picture! ha

Thanks for coming by and visiting with me today. I hope you liked our party and come back again soon.

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Anyways, I decided last second to try and make her some special birthday pancakes, (or pannie-cakes as my kids say)……They turned out super cute and she was THRILLED.

All I did was add sprinkles to regular pancake batter and cook as usual. Then mix a little water with powdered sugar for a simple glaze and pour on top. Add a little more sprinkles and maybe some whip cream.

Happy Birthday sweet girl

Do you have any special traditions for your child’s birthday morning? I’d love to hear!

We also had her Olivia the Pig birthday party yesterday. It was so fun even though the bounce house stopped working, I didn’t buy enough hot dogs for the kids, and it was nearly 100 degrees outside, way hotter than normal! Oh well, she had a great time with her little friends.

Here is a sneak peek! I am recovering today and working on that post

Make sure to come back and see the entire party!

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Hi friends, I had the opportunity to shop at Grocery Outlet here in Fresno, CA for the first time. Oh you know I do love a great bargain, so this place is perfect for me! When we moved to CA from AZ we had serious sticker shock on the cost of groceries. I’m always looking for ways to cut back on this expense while still buying quality real food.

Headquartered in Berkeley, California, Grocery Outlet currently encompasses 185+ independently operated stores in Arizona, California, Idaho, Nevada, Oregon, Washington and Pennsylvania. Click here to see if you live by a location.

Since today is Earth Day, one way to be kinder to the plant is buying organic. Choosing organic versions of products reduces the level of pesticides the environment is exposed to…and reduces exposure to your body as well. But organic can be expensive. I can’t afford to buy all organic, but I do try to buy when I can.

Guess what? Grocery Outlet has an organic and natural section with savings of up to 50%, although I found some things even deeper discounted!

Just look at some of the bargains I found. I love this peach blossom tea, and six Luna Bars and Kids Z bars for under $3? Awesome!

My kids are obsessed with Pirate Booty and what a great price. You don’t see Cuties for $1.99 anywhere else around here!

Oh yogurt! Are entire family loves greek yogurt. The tubes were 1.99 as well as a four pack of the smaller ones. Coffee with dark chocolate chips is the best 100 calories EVER!

Their produce is great too! I have too many pictures of examples for one post, but earlier this week I made these Hummus Feta Pita Pizzas with items all from Grocery Outlet.

Okay so now the good news!! Grocer Outlet is giving away two $25 gift cards to their store just for Fancy Frugal Life readers!!

Contest open to readers over 18 and in the U.S.

I will pick a winner in one week. Good Luck!!

a Rafflecopter giveaway

 Disclosure**I was compensated for this post by Grocery Outlet and all opinions are my own.