And the winner is....

My first giveaway has been super exciting. I think I might even be more excited then the 'applicants,' but here goes....

and the winner is......

Congrats, Kelly! :) Your name was drawn from a hat by my little assistant. Just go ahead and email me with your mailing address and I'll get that right out...enjoy!

Thank you to everyone that reads my little ol' blog. I so love to hear from you!

Thanks for reading!

La Famille is 1!!

Today my little piece of the world wide web turns ONE! I started blogging a year ago without knowing much of anything about blogging, but I wanted to share our homeschooling and other family stories with faraway friends and family...but...it's become such a great hobby, outlet, learn, get inspiration, motivation, you name it! I've "met" so many talented, lovely mamas here in the blog world, I cannot believe it.

So...in having a warm, fuzzy feeling about blogging, I decided to do my first giveaway for y'all.

I LOVE to give handmade gifts and you are no exception. I made some fun aprons for a few Christmas gifts, so yesterday I whipped up another one for a lucky winner somewhere out there.

Isn't it fun?! I love the retro, vintage vibe ;)
To enter to win, please leave a comment and I'll chose a random winner on Friday morning. If you want to enter more than once, become a follower and leave another comment telling me you have done so.
Check back Friday to see if you've won! Email me at aliciaahutchinson@yahoo.com to claim your sweet lil' prize :)

My, How You've Grown!

Hi!! I've been a bad blogger lately! Summer has not allowed us much free time, and when it does, I've been trying to get a few things done around the house. I've had some pictures of our garden on my camera since June 28th and I'm finally getting around to sharing them.

So...you may remember the garden we started from this post, but we planted on about May 28th and it looked something like this.....

And now, one month later, it looked a little something like this....
Yikes! Everything is just exploding! We've had lots of rain and lots of sunshine, so I guess that's the ticket!
This is Sophie posing through the sunflowers. They have not bloomed yet, but I'll be sure to share when they do. I'm very excited! They are well above 6' tall.

Banana peppers...

Golden cherry tomatoes...I'm also very excited about the Heirloom tomatoes I planted this year. There are tons on the plant, but none ready to pick. When they're ripe, they have the most gorgeous colors.

We planted our pea seeds in mid-April, because peas like the chillier weather. They are done producing now, but we got tons of yummy peas...like these...

and these...

This week, I found that I have a few pests in the garden, like slugs and earwigs. I am NOT a bug person, so this part of gardening I really struggle with, but I've been on the attack all week and I think I'm winning! Since we've had a lot of rain the slugs are really having a party, but I am here to crash it!

To all you gardeners, I hope yours are doing great! What a gratifying hobby it is.

Help!!

How the heck is a homeschool mom supposed to make any decisions when a catalog like THIS comes in the mail??!!
Rainbow Resource Center is a great site to find pretty much anything for your homeschool. Just when I thought I knew what I was going to order for next year, I get this giant catalog in the mail and it messed with all my plans! I do love options though, so I've done a lot of searching in this catalog.
I've found tons of things to order for next year, so I'd recommend requesting one of these lovely catalogs.
I feel a little behind in my curriculum shopping and I still need to do a little tweaking before I make the actual order, but it'll sure be fun to get those packages with all those lovely books :)

Classic Starts

My kids and I have been reading lots of classic literature from the Classic Starts series. I love how these books make the classics so appealing to kids. For a full write-up on this series, click here to read my review over at Curriculum Choice.