Not too far from our home is a local arboretum that is 7-acres in the heart of the county I live in where "homeowners can see the variety of plants that grow in our area as well as emerging trends in plant material."  My two oldest children currently take a Junior Master Gardening homeschool class at the arboretum once a week and they have learned so much about gardening and have enjoyed their time in class.  While my oldest children were in class one week, I took some pictures of the beautiful scenery in the gardens at the arboretum.

  






Our arboretum visits are always a treat for our family since the scenery and landscaping is so beautiful!

Thank you for all those that entered the Unplanned DVD Giveaway that I posted about HERE last week! The winner of the DVD through Inlinkz random drawing is Joann, the #24 entry! Congratulations Joann!

Now onto some Wordless Wednesday pics that I am titling


The 3 hanging baskets on our front porch that I picked out on Mother's Day.  We got these from Harris Teeter.  Unfortunately, there was no coupon to use when we bought them :) 














Please join Lynda, Anna-Marie, and myself at No Ordinary Blog Hop (NOBH).  Click button below for details and to read and follow some great blog posts that have already linked up!

"The most important person on earth is a mother. She cannot claim the honor of having built Notre Dame Cathedral. She need not. She has built something more magnificent than any cathedral-a dwelling place for an immortal soul, the tiny perfection of her baby's body...Even the angels have not been given such a grace! What is more glorious than this - to be a mother."  

-Joseph Cardinal Mindszenty

When I first took this box of BRIDE'S stationary off the pile, I thought it was a box of unused printed wedding invitations that someone was getting rid of because the wording on the paper was an invite to a wedding.

I then noticed the price tags on the outside of the box in the top right corner: $39.99 reduced to $19.99 reduced to sitting on top of the cardboard recycle pile for me to find!

Tonight was my 6 yr. old daughter's last soccer practice for the Spring 2011 season.  My husband coaches her team and it is made up of a great group of kids.  It is a tradition at the last practice of the season to have a kids vs. parent "game" and have pizza and cupcakes to celebrate a job well done.  I wanted to share with you an easy way to decorate cupcakes for any occasion.  You can also check out some other cupcakes and cakes that I have decorated HERE.

I first get on my computer and find some clipart in Microsoft Word.  For the soccer party tonight I chose these soccer balls with flames.

Then after I have cut out all the clipart images I want to use, I gather tape and toothpicks.  There were 4 girls and 4 boys on the soccer team so I also chose blue clipart with a boy kicking a ball and pink with a girl kicking the ball.

I then tape a toothpick on the back of each picture.   My 6 year old enjoyed helping me tape the pictures for the batch of 24 cupcakes.

After icing the cupcakes, I just stick one toothpick in each cupcake.  These cupcake decorations are easy and the kids love the pictures.  There are so many different clipart pictures on the computer that you can decorate cupcakes like this for about any theme or occasion and it doesn't cost a fortune to make.  Have you ever decorated cupcakes like this before?