Every year around Feb. 14 my daffodils bloom. They were a little early this year!

I know that many of you are still enjoying/enduring winter and and I thought you’d like to see this bit of spring.

Imagine air that smells like a cool spring day and that’s what’s happening in north Texas now. I know it’s not going to last – cold, freezing weather always comes back to us before Easter – but today is very nice!

When my boys were little, I took them to the park. A lot. Fresh air made them happy – and they slept better which made everyone happy!

The weather has been pretty in north Texas lately and I’ve been taking Elanor and Jack to Hillcrest park. It’s a small park and very little kid friendly.

Jack is starting to walk and I’ve been making him walk in the park. It’s so much fun to see him figuring out how the world works. He likes to slide!

He and Elanor play really well together and I hope that lasts a long time.

My son, Chris, is really happy to have a son. They are such guys together! What this means is that sometimes they do “guy” stuff that I’m not all that crazy about.

The other night before dinner Chris wanted to show me how well Jack balances himself. So Chris perched Jack on the cats’ scratching post.

Chris was standing right there to catch Jack if he started to teeter. I wasn’t thrilled, but took pictures anyway. Jack thought it was great fun! And I have to admit, the boy does have good balance.

I did hear from Del, the winner of my block. It is on it’s way to her. Keep watch for the next blog door prize!

Last month when Steve and I were in Oklahoma City visiting parents, we spotted the metal base to a patio table. The glass was gone, but the base was in good shape. I even liked the slightly weathered blue paint on it.

We got it back home and I decided it needed a mosaic top . We used a sheet of Hardie board for the base.

I priced tile and realized that I didn’t want to spend that much. I had some garage sale plates and white tiles. We bought mastic and grout.

I broke the plates between pieces of cardboard with a 4 lb hammer. Wear goggles!

Steve helped me with this project. It’s too bad we don’t have a movie of us hurriedly trying to stick the pieces to the table before the mastic dried!

I could have gone hunting for more plates, but honestly I didn’t have time. We both think it has a nicely casual look as it is. And it was (practically) free!

Congratulations to “Del”, poster #195. You have won my block!

How did we choose a winner? I asked my youngest son, Jeff, to do the choosing. He is a phd student in biostatistics at Johns Hopkins and seemed to me to be a perfect person for this very important task. He chose the winner by randomly picking a number between 1 and 314 in R.

So, Del… I need an address from you! You can email me at becky@pieceocake.com.

Thank you all for visiting our blog. I hope you continue to check in. We’ll have another blog door prize in a few weeks.