adventures in babysitting

The other day one of out neighbors asked if we could babysit her little vase of flowers. We warned her that we kill any plant that isn't fake. She laughed and said she trusted us. We don't even trust ourselves. We never bothered to landscape with trees or flowers or non-dying shrubs in our last house due to our plant-killing tendencies. We only had grass (which always seemed pretty dead by August anyway), and that was just to keep the mud to a minimum. I don't know what she was thinking, leaving this lovely little thing with us.

This is the before picture. We didn't take an after picture, despite my good intentions, but imagine this lovely pink thing all shriveled up like a grape. Luckily, the white flowers seemed to have survived and she wasn't too completely horrified when she came to pick it up a week later. Just slightly horrified. She probably walked away thinking, "what was I thinking?"

It's a good thing we're better at taking care of kids than plants. So far we haven't killed any of them.

 In other news, Ashley learned to make paper balloons and went on a paper balloon-making spree. She decided she will sell paper balloons and make a fortune. So if any of you need to buy a plethora of paper balloons, she's your girl. Just be warned...they don't hold helium well. Or water. Or air, for that matter. But they're cute anyway. (and you can string them up and use them as party decorations like {this} link.)

If you don't know how to make these, they're pretty easy. Here's the tutorial Ashley used: