There's No Place Like Home, unless it's about to get invaded by a Pumpkin Vine

You probably know by now that my girl loves, loves, loves, to craft. She also loves her sparkle shoes. Unfortunately, those sparkle shoes didn't stay very sparkly. They started out as black sparkle shoes. I brought them home from the store and literally within days, she had worn out the sparkles on them. I found sparkles all over the house - even in her bed (yes, she wore them to sleep).
So, yesterday as I was browsing my favorite blogs Craft Zine- we came across a tutorial for making your own sparkle shoes! Totally easy - just basically paint your shoes with glue, then sprinkle sparkles everywhere. I will be forever vacuuming up sparkles. She was excited, so here's our results -


I also wanted to show you all my garden. My girl wanted desperately to grow pumpkins. So, I let her put a few pumpkin seeds in the back corner when we planted the garden, not really having much hope that they would actually grow. I was more concerned about my precious tomatoes growing into juicy round deliciousness. Well, the pumpkins have not only grown, they have literally taken over the back forty. They would take over the neighborhood if I let them. I've been cutting them back a little at a time, just to keep them from suffocating the rest of the garden. You can see them behind little girl, in the corner. At one point they had grown over the tiller, but I cut them off. I'm trying to get them to grown along the back, behind my peppers, but they are a bit unruly. If I cut anything off, I have to do it under the cover of darkness, or at least nap time, because if little girl sees hacked off pumpkin vines laying limp on the ground - or sees me coming at them with clippers - she goes into a tizzy.

So, I guess we'll have Cinderella's pumpkin carriage in the fall for my little "Dorothy" in her red sparkle shoes.

Those are my tomatoes in the cages - I can't figure why some are big, with long arms all over and curly leaves, one is barely past the cage, and one looks pretty and green. None of them have tons of fruit on them - just a few flowers. Hubby says the flowers are falling off. Any advice?? This is a learning year on the garden - we have been dining on zuchinni though, yummy on the grill.