Carlie Jade + Daniel Luke + Baby

Cloth diapers!

2012-02-13T20:31:00.000-08:00

Just discovered Zulily and it looks like a great place to find deals on baby/mom related items.

Tonight, I bought 3 Charlie Banana cloth diapers that were on sale ($13.99, normally $20).

I am totally excited to cloth diaper, which is interesting because who is interested in changing poopy diapers???

I can't wait. Kinda weird.

There are a ton of really helpful websites and youTube videos about how to make cloth diapering work. I've registered on Amazon for all my cloth diapers - mostly so I remember what I'd like to buy and because we have Amazon Prime (which is AMAZING!).

Also, I found a deal on cottonbabies.com to buy Flip cloth diaper covers, Buy 1, Get 1 Free! Plus, there is free shipping!

I wanted to wait awhile to buy my cloth diapers, but I just can't miss these deals.

Any one else cloth diaper and have any good tips/resources?

itchy itchy

2012-01-30T19:49:00.000-08:00

no one told me about all the itchiness....

i'm desperately trying not to itch my little belly, but it is beyond itchy.

it's ridiculous.

just sayin'

Envelope Pillows

2012-01-27T17:21:00.000-08:00

Every time I go to Joann's or Fabric Depot, I ALWAYS come out with way more fabric than I intended. This weekend, a lot of Joann's fabric was 40-50% off.

Heaven!

I went in looking for fabric for the little peasant dress I made, but also found quite a few yards of fabric to re-do our living room pillows (since we painted the grey stripes, we HAD TO do the pillows too, right?). Time (...and Lily!) had really destroyed some of our older pillows. Our silky purple pillows, are actually nice down feather pillows, but I'm totally sick of the silk purple fabric.

So I took off the cases and made the easiest thing on the face of the planet to sew....envelope pillow cases.

It was beyond easy.

I basically already knew what I wanted to do, but I used this blog to reassure myself.

I only made 2 for now, but I'll likely make a couple more. Plus, I've got plans for a few small pillows in the baby's room.

Grey stripes

2012-01-25T17:38:00.000-08:00

We are addicted to grey stripes.

Right before winter break was over, we made a mad rush to clear out the guest room and start converting it to a nursery.

The coral cribskirt isn't made yet, just a potential option. :)

Our extra room is ridiculously small.

At this point, basically only the crib fits and a piece of re-purposed furniture we are using as a changing table/dresser/shelves combo.

Obviously, there is much to be done it terms of wall decorations, fabrics, etc.

Amazingly, thanks to great finds and a donated crib, we've only spent $7 on the whole room so far! Dan found a gallon of a great neutral grey on clearance at Home Depot for $7.

$7!!!!! I don't think anyone can beat that.

(Okay...so that's not counting all the fabric I've purchased, but we'll get to the cost of that later...)

Anyways, we loved the grey stripes so much, we decided it was time to finally do something in the living room.

We like it.

It makes the room a bit more modern/chic (or something like that...)

Little Peasant Dress

2012-01-23T18:05:00.000-08:00

Source: sew-much-ado.com via Carlie on Pinterest

I'm not sure what I would do without pinterest and all the craftiness I feel I need to do before baby girl arrives.

Now that the end of January is arriving and track season is quickly approaching, I've come to realize I really don't have that many free weekends until she is here. WHOA!

Okay, so I have 1 more weekend in January, plus most weekends in Feb/ March - but after that I am solidly booked April-May, not only on weekends, but during the week too!

Doesn't sound too bad, but I'm starting to feel a little nervous about the fatigue and uncomfortableness that is supposed to hit in the 3rd trimester, combined with my already busy track schedule and a due date of May 27th.

So instead of fretting about what April/May will be like - I've decided to turned up the gears on all baby related projects.

The bad lighting from my phone camera does not do this fabric justice !

Hence, the little infant peasant dress I spontaneously made this weekend. It's so precious and really only took 1 1/2 hrs to make (mostly because my sewing machine is dumb...).

This tutorial from Sew Much Ado was amazing - and made the whole process super easy. I'm definitely going to make a couple more (plus, it was super cheap ~ $4-5 with fabric I got on sale!).

It's even an easy enough project for a future baby shower gift.

So glad I found this on pinterest!

Weekly Menu

2012-01-22T17:43:00.000-08:00

Menu planning is still a success!

We didn't follow the schedule to perfection, but made most of what we planned for. The Baked Potato soup turned out AMAZING!

Monday:

Chicken quesadillas + Spanish Rice

Grilled guacamole + homemade tortilla chips.

Source: whatsgabycooking.com via Carlie on Pinterest

Tuesday:

Potato, Sausage and Spinach Frittata per Real Simple recipe + green salad.

Wednesday:

We loved the Baked Potato soup so much, I'm going to make it again. Plus, Dan's school schedule changed on Wednesdays, so he won't get home until about 10:30pm! I need to make something that will be good reheated (soups!)
...and find someway to entertain myself while home alone :(

Thursday:
Going to give this another try, because we didn't get to make the Apple Salsa part. Might also make shrimp instead of chicken?

Black Beans & Rice w/Chicken and Apple Salsa (per Our Best Bites)

Source: ourbestbites.com via Carlie on Pinterest

Friday/Saturday:
Eating out with friends and weekend relaxing.

Weekly Menu - Round 2!

2012-01-15T17:47:00.000-08:00

We successfully made a planned dinner every night last week! I don't think we've ever done that - so proud. :)

We also made a delicious fruit dip to take to a church activity on Friday. It is from a recipe that our friends Sharon and Ben shared with us during New Years Eve. I couldn't find the exact recipe, but we attempted it anyways and it was SO delicious! It's a combination of cream cheese + marshmallow creme + orange juice + pinch of sugar and it seriously tasted like an orange creamsicle! We brought strawberries, grapes, oranges, pineapple and apples to dip in it. Luckily...we still have some left to snack on.

Now, it's time to think about this week's menu....

Sunday: Dan is making delicious homemade Shells n Cheese again (we've added some SPAM and veggies too!)

Monday: (new recipe!)

Black Beans & Rice w/Chicken and Apple Salsa (per Our Best Bites)

Source: ourbestbites.com via Carlie on Pinterest

Tuesday:

Slow-cooker pulled pork sandwiches with cabbage slaw (i never get sick of this...)

Wednesday:

Fish stick tacos (with the most delicious tartar sauce ever!)

Thursday:

Baked Potato Soup (I've never made it before and have been wanting to make it for awhile.) Also from Our Best Bites.

Source: ourbestbites.com via Carlie on Pinterest

Friday/Saturday:

TBA - It's Dan's first week back @ school...so we'll see how we feel. It'll probably be leftovers one day/fend for yourself or maybe we'll make some Banana Chocolate Chip Pancakes (YUM!!)

**I wish I could think of some more ways to use my frozen garden veggies this week- but I'm just not thinking creatively right now. I have however been thinking a lot about what it means to eat seasonally and how I could get my garden to potentially feed our soon to be family of 3 nearly year round.

Weekly Menu

2012-01-08T19:30:00.000-08:00

After all the holiday grocery shopping, cooking and baking + winter break laziness, I've been in a dinner rut. Add on the stomach flu and there hasn't been a good meal around here for days...

So the goal this week:

Step 1: Plan dinner meals (meals that I don't really have to grocery shop for...since we had to frantically get our shopping done in the midst of the stomach flu and returning back to work)

Step 2: Make dinner (within 15 minutes of getting home)

Step 3: Eat dinner!

It starts tonight.

Sunday:

shrimp lo mein. (going to use yakisoba noodles instead)

Monday:

Homemade Pizza: Dan will make the crust while I'm at work :) Use lots of veggies (tomatoes, spinach, onions)

Tuesday:

Slow-cooker chicken curry (a coconut milk free version (because we just don't have any!), like the recipe pictured above)
Add slow cooker ingredients together the night before, turn on in the morning, make rice after work.

Wednesday: Homemade Mac n Cheese

Thursday:

Source: ourbestbites.com via Carlie on Pinterest

Spicy Honey Glazed Chicken + roasted garden carrots + baby spinach salad

Friday: Church activity (need to make an appetizer!)

Okay, Step 1 - COMPLETE!

2012

2012-01-04T17:38:00.000-08:00

Being home sick today (some awful stomach bug attacked me the past couple days, ugh!) I've had some time to reflect on 2011 and of course what 2012 will bring.

In 2011, I blogged more than any other year. It's amazing how the blog-o-world and social media has become such a huge part of everyone's lives.

So to recap:

A new camera lens!

A commitment to be more crafty and productive on weekends (so glad I chose to do this!)

An amazing trip to NYC with my sister! It was seriously cold, but we managed to see a ridiculous amount of the city. Can't wait to plan another trip (this time with Dan).

A new car

A new garden - never thought I would get so much enjoyment from growing vegetables. But this was one of the best things about the whole year. I happily watched my garden grow most of the year. Now, I'm completely obsessed now with planning my 2012 garden.

Still to this day we are enjoying our fresh (or frozen!) garden produce!

We enjoyed a relaxing summer full of:

braces (okay, so this part wasn't relaxing...)

Dan did a lot of painting while I was at a 2 week Project Lead the Way training in Klamath Falls

Sara Bareilles

Trip to San Francisco

A beach trip

A vacation, visiting Mt St Helens and camping at Orcas Island in the San Juans. Hmmm...just realized I never posted pics of that trip! Oops!

.....and far too much time on !!!

And of course the fall and the end of the year brought about what we are most looking forward to in 2012....

tiny tiny baby bump!

Overall, 2011 was one of our best years together!

And we are happily awaiting all that will arrive in 2012.

a tiny profile

To list our goals or "resolutions" would be a little overwhelming at this point, as we have A LOT planned for this next year...

baby Baby BABY!!!!

2012-01-01T22:38:00.000-08:00

We are being consumed.

By everything baby.

Our poor friends and family. It's all we're talking about these days. If you've seen my pinterest pins lately, you'd understand.

baby's ultrasound .baby girl. baby's name. baby crib. baby's room. baby in belly. baby kicks. baby clothes. sewing for baby. crocheting for baby. when baby is here.....

OH MAN.

And we've got just under 5 months to go! I'm not even to the 'huge as a whale' part and I already feel like I've been pregnant FOREVER [not complaining].

We are blessed that everything is going perfectly so far, but I am getting SO anxious to meet her.

I walked into Baby's-R-Us yesterday with $20 in coupons and I was utterly stuck as to what I needed. Generally, Dan and I are excited for parenthood (okay...we are ECSTATIC!!!!) and we feel pretty ready to take on this HUGE challenge....but it's nerve-racking going about it for our 1st time.

No idea what to expect.

So this is what I've been keeping myself busy with (yes, i'm inundating you all with MORE baby stuff!):

Planning for the nursery:

Fabric Depot!

Source: 1.bp.blogspot.com via Carlie on Pinterest

Taking inspiration from:

Source: projectnursery.com via Carlie on Pinterest

Source: gallery.apartmenttherapy.com via Carlie on Pinterest

Source: ohdeedoh.com via Carlie on Pinterest

Source: domesticadventure.com via Carlie on Pinterest

Making all sorts of stuff:

Fleece baby blanket (from my Black Friday purchases!)

Crocheted baby booties (need to finish tonight!)

Finally giving in and buying clearance baby onesies:

Baby Harris: Boy or Girl???

2011-12-28T17:35:00.000-08:00

Untitled from Carlie Harris on Vimeo.

Crochet

2011-12-28T07:00:00.000-08:00

Guess who was caught in a tangle of yarn one afternoon??

I've become a crocheting machine lately! I've made a couple hats and headbands and I'm almost finished with some baby booties.

Here are a few more things I plan to make this winter:

Leg warmers - definitely plan to make these if we are having a girl...will likely still make them for a boy :)

Source: crochetncrafts.com via Carlie on Pinterest

Ear flap hat for baby

Source: allicrafts.blogspot.com via Carlie on Pinterest

And a bunch of these super easy headbands

And, if I get super ambitious and also finish my quilt + other small cozy blankets I already have planned to sew, I hope to make some sort of square patterned blanket, like this:

Source: dottieangel.blogspot.com via Carlie on Pinterest

I'm pretty sure I have crafting ADHD, as I can't seem to stay on one project at a time....so we'll see how this goes! :)

Lentil soup

2011-12-27T17:07:00.000-08:00

I know it's very grandma of me...but I just love lentil soup! I make it in the crockpot all the time, especially in the fall & winter.

Today, it's currently cooking in the crock and I love that I was able to use a lot of my garden veggies.

It's super easy, so I'll share...

The basics:
1 C Lentils
4 C chicken stock (I like the Organic Pacific Natural Foods brand)
2 C chopped onions (we really like onions, you could add more or less)
pinch of salt and pepper

Depending on what's in my freezer/refrigerator/cupboard/garden, I'll add all of these or just a few:
carrots (fresh from garden)
tomatoes (either from a can, chopped up fresh or frozen cherry/grape tomatoes from the garden)
spinach or beet greens (fresh from garden or frozen from garden)
...going to grow kale next year and give it a try!
zucchini (fresh from garden or frozen from garden)
...add this during the last 1-2 hrs, otherwise it's mushy...unless of course you like mushy zucchini :)

Herbs (I change this up ALL the time. Sometimes, I don't have any):
springs of:
thyme (happened to have it today!)
parsley
cilantro (tried this last week and it was good)

Meat (I've made this quite a few times without a meat and it totally works (just not as hearty!):
Italian sausage (spicy or sweet.yum!)
Ham
Ham bone (after T-day or Christmas)
Ground Turkey (not as good, but it works!)

Throw all this into the crock together, at the same time. Cook on low for 6-8 hours or on high 3-4 hours. Sometimes lentils cook a little fast, so check their progress after just 2 hours (cooking on high, 4 hours on low)...and throw in that zucchini!

Tonight, when my soup is done...I might just add a little heavy cream and see how that tastes. :)

So, what are your favorite soups?

It's just about that time...

2011-12-21T19:25:00.000-08:00

...to buy maternity clothes!

Okay, so I've told myself that I am NOT going to buy maternity clothes until it's absolutely necessary (if ever?).

Most are ugly and expensive.

Regardless, today I found myself buying a Belly Band at Target. It's just not cool to have my pants unbuttoned with my fly down while standing in front of 30 teenagers, as I muster up enthusiasm about Photosynthesis. Not fun.

But more excitingly, I just got an awesome online deal from Forever 21 Maternity (yippee- for supporting teenage pregnancy!!)

2 pairs of jeans for $9.99!

...I committed to buying them the second I saw them.

Forever 21 usually has super cheap cheap jeans. However, I already have two pairs and they fit AMAZINGLY (pre-preggo days) and they haven't worn out yet...so here's to looking in the mail everyday until they arrive!

12 days...

2011-12-16T17:38:00.000-08:00

12 days until we find out if this little one is a BOY or a GIRL!

Eeek!

Make your guesses now..... :)

cupcakes + birthday

2011-12-12T15:00:00.000-08:00

Leila made these fabulous cupcakes for her birthday.

Her enthusiasm in blowing out her candles was contagious. :)

16 weeks

2011-12-11T15:49:00.001-08:00

The baby bump has arrived!

This weekend I asked Dan to take some "bump" pictures. When I wear looser clothing you can't really tell that I've got a little one growing, but when I wear tighter tops (or this dress!) it's a bit more apparent. Hopefully it'll start looking more like I have an actual baby bump and less like I ate a really big lunch. :)

Missing

2011-12-08T21:34:00.000-08:00

I miss this.

My garden looks like death.

This week we struggled to reach 35 degrees.

When I go to work, it's dark, foggy and icy.

When I come home from work, it's dark, foggy and icy.

I miss going out to the garden in the sunny, warm afternoons, just to stare at my vegetables growing.

I must have SAD (Season Affective Disorder).

Morning (aka ALL FREAKING DAY) sickness totally shot down any hope of fall harvests or prepping my raised beds for the winter months. Oh well. Now, Dan can do all the hard prep work for me this early spring, since I'll be way preggo. :)

Here's to crossed fingers that my onions and garlic are still growing (or quietly hibernating through the winter months, until the sun starts shining again!) :)

Baby quilt

2011-12-06T21:46:00.001-08:00

I've wanted to learn how to make a quilt for quite awhile now. I like the look of modern quilts, with clean lines or stripes and color blocking. Traditional quilting with the intricate shapes and patterns doesn't appeal to me as much. So having a baby is the perfect time to learn how to quilt and practice my skillzzz.

I decided to make this quilt and somehow found myself waiting in line at Joann's for over 2.5hrs on Black Friday. I can't believe I did that. I did not at all anticipate Joann's being so crowded, but once I saw the good deals and picked out my fabric, I just couldn't leave. I ended up getting enough fabric to make quite a few smaller blankets, as well.

via Pinterest

So here's to hours of quilting! Actually, I've already started it and am quite surprised by how quickly the main patterned section is going. I think I choose a super easy pattern to start with, so I'm excited about that.

It's about time...

2011-12-04T17:26:00.001-08:00

We'll it's about time we shared our exciting news with the blogging world. Most of our blog readers (which, there aren't a lot of you...) know the news anyways! :)

It's also about time Dan and I enter the world of parenting...as we've been married for nearly 5.5 years and together for almost 8 years (time flies!). We are blessed to have made it this far together and even more blessed to have our little one on the way. Although waiting 5 years, (nearly 6 by the time the babe is born!), has seemed like an eternity, I am confident that this is exactly the right time to finally begin our family. We've had a significant amount of time to enjoy being together, getting to know each other and ourselves, traveling, starting our careers and preparing for how we'd like to raise our children.

Despite knowing that this is exactly the right time for us to start a family, it's still incredibly scary and surreal most days. But that's okay. :)

The day we found out. Of course, no baby bump yet! :)

The most surreal moment was actually finding out we were pregnant. I took a test on a Sunday night and the line was so incredibly faint that I didn't really believe it. So I quickly and quietly went to bed, so I wouldn't prematurely blab it to Dan and decided to test again in the morning. Again, there was a line, but it was completely faint. Still not believing that this was actually happening, I stopped at the store on my way home to get a digital test. Words are easier to read than faint, nondescript lines, right? The words PREGNANT popped up so quickly, I couldn't believe it. I ran downstairs to tell Dan. I always thought I would want to have some creative way of telling him, but in the moment I was too amazed to think of anything clever. When I told him he said, "Well, that's what we were hoping would happen....right?" Wow. Nothing surprises him. Of course, Dan being the logical one, also immediately wanted to talk finances and "our plan" etc.

I thought by now that I would have lots of pictures of my baby bump, etc and would want to tell the whole world. I've actually been a whole lot more private about my pregnancy than I thought. For some reason I assumed that I would be the type of post weekly updates on my pregnancy and put up lots of belly shots, etc., but I've just been too exhausted to even attempt it. Also, up until lately I've really been nervous about something going wrong. But I've been blessed so far, so I've got to stop worrying about things.

Anyways, I do want to document life's happenings and how incredibly excited Dan and I are to bring a little one into our family. So I am going to try and be a more diligent blogger, plus, I've got plans for quilts, baby blankets, crocheted hats, the nursery, etc that I need to share! :)

So ya'll....expect to see thousands of pictures of our beautiful little child this summer, instead of vegetables! YAHOO!!!!! I knew you'd be excited... :)

Dear blog...

2011-11-11T12:49:00.001-08:00

Dear blog,
Yes, I've been ignoring you. Some what purposely. One day, I'll get my stuff together and start again. Because I only have 1,000 photos of garden veggies that I know the whole world is dying to see.

Also, I have big news to share with you. Not sure if I'm ready to share it with the big blog-o-world, yet though.

So until then...

Carlie

Photo shoot @ Mt. St. Helens

2011-10-02T12:39:00.000-07:00

In serious love with all these photos.

daniellukeharris.com

2011-09-27T16:59:00.000-07:00

If you haven't seen it lately, check out Dan's art website. He's updated it with quite a few more paintings.

Plans

2011-09-26T19:13:00.000-07:00

Even though summers are kind of crazy in terms of menu planning, I've actually been really pleased with how well preparing a menu has turned out for us! This month we've actually stayed on budget for groceries! This is the pattern that works for us: 1 big shopping trip early in the month, a trip to costco, and a small grocery trip for fresh items. If we can stick to that, we do well budget wise.

Three weeks into school and I am amazing myself with how early I am coming home. I went home "early" 3:30-4pm every day last week except Friday (stayed until 5pm). I'm not taking any work home and I've been finding time to run with the XC team. I even made dinner most evenings last week! This is pure craziness, compared to where I was last year and especially Year 1. I love it.

So we have to hold out until the end of the week to make our budget, but here is what's on the menu for the next 1-2 weeks. We don't cook a big meal every night because sometimes we are too tired or we eat leftovers. So these 9 menus will get us far...

Puff pastry pizza (new!) + green salad
Basil Spahetti w/ Cheesy tomatoes + Biscuits
Lemon Shrimp Salad w/couscous
Lund-Harris Chicken Tacos
Red Curry Mahi Mahi (new!) + rice + marinated zucchini & onions
Lemon-herb Fully loaded Potatoes (slow cooker)
Grilled Terriyaki Chicken(new!) + spicy sauteed green beans
Pork Chops(new!) + Roasted beets, carrots & organges
Slow cooker chili

harvest monday 9.26

2011-09-25T18:57:00.000-07:00

Things are going a little slower in the garden. We had another surprising week of 80 degree weather. Loved it. But now we'll get some cooler temperatures this week. Maybe this will help all the fall veggies start growing? I miss fresh lettuce and arugula. Oh well.

Sweet Banana Pepper

2nd growth Basil

Finally more Brandywine tomatoes! :)

Weekly harvest

Out of control tomato plants. That sweetheart grape is the most prolific and tallest (about 7 ft?)

Slowly starting to dream of my 2012 garden. Can't wait to plan things a little bit better!
I wish I would have been smarter with my fall/winter plantings. I think I'm going to put some arugula, spinach and mesclun mixed seeds under my lights in my classroom, because nothing is germinating outside...
Still waiting for my garlic to come in the mail. I can't wait to rip out all my mildewy squash plants and put the garlic there!
Overwintering onions are still doing ok. Again, the germination rate wasn't as great as I'd hoped, but I'll still have plenty of onions this next spring if everything goes right. Wahoo!

Harvest Monday 9.19

2011-09-19T20:08:00.000-07:00

This week, I linked up to Daphne's Dandelions again. Most of the gardens around the country are slowing down, but I'm excited mine is still going! Not a whole lot of variety this week, but I'm still satisfied. :)

The garden has really benefited from a "second" summer heat wave and the first fall showers. I'm happily enjoying picking my cherry/grape tomatoes and watching everything continue to grow in our 80+ weather.

I finally, finally harvested my red cabbage. This baby was transplanted in....MARCH! Can you believe it? Good thing the purple leaves were so beautiful, I decided to keep it around this long. We used some of it tonight in a Yakisoba noodle stir-fry. Delicious!

Most of this bowl if filled with sweetheart grape tomatoes. The rest are yellow pear, early girl tomato, oregon cherry and a few small san marzano romas.

A few small harvests of carrots, zucchini and tomatoes aren't pictured as they were quickly pulled for dinner or to bring to neighbors/family.

The only disappointment with our end of summer heat is that most of the seeds I planted for a fall harvest haven't germinated. Not sure if they will... My cascadia peas are doing great, but I'm starting to miss fresh garden greens. So far none of my lettuces have germinated. Hrrmph!

eskimo girl

2011-09-16T20:26:00.000-07:00

I quite possibly have the most adorable niece.

Don't you love these eskimo snow goggles?

sand dunes

2011-09-14T14:00:00.000-07:00

As soon as September hit, out summer weather finally kicked in! The heat was not so enjoyable for the 1st week of school, but it was definitely gorgeous over at the coast. Dan, Jeff and the kids and I went to Pacific City to take advantage of the rare 80 degree temperatures and sunny weather on the Oregon coast. The beach by the dune was packed with people!

Of course we climbed the sand dune to get this beautiful view.

"Tough girl" awkward smiles in pacific city

This happy girl climbed up the ENTIRE dune herself. She's tough.

Harvest...Tuesday?

2011-09-13T20:55:00.000-07:00

My garden is totally loving the mini heat wave we've been having in Oregon. My cherry and grape tomatoes are producing like crazy! We love it. No matter how many times my squash plants have succumbed to mildew, they keep coming back. Not sure if we love that.

Harvested Today (tuesday) - Look at my 1st hot banana pepper! Never thought it would get hot enough for them to actually turn red! Also, here is my awkward fat cucumber (we ate it today for dinner a top our spicy pulled pork sandwiches).

random plant i found growing in our yard. pretty sure it's a pepper. no idea how it got here?

Wow - my corn is actually growing! Pretty sure it'll be tiny though.

So apparently I ended up with everbearing raspberries. Pretty excited about this, since I got the plants from a coworker and had no idea what they would do. I'll get a few berries in...a week or so? If my research is right, I'll then get a bunch more early next summer and again late summer. Love raspberries.

Beautiful brandywines.

My favorite snack: edamame (soy beans!)

Red cabbage. Is it ready? No idea.

Grows like weeds.

I swear I get a bowl of these every other day or so.

Finally checked the french fingerling potatoes and decided to pull them. I was too impatient.They weren't as prolific as I'd like. I'm not sure if I pulled them to early? Probably. But I also think that some animal or bird was nibbling on the leaves and didn't really allow them to get to their potential and so they just died down. Oh well. They are fun.

Last...look at this little carrot hugging the other carrot! Awesome.

Fall Weekends

2011-09-06T07:00:00.000-07:00

Besides my other million something goals I have for this upcoming school year, one of my most enjoyable goals that I'm really looking forward to is to improve my weekends.

For the past two or three years, my friday nights (which often start at 10pm if there is a home football game or track meet), have consisted of me falling into my house completely exhausted. All I want to do is sleep, read a book, watch tv, zone out at the computer and basically not even think or exist. It's awful.

So hopefully, now that I'm becoming a little more organized at school and only have to half-way pretend that I know what I'm doing (opposed to completely not knowing what I'm doing), I will have some more time to make my weekends relaxing, but enjoyable.

So some crafty fall goals I have:

finish crocheting that soft warm brown blanket I started more than a year ago
make hot pads for the kitchen
clean out the spare bedroom closet. seriously, it's ridiculous.
organize my newer pictures. get some more prints.
catch up on editing.
learn how to knit better and make something awesome. amy butler?
make a quilt (as long as it doesn't cost me a trillion dollars....)
keep the garden alive.
cook + bake more often.
catch up on family history research. print all records, pics, etc. organize in box or book.
sew more clothing. skirts + tops + dresses.
paint living room (maybe more of a spring break thing??)

homemade.

2011-09-04T14:04:00.000-07:00

Last week I went to Bend for Kayla + Dustin's baby shower. I made these burp cloths

and a few appliqued onesies. The onesies were cute, but I forgot to take a pic, so here is an example from where I got the idea.

From Pinterest.com

It was nice to see my mom and sister and family in Bend.

2ish weeks of harvest

2011-09-03T13:51:00.000-07:00

Finally, my garden is in full harvest swing! I've had baskets and baskets of cherry/grape tomatoes, it's awesome! Here are some pictures from the past couple weeks. Unfortunately, I accidentally deleted almost a whole weeks worth of pictures. I also harvested a few baby french fingerling potatoes, a ton more tomatoes, green beans and of course a ton of yellow squash and zucchini. Oh well.

Finally a cucumber! It was delicious. I don't think I'll get many more. :(

Left: the 1st Brandywine tomato. I'm going to try it tonight. This plant would have been more successful, but I accidentally broke off a main stem when it first arrived from the nursery. I'll hopefully get nearly 7 or so more, so it turned out okay.

my crazy wild sweetheart grape plant. definitely the most prolific so far!

My poor San Marzano romas...totally destroyed by BER. They look so gross, nearly all the fruit has BER. But I've been cutting the ends off and they are still delicious. Not sure if i'll plant them next year as the plant grows just out of control. But I'm surprised how many have turned color by mid Aug. Pretty good, for this weather I think.

Flannel.

2011-08-17T05:16:00.000-07:00

greenweddingshoes.com

I love the feel of these photos. Love the flannel. I can totally see Dan and I fitting right into a photo shoot like this.

Look at what I also discovered. Not sure why it is so amazing, but I can see a lot of good use of this. This website will break down any photo's (with a URL) color palette. Dan should love this. Amazing.

Outdoors. Beautiful.

2011-08-16T13:04:00.000-07:00

Look at all this beautiful outdoor photography. Jealous.

Harvest Monday

2011-08-15T06:00:00.000-07:00

The week of tiny tomatoes and green beans.

I wish I lived in the south, just for a perfectly large gardening harvest.

Oh well.

Each harvest was so so small, but we are now daily getting a couple ripe cherry tomatoes and beans, I can't wait until more are ready!

Sweetheart grape, Oregon cherry, Blue lake bush beans and a few green tomatoes that fell off by accident.

Finally, 2 larger Early Girl tomatoes are ready! I pulled them off while they were still blushing so they could ripen in my windowsill. I haven't tried them yet, but I'm excited. A few more will be ready this week! Also, another zucchini (sigh...). I've got to blanch, freeze, and store all of them today!

Every summer we always get into making homemade pizza. This BBQ chicken garden pizza was super! We piled on BBQ chicken, fresh tomatoes, fresh basil, fresh zucchini, fresh onions, and a ton of mozzarella and Parmesan! I love when I can make dinner with fresh food from our garden! We've made another since this one. I also plan to bring some pizza dough camping so we can make an easy pizza while at the San Juan's.

Tote Bag

2011-08-14T17:37:00.000-07:00

This week has been a week of mini projects. Dan and I both got on a sewing kick (yes, my husband sews...probably better than myself).

I'm pretty proud that I quickly found this fabric and I wasn't too indecisive with my decision to make this cute tote bag. It did take me about 5 hrs, which is far longer than it should have. But I haven't sewn since I made these curtains in February. Most of that time was spent yelling at my sewing machine or trying to figure out how to sew the lining/strap in. I used a tutorial/pattern from a fun sewing website called thimble. The pocket was also super easy and based off of this.

I love the silky teal blue liner.

I plan to make another small version of the bag (it's actually quite big!) and move my pocket up higher (it is a little low for my liking). I'm hoping it will only take 2-3 hrs next time.

The total cost was probably ~$10-$12.

Nothing beats BEETS...

2011-08-14T17:05:00.000-07:00

This week I finally admitted that my beets just weren't growing anymore. I'm blaming it on the weather. I pulled them all up (along with a few spare carrots) and made some room for my Top Keeper Onion and Marble Red Onion seeds. I've been babying these since and hoping they will overwinter properly. Overwintering is completely new to me. As is most of this gardening stuff.

Since most of the beets hadn't formed significant roots, I gathered and washed all the beet greens. Maybe I'm like a grandma, but I love the taste of beet greens!

Being a family of two and myself the main consumer of beet greens, I decided to blanch them (also new to me, and incredibly easy!) to allow for better and longer storage.

This will allow the greens to stay fresh longer in the freezer and we can use them in stir-frys. I do prefer beet greens in salads...but what can I do?

With the teeny tiny roots that had formed these past few months, I made a delicious little pot of goodness (see top photo) mixed with carrots and brown sugar. It was delicious, but I wish I had bigger beets!

Hoping my fall beets are more successful....

Harvest Monday

2011-08-08T17:20:00.000-07:00

Here are the harvests after being gone at YW camp for 5 days.

Sadly, this is the extent of my onion harvests. Small lil things...but I won't complain.

Cured onions, a couple baby carrots, lots of Early cherry tomatoes, a couple Oregon cherry and a Sweetheart grape.

The tomatoes are delicious, I've picked a few more since and I've eaten most of them already...I wish they would all ripen already! It's tough waiting for them! Sadly, I also came home to see that some of my Marzano romas had BER (blossom end rot). I've removed about 10 tomatoes! I'm pretty sad, but hoping the rest will come in nicely. I think they got too much water while I was gone and must also be lacking Ca.

The zucchini are giants! Ooops! What do with them now??

Today, I spent most of the day planting for fall harvests and pulling up all of the beets that just did not grow. I really don't know why? I think they were much too crowded. My next post will be about how I used the mini beets and the greens.

In their spot, I planted Top Keeper onions, Guardsman salad onions and Red Marble onions. Most of these should overwinter (except the guardsman).

I also pulled a few early petite carrots that were in the way.

Yesterday I ate 1 of the bush green beans with a little tomato/onion relish. Delicious! I need to go pick a few more beans! I'm definitely planting much more next year!

Cilantro + Coriander

2011-08-01T10:53:00.000-07:00

Aren't these little white flowers on my cilantro precious?

This is seriously some of the best cilantro I've ever had. While we were gone for 3 weeks most of it had shot up and tried to flower before we could eat it. But I've been taking tiny bunches of leaves anyways and it's so fresh!

I am letting some of it flower and seed (should be about 3 weeks from now) so I will have coriander seeds. Currently, I don't really cook with coriander and I'm not sure why. Apparently it's great in curries and soups, which are both things I love. I also just learned that you can freeze cilantro. Who knew?

I can't wait to have seeds to plant more for next year.

I'm hoping the seeds I planted this week will come up in time for a fall harvest.

Butter Garlic Shrimp with Green Beans and Cherry Tomatoes

2011-07-31T10:34:00.000-07:00

This is my favorite summer dish.

It's super easy.

Usually when I want to cook something new or unknown I browse through some cookbooks or online. I look at a variety of similar recipes and then decide what to do based on what ingredients I have. Most times, I just throw stuff together. Luck is a huge part of it! :)

My favorite meals are the simple + fresh ones.

Growing up, I really hated seafood. Now, I love it! What was I thinking?

So here's the deal: we never splurge on fresh seafood! We just get bags of frozen shrimp and tilapia from Costco. It's the best.

I grilled up the shrimp in butter (yum!), garlic and a pinch of salt. Once it started to brown, I added fresh green beans (not from my garden...but COMING SOON!) and a bit of water. I let it all cook down, added a bit more salt, freshly ground pepper, fresh basil/cilantro (yes, from the garden!) and then last minute added some cherry tomatoes (not from the garden but...again...COMING SOON!). Once things were nice and tender....I ate.

Zucchini!

2011-07-30T22:15:00.000-07:00

Everyone loves zucchini, right? So far, one of the best things about my garden is the quantity of fresh zucchini I'm getting. The plant grows like a weed! Thankfully, we have just the right amount (so far!)

This week, I've started to experiment with the delicious green veggie. Breaded and fried zucchini chips are the best. I've made them a couple different times but until now, I've yet to perfect it. I finally got the batter/frying right when I added loads of Parmesan/mozzarella cheese and salt. Healthy, right?

While frying these in oil turned out great, I prefer to bake them. It's much healthier and totally easier. So I tried to bake some, but I was without Panko bread crumbs, so they turned out just alright.

Tomorrow (unless I'm lazy), I plan to make this recipe instead:

Baked Zucchini and Sweet Onion Dip

There is a beautiful recipe and tutorial to go with it too! Can't wait.

Today, I tested out a new zucchini bread. I'm sad to say that I lost by bested, most trusted banana bread recipe. I wanted to use the same recipe and just substitute the zukes... And I totally don't remember any of the measurements (except lots of brown sugar!). So I traveled to Pinterest and found a decent recipe here. I would amend the recipe to add more sugar (of course!) and maybe a little more oil or less flour (something to make it a bit more moist...)

But it's delicious enough to nibble on all day!

Zucchini Bread

Yield: 1 Loaf

2 cups flour

3/4 cup Loosely packed brown sugar

1 teaspoon baking soda

1/2 teaspoon baking powder

1/4 teaspoon salt

1/2 cup canola or vegetable oil

2 eggs

1 teaspoon vanilla extract

about 1 1/2 cups freshly grated zucchini (with skin)

1. Preheat oven to 350 degrees F.

2. Grease a loaf pan (preferable a stone loaf pan but it is not necessary) with a little oil and butter and then bounce flour around in the pan to coat.

3. In large mixing bowl beat together the oil and sugar.

4. Add vanilla and the eggs (one at a time) and beat in between.

5. In a separate bowl, mix all the dry ingredients together and then add to the wet mixture and beat until blended. Stir in zucchini until fully incorporated. Use spatula to pour evenly into pan.

6. Bake for about 50-55 minutes. Test with a toothpick by sticking one in the top of the bread and making sure that it comes out dry.

Only $30 a week?!?!?!

2011-07-29T20:39:00.000-07:00

These people only spend $30 a week on groceries! Can you imagine? Yes, there are only two of them and yes, they don't eat/buy meat. But holy smokes...if only we were that good at grocery shopping!? Our goal is $250/month ( or ~$60-65 a week).

Usually we try to go "big time" shopping every 1-2 weeks and then 1 or 2 small trips in between to get fresh stuff.

It hardly ever happens this way though...we ALWAYS spend way way WAY more.

Menu planning is helping out a lot though. And the garden.....oh the garden! :)

Oh well....

We. just. like. food.

It's a Jungle out there!

2011-07-27T20:07:00.000-07:00

I know you all have been wondering where my garden posts have been! :) I've hesitated posting all my gardening pictures because well...they are plants. How exciting can they get? It makes me a little worried...I mean if I've got 15 pictures of veggies to post, how many pictures am I going to eventually end up posting of my children? But for now....vegetables are all I've got (oh and Lily!) :)

It was pretty difficult to leave my gardening obsession behind for 3 weeks while we were in So.Oregon but we bought an automatic water timer, so I knew my plants would be fine, But I didn't expect so much growth! It's awesome!

A few days before we left - June 27th -

What the tomatoes look liked after - July 21st -

Here is another tomato plant before and the raised bed after (yeah, the beans look a little yellow from so much water, but they are greening up now!)

Hot Banana Peppers!

Love these funky Marzano roma tomatoes!

With 3 cherry/grape tomato plants, I am going to have a TON of tiny little tomatoes!

Potted plants: cherry tomato, spicy thai peppers, basil

The 3 weeks away summer harvest

I also ended up with HUGE squash plants! Seriously, every time I look at the plant more zuchinni has grown. It's awesome and I'm not complaining....yet!

Lily loves spending time with me in the garden.

So this is what I'm looking forward to:

Green beans!!!!

The onions didn't get very big...but I can't wait to see how they taste!

Most of the lettuce that was left bolted (got bitter) and I should really pull it up. But look at how awesome it is! We'll see if it flowers anytime soon and some of the smaller plants actually still taste ok (although, i'm really sick of lettuce!)

Sara Bareilles + Joshua Radin

2011-07-24T15:19:00.000-07:00

I love Sara B. Cheyenne loves Joshua Radin. It was the perfect evening! I can't believe I've gone 25 years without going to a concert at the Britt.

Thanks to Cheyenne's 15-year-old love for Mr. Radin....we got to meet him! And he totally told me that Portland is his favorite city! And he wasn't just saying that....Love...

Ok...so if you didn't believe me before, now I really look like a 12 year old with my braces, swooning over a pop star....sigh.

The best part of the night was when Sara came back out for an "encore" performance and she sang a really beautiful a capella version of "Gravity." Well, that in of itself would have the best moment of the night, but what was even awesome(er) was that 10 seconds into the beautiful, but quiet song, a lady totally tripped over some chairs right in front of us. Cheyenne and I just died laughing. Once I finally got myself under control , there was another silent moment and a neighborhood dog started howling. It was hilarious!

Love The Britt.

2011-07-24T12:50:00.000-07:00

This is why I love my husband. Isn't this hilarious?

Dan helping with the sailboat - SF

San Fran Quickie

2011-07-24T00:44:00.000-07:00

To celebrate my mom graduating from her nursing school (yay mom!), Dan, Chey and I went to San Francisco for a short weekend trip. Although, most of my pictures of the actual pinning ceremony didn't turn out well, I am super proud of my mom and we had a fun, quick weekend together! Jerry took us out on the sailboat and I took advantage of my hilariously beautiful sister for a funny mini photo shoot. One day she'll let me do one of her and Ryan for reals...

By Dan (don't you love the sparkly shine on the metal?)

Cool art in a SF neighboorhood

YW Girls Camp!

2011-07-01T17:31:00.000-07:00

This week I found out that I've been asked to help out at our church's summer Girls Camp! I'm pretty excited. I love YW and working with teenagers! I've really only been to camp myself a couple of times when I was an older YW, so it should be fun. Camp is from Aug. 1st-6th in Willamina (northern oregon, sort of by the coast).

Harvests!

2011-07-01T17:18:00.000-07:00

We came back from our camping/track/painting long weekend in Eugene (to be posted about later) and there was much to harvest in the garden! We have WAY more lettuce, spinach, arugula, etc than we could ever eat! I bagged it all up and gave a gallon sized bag to one of the neighbors. We have 2 left (plus 2 more bags I picked today!) Luckily, my neighbor was happy to receive it, so I think I can pawn more off on her later this summer! Most of the lettuce is picked by now...I didn't really mean to plant so much, but after the cat attacked my garden, I planted A LOT extra, just in case. Well, it ALL grew! It's been delicious, but salad greens don't store for very long...

Anyways, as I'm getting into this whole gardening thing I've decided to try and grow a few things over the fall/winter. I have some good plans for onions, carrots, beets, and GARLIC! Can't wait.

But first...my tomatoes, peppers and spring carrots need to GROW! :)

Anniversary Present

2011-06-29T09:34:00.000-07:00

This year instead of getting each other individual anniversary gifts, we splurged and went to Macy's and bought a set of All-Clad stainless steel cookware by Emeril. It's a great set, and we're doing our best to get used to cooking with stainless steel.

Good Reads

2011-06-28T21:17:00.000-07:00

Beauty Queens by Libba Bray
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Libba Bray is hilarious in this book. I love her feminism! At first, I was a little skeptical about the title and subject matter. The Gemma Doyle series in one of my favorites, so I was excited for her writing. In this book, Bray found a way to make fun of...well everything. She is completely sarcastic in this book and I was seriously laughing out loud throughout most of the book. It's a light, easy read and you can't take anything in the book seriously. However, the undertones and deeper meanings behind all the sarcasm and jokes do bring out true flaws about social roles and our american society. LOVE IT!

View all my reviews

Flowering veggies

2011-06-21T22:06:00.000-07:00

Today I had to finally get rid of some of the arugula and spinach that was bolting and flowering. I was going to let it mature and seed, but then I realized that I didn't really want a bunch of messy arugula and spinach growing everywhere...I'll just plant it myself, exactly where I want it to grow. :) So I gathered all the flowers together and arranged them in vases around the house. I'm quite pleased with how they look.

Arugula

Spinach

Oh...and check out the awesome coffee table Dan made for us a month or so ago! It's a perfect size. Can you tell we like teal?

The 80+ degree weather today also caused my onions (the transplants) to send up a seed pod. Once they do that, the bulbs won't get any bigger, so I pulled them up and we'll have some glorified green onions this week! I don't mind at all. I can plant something new too... :)

Yes, I've finally found my calling in life. :)

5 years!

2011-06-21T17:07:00.000-07:00

On the 17^th, Dan and I celebrated our 5^th wedding anniversary! Time goes by so fast, but at the same time, a lot has changed since Dan and I got married…as it should J. Every anniversary year, I try and pick out about 10 photos that represent our year…what we did, big trips or events, etc, and keep them in a file to reminisce through.

So I decided to share some of the major turning points for us in the past 5 years. It’s pretty hard to pick only a few photos, but if you know us, you know how significant some of these things are.

For example, 6 months into our married life Dan joined the Coast Guard.

Even though it took us literally across the country (Florida!) and Dan had a ridiculous amount of responsibility, it really helped us become independent and financially secure as a very young couple. In some ways, Florida seems like a big blurry dream…mostly Dan and I had no idea what we were going to do with our lives. I still had no clue that I would ever become a teacher. I don’t think Dan had even heard of PNCA. Weird, how life can change so quickly!

Year 2: We mostly just enjoyed being together. Since Dan and I were apart most of the previous year, it was nice to just relax and spend time together. Living in Florida was pretty easy…we just missed our friends and family like crazy. Like I said…Florida is like a blurry dream.

Year 3: Serendipitously, we found ourselves moving back to Oregon and finally made some important decisions about our careers (finishing school for the both of us!). One year after working at Target and having no clue about my future plans, I was graduating from Willamette’s School of Ed with a whole lot of goals and direction to my life. Thankfully, after a year of painting and doing an embarrassing amount of relaxing reading, Dan had decided to get his BFA in painting. Ahhh…..big life decisions made: CHECK!

Year 4: We started off our 4th year of marriage perfectly by heading straight to Europe! We had worked hard the year before and we knew the next year was going to be nothing but crazy (and it was!). Living in Wilsonville, we mostly just figured out how to juggle both of us being busy with school and work. All I remember from that year was lesson planning…hmmm, not good. I think all Dan remembers is riding the MAX to school (and maybe the dead body he found…you’ll have to ask us about that one, if you don’t know already!) At least Dan got me sunflowers to celebrate being done with my 1^st year of teaching at Kennedy.

Year 5: This might be my favorite year with Dan so far! J We both feel as though we’ve figured each other out fairly well, and can enjoy being married together. Now we are just enjoying our time together before we start a family (which, if you’re worried…will happen someday soon…hopefully!J). I’m not sure what it is about buying a house, but as soon as those keys reached our tiny hands, we both felt incredibly more content with life. We love just reading on the couch together, getting frozen yogurt together, sleeping-in on weekends together, watching our niece and nephew together, watching silly tv shows together, cooking together, doing home improvement projects together…yet we are also perfectly content not being together at all J. Dan can go work in his shop and I can happily stare at my garden. Add in Lily, our puppy and life just works.

what's going on cabbage?

2011-06-19T19:18:00.000-07:00

What's going on with my cabbage? This doesn't look like an edible cabbage head to me... :(

sunny summer days...

2011-06-18T11:07:00.001-07:00

So glad the happy sunny summer days have started....

2011-06-08T21:30:00.000-07:00

Love the purple color of the cabbage! My cauliflower is nearly ready!

Veggies are in full growth mode!

Too excited for this Oregon cherry tomato to grow and ripen!

My sugar ann snap peas are filling out the trellis. I probably have 15+ that I can soon pick. I don't have bowls and bowls of snap peas, as I'd like, but I'm satisfied with crunching on a few peas every other day or so. Never has one made it into the house, as I've eaten them all immediately, on the spot! I will definitely plant A LOT more next year (HOLY COW...I'm already excited for next year....)

Totally enjoying all my baby greens. As the weather gets warmer, I'm trying to eat as much as possible to prevent bolting. Who wants a salad?

For example, here is some arugula (the tall, spindly plant on the right that immediately started to bolt on our first 65+ day! Luckily, I had already harvested most of it.

Growing strawberries. I will have way more strawberries with these 2 plants than the 4 plants I had last year.

A beautiful 75+ degree weekend allowed me to plant my very last 2 beds. These two beds have mainly tomatoes, peppers (sweet and hot) and squash.

Enjoying the harvest. Lettuce + Radishes.

Thai Hot Chili Pepper - should be in full bloom any day!

Happy Summer to Everyone!

Menu Planning

2011-05-29T16:58:00.000-07:00

Okay, so I've really had enough of spending so much money on groceries! We try and set-up budgets for all of our spending, but we almost never can stay within our food budget. We don't eat out a whole lot, so I guess it's okay to spend a lot of $ on groceries rather than eating out. But seriously there are two of us and some months we can easily spend $400-500 on groceries. The worst part is, I don't feel as though we are splurging on anything at the grocery store! We try to buy bulk and hardly every buy name brand stuff! We usually go to the grocery store once a week too. I hate going shopping and then coming home and having no idea what I should cook.

The basic weeknight dinners we always cook are: tacos, burritos, salads, chicken curry, some sort of pasta dish and dan makes egg burritos. Pretty boring. However, we both LOVE to cook and I think we cook at home a lot more than other people our age.

Track season is the worst though, because I'm tired and sometimes I'm gone on weekends or get home at 9pm or later....I hardly ever cook. Dan does most of the cooking from late Feb-mid May. In fact, I'm not even sure I eat a full dinner most nights. So where is that $$ going?

Now that track is over and school will be out soon, I've decided to try and menu plan shop. I'm hoping this will either a) save us some money or b) at least help us spend our money on nice meals that we actually like.

Today I looked through my Real Simple magazines (love them!), my crock pot recipe book and then got creative and made an excel spreadsheet with my menu and grocery list. I wish I could post it on here, but it won't work. :(

So here is the menu for the next 2 weeks or so. I didn't plan out what to make each day, because I anticipate that sometimes I won't feel like eating a certain meal or that there will still be times when we don't feel like cooking (or we'll be eating leftovers!), but at least I know that I'll have the ingredients to make these dishes.

Avocado Cheddar Burgers (Turkey or Beef)
- Crockpot Baked Beans
Basil Spaghetti w/ Cheesy Tomatoes
- Fresh garden greens salad and bread
Shrimp Salad
Pork/Steak Fajitas
- Radish Slaw (garden)
Cheesy Talapia w/ Rice and Veggies
White Bean Soup w/ Andouille Sausage
BBQ Chicken Sandwiches
- Green Beans and Cheddar Stuffed Potatoes
Columbian Chicken and Potato Soup
Mac n Cheese (sausage?)
Lund-Harris Chicken Tacos
(side dish ) Lemon-Mint Potatoes
Fresh Spinach-Basil Stuffed Manicotti Shells (I made this today for a church family and had leftovers and it's delicious!)
Homemade pizza (dan)

Most of these dinners are recipes that I've made before or are very similar to other recipes that I know we love. There are a few "splurge" items on this menu (shrimp and tilapia), but we haven't purchased them in months and at least we'll have yummy food to jump start cooking after "my busy season."

We also recently found a local produce shop that appears to have cheaper, local produce. I think we'll give it a try. Plus, our garden is helping out with lettuce/salad greens. :)

Let me know if you have any tips, good recipes or the same trouble we have.

More garden yummyness!

2011-05-26T12:00:00.000-07:00

Cabbage - not ready yet, but hoping it will be soon!!

Holy Cauliflower!

2011-05-25T19:59:00.000-07:00

Everyday as soon as I get home, I always go sneek a peek at my garden to see what new has popped up. Look what I found today?!!

Nothing beats fresh veggies.

2011-05-22T19:30:00.000-07:00

Track is OVER! It's sad, but also a good thing. I love coaching track, it's one of the best blessings I have! We took a good sized group to state this past weekend and all of our athletes got medals! I'm proud of them! We are a tiny, young team this year, so it was pretty cool to see so many kids do well. We had a couple PR's, higher places and finished in the top 8 as a team, so we did great! Now, I can finally have some free time to finish up the school year. I was starting to get a little desperate.

Only 3.5 more weeks till schools out. I cannot explain how impatient I am for summer break to get here. It's been an emotionally draining year. I can't believe it's almost over, but it's also felt sooooo long!

Early last week, Dan and I picked our first radish! It was pretty tasty. Nothing beats fresh veggies.

Today, I picked 3 more radishes to snack on. One of the radishes was a really deep red color, I thought it might taste different...but it didn't! :)

The best way to eat radishes - with a pinch of sea salt!

This week and today I've picked A LOT of salad greens: baby arugula, red leaf lettuce, romaine, buttercrunch, baby spinach and some beet greens. Every time I pick it, I swear I go back and there are more and more leaves! It's amazing how good a salad is with a little bit of arugula!

On Friday, the peppers and tomatoes I ordered from Territorial Seed Company arrived. I'm super excited to plant all these, but the weather is still too cold. I bought some jalapenos and banana peppers from Fred Meyers too to see how they do compared to the Territorial Seed plants. I also have some squash and cucumbers to transplant, so it seriously needs to warm up already!

Unfortunately, Lily got a little too excited while running around and snapped off the main stem of my brandywine tomato plant. I'll still keep it around and hope that it'll produce some offshoots down below?

CAN'T WAIT FOR SUMMER BREAK!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Week 7- Almost time to harvest!

2011-05-15T16:38:00.000-07:00

It's almost time to make my first harvest! I've been snacking on lots of buttercrunch/romaine/red leaf lettuce the past few weeks. When I snuck out to my garden late this morning, after being gone for two days, I happily shrieked when I saw how large my radishes are getting! Even more exciting, I've spotted my first sugar ann snap pea starting to form. Not sure how long this will take before I get to snap it off and munch on it, but it should be sometime soon!

Last week, I planted more spinach, arugula, lettuce mix and radishes. We will have a huge harvest of salad greens this summer!

This onions need to be transplanted soon!

WEEK 7

Walking back into the house - this is what I saw. She usually comes outside with me to check on the garden, but she was too busy chewing on her bone when I left to go outside. Bet she was regretting that decision...

Also kind of ironic that I snapped a photo of this door, because about 1 hr later, Dan and I ended up locking ourselves out of the house for 1hr+ (we didn't even have our cell phones!). I quickly went out to check on the potatoes and Dan had come in /out while working on a project and somehow the door ended up locked. UGH! But we're back in - thanks to his super breaking-in skillz.

PS - one potato has germinated! :)

Not a garden post :)

2011-05-10T21:45:00.000-07:00

How boring - I've posted nothing but garden pics.

Well, here's something a little different. :)

Today, I received word that my school has won $18,000 from a grant written by a co-worker and I to start our engineering and biomedical classes next year! We've already received $8,000+ this year from another grant, plus $500 for lab supplies. And I've written another grant for $10,000, which we won't find out about until Sept.

I AM SO EXCITED! We get to teach AMAZING science classes in the next few years! We are using a program called Project Lead the Way, which uses fantastic hands-on activities and technology to teach engineering and biomedical sciences. Stuff that kids can REALLY USE!

We will be only the 2nd school in Oregon to use the PLTW biomedical program!

It's gonna be pretty wicked. :)

A little sunshine + Fertilizer

2011-05-09T20:51:00.000-07:00

Look things are really growing!

Lettuce Mix

Box 2

Peas are flowering!

CAULIFLOWER

May 7th

May 1st

April 17th

I just can't wait for the sunshine. We've had so much rain here, it's really depressing. Not only for my garden, but everyday out at track practice too. UGH!

I'm also sick of complaining about it! :)

This weekend, I dug up an area around our side fence so I could plant about 6 raspberry plants a co-worker gave me (how nice, right?). I bought more soil and filled in Box 3. I planted more squares of arugula, lettuce mix, spinach and radishes. This might be my last sowing of spring veggies. I'm also starting some more carrots + beets in wet paper towels again.

In a couple of weeks I get to fill boxes 4 + 5 and plant:

cucumbers
yellow squash (2 kinds!)
zucchini (2 kinds)
Tomatoes (lots of varieties!)
Bell peppers (3 types)
Hot peppers (yet to be determined)
Tomatillos (if I can find them?)
Cantaloupe

My whole backyard is likely going to be overrun with veggies. I can't believe we've managed to get about 96+ sq ft(counting the potatoes, raspberries and containers) of garden space in my teeny tiny backyard. It's very likely that I'm planting too much in too little space, but whatever, it doesn't hurt to try! If it doesn't work out...there's next year!

Garden Week 5

2011-05-01T17:55:00.000-07:00

Happy May Day!

Even though I planted my tulip bulbs MONTHS late, they are still growing!

Finally planted out the French fingerling potatoes! I decided to put them on the "side yard" because that area gets a lot of sunshine. I made two rows of 5 potato "seeds." I'm excited for all the potatoes we'll get just from these 10 "seeds." It'll be fun, hilling and mounding the potato plant underground and by August we'll have a great potato feast! :)

Due to the warm sunshine, the cauliflower and cabbage are doing much better!

The carrots FINALLY came up! After 3+weeks!! They are messy and everywhere now, due to the evil visitor, but at least they've arrived.

Planted some more beets and they are doing okay!

Lettuce is ready for eating! I think I'll make a salad for dinner tomorrow.

Radishes are doing better. They should have matured by now, but I think they will just take a couple more weeks, thanks to the evil visitor and the pouring down rain we got two weeks ago.

Messy salad greens...but at least they are growing!

(green?) Onions

I've decided that things are growing a little too slowly due to not very much light. I purposely planted the cold-weather veggies in their locations because I didn't want them to get too much heat/sun during the summer. But I'm a little worried it's not enough sunlight right now in the spring. So we'll see if things actually grow to maturity...

Garden Week 3

2011-04-17T18:09:00.000-07:00

I guess since we don't have children (yet!) I'll just have to blog about my garden - haha!

So slowly but surely we are recovering from the garden disaster on Monday. I've kinda gotten over it...that which will grow...will grow! :)

I bought 3 different types of basil seeds from Territorial Seed and started them today in egg cartons and black trays. I planted lime basil, siam queen (thai) basil and the classic sweet basil. Basil likes warm weather, so I am going to start these in my classroom because I have grow lights in my room. Hopefully, we'll have a warm summer (yeah right!) and I can get a good enough harvest to make/freeze my own pesto.

I also planted some cilantro in some transplant trays that I'll also take to my classroom lights. Can't wait for fresh salsa!

A clump of arugula and lettuce mix. Things are kind of clumpy and messy thanks to our " evil visitor."

So far, the radishes are doing okay. I'm a little worried they will have trouble forming an edible root, but we'll see! They are definitely behind schedule...

The spinach finally came up! YAY!

Walla walla onions are getting bigger too! These will take ALL SUMMER to grow.

Sugar Ann snap peas are starting to climb up the trellis.

My second planting of radishes are in much neater rows. Thankfully, the evil creature didn't really disturb them.

My cauliflower (top) and cabbage still aren't looking so great. They lost a lot of support from the upheaval. Quite a few plants were found buried under soil in a completely different spot! I'm nervous about these guys!

Strawberry plant that overwintered...wondering if I'll get strawberries???

Lettuce transplants - not doing as well as I thought. They ended up with a lot of dirt on them from the evil creature's digging. Almost want to just start eating this now and plant something new...

Box number 2. There is random arugula everywhere, from the evil creature's digging - but at least it's growing! :)

I think I'm going to try and get some fertilizer this week and see if that will revive some of the older plants. It is supposed to be sunny this week too! We had nothing but pounding rain last week and I think the beds are getting a little soggy.

Also...still no carrots. It's been 3 weeks. I might have seen beets today. So just in case, I am trying to germinate carrot and beet seeds in a wet paper towel in the warm house. Once the roots emerge, I'll place them outside and wish for the best.

My potatoes also arrived from Territorial Seeds. We bought fancy french fingerlings (kind of like small red potatoes), because those are often more expensive to buy from the market and they are so tasty! Still haven't figured out where I want to grow them...but I've got some time, as it needs to warm up a little bit.

And last, I just found this funny article that talks about human urine as fertilizer! The study specifically cites urine as being beneficial to cabbage due to excess nitrogen. Hmmm...I think Dan would go for this!?! :)

Garden Nightmare

2011-04-11T21:41:00.000-07:00

Today I came home to total destruction of my gardening beds. I can't believe it, but some filthy lowly creature decided to entirely dig up my two veggie beds today. It was so devastating, that I literally had tears. I felt pathetic for crying. But I've invested a lot of time into working outside and hoping that our little garden will sprout up....See, I told you I was going to be really let down if something didn't work out!

Everything is in chaos. I spent 1+ hour hunched over when I got home at 7pm trying to find hundreds of little 1-2in plants.

Two full weeks my garden made it. :(

I think most of the transplants will survive. The cabbage and cauliflower that I put in last weekend, is looking questionable. They are all wilty and leaning over now. Good thing Dan doesn't really like either of those veggies. :)

So I did my best to find all the little plants and stick them back in the ground...but I'm really worried. It's been the longest 16 days waiting for those little baby plants to finally get green and start to grow leaves! Tomorrow is going to be a sunny day too - that's lots of growing that could've been happening. Now they are all uprooted, stressed out and hidden under the soil...

Yesterday, I planted another few sqft of seeds too so that I could have a continual harvest through the early summer. Ugh - I have absolutely no idea where those seeds are now. Hopefully they are on the top of the soil!

I saw that some of my carrots put down roots the past few days...now I'm pretty sure I won't have a carrot harvest this year as I could not find them tonight. The next chance I'll get to plant more seeds might be thursday, so I'm really going to have to get more carrots going because they've taken a really long time to germinate. Same thing with my beets. Bummer...

Now it's too dark and too late to get up a protective barrier over my beds to prevent this from happening again. We think it was a neighbor cat. I'll be so pissed if this happens again!!! Thankfully it wasn't Lily, she's so cute it's hard to punish her! :)

Off to bed to sulk a little bit more and then time to try and stop thinking about it...

Garden Week 1

2011-04-03T19:39:00.000-07:00

Thankfully the weather wasn't too bad this weekend, so I was able to get out and work in the garden beds. I'm so excited to have a project that I can work on all spring/summer/fall!

Germinating radish

Walla Walla onions - might possibly become green onions?

Romaine lettuce (from transplant)

Today, I filled up the second bed. This time I actually marked off my square feet with yarn and a staple gun. I wish I would have had 5 hands to hold everything, but I managed to measure out the spaces fairly fast. This bed also holds cool weather veggies.

Today I planted:

4 older Buttercrunch lettuce transplants

3 sq.ft. Beet seeds (I presoaked them a little, because they take forever to germinate)

1 sq ft Carrot seeds (Larger)

1 sq ft Carrot seeds (Little finger baby's)

2 sq ft Arugula seeds

4 sg ft Cauliflower transplants

2 sq ft Red Cabbage transplants

5 sq ft Golden Acre Cabbage transplants

1 sq ft of 3 puny-sad-looking cabbage transplants (we'll see what happens...)

Cabbage + Cauliflower

We bought a trellis this weekend for the growing peas.

I also planted some Little Marvel peas seeds behind some lettuce and added a few spinach seeds to the spinach plot. Not too many of the spinach seeds have germinated yet, so I thought I'd throw in a few extras just in case. The arugula and lettuce mix is also coming up, but I'll take a picture in a few days when it looks a bit more substantial. :) I've yet to see a whole lot from the carrots...but they take a bit longer to germinate so hopefully they will start to sprout soon!

I've also got a sweet potato in water and I'm trying to grow some splits. We don't really eat sweet potatoes, but I think it would be really fun to try and grow them. They are such a healthy vegetable, so I think I would be encouraged to eat them more if I grew my own. I think I'll grow them in containers to save space in the beds for other veggies we eat a lot of (tomatoes, peppers, etc)...we'll see!

Garden Dreams

2011-03-28T21:04:00.000-07:00

Despite all the car craziness this spring break, I did manage to accomplish my one big goal:

THE BACKYARD.

While it's still cloudy and rainy outside, I knew that if we didn't get the sod in now or start the garden beds, it likely wouldn't happen.

I knew putting in sod ourselves would be a lot of work...but I just didn't realize how heavy and obnoxious a roll of soggy wet sod would be! It didn't help that it was cold and rainy either.Thankfully, halfway through I was sent to get the rental car and Dan managed to put in the rest while I was gone. (He's amazing!)

I think Lily loves the grass the most. Unfortunately, she's loves it a little too much and has been caught digging holes. She's in big trouble if she gets caught again...

I've become slightly obsessed with gardening lately. I knew that I wanted to garden, but I've really gotten into it. So I researched a little (okay...a lot!), then Dan and I went to home depot and we got lumber to build raised gardening beds. Of course, Dan did all the hard work (like I said...really amazing!). :) Eddie and Leila helped a little (okay...not at all.)

Romaine up front, buttercrunch and red leaf in the back.

Saturday after we bought our Jeep (<3) I rushed to Home Depot to pick up soil, compost, manure, etc, and filled up one of the beds. Somewhere along the way, I had already managed to buy a couple of veggie transplants and seeds too.

Walla walla onions in the front, sugar snap peas in the back.

In the back middle, the lettuce mixes, arugula and spinach are planted. Front right: radishes and carrots.

It's looking a little sad and pathetic now...it was drizzling rain the whole time I was out there and I stayed out until about 8pm, when it got too dark to see what I was doing. Although the conditions were not that great, I knew that if I didn't get this stuff in, I would likely not have time for a long while. So it was worth it! :)

So far, I have planted:

3-4 Buttercrunch lettuce starts
4 Red Leaf lettuce starts
8 Romaine lettuce starts
a sprinkling of arugula lettuce seeds
a sprinkling of lettuce salad mix seeds
a sprinkling of spinach seeds
4-8 Sugar Snap Peas starts
4 walla walla onion transplants
10-15 walla walla onion sets (+ nearly 35-40 others in a pot)
sprinkling of radish seeds
sprinkling of carrot seeds

I just can't wait! I think I might be too eager. It's gonna be rough if all this doesn't work out...the weather is looking pretty nasty the next few week too. :(

I'm a little nervous about the lettuce transplants...they aren't looking so great because I was sort of rough with them in the cold, rainy dark. Ooops...we'll see.

In a week or two, when the lettuce starts to sprout up (hopefully!!!), I'll plant some more seeds so that I have lettuce throughout most of the early summer. I plan to sprinkle seeds a week or two after that as well. Then I'll thin them out and we'll have some baby salad greens to enjoy! I'm planning on trying to do this with the carrots too - baby carrots! Can't wait.

I've got a lot more planned for early spring: cauliflower, beets, more carrots, prob. more lettuce, maybe sweet potatoes, maybe regular potatoes (if I have room and can figure out how to grow them!), beans, and green onions.

Late spring/summer we want to grow: tomatoes (roma, cheery), squash (like zucchinni!), peppers, lots of basil, a few other herbs, maybe cucumbers, maybe some melon...I've got a little while to figure it out.

Great car, smashed car, NEW CAR!

2011-03-27T20:38:00.000-07:00

In one second, we went from our great 2004 Saturn Ion to this:

First off, thankfully, Dan and Jeff are okay! I'm pretty tired of thinking of the details, but Dan and Jeff were coming back from the movies and they got rear-ended on the freeway. Dan had a little whiplash, but he is okay now. Everyone else is fine.

Our poor Saturn didn't fare so well...she's totaled. I tried to find pictures of her "before," :) but realized we don't have any....so I found a few of our road trips across the country.

Sad.

But now, we have this BEAUTY:

Yesterday, we bought a 2011 Jeep Patriot. :)

Thankfully, we had been saving for a new car anyway. The bad news is that we were saving so that we could have 2 cars...now we are still stuck with 1. But hopefully, we can now find a decent used car to buy.

I never thought I was the type to write a whole blog about our car...but it's kind of consumed our spring break. Also, the Saturn was basically my first car, our only car for most of Dan and I's relationship and she traveled the span of the country with us (twice!)...so we were kind of attached. :)

On to bigger and more beautiful things...

Rants on an empty stomach

2011-03-05T17:36:00.000-08:00

All I've eaten today:
a few crackers, a banana, two oatmeal banana cookies (delish!) and 1 pickle. It's 4:40pm. Weekends are weird.

Wait...

...add another pickle. :)

January and February have happily flown by. I owe this mainly to my purposefully planned mini(big) vacations. Previous years, I have always hated January/February, mainly due to freezing temperatures, the lack of sunshine and the absence of breaks/vacation time after a long Christmas break. My life revolves around a public school schedule. So this year a trip to NYC with Chey at the end of January and a little weekend break in the middle of February for a conference in Seattle and a visit with Natalie really made my winter not so awful.

Now for spring - PUH-LEEZE! The winter blues have not completely escaped me. It's March and March should equate to sunshine and flowers. But it doesn't. Instead, I get rain and wind. Thankfully I have coaching track to keep me busy until the sunshine arrives.

Not sure why I'm talking about the weather...but I guess it's because I've got A LOT of crazy stuff on my mind and talking about the weather is easy.

Things on my mind:

UGH - lesson planning. I really love lesson planning (KEYWORD: planning). Actually getting all my materials together is really annoying. Why can't their be two of me?
Grading. Seriously - worst thing ever.
House improvement/decorating crafts - i've taken a sharp decline in this department, after a rapid acceleration (hey...ignore my vocabulary...i'm teaching about motion and forces right now...)
my procrastination with advising the prom committee. i have tons of ordering to do.
spring break plans with friends - Canada??
why does Lily (the pup) still insist on submissively peeing? Gr!
Dan is amazing (he's had some impressive offers (=$$$) for a piece that he got into a juried show at school).
my sunday school lesson (yes, i teach 6 days a week)
my NYC trip (can I go back?...right now?)
planning my life + dan +children (constantly on my mind)
my school district budget cuts for next year. (seriously America? can we please value education a little bit more. I'm disgusted.)
my teensy tiny track team. (the kids we have are extremely dedicated, but it's a rebuilding year for sure. one or two girl hurdlers & not even one boy hurdler. hrmph!)
summer vacation plans.
The Bachelor - was Reality Steve really wrong all this time. GRRR?! (Stupid, I know!)
i should really go make something to eat for myself...before I waste away and die of starvation...

So that's that.

PS - check out my new label.

S'mores

2011-02-26T20:57:00.000-08:00

Whoa...look what I just stumbled upon. Peanut butter puff pastry s'mores. These need to be made. Sometime soon. Found the recipe here.

Terrifying!

2011-02-25T19:38:00.000-08:00

So this evening I was casually thinking about what I should blog about today, tomorrow or sometime soon. When randomly (i have no clue why...) I remembered that the most terrifying thing happened last night and I totally forgot until JUST now. Don't you love how our brains do that? Looking back now...it's completely hysterical.

I've been sleeping a lot lately. For example, Sunday evening I slept from about 5:30pm until 8am-9am the next morning! Also, at night I've been quickly falling into a deep sleep, which is a bit unusual for me. As such, last night I quickly fell asleep while reading in bed with the light on around 9:30pm.

Well, at around 11:00pm or so (if i remember right...) I literally skyrocketed out of bed! I have never gone from such a peaceful, deep sleep to utter and completely chaos.

Now, I love our new house, but something seriously needs to be done about our smoke alarms. Some genius engineer had the bright idea to connect all the smoke alarms in our house, so that when one alarm goes off - ALL OF THE FREAKING ALARMS IN OUR TINY 1200 SQFT HOUSE BELT OUT THE HIGHEST PITCHED SCREAMING NOISE IN THE UNIVERSE!! I'm pretty sure we have enough blasted alarms to cover the square footage of our whole block!

So as I was happily dreaming away, Dan decided to do a little late night cooking and set off our extremely sensitive smoke alarm system.The alarm in our room is right over my head. I'm pretty sure that as it went off, I felt the earth shake. I was so startled from sleep that I literally thought the world was ending. I can't even describe how fast my heart was racing because I was so disoriented! I stumbled down the stairs to make sure there wasn't a real fire. And of course not....Dan was just cooking (fake smile). For a good minute I was shaking because I was so scared out of sleep and then....within a few minutes I made it back upstairs and I fell back asleep! HAHA! Looking back now, I have no idea how I slept after having so much adrenaline going through me because I was so terrified.

This isn't the first time something like this has happened. Around Thanksgiving, Dan set the alarm off while I was in the shower (like 3 times in a row!) and I thought I was going to have to run out of my brand new burning house in my just my towel. When we have friends over and cook, it goes off with just the faintest amount of smoke. It wouldn't be so bad if only ONE ALARM went off....but instead we have 20 SCREECHING ALARMS. UGH!

Something has to be done about this....

Dinosaurs

2011-02-16T20:25:00.000-08:00

Dinosaurs are my favorite thing.

My childhood memories are filled with imaginative stories of these giant beasts.

Seeing 'real' dinosaurs at the American Museum of Natural History was one of the coolest experiences I've ever had.

I could live at AMNH...for realz.

As silly as it is -Jurassic Park is one of my most favorite flicks.

People who say that dinosaurs didn't exist are dumb. Straight dumb.

I enjoy making story boards. It's a good way to show a lot of pictures at once...especially my travel photos.

Ellis Island

2011-02-14T20:26:00.000-08:00

Some of the best moments of my NYC vacation were in the Ellis Island museum. I am a total family history nerd. I've personally researched both sides of my dad's family, the majority of which came through Ellis Island. On his side we originate from Vimpeli, Finland and Bellosguardo, Italy. I'm also lucky to have a lot of research done already from my mom's side (Irish and English).

The Lund girls above would not have the freedoms we have today, without our ancestors hard work and determination to have a better life in America (Registry Room, Ellis Island).

I love this quote that I saw at the museum,
"America's a big deal in Italy those times...Because when they sent the letter or a picture...it was a big deal....Everybody thought everybody was rich in America....The Italian people, they thought that America was gold." - Victor Tartarini, an Italian immigrant in 1921.

The Registry room back in the day.

Looking at all the old documents was amazing. I wish I had old passports of my ancestors, like this one. I have only an image of one.

Love this propaganda.

Great light and angles...

View of Manhatten from the window. A few of my Italian ancestors (my nana's grandma) were held for a time at Ellis Island because another member aboard their boat had a disease similar to pink eye. I wonder if they found themselves looking through the same window during their stay there.

I would go back for another visit in a second. Hmmm...if it wasn't so late already and the bachelor wasn't on tonight...I could get lost in my family history research tonight. Maybe tomorrow.

quilt?

2011-02-10T21:01:00.000-08:00

Add this to my weekend list. Maybe my spring/summer project? Making a beautiful bright quilt.

From Amy Butler

PS- I'm becoming such a "blogger" lately. Trying to get all my posts in before track season starts!

Crafty weekend(plural)...

2011-02-10T19:05:00.000-08:00

Maybe if I make a virtual commitment to doing something productive on weekends...I will ACTUALLY do something productive?!? Last weekend I finally got my act together and made curtains for our bedroom and kitchen sink window. It was about time I stopped walking in front of my bedroom window completely naked...I mean...we have neighbors now!!! :) Geesh.

Last weekend:

Dan dyed his coat a darker shade of blue/black, so we experimented by throwing in a bunch of old shirts we don't really enjoy. Now we have a few new shades in our wardrobe! This definitely needs to be continued with new colors/new fabrics on future weekends.

Just a new little flowery spring piece I added by the window.

Fabric for the kitchen.

crappy lighting, but bright, colorful kitchen curtains!

fabric for closet window

the lighting is pretty bad in this shot, but we have smaller sized windows in the hallway of our bedroom, so we needed little curtains to give us some privacy (=no more window nakedness).

The curtains didn't take long to make. I had a lot of fun and spent a good portion of saturday afternoon working on them. By the end I could do one panel in less than 30 minutes.

sewing in a straight line = easy

The major time-consumer was ironing to perfection. :)

Sewing< 10minutes.

So here is my list for this weekend and the weekends to come:

Make matching curtains for other kitchen window.
Buy roman shade for living room window.
Shop for and prep these delicious desserts from Martha Stewart for Valentine's day yummy!

decide what photos need to be enlarged for bedroom/living room walls. pick out frames. choose a fun design from a pinterest pin.
try planting my flower bulbs (yes. i know. they are supposed to be planted in the fall. i get it. but it doesn't hurt to try. they will be useless next fall anyways. dang.)
paint wall shelves antique white. put shelves up in guest bedroom.
decorate shelves.
figure out the bookcase situation upstairs. current state = disaster.
organize outside closet boxes (HAHAHA...okay I won't actually do this...EVER. even though i really need to. i'll save it for an absolutely boring summer day when there is literally nothing better to do.)
make more lists of things to do. i'm pretty sure this is a small portion of what really needs to be done.

6 pack?

2011-02-07T19:48:00.000-08:00

Did the "Get Focused" Nike Track Club shoulder workout today with the above drill. Like. New goal: to have this girl's abs...and shoulders. :) So jealous.

Hair + long bangs?

2011-02-06T22:09:00.000-08:00

Totally miss this long hair.

If I could ever find a decent hairstylist in the area, I am going for the long blunt bangs per Katy Perry.

bird(s) eye view

2011-02-04T20:52:00.001-08:00

Laughter

2011-02-04T20:41:00.000-08:00

Already miss my sister's laughter and the time we spent in NYC...

NYC

2011-02-01T20:39:00.000-08:00

I am lucky. Visiting NYC was surreal. I know it's just a city, but I had a fabulous time. More info and pictures will come, but for now here are my favorites (not necessarily photos, but experiences too!).

Can't wait for NYC!

2011-01-19T22:10:00.000-08:00

My sister Cheyenne and I are going for a quick weekend trip to NYC next weekend. Just made reservations at these fun NYC restaurants for Restaurant Week! YAYA!

Fun, whimsical food @ David Burke Townhouse

and

delicious latin food with a funky salsa playing atmosphere!

Week 2 - Breakfast

2011-01-16T22:35:00.000-08:00

This was really an impulse shot I took, but I realized it works perfectly for my 'breakfast' theme. It's a little blurrier than I wanted, but oh well! Some days I am great about eating breakfast. If I wake up early enough, I make oatmeal, play with Lily while it's heating up, add some fresh cold milk, sit down with my scriptures and enjoy breakfast before things get hectic. However most days, breakfast is none existent. Instead, I press 'snooze' 3 times, wake up late and then listen to my stomach yell at me all morning until I find time to squeeze in a few fruit snacks right before 4th period. I'll work on it...

Week 1 - Newness

2011-01-16T21:59:00.000-08:00

Here are my photos for Week 1: Newness. I've quickly realized that a 365 day challenge is absolutely out of the question for me - mainly I'm just too lazy after work. I think I can make it work for the spring/summer though. So for now, it's a themed 52 week challenge.

I got started a bit late because I was waiting for my "new" lens so arrive. So far - i love it! So here is me playing with my "new" lens. Lily has quickly become my new favorite subject! :)

Nike Training Club

2011-01-11T19:21:00.000-08:00

This is my new best friend. Nike has such great workout apps and programs! I love my Nike+ but sometimes I just get sick of only being able to keep track of running workouts. This app for my iphone has a ton of different types of workouts and it'll play my music and has videos and pictures of the different drills. I've used is each day so far this week with some of my athletes that are getting in shape for track season (ok...so 2 times... :P ). But I'm fairly confident it will keep me busy for awhile...plus the girls on the app are in wicked good shape so it motivates me!

I am desperate for a workout buddy. It's the only thing that keeps me motivated. I LOVE LOVE LOVE working out, but if I don't purposefully schedule a time to work out, I'm content sitting on the couch or browsing the internet. Thankfully, I have been blessed with good genes, but I hate being too lazy to do something that I truly love.

This is a drill I'm looking forward to trying tomorrow....

Carlie Jade + Daniel Luke + Baby

Cloth diapers!

itchy itchy

Envelope Pillows

Grey stripes

Little Peasant Dress

Weekly Menu

Weekly Menu - Round 2!

Weekly Menu

2012

baby Baby BABY!!!!

Baby Harris: Boy or Girl???

Crochet

Lentil soup

It's just about that time...

12 days...

cupcakes + birthday

16 weeks

Missing

Baby quilt

It's about time...

Dear blog...

Photo shoot @ Mt. St. Helens

daniellukeharris.com

Plans

harvest monday 9.26

Harvest Monday 9.19

eskimo girl

sand dunes

Harvest...Tuesday?

Fall Weekends

homemade.

2ish weeks of harvest

Flannel.

Outdoors. Beautiful.

Harvest Monday

Tote Bag

Nothing beats BEETS...

Harvest Monday

Cilantro + Coriander

Butter Garlic Shrimp with Green Beans and Cherry Tomatoes

Zucchini!

Only $30 a week?!?!?!

It's a Jungle out there!

Sara Bareilles + Joshua Radin

San Fran Quickie

YW Girls Camp!

Harvests!

Anniversary Present

More Good Reads

Good Reads

Flowering veggies

5 years!

what's going on cabbage?

sunny summer days...

Menu Planning

More garden yummyness!

Holy Cauliflower!

Nothing beats fresh veggies.

Week 7- Almost time to harvest!

Not a garden post :)

A little sunshine + Fertilizer

Garden Week 5

Garden Week 3

Garden Nightmare

Garden Week 1

Garden Dreams

Great car, smashed car, NEW CAR!

Rants on an empty stomach

S'mores

Terrifying!

Dinosaurs

Ellis Island

quilt?

Crafty weekend(plural)...

6 pack?

Hair + long bangs?

bird(s) eye view

Laughter

NYC