Here are some pictures of what's growing so far in my garden...
Parsley (a bit dry right now):
To see more about my garden, go to http://myfolia.com/gardener/WithoutContext This site is so helpful in planning my garden, I highly recommend it!
I recently decided to join a local co-op that I found online in order to save some cash on fresh produce. Every pair of baskets (one basket of fruit, one basket of vegetables) is $15.00. I'm so excited because the produce has been great quality so far and there is so much of it.
Cantaloupe, peaches, plums, oranges, grapes, limes:
Broccoli, potatoes, beets, green beans, spinach, celery, lettuce, onions:
They also have other offering that you can purchase separately. This week I bought two loaves of bread. the one on the left is a 16 oz 9-grain sandwich loaf. The other one is a 24 oz 9-grain artisan loaf. They sell these delicious loaves for $2 each!
They charge $1.50 to maintain their website, so including everything the total for all this bounty was $21.50- such a good deal!
I've never made anything with raw beets before, so I'll have to look up some recipes to get an idea of how I want to make them. Do you have any beet recipes you enjoy?
Ok, I think it's obvious to anyone who knows me that I love me some coffee.. I saw this on another blog and wanted to see if I could get it to the highest level (which was near death). The first time I tried, I got to '"Cracked Out," Paranoid.' Now I'm sure anyone else would have been happy with that- but not me! I tried it several mores times... only to make my mouse finger too tired to get past 174 clicks in 30 seconds, which means:
Created by OnePlusYou
(Be forewarned- if you click on OnePlusYou, that takes you to a dating website... click on the The Caffeine Click Test to try the game itself).
Funny thing was I had actually just made myself a Double Latte (that's two shots of Espresso in steamed milk with a little bit of foamed milk to you unfortunate non-coffee drinkers).
As I was making my Latte this morning, I had no real intentions of attempting to make Latte Art, but it appears that I actually did, however accidental:
Do you see what I see? It looks like some kind of weird winged creature with a big nose! Or maybe I'm just being Paranoid!
Here are some examples of intentional Latte Art from people with much more talent than me:
I saw this on Julia's blog:
Here are the rules..
Leave a comment on my blog of a memory you and I have had together. It doesn't matter if you've known me for a short time or a long time. It can be funny, embarrassing, whatever. Anything that you remember! Next, re-post these instructions on your blog and see how many people leave a memory about you. It is pretty funny to read the responses.
If you do want to play along just put this on your blog and we will see how many lovely, funny, whatever memories we can get. Have fun! And good luck.
I saw this post at The Peach Tree: The Big Read and had to play along (though I have to agree I was surprised at some of the books on this list):
Here's how it works:
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
The Big Read says that the average adult has only read 6 of the top 100 books they've printed.
1) Look at the list and bold those you have read.
2) Italicize those you intend to read.
3) Underline the books you love, and strikeout the books you read but didn't like.
4) Reprint this list so we can try and track down these people who've read only 6 or less and
make them read.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
And now..... THE BIG READ TOP 100
1. Pride and Prejudice - Jane Austen
2. The Lord of the Rings - JRR Tolkien (I own the collection already)
3. Jane Eyre - Charlotte Bronte
4. The Harry Potter Series JK Rowling
5. To Kill a Mockingbird - Harper Lee6. The Bible (the parts of it I've read anyway...boring)
7. Wuthering Heights - Emily Bronte
8. Nineteen Eighty Four - George Orwell9. His Dark Materials - Philip Pullman
10. Great Expectations - Charles Dickens
11. Little Women - Louisa M Alcott
12. Tess of the D'Urbervilles - Thomas Hardy
13. Catch 22 - Joseph Heller (own it already)
14. Complete Works of Shakespeare
15. Rebecca - Daphne Du Maurier
16. The Hobbit - JRR Tolkien
17. Birdsong - Sebastian Faulks
18. Catcher in the Rye - JD Salinger
19. The Time Traveller's Wife - Audrey Niffenegger
20. Middlemarch - George Eliot
21. Gone With The Wind - Margaret Mitchell
22. The Great Gatsby - F Scott Fitzgerald
23. Bleak House - Charles Dickens
24. War and Peace - Leo Tolstoy (I started to read this once in 6th grade... never finished it)
25. The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy - Douglas Adams
26. Brideshead Revisited - Evelyn Waugh .
27. Crime and Punishment - Fyodor Dostoyevsky
28. Grapes of Wrath - John Steinbeck
29. Alice in Wonderland - Lewis Carroll
30. The Wind in the Willows - Kenneth Grahame
31. Anna Karenina - Leo Tolstoy
32. David Copperfield - Charles Dickens33. Chronicles of Narnia - CS Lewis
34. Emma - Jane Austen .
35. Persuasion - Jane Austen36. The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe - CS Lewis
37. The Kite Runner - Khaled Hosseini
38. Captain Corelli's Mandolin - Louis De Bernieres
39. Memoirs of a Geisha - Arthur Golden
40. Winnie the Pooh - AA Milne
41. Animal Farm - George Orwell
42. The Da Vinci Code - Dan Brown
43. One Hundred Years of Solitude - Gabriel Garcia Marquez
44. A Prayer for Owen Meaney - John Irving
45. The Woman in White - Wilkie Collins
46. Anne of Green Gables - LM Montgomery
47. Far From The Madding Crowd - Thomas Hardy
48. The Handmaid's Tale - Margaret Atwood
49. Lord of the Flies - William Golding
50. Atonement - Ian McEwan .
51. Life of Pi - Yann Martel
52. Dune - Frank Herbert
53. Cold Comfort Farm - Stella Gibbons
54. Sense and Sensibility - Jane Austen
55. A Suitable Boy - Vikram Seth
56. The Shadow of the Wind - Carlos Ruiz Zafon
57. A Tale Of Two Cities - Charles Dickens
58. Brave New World - Aldous Huxley
59. The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time - Mark Haddon
60. Love In The Time Of Cholera - Gabriel Garcia Marquez
61. Of Mice and Men - John Steinbeck
62. Lolita - Vladimir Nabokov Nabokov
63. The Secret History - Donna Tartt
64. The Lovely Bones - Alice Sebold
65. Count of Monte Cristo - Alexandre Dumas
66. On The Road - Jack Kerouac
67. Jude the Obscure - Thomas Hardy
68. Bridget Jones' Diary - Helen Fielding
69. Midnight's Children - Salman Rushdie
70. Moby Dick - Herman Melville
71. Oliver Twist - Charles Dickens
72. Dracula - Bram Stoker
73. The Secret Garden - Frances Hodgson Burnett
74. Notes From A Small Island - Bill Bryson
75. Ulysses - James Joyce
76. The Bell Jar - Sylvia Plath
77. Swallows and Amazons - Arthur Ransome
78. Germinal - Emile Zola
79. Vanity Fair - William Makepeace Thackeray
80. Possession - AS Byatt
81. A Christmas Carol - Charles Dickens
82. Cloud Atlas - David Mitchell
83. The Color Purple - Alice Walker
84. The Remains of the Day - Kazuo Ishiguro
85. Madame Bovary - Gustave Flaubert
86. A Fine Balance - Rohinton Mistry .
87. Charlotte's Web - EB White
88. The Five People You Meet In Heaven - Mitch Albom
89. Adventures of Sherlock Holmes - Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
90. The Faraway Tree Collection - Enid Blyton
91. Heart of Darkness - Joseph Conrad
92. The Little Prince - Antoine De Saint-Exupery
93. The Wasp Factory - Iain Banks
94. Watership Down - Richard Adams
95. A Confederacy of Dunces - John Kennedy Toole (I really want to read this one!)
96. A Town Like Alice - Nevil Shute
97. The Three Musketeers - Alexandre Dumas
98. Hamlet - William Shakespeare
99. Charlie and the Chocolate Factory - Roald Dahl
100. Les Miserables - Victor Hugo
Post a comment back to your blog if you decide to play!
Ok Julia Ann(!), I don't think you've left a comment letting me know I was tagged, but I did read your blog so I'm going to go ahead and play along. That's how much I love you.
Tag...I'm it!
How To Play This Game of Tag:
Post these rules on your blog.
Answer these 15 questions about yourself on your blog.
List:
3 joys
3 fears
3 goals
3 current obsessions/collections
3 random/surprising facts-
Tag five people at the end of your post by leaving their names.
-Let them know they are tagged by leaving a comment on their blog.
Joys (I'm going to leave "friends and family" out of mine 'cause that's a given).
1. The written word. I love to read: books, blogs, emails, message boards, magazines.. you name it, I'm reading it.
2. Creating. Whether that's cooking, sewing, baking, writing... gluing Popsicle sticks together- I love it!
3. Connecting :) I'm am so interested in other people; I think that's one of the reasons I love to read so much: if I have no flesh and blood people available to talk with, I can always rely on my good literary friends to keep me company.
Fears
1. Flying! Not so much because I'm afraid of heights.. more because I'm afraid of plummeting to the earth in a great blazing fire of torrid death. It probably comes down to not having control of what's happening to me.
2. Cockroaches. 'Nuff said.
3. Being forgotten.
Goals
1. Good physical health.
2. Make all my Christmas presents this year.
3. Get through this crappy Phoenix summer without melting.
Current Obsessions/Collections
1. Sewing. This is a case when an obsession results in a collection (see #2).
2. Fabric. I could probably clothe a village with the fabric I already have and still have enough left over to make each of them their own lap quilt.
3. Craftster. I am constantly on this website reading about what other people are doing and getting ideas for things I can create myself (whoa- that hits all three of my "Joys," no wonder I'm obsessed!)
Random/Surprising Facts
1. I get seasick at weird things: scrolling down on a computer screen, scenes on TV that have up and down motions...
2. I don't want to learn how to knit or crochet because then I'd have one more type of hobby to buy things for. Maybe once I make use of a large portion of my fabric stash I'll take up knitting.
3. My favorite movie is V for Vendetta.
Tag: I don't know that many people IRL who also have a blog, so I'm only tagging Colista even though she was already tagged. You've heard of tag-teaming, and now you've heard of team-tagging!
...so I can plant in them too!
I got the lumber for the bed frames:
The wood is douglas fir, purchased at Lowe's. My lovely neighbor and friend was nice enough to drive me there with her truck so I could get it home. I had Lowe's cut the wood to the lengths I needed to make things easier. Now it's just a matter of drilling pilot holes in the ends of the wood and using deck screws to secure them. Simple, eh?
Here are pictures of the items I sent out for the Craftster Sweat Shoppe Round 13 Swap (discussion thread, gallery):
These are reversible coffee cup holders.. side 1..
side 2..
Here are the postage-stamp quilted potholders (each square is 1"x1" finished size); I made 5 different color schemes, but here's just one for the idea..
I really need to figure out how to mitre corners before I try that on an actual quilt! I'm glad I made these potholders because I do plan on making a postage stamp quilt much like this, this, these, and these ones. I even participated in a swap on Craftster (discussion, gallery) for squares. I am just going to go for a random look for my first one rather than try to figure out values or sort by color waves. I'm going to use this method, which is what I did in miniature for the potholders. I also swapped squares with my sister (along with her 2 sisters-in-law), who sent me squares she cut out of my grandma's clothes- that means so much to me that she thought to do that. I still owe her and her sisters-in-law their squares... I'm so late sending out that I'm sending them tons more fabric and some other things- which is just making me later! Oh well, I hope they'll forgive me when they get their packages.
I signed up for the Naughty Words Needs Friends Too Swap, which is going to be insanly fun. I have stalked my partner and I'm glad to see she makes awesome stuff, and I love her personality so it will be it fun to make her things and see how she likes them. I'm kicking around a few ideas right now and I'll be crafting probably this weekend (if I don't start sooner).
I received my July issue of Sewing Savvy and June issue of Travel and Leisure in the mail today, so I have some good reading ahead of me for the next couple hours or so.
à tout à l'heure!
I decided this year is "the year" for working on my back yard. I want an outside space that is my oasis instead of a desiccated wasteland like it is now. I have 2 main goals for this year for my back yard:
1. I will have a vegetable and fruit garden in this space, which is on the side of my house:
2. The rest of my yard will have grass at minimum and hopefully flowers and shrubs. This is what the rest of my yard looks like right now:
Those two trees were actually volunteers that each rooted over from a different neighbor's yard. That's the easiest way to add foliage I must say! They probably aren't exactly where I would have planted them, but they took no effort on my part so I'm happy enough with where they are. There's also another side area of the yard, which is where the garbage and recycle containers are stored; I think I'd like to pave at least some of that area with either concrete or pavers and add a small shed for yard and gardening tools.
I have to admit I am taking the easy way out for getting grass going and the basic maintenance- I hired a guy that works for my neighbor's landscaping company to do that for me. He'll be coming out monthly to get the grass in, mow it, take care of weeds, trim the trees and such for both our back and front yard. He isn't charging me very much considering I really do hate that kind of yard work (plus both DH and I have bad allergies)- especially in the summer during 115 degree weather (it's 108 today and it's only May!!)
Eventually I'd like to expand my porch area and get a table and chairs so I can enjoy the back yard more. My in-laws enclosed their porch with a half wall and screens and added a ceiling fan, which is really nice in cooler weather. They even have a TV out there so they can watch the news and enjoy being outside while they have their morning coffee. I just might be able to convince my wonderful FIL to help us do that :)
I have a layout all planned for my garden, which will be a raised-bed Square Foot Garden; I bought Mel Bartholomew's book from Barnes and Nobles for all the information I need for that method along with Dave the Garden Guy's Seasonal Guide to Organic Gardening in the Desert Southwest for local information. I won't be able to do much in the next couple months as far as actual planting and gardening, so I'll be using the summer to build my beds (oh joy- construction in the heat!) In June I'll plant pumpkins so I'll have them for Halloween! I can't wait until I have a full veggie garden going and can pick my own salad fresh whenever I need it!
I had to take a picture of my poor panting puppy while he was following me around outside wondering why I would venture out in this insane heat; this is Milo our Miniature Pinscher:
Don't worry, he has a doggy door so he's inside most of the time!
So that's my currently-ugly, soon-to-be-gorgeous back yard desert. My front yard is desert too, but the kind with rocks and cacti, so it looks much nicer:
I'm ready for it to begin!
Story of my life :)
In other news... I received a bona fide coffee roaster for my birthday, whohoo! My DH and his mom pitched in to buy me this lovely piece of machinery:
This was of course purchased from Sweet Maria's and came with 8 1-lb packs of green coffee beans from different regions and a double sized chaff collector. This is quite possibly my favorite thing in my whole house (DH and dog not included as "things" of course).
I've only done one batch so far... which I slightly burned. Even then it was still tolerable with enough half and half and vanilla flavor added. Next time I'll be more careful about watching for 2nd crack.
It's very quite and doesn't produce too much smoke- I just parked it under the oven vent and that was more than enough, although I do think that's why I couldn't hear the beans as well as I wanted so I'll skip that until the end next time.
Today being Earth Day, I thought I'd share some of my favorite ways of helping the environment:
1. I like to read digital issues of magazines instead of subscribing to the print issues.
Make Magazine has recently started releasing their publication through the internet. The cost for an online-only subscription is $26.95; a regular subscription is $34.95 (which also gives you online access). So not only am I reducing the amount of paper being wasted, I'm also saving myself a few dollars in the process: win-win!
This looks interesting- I just found this site, so I'll need to look into this some more before I give an opinion.
2. Another way of saving energy is to use a search engine like Blackle (powered by Google Custom Search), which reduces the amount of electricity being used by your computer simply by having a dark background. So far they report "576,468.401 Watt hours saved."
3. I always wash my clothes in cold water to save on heating. My clothes get just as clean this way and I'm not using as much electricity.
Those are just a few things I do- what about you?
Today is World Down Syndrome Day, a day designated to help spread awareness of the needs and rights and to promote acceptance of individuals with Down's Syndrome.
Please go to World Down Syndrome Day to read more about the event. For more information on Down's Syndrome itself, check out their links page.
I started making this Jalapeño Pickle Relish the same day that I made the Pickled Garlic; I let the chopped veggies soak overnight in the fridge and finished the recipe the next day while DH was at work (he was complaining about the vinegar smell-which admittedly was pretty strong).
It turned out a bit too sweet and not spicy enough for me, but still pretty tasty. Next time I'll just add some more jalapeños and a bunch of garlic and it should be perfect. I got four bottles from this recipe, which should last me a few months!
I also slow-roasted some jalapeños on the stove to make some hot sauce. All you do is pour 1/2 cup of oil (I used olive oil) into a large frying pan and add your jalapeños. Turn on the heat to a pretty low setting- according to my neighbor (who gave me this recipe) the slower the roast, the better the taste. Cover them with a lid and let them roast for about an hour, shaking the pan every once in a while to turn the peppers. I lifted the lid to take a picture, but I don't recommend that- hot oil flying out at you is no fun!
Pull off the stems, puree the peppers in your blender until smooth (or semi-smooth)- and you have yourself some awesome hot sauce. You can see I added garlic to the pan while I was roasting the peppers- don't do that; they turned out hard as rocks. Just add the garlic to the blender. It's kind of sweet and very spicy- this one gives you a slow burn that tends to sneak up on you! It's delicious on the tamales my neighbor gives me once in a while.
serendipity_sarah received her hedgehog pincushion and has posted pictures, so I can show them to you now. These are the pictures I took before I sent him out to her:
I used this pattern for his body, then made up the pattern for the spikes on his back.
I had so much fun doing this swap!
Now I'm working on creating 10 things (2 groups of 5 similar items) for the Sweat Shoppe Swap, Round 13. More on that later...
Last year I went to the Arizona Renaissance Festival with my husband and some friends. We walked around all the shops, caught the Ded Bob Show, had a turkey leg, watched a joust, laughed through the Tortuga Twins, saw all the wonderful crafts, enjoyed the glass-blowing demonstration.. and generally had a great time. But the best part? On the way out, my husband and I spied a huge sign that touted GARLIC- which of course was a sign that neither he nor I could walk past. They had several types of pickled garlic for sale and, after sampling every one of them, we came home with a bottle of pickled garlic with jalapeños. They are so good on sandwiches, salads, mixed into salsa... eaten whole by themselves... yum..
I had plans to go to the Festival today with some friends and I knew the one thing I was definitely going to buy were a few bottles of the pickled garlic. I ran out pretty quickly last year and I wanted to have a good stock to last me longer this year. Unfortunately my friends wound up not being able to go to the festival, and I didn't want to drive for over an hour to get there only to pay the entrance fee and hang out by myself, even if it did mean I'd come away with these pickled gems.
So what is a girl to do? Make her own!
I found this recipe for Pickled Garlic with Hot Pepper on Recipezaar (a great recipe resource, by the way!)
It's pretty easy to shop for the supplies for this recipe. I had everything but the habaneros I had decided to use instead of jalapeños (I like it hot!) I left out the red peppers and used apple cider vinegar instead of white vinegar for more flavor. I halved the recipe except for the peppers- I was making two small bottles, and I put 3 peppers in each bottle (did I mention I like it HOT?) Here are my lovely bottles of Pickled Garlic & Habanero Peppers:
They have to rest for 2 weeks before I can eat them to allow the garlic and peppers to pickle and the flavors to blend... oh, the torture! I'll report back then to let you know how they turned out.
By the way, just in case no one caught the reference in my title (which wouldn't surprise me, I'm just weird that way): That was part of the first song in the ending credits to Care Bears in Wonderland, sung by Grumpy himself. Here is a clip from Youtube (the song starts at 2:50):
This movie was a favorite of my brother and I when we were kids. We used to pick a character each and say all the lines of that character throughout the whole movie. Grumpy was our favorite and we would fight over who would "be" him each time! This song was going through my head while I made the pickled garlic- there is a line (starting at 3:10) where Grumpy sings "I'm filling up my belly with ice cream and jelly and topping it with pickled beets." Ah, good times.
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