Friday, April 29, 2011

Spring Garden

Well, not the kinda ‘garden’ pictures you were probably expecting to see – I need to get back out in the veggie garden and take some pictures this weekend! Things have been growing a little slow out there so I haven’t blogged about it for a week or so.

These ‘garden’ pictures are the Spring Garden Tee that I finished knitting a few weeks ago and wore for mil’s birthday lunch. I just wanted to share them with you but as you can see it was really very sunny and the lighting is terrible. Anyway, I’ll still share them with you, cos this is one top that I think turned out really cute. I’m seriously considering knitting another one, I like it that much :-)

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The pretty little flower was a gift from my friend Sadie a few years ago. She makes the prettiest felt roses :-)

I’ve been doing really good with my healthy eating and exercising. Hope to post more about it next week… and update you on the garden too.

Have a great weekend!

Tuesday, April 26, 2011

My Healthy Den

I’ve posted over at my ‘healthy blog’ this morning. I still like to post there so I can look back and review what worked for me and what didn’t!  I’ve decided to try Jillian Michael’s 30 Day Shred again!!!

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I must be crazy. It is pretty hard. I did day one yesterday and my legs feel like jelly this morning! You can read my full post HERE.

Saturday, April 23, 2011

Saturday!!!

Wow, did I really not post all week? It doesn’t seem like that long ago I posted, but it was Monday?! My sis will be wondering where I am! This week just flew by, and it was a short week. No school on Friday because it was Good Friday. 

Kiki and I decided to color eggs, like we do every Easter. I figured Friday was a good day, then we can eat them today because we will be eating out tomorrow. Not sure how long hard boiled eggs last in the fridge but I usually like to eat them within a day or two.

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We’ll be spending the day at Grandma’s house (my inlaws) tomorrow. After we’ve seen if the Easter Bunny has hidden any eggs, and left a basket ;-)  And I’ll also make a nice brunch for us! Hope you all have a lovely Easter Sunday. Be blessed. xxxxx     

Monday, April 18, 2011

Eat This, Not That!

I’m sure you’ve all seen the books like this. . .

eatthis_notthat a guide to eating healthier, by making smarter food choices! This is my take on ‘Eat This, Not That – the pizza version :-)

Friday is often ‘pizza night’ here, well it used to be for Jason and Kristen, I was always watching what I ate and didn’t even want a slice of Dominos or Digorno, or whatever it was they were having. But of course sometimes I did, and I always felt like I was eating something really greasy and very unhealthy! Last week I bought some ready made pizza crusts so Kristen could make her own pizza, I got them from Target, one pack was whole wheat, the other was a cheesy one, she really liked making her own. This past week I went one step further and bought frozen whole wheat pizza dough from Whole Foods Market. Once it was defrosted in the fridge we could roll it out and top it with whatever we liked. . . .

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Kristen’s (and Daddy’s) was topped with Italian sausage, turkey pepperoni shredded and fresh mozzarella.

Mine was much more colorful (imo), I topped it with shredded mozzarella (just a small amount) then added red onion, yellow bell pepper, fresh mozzarella and a little basil from my herb garden :-) Next time I would add fresh mushrooms too, but I had none in at the time.

DSCF5262oh, and I drizzled it with some really nice olive oil I just bought.

I didn’t take a cooked picture of mine, but I have to tell you it was absolutely delicious, even Jason liked my veggie one. I can see this becoming a Friday night staple here. Next I want to make my own dough(preferably whole wheat)  so I can calculate how many ww points is in the whole thing, toppings included.

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So, right now, I’m choosing to eat this. . .

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not that . . . .

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Friday, April 15, 2011

Last weekend!

Goodness, this week got away with me (as most of them seem to do), I agree with Darylynn - “what happened, where did it go"?” And if I think back I can’t really say there was much I did other than the usual housework, laundry, running to the store, taking Kiki to piano lesson and a trip to Whole Foods with my friend Cindy yesterday!

With all that said, I must get on and start my day, make the beds, load the dishwasher etc, so I will leave you with some photos from last weekend, when we celebrated mom-in-law’s birthday:

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I made a wonderful carrot cake, (I’ll have to share the recipe another time) with cream cheese frosting. Honestly, this is so good I could eat all of these pieces!

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Kristen doesn’t like carrot cake so I helped her make cupcakes, and showed her how my Mam used to decorate them with me. We called them butterfly cakes :-) Simply cut a little circle out of the top of the cake, put in some frosting, cut the little circle piece of cake you have in half , then add them back to the top of the cake (with the straight cut sides facing out) so it looks like butterfly wings. I added antenna with bits of orange peel – sprinkle with icing sugar. Look at that crazy Kiki, she can’t wait to eat this!!!

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The table was set for a simple pasta lunch. Penne pasta with a choice of marina sauce w/ground turkey and turkey Italian sausage in it, or creamy alfredo with onions, peas, bacon and mushrooms in it. Side salad and fresh baked bread. Simple but satisfying (sorry I didn’t get pics).

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Flowers and pressies await!

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And Kristen makes Boo look all pretty for Grandma arriving!

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Birthday kisses from Boo (notice he has his little blue shirt on too!)

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Recognize the green top I’m wearing? It looked like this the last time you saw it!!

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Yep, I finished my pretty Garden Spring Tee… I’ll share more photos next time. Have a great weekend!

Monday, April 11, 2011

You Can Laugh At My Wellies!

Go ahead, laugh :-) Jason does every time I wear them! He wonders why I put such big (welly) boots on to go out in the garden, and I tell him “because if I wear my flip flops the fire ants will get me!”.

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We’ve been busy in the garden all weekend, planting seeds, and yesterday I had my inlaws over to celebrate mom-in-laws birthday (which is actually tomorrow). I’ll post more about that later. I’ve been to the ENT this morning for a check up and to pick up my allergy drops. I just got back and need to catch up on laundry and cleaning up the kitchen (what’s new?!) so here’s a few pictures, and hopefully I’ll be back tomorrow.

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Last week Kristen and I started painting some garden signs. They came out pretty good. I need to do more for things like corn, potatoes, onions and peas. . .

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Jason - planting some potatoes!


Linking to Tuesday Garden Party at An Oregon Cottage.


Wednesday, April 6, 2011

Cooking with Kiki!

Kristen recently asked if she could cook with me in the kitchen – not ‘BAKE’ (as in the usual cupcakes or cookies thing) but ‘COOK’! Of course it’s something I would get around to showing her one day, I mean I don’t want my daughter going off to college and not be able to even boil an egg! But it was nice that the request came from her. I was the one that mentioned it shouldn’t be just cookies and cakes, and that she should learn some basic skills (scrambling an egg came to mind first) which she was fine with.

So, last weekend we decided to make ‘French Toast’.

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She dipped the bread in the egg and sprinkled on cinnamon, then placed it in the pan.

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Once both slices were cooked she wanted them cut in to strips, I guess so they resembled this . . . !!

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And of course, being the sugar fiend that she is, she didn’t want just maple syrup drizzled on there with a little powdered sugar!

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She wanted the powdered sugar mixed with water to make a frosting to drizzle on there + maple syrup + more powdered sugar!

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I was the one that threw the raspberries on there to make it look healthy, ha ha :-) (which, I might add she didn’t eat!)

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On a serious note, I’d much prefer she ate this wholewheat bread dipped in egg, drizzled with frosting, than the frozen ‘stuff’ we’ve had in the past. I don’t even want to think what ingredients are in those! We’ve had the Aunt Jemima toast sticks before (or Kristen has, I won’t eat it!) and it doesn’t even look like bread inside :(

And what’s worse is, they looked so ‘yucky’ I didn’t even want to try them, but I was happy enough to feed it to my child! That has to stop, but more of this kind of cooking is a go!

After we made our first French Toast Kristen announced later in the day that she wanted to surprise Daddy with breakfast in bed the next morning, and make the French Toast again. We nearly succeeded! Jason woke up on Sunday morning and came downstairs before we cooked it. But Kristen still made it again and we all enjoyed it together :-)

We’ve made scrambled egg since then, and chicken nuggets, but I didn’t get pictures. Next time we do them I’ll take pics and blog about it again. Perhaps I’ll make a new series ‘Cookin with Kiki’ :-)

What about you, do you cook with your kids? If they’re older can you remember what the first thing you taught them was?

Have you seen the site Spatulatta.com? If you have kids that want to get in the kitchen with you check it out. It’s kids showing kids how to cook… lots of videos of recipes on there.

Monday, April 4, 2011

C’est Fini!

The yard work is finished!!! :-) Hard to believe we went from this. . .

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to this. . . . in less than a week!

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Cheryl and I ended up not doing the craft fair after all (she hadn’t heard from the organizers, so she’s either going to get a refund or do the fair in May) so I got to play in the garden all weekend with Jason. As you can see we wasted no time in getting the plants in that we had bought . . .

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Lots of pepper plants! Don’t ask me why but Jason wanted a huge variety – we have jalapeno, cayenne, habenaro, banana pepper, golden bell peppers, red bell peppers, and I’m sure a few others too. He bought about 12 total at Lowes this weekend. I bought two more tomato plants, one makes a very good tomato paste apparently!

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So here’s me posing at the first bed we planted. The top (where I’m standing has peppers and tomato plants in it. And at the bottom where the grid is we’ve put herbs in and planted some seeds for green beans, beets and zucchini. (I’ve added more herbs since we took this photo)

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Of course, now I have to ‘pretty’ things up out there too, so to start I made a new sign . . . .

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DSCF5110I want to make similar signs for the veggies like I did the first year we did the garden. They looked like this . . .

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Cute huh? I need to buy better wood though, these didn’t last long in the wind and rain.

So, here’s to a great gardening year (raising a glass) for us all :-) I’ll be sure to keep you all posted on the progress in ours.

Linking to Tuesday Garden Party at An Oregon Cottage.