While you're waiting. . . .

The game room is looking such a mess right now it's not worth taking pictures. Not until we move things around again at the weekend. So while you're waiting for those pics (and because I promised pictures in my next post) I thought you might like some 'Farm' news. Let's be honest, it's been a while since I last posted about it, June 27th to be exact!

THIS. . . is the pumpkin patch:

Thriving, isn't it? :-) There's probably a half dozen or more plants in this bed. Jason has trained most of them to go up the trellis. The flowers you see are mainly 'male' flowers. The female flower will have a 'bulb' at it's base. So far we've only seen 2. . . this is one of them:

Just last week this little guy was still pretty green. He turned orange very quickly but doesn't seem to be growing as fast. It's one of the Jack-o-Lantern ones (not the little sugar pumpkins) so we are hoping he gets much bigger.

The other pumpkin is hanging on the trellis (trying to disguise himself as a melon)!


But he can't fool us. . . THIS is a watermelon (hanging on a trellis)

back to the pumpkin patch. . . a couple of different angle shots:

The picture above is taken from the other side of the trellis.

And now back to the watermelon patch!

and below, 2 more watermelons further down on  the same trellis. Kristen is thrilled with these little guys, watermelon is her favorite fruit!


Hope you enjoyed your little walk through the 'patches' this morning. It's Friday and we have no plans :-)  Just a nice relaxing day doing whatever we want. 

just a quick one...

still no pics today (sorry Nenna). We may actually be rearranging the rearrangement in the game room this weekend! We're not totally happy with it. Everything still looks a mess too, but I'll take a picture later then if we change it all around again I'll be able to show you the final result too.

I'm off to the ENT today. It's my 6 week check up since my last appointment when I had the last of the 'packing' removed. Everything is going well, I am not stuffy at all, get no headaches and amazingly enough, I don't even have to take my Advair for asthma (something I was having to do on a daily basis for years!)

After my appointment Kristen and I will go over to Ikea. We will be looking for a couple of bean bag chairs for her. Because of the way we have the game room now, the controls to the PS2 don't reach the sofa so she has to sit on the floor closer to the tv to play it. I thought bean bag chairs would be fun for her and a friend to sit on while they play. The other games like the Wii and Xbox have wireless controllers, so they are ok. If we move the game room around yet again I still think we'll have this issue because our aim is to move the sofa further away from the tv so Jason can use the Wii Active. I also want to look at some curtains in there and a new rug for the room. I'm hoping it's not too busy. It gets crazy at the weekends so I never go then.

OK, this is just a small post. I promise the next one I write will have pictures!

The less you do....

. . . the less you feel like doing! At least that's how I feel. Yesterday we didn't do anything all day. I should have gone out to get some essentials at the store, like milk and dog food, but I just couldn't motivate myself! It was overcast yesterday but still warm and sticky. It said thunder was forecast but we never got any. Today it will be 'partly cloudy' and 98! I know this sounds crazy but I find myself thinking of Fall already and much cooler weather! That usually happens with me after a few weeks of intense heat like high 90's and triple digits. I love the start of each new season, but I'm always ready to move on to the next one.

Today Kristen has a piano lesson to go to at 10.30am, so we will be leaving here in about an hour. I would have liked to pop out shopping afterward (I wanted to take a trip to Ikea) but we have to come straight back home to wait in for the a/c guy - yet again! After they replaced the cracked drip pan in the attic last week I still noticed water dripping from the overflow a few days later. The guy told me I should NEVER see water coming from there, so I've called them out again to go take a look and see if we still have a problem.

We've been rearranging our game room! Jason bought the new Wii Active and needed more room to play it. I will take pictures soon (once we get it all back together the way I want it) and let you see the difference. That is the reason I wanted to go to Ikea, I need to get a new rug and curtains, and some picture frames for the walls. I never did get all that done when we finished painting the room and putting the 'Billy Bookshelves' in. He has yet to try out the game!

So that's all that's happening here for now. Have a great day!

A Fabulous Fourth

We all had a wonderful time on Saturday over at our neighbors. We didn't manage to get the water slide. Cheryl told me that she was only on a waiting list for one and the company didn't call so we knew they wouldn't be bringing it. We had a slip n slide for the kids instead and water balloons. They still had a fun time..... and the best part - we saved $270! ;-)

Here's a few pics as promised.... first, my 'flag cake'. This was really easy to make, just pound cake, jello and fruit, topped with cool whip and then strawberries and blueberries on top.

We did a 'hot dog station' and made cards to place on the table letting everyone know how to assemble certain dogs. There was the Chili Cheese Dog, the Steam Whistle Dog (cheese, bacon and pickle relish), the Texas Dog (bbq sauce and coleslaw) and a Nacho Dog (cheese sauce, onions and crushed chips on top).

These are the flowers I took to our 'hosts' Cheryl & Steve...

Me in my matching 'dessert' t-shirt. . .

me and Cheryl. . .

Kristen and Emily. . .

I tried taking a few pics of the fireworks we had, and this was one of the better ones. . . .


I hope you all had as wonderful a day as we did.

Getting ready to celebrate....

I didn't make more pesto yesterday, the day just slipped away (you know how that goes). I did get to the gym again though, which I'm happy about. That's something I think I've been forgetting to mention. Since my surgery and my sister's visit, it was over 7 weeks since I'd been there! Last week I started back with a vengeance. I went 4 days in a row, a few of those times was with my neighbor Cheryl. Now that school is out though it's harder for me to get to the gym in the mornings. I could take Kristen with me and put her in the child care, but it's often very busy and has been known to even have a waiting list! What I usually do now is wait til Jason comes home from work, and go at the weekends too. So far it's working this way for me.

So for the 4th of July we are going next door to our neighbors. She is having some other friends and neighbors over and we've hired an inflatable water slide :-) The temps are due to be over 100 again, so it should help to keep the kids cool while they play out in the back yard. I told Cheryl I would take hotdogs and the 'fixins' for chili cheese dogs. I think she was going to make tacos? but then she decided it would be better to just go 'All American' and do dogs and burgers. We thought it might be fun to do a hot dog station where you can do different fixins. I might try to make some signs that tell the name of the hotdog and how to 'fix it'. For instance Kraftfoods.com has a recipe for 'Steamwhistle Hotdog', it even shows you how to fix it in a video (I love their website). Also from their site, I'm going to try and make this. . . .

It's called a 'Flag Cake', but it's not actually a cake, I'd say it's more like a trifle because it has the jello mixed with the pound cake and fruit, then just the cool whip on top with the fruit to resemble the flag. What's funny is I was looking for a t-shirt in Target yesterday, something I could wear on the 4th and I found one with this exact pattern on! Yes, it had strawberries and blueberries on it in the shape of the flag. I hope to take lots of pics tomorrow to share with you all after the weekend.

I'm taking Kristen to play with a couple of her school friends at their community pool this morning, then I'll be home making potato salad and this cake ready for tomorrow.

*******Have a happy and safe 4th July*******

From my garden....

I took these pictures a few weeks ago and just realized I never shared them on here! This was back at the beginning of June. My basil as you can see was doing well so I decided to make my own pesto :-)

The recipe called for basil (of course) and a little Italian flat leaf parsley....

I had some parsley in my herb garden too, but the plant was still small, I just say managed to get the amount needed... then you add pine nuts....

actually you have to toast the pine nuts first, they have a much nicer taste that way too....


blend all together with olive oil until you get this.....


then boil the pasta of your choice and mix together.... and 'Hey Pesto'! (ha ha, get it)....

you have dinner :-) My basil is going wild again so I think I will make this again today (need to buy more pine nuts) and have it on top of grilled chicken (I'm cutting the carbs out this week, til I lose those 10lbs remember!) I'll try to post the recipe later, it's in a magazine I have and I can't remember which one right now! I need to go look for it.

Hump Day

Susan asked about the recipe for the cheese-stuffed chili peppers. We got it from allrecipes.com.

Here is the LINK to that page. If it doesn't work just visit Allrecipes.com and search for cheese-stuffed jalapenos. The recipe is for 16, but you can half that amount if you need to. The site allows you to change the amount of servings and automatically recalculates the recipe for you.

I woke up this morning to overcast skies. The high will only be 94 today and there's hope of rain and a possible thunder storm. Bring it on I say..... I'd love a little cooler weather for a day or so right now.

Kristen and I will be off to piano lesson at 9.30am this morning. Her lesson is at 10am. It's already 8.41am as I type this! I get so used to lazy mornings where we just potter around in our pj's til well after 10am that I'm not liking this 'having to get ready and get out' feeling! I'll pop in to the store on the way home, we need some coffee, dog food and coffee creamer. That's all I'm buying too, I have plenty of groceries in the cupboard so I need to use them up first before I go buy more.

That's about all we have on the agenda today. Once we're back home we can enjoy 'pottering around' again. No doubt Connor will come over to play. I don't know what Kristen will do after Sunday.... Connor leaves then with his brother to go stay with his Dad in Atlanta for 3 weeks! :-o

Have a great day everyone.