Pumpkins

Melanie is going on vacation so she won't be making any PW recipes for the next week or so. I said I would try a couple of recipes that I know she wouldn't want to make... but I've decided to skip this week, mainly because I am having issues with my sinuses and I can't taste or smell much! So for today I thought I would talk about 'Pumpkins'!

I was happy to see from your comments the other day that I am not the only one that is starting to wish for Fall. Stephanie said it best when she said "I don't want summer to be over, but I do want the heatwave to end". That's really how I feel too, it's not so much I want Fall to be here I just want the cooler weather that it (hopefully) brings with it.

Speaking of Fall, I knit an adorable pumpkin hat the other day and listed it at my Etsy store. I was happy to see that it sold very quickly and so I thought I would knit more, but then I got to thinking. . . what with it being a 'seasonal' item, I didn't really want to knit a lot and then be left with them all if they didn't sell. So I thought I might offer it as a 'custom order'. I wish I had a little guy (or gal) to model this for me, it is so cute :-)

To all you grandmas and Mommies out there, wouldn't you just love to see your little 'punkins' in a hat like this when you take them to the 'Pumpkin Patch this Fall? If you'd like me to knit one especially for your little one, just email me and I will get started on it straight away. Turn around time will be about 7-10 days before I can mail it out to you, but considering Autumn is quite a few weeks away yet it shouldn't cause any problems.

The hat can be knit in the following sizes: Newborn, 0-6mths, 6-12mths, 1-2yrs, 2yrs and up.
I am also hoping to knit a pair of matching booties this week for younger babies. I will list them at my Etsy store too but will also take custom orders on those if you would like them. There is one hat listed in my store right now... you can see all the details HERE. If you would like a custom order just send me an email to denise 'at' deniseschulz 'dot' com (I'm not sure how to make an email link on here - don't forget to replace the 'at' with @ and the 'dot' with .) or you can contact me through my Etsy store too.

Keeping with the pumpkin theme - do you want to see something really funny? You have my permission to laugh. . . .

This is a very pregnant me back in October 2000! My friend Julie gave me this idea when she showed me pictures of her belly when she was pregnant (she gave birth to her baby in Sept 2000), her hubby had painted a yellow smiley face on her 'bump'!

Jason painted a pumpkin on mine!!!

I thought it would be cute to buy some pumpkins and sit out in the 'pumpkin patch' with them. So yes, that is my actual tummy painted like a jack-o-lantern when I was about 8 1/2 months pregnant! I was 37!!!

The first picture is from my computer and for some reason is rather small (I may have just scanned it in because I don't think I was using a digital camera back then) so the next two larger photos I just snapped a picture of the original pictures today (using my digital camera) so they weren't as small. Ok, you can stop laughing now :-)

Linking to Outdoor Wednesday at A Southern Daydreamer

and Spotlight Yourself at Santa's Gift Shoppe

Sunday Musings . . . . July 11th

I haven't felt 100% this week after getting whatever Jason had last weekend... a head cold, or whatever it was! My head is still stuffed up, it feels more like a lot of pressure and I've now lost my sense of smell and taste again which always happens when I get too stuffed up. It's the worst part of any cold or allergies, drives me crazy when I eat something and can't taste it. I have an appointment on Thursday at the ENT to get more allergy drops (I take them daily instead of a weekly allergy shot), if I still can't taste by then I'm hoping he can give me the meds I usually get that clears everything up!

So because of how I was feeling, we didn't really do much this past week. Jason actually took the rest of the week off instead of returning to work on Thursday because he still felt pretty crappy too.

It was nice that we had some rain this week so it made staying home seem all the more cozy. I made play doh for Kristen. . . .

Here's a link to a video I found, I know there are lots of recipes out there using flour, water and salt, this is the one I used. I actually used half the recipe because Kristen had some already bought play doh that she was still using - but we actually like the homemade stuff best. It's much easier to roll out and practice 'rolling out cookies' etc.

I also made some 'no flour' peanut butter cookies because I saw them on someone's blog - now I can't remember who's blog! It's simply a cup of sugar a cup of peanut butter, 1 egg and a tsp of vanilla all mixed together. . . . fun and quick, tasty too!


And lastly (is that a word?) I made some of my favorite butternut squash soup from the two butternut squashes I showed you in my previous post. . . .

sad to say, I can't taste this much but I'll be eating it all week for lunch :-) Jason doesn't care for it and Kristen would rather not eat it (although she used to love it when I first made it last year!), so it's ALL for me! The recipe is from Paula Deen, she calls it Creamy Squash Soup, you can get the recipe on Foodnetwork HERE. It's so simple to make.

So, that was our week, not too exciting, but fun and relaxing, just the way I like it. This week I have a few appointments to go to, the best one is tomorrow to the hairdressers, and if you're lucky I might share photos next week!! Have a great Monday and thanks for stopping by.

More garden stuff.....

I hope I don't bore you with yet another garden post, but it seems a while since I posted some pictures, and well to be honest, there's not much else going on around here to post about.

I got whatever Jason had last weekend and ended up with a sore throat and stuffy head this week, so I haven't been up to much at all. I have gotten out of the weekly habit of posting to my garden blog.... it hasn't helped that Jason has lost interest in it and the weather is just so hot most days we can't stand to go out there and tend to it. Things are growing like crazy, including the grass and weeds all over the paths!

Here's a picture I took from the upstairs game room. . . .

Things are still growing out there but a lot of plants don't seem to look that healthy (which is why Jason seems to lose interest, he just doesn't know why they aren't thriving in a 'healthy' kinda way - we're assuming it still has a lot to do with the bugs and beetles) Look at the pumpkin patch for instance, it's growing like crazy. . .

You can hardly see beneath all those huge leaves but when I went looking I found these. . . .

These are the 'Big Max' Jack O Lanterns that I planted a few weeks ago that were getting eaten by the beetles and I thought they wouldn't survive.

This is how they looked about 6 weeks ago!

The cucumbers finally made it too.... I kept planting seed after seed after seed and they would be eaten by the beetles as soon as they got new leaves, but eventually they got bigger . . .

I've had 3 big cucumbers off these plants so far and there's a ton of smaller ones on there.

This is what I've picked this week, you can see the cucumber, I've got two lovely butternut squash, peaches from the tree, and apple and a pear which I don't think are quite ripe but I wanted to see if they were.

My lovely basil finally started growing too.... I'm gonna buy some pine nuts next time I'm at the store and make some pesto this week (there's only me eats it but I can freeze it in small batches and have it with pasta now and then - I love pesto :-)

Don't the apples look lovely, I think they still have a few weeks before they are edible, the one we picked and tried was a bit hard and dry tasting? But they're a really nice size, compared to last year when we only got one and it fell off before it got to a decent size!

There's lots of other stuff still growing out there, tomatoes, peppers, zuchini but as I said some of them don't look very healthy. I can't seem to get nice bell peppers, they always seem to feel so hard and never ripen, then they just start to rot? It's weird.

Well anyway, that's what's going on out back.... not much going on inside. Jason and I have both felt pretty tired this week with this 'cold' we got. We'll no doubt just be resting again today, and staying indoors because it's hot and humid out.

Hope you have a lovely Saturday. . . . thanks for stopping by :-)

Outdoor Wednesday.... and Wishful Thinking!

A few months ago I started saving what I like to call ' inspiration pictures' from the web as and when I came across them. I keep them in a folder on my computer right now but it is my intention to make a binder for 'Home Inspiration' projects inside and outside the home. I only have these 3 photos of outdoor spaces right now but I thought I'd show them to you and link up to Outdoor Wednesday again because. . . . .well to be honest because I have absolutely nothing else to post about right now!

If I had to chose, I really don't know which one of these 3 pictures I like best. I love them all - I guess that's why you make up your own folder, each picture has a little of something you like, and you start to form a picture in your own mind of exactly what you would want in your outdoor space.

I'd be more than happy if someone would come along and tell me they could replicate the exact same thing in the picture in my own back yard, I wouldn't change a thing ;-) Ahhhhhhh, if only!

In all honesty, this photo above is more realistic to me than the other two - more achievable in my own back yard (with the budget I would have) if I ever got off my butt and tried to do something like this. But it's waaaaaay too hot now here in Texas to try and do anything, it's no fun being outside at all, not to me anyway. Sad as it sounds I'm ready for Summer to be over.

I'm off to check out the other wonderful participants of Susan's Outdoor Wednesday. Don't forget to check them out too.

PW's Pizza Dough

This week Melanie picked Pizza to try. The recipe is actually for the pizza dough then PW has a couple of different toppings she does, one is tomato and pesto and the other is leek and potato with bacon. I'd love to try both of these but no one else in the house would eat them.....so I opted to just try the pizza dough and do our usual cheese and pepperoni topping for Jason and Kristen.

The recipe itself seemed pretty easy, add 4 cups of flour to your mixing bowl and a tsp salt,

drizzle in 1/3 cup of olive oil,

then add the yeast and water til it forms a dough

put it in a bowl and set aside in a warm place for 1 to 2 hours

you then simply spread the dough out on a cooking sheet that has a little olive oil on it

It's supposed to look pretty rustic and have lots of bumps in it from your fingers, this is the best I could do!

ready for the oven.

here it is out of the oven after just 10 minutes. I used ready grated mozzarella cheese but it actually looks like cheddar?

Ready to serve!

Verdict: I was happy how the dough turned out, no mishaps, it seemed the perfect consistency. Fresh out of the oven it, I have to say it was pretty yummy. Not much taste to the dough but I could say that about most pizzas to be honest (I can take it or leave it). I would make this again, it's easy to put together and so long as you have packets of dry yeast in you will usually have everything you need already in the pantry. Kristen and Jason gave it two thumbs up.

In hindsight after reading Melanie's verdict I am more than willing to give Smitten Kitchen recipe a try too ;-) Check out Mel's blog and see what she thought.

Sunday Musings . . . . July 4th

First of all Happy 4th July to everyone, I hope you all have a wonderful, safe and fun day! The picture above was taken on Kristen's very first Independence Day, back in 2001 - I was 37!!!

Of course Kristen has changed dramatically in the past 9 years.... but have I? I'd like to think not, here I am this week with my new grill, and look I even have the same hair style, ha ha :-) Hard to believe I'll be 47 this year!

So, what have we been up to this week, and what have we got planned for today? I can answer both of those questions with "not much!". We had a lot of rain this week and a thunderstorm on Tuesday night. The rain that came after that was from Hurricane Alex. I didn't mind at all, it dropped our temps to the high 70's and gave us some much needed rain. I liked the overcast skies too. It did mean we didn't get any pool time this week, so Kristen and I have had some quiet days. Jason was off one day this week, I think it was Wednesday! We went out to Chinese Buffet for lunch then went and bought a new grill. I do all the grilling around here so it feels more like a new toy for me :-)

And the reason we bought a new grill was because we sold our Nexus One phones! You know, those fancy new phones we bought about 6mths ago? We haven't used them much at all since we got them, I can honestly say I hadn't called anyone on it in about the past 4 mths. I really don't need it to surf the net or check Facebook, I can do all that from my computer at home, and lets face it, I'm usually at home most days. We checked on Ebay and the phones were selling for a really high price. We bought ours for over $500 each and I'm happy to say we have sold both of them for about $400 each. We will just use the old phones we had which are from Verizon and use the plan we had where you just pay as you go.

We have no plans today, poor Jason is sick :-( He was very stuffed up yesterday and I said it might very well be allergies. He wasn't sure if he was coming down with something because his throat was getting sore too. I've often had a sore throat caused by allergies too, so it's always hard to tell the difference. Today he's even worse, very congested, thick green mucus (sorry for TMI) chesty cough, he really feels (and sounds) miserable poor thing. I still say it could be allergies too. Hopefully he will make an appointment to go see the Dr. I'm betting he has a sinus infection. So it will be another quiet day just staying home for us. I will probably grill some dogs (on my new grill) for us all later. Right now I'm off to get another yummy cup of coffee and stay in my jammies just a little while longer.

Enjoy the day!

Old Posts!

Do you ever look at your old blog posts to see what you were doing a year ago to the day? Or even two years ago ? I do that sometimes - I did that today. It's funny, what I wrote on July 1st 2009 was something I could have written today and it would still be true... for instance, this is some of what I wrote

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.

Well we had overcast skies today too, we went to piano today too (but at 11.00am not 9.30am) and we called in to Target on the way home to get a few groceries! See what I mean :-) We did just about the exact same thing last year, as we did today.

So, that got me thinking..... what was I doing on July 1st 2008? I checked my old blog posts and ha, I was actually getting my Lasik eye surgery on this day two years ago! I didn't post much that day because I was having the surgery done but I posted the next day to say thank you for all the kind comments and well wishes. You can read it HERE if you like.

On both of these days I didn't add a picture to my post, so I thought I'd leave you with one from last year just a few days later.... 4th July to be exact :-)

So, I have to ask - "what were you doing a year ago today?"