Passing the time

Rainy. Dieting. Saving Money. Sounds like the combo for a fun day, huh?? Yeah, no. Not really. Especially with two three boys to constantly entertain. I knew I had to figure out something. Football would help entertain one but we still needed some food to munch on and I wanted to be able to partake in some of it. So.....Fruit....and chocolate, it is!

I had a lot of fun making these. I took some bananas and split them into thirds. Dipped them into some melted dark chocolate. Sprinkled some sprinkles on them for the whole "kid" effect and stuck them in the freezer for a few hours.

In the mean time, I also took some strawberries and dipped them in some fat free Greek vanilla yogurt and stuck them in the freezer too.

Fast forward the clock a few hours and it's time to taste test!!!
I'll be honest. Not to wild about the strawberries. I really thought I'd like them but something about the smell of the Greek yogurt turned me off. The boys wouldn't even try them.
The bananas on the other hand. YUMMY!!! K tried them and him being the non sweet fan that he is, he took one bite and threw his away. I loved them though and have no problem continuing to eat them.

E? Well E never really got to try them. We couldn't pull him away from the Valentine Day candy long enough to care about anything that had to do with a banana.

"The only time you should eat diet food is while you're waiting on the steak to cook"~Julia Child

Eat, Drink, and Be Scary!

I had a great little Halloween Feast with the family last night. It wasn't planned and at about 3:00 I decided to throw something together really quickly. I had some Halloween decorations that we bought 50% off about 3 years ago and have never used. While the boys were outside playing I grabbed them from the attic and got to work. On the menu was still what I had originally planned for dinner we just stepped it up a notch by giving it all a new name.
Menu:

• Shredded Frankenbrains aka Shredded beer BBQ chicken in the crock pot
• Maggots aka rice
• Smashed liver & onions aka squash and onions
• Grubs aka greenbeans

I went out and cut some fresh mums from our 4 year old mum outside. I didn't realize it until later that I also brought in a little visitor with them.

I grabbed the two pumpkins that K brought home from his field trips to the pumpkin patch and just to add a little spunk I cut out a bat and used some of my jewelry wire to make the bat hover.

The end result certainly wasn't anything spectacular but it brought smiles to the boys faces for sure!

Eat, Drink, and Be Scary! ~Author Unknown

What's up Doc!?

Does anyone know how excited I am about the carrots we pulled up in the garden today....? Nope, probably not! But yes, I am sooooooo excited! We have tried to grow carrots time and time again and I don't know if it's our lack of patience or what but we have never been successful. This year we planted the seeds, watched them grow, but overall tried to forget about them.....And Voila!

This will feed us salads, stews, and soups, oh my....

Let The Feast Begin!!

I was reading another blog, as I often do, and I saw where this very creative momma was throwing her kids a back to school feast. I thought the idea was brilliant! Here it is K's first year in "real" school which means it's a perfect time to start a new tradition.
I immediately set the plan into action. Luckily I wasn't too busy at work and spent my lunch hours crafting crowns, shopping for goblets, and coming up with the menu.
I don't consider myself to be too creative and pondered what on earth to put on these crowns. I finally came up with the idea of using the meaning of their names. K's stands for ball of fire (which really couldn't be further from the truth), and E's means outdoorsy or river settlement. That was a tough one.

I also made the center piece using matching flowers that went so well with the goblets and plates.

and for K's little keepsake token I ordered the most beautiful stained glass star from a very talented couple. Not only was the star beautiful but it was so carefully wrapped. It was just perfect!! I'm so worried they will stop making these beautiful stars before all the years of school are up. I'm tempted to by several now, while I can. :)

The food was wonderful. We had a big taco bar, chips, dip, ice cream, and the most delicious cupcakes. Once dark fell, we continued the feast by playing with our glow in the dark King's sword.

Fun times were had by all. I can't wait to do it even bigger and better next year!

Makin' Jelly

It's been a pretty cool day.....We were sitting at Nanna's house with Uncie Tye and Aunt Jeni, who we hadn't seen in a while...I was looking through a canning book and stumbled across a recipe for some Jalapeno Pepper Jelly. I'm not sure if you've ever tried that jelly but it is SO GOOD! As soon as I saw it I decided that this would be my challenge for the day. We have plenty of homegrown Jalapenos and we have no clue what to do with all of them. I've never made jelly and of course I haven't canned the first thing but I figured it couldn't be that hard....Right!?

Daddy & K picking some peppers, potatoes, and zucchini.

Today's photo challenge for June 12th was "Sun Flare".....Perfect!

Preparing the peppers.....Maybe I should have worn gloves. My fingers still burn!

Cooking the "jelly." I truly had no clue what I was doing. Looks pretty though, right!?

WOW, that's a lot of sugar!!

Stirring, stirring, stirring....the whole mix.

Jars are loaded with the jelly. Now it's time to boil them.

What a mess!! This seriously took more pots and pan then I could have ever imagined!

The finished product. I'm so impressed, proud, excited...can I just go on and on!?!?
One Jar for Nanna who helped supply the jars, lids, and the pot.
One Jar for my Dad...Happy Father's Day!!
One Jar for our neighbors Mr. John and Mrs. Betty who we love.
and the rest for us....YUMMY! :)

Garden Journal-June 10

Our garden is growing leaps and bounds. It's amazing to look back at the pictures from May 1st and May 15th and see the growth from then and now.

Our goal was to have enough food to not just enjoy throughout the summer but to also be able to eat some homegrown organic veggies throughout the rest of the year. Above is a picture of our harvest from last night. So far we've been able to put away about 350 sugar snap pea pods, about 25 zucchini and 15 squash, we've eaten fresh from the garden several cucumbers and peppers (I can't wait to make some pickles), and just last night we picked about 55 pole beans. I was chopping them up to prepare them for blanching and freezing.

The sunflowers are just UNREAL! I remember a month ago thinking they were so tall when they had almost reached K's height. Now they have surpassed the whole family and our privacy fence. I can't wait until they actually bloom!

The watermelon are one of my favorite things to look at daily. They have taken over their area of the garden and looking for them is like playing hide & seek. We have about 8 on the vines. The one pictured above is our biggest. It's about the size of a small football already.

We have probably close to 40-50 tomatoes. Wowzers....And to think I don't even eat tomatoes. The rest of my family does though. I'm going to have to get with my friend over at Mallard Cove Mommy to find out the best way to can them.

The rest of the garden is doing just as well. Here is a small peek of some bell peppers, eggplant, and squash. We have little baby okra on our okra plants as well.

Before I left the garden for the morning I also had to take a picture of our little visitor we had last night. I  must say that I am quite honored to have his visit considering it'll be another 13 years before we are graced with his presence again. :)

Strawberry!?!?

This is a farm not even two miles from our house....I love it. I drive past it all the time.
This past weekend we went there to get fresh milk from the dairy farm....Fresh eggs from the chicken farm....
and fresh strawberries....

.....from the strawberry patch. We came home with our car full of fresh treasures!!

Garden On My Mind

How does the song go? Georgia Garden on my mind?? I like my words better. :) It seems with spring coming a bit early in our area that gardening is all that I'm thinking about. We've started our seeds in the mini greenhouse. We've planted the sweet peas outside and we're even trying a little experiment and planted a few potatoes to see what they do this time of year.
We've got big plans for our garden and backyard this year. We normally work out of 3 raised beds but we've decided to till up the whole backside of our backyard along the fence and make the garden even bigger. Our hope is to grow enough veggies throughout the growing season and maybe...just maybe we can continue to eat on them in the winter months. And...if you really want to dig deep into our dreams you'll find that we're hoping to be able to save enough money throughout the summer months that maybe come winter we can purchase a larger outdoor greenhouse. This little mini indoor one we have just isn't cutting it.
With all this being said-of course my macro photos for Friday go hand and hand with this post.
I'm posting this one for it's sheer beauty. I love these colors together and having these fresh flowers in the house have given the living room a wonderful aroma.

And this marco picture is of one of our our sweet baby tomato plants. I love it's prickly little baby hair. I also love watching it grow knowing that in a few short months it will provide us with more tomatoes then we probably know what to do with.