Zucchini

Our garden in doing great this year. Matt made a raised bed for us and there's such a difference between the pots and the raised bed. My pots get dried out so quickly in the heat of the summer even if I water the pots twice a day. So, next year I'm hoping Matt will put up another raised bed! (Hint) I'll have to post a picture of our huge tomato and zucchini plants that I let get out of control. Next year I'll plan a little better.


We've gotten several zucchinis out of the garden so far and just a few grape tomatoes which Lucas gobbles up as soon as they are picked. So, I was inspired and made stuffed zucchini. They turned out great. The boys didn't appreciate it but Matt and I did have a yummy lunch out of our garden.

Homemade curlers

Since Audrey has started school I've been doing her hair.

At first, it was just a few quick ideas to keep her long hair out of her face. Now, it's a daily ritual of looking online for a hairstyle. Or she wakes up saying "I want an inside-out french braid." We've have found a few favorite "hair blogs" one of which is princesshairstyles.com - super awesome! My biggest problem has been curls. Audrey loooooves curls. But I don't have a curling iron and, even if I did, I'm not sure I would take something that hot to a wiggly girl's head. Most of you have seen my wacky Curlformers. They give great curls but they are difficult to sleep in and Audrey's flat hair really needs that overnight time to get a curl to set. In my quest to find the perfect curlers that will stay in her hair all night and are easy to sleep in I have bought three different kinds of curlers and tried rag rolling. Purchased curlers fall out and rag rolling looks like bozo. So, I made my own. Here are our directions. Hopefully the pictures will fix any confusion.

First, we picked out fleece

because it's soft and cozy. Then, we cut a rectangle 5 1/2 inches by 4 inches. Cut another rectangle 5 1/2 by 2 inches.

Roll up the smaller rectangle and place it on the larger piece. Make sure you leave a little room at the bottom.

Roll the little roll of fleece into the big like a

tortilla with one side open. Squeeze a line of no-sew glue on the open edge and finish rolling. Squeeze glue on both ends and close shut.

After the glue has dried sew a button (or hook and eye - that's all we had!) onto the ends so that they can clip shut. Roll wet hair in curlers and Voila!

Here is the hair in the morning:

Depending on the size of the original rectangles you can make bigger or smaller curlers.

A few tips: Make sure your buttons pull tight before you completely sew them on.

If you use cotton you need batting or some other filler and the filling will need to be sewn closed. That's another reason I like fleece - it doesn't float around in the curler.

New Recipes

This summer, I fell into a bit of a dinner slump. A heat index of 110 degrees added to the task of figuring out how to juggle 2 kids left me with absolutely zero motivation to cook. I found myself recycling the same, comfortable recipes which eventually became quite boring to cook (and eat)!! A few weeks ago, I decided to make myself try at least one new recipe each week. I have a few cookbooks that I like, but perusing foodie blogs is much more fun. I love all of the pictures and the readers comments on how they tweaked the recipe a little to make it even better. I have ended up finding some really great recipes to add to my list of old standbys!

There are 2 sites that I am frequenting the most right now. My Kitchen Cafe is my favorite. I could spend the rest of the year making Melanie's recipes - they are quick, easy, and tasty! Here is a list of a few of the things I have recently made. I would recommend them all!

Baked Pasta with Chicken Sausage
Cornbread
Foil Packet Chicken with Carrots and Snow Peas
Classic Oatmeal and Chocolate Chip Cookies
Lemon Sugar Crusted Blueberry Muffins
Italian Chicken Pastina
Best Baked Manicotti

Sugar and Spice is another favorite. Celeste definitely has some more labor intensive recipes that I just don't have time to do right now, but I still like to look at them and dream of a day when I will eventually have more time to cook! For now, I make her easier recipes and they are still delicious!!

Slashed Chicken with Herbed Butter
Chicken with Cranberry Sauce
Easy Spinach and Ricotta Tortelloni with Meat Sauce
Tuscan Pasta with Basil Cream

I also really like Allrecipes.com when I know what I want to make but need a recipe for it. They have a ton of reader reviews, so I know that a dish rated 5 stars will probably taste pretty good!

I'd love to know where you guys find good recipes at!

Pesto-licious

Marcia gave me some of her basil one weekend since her plants looked amazing. So, I picked my basil from our garden which isn't looking too great and made pesto! YUMMY! I eye ball a lot of these ingredients since the pesto recipe in very forgiving.

Pesto

About 4 to 6 cups basil

zest of 1/2 to 1 lemon

3 cloves garlic

2 Tbls olive oil

about 1/2 cup shredded Parmesian cheese

juice of 1/2 a lemon

chicken brother (I poured in the broth slowly until the pesto looked like a nice thick spread maybe 1 cup or so.)

NOTE: Traditional pesto has pine nuts and more olive oil but this recipe is a nice compromise to reduce the fat and omit the nuts for Connor.

Next I'm going to try creamy pesto with cream cheese!

Finally Strawberry Season!

I'm so excited it's finally strawberry season here. Or at least I was very excited at the beginning. I am beginning to get strawberry saturated. I feel like I've accomplished a lot this year in the strawberry department though. I froze 1 flat of strawberries (which I have done the last couple of years). I also made strawberry-oatmeal bread and muffins, which are always popular at our house, along with one strawberry pie. My new accomplishment was strawberry jam. A few years ago I made a small batch of strawberry jam, and I wasn't too pleased with how it turned out. This year I got my grandma's strawberry jam recipe from my Aunt Nancy, and it turned out really well. It is freezer jam, so it was relatively easy, and I made 24 jars of jam! I still have about half a flat of strawberries left, and I'm planning on trying out Kristen's strawberry bread recipe, and then freezing the rest.

Painting...

I've wasted a lot of time the last few days staring at my bedroom walls trying to figure out what colors to paint them... I moved into my new place last week, and for the first time ever I am allowed to paint my bedroom whatever colors I want... and I'm finding the decision a bit overwhelming. I came to the conclusion that I am simply not a color-coordinated person! I'm trying to reconcile all the random (and extremely colorful) junk that I own and refuse to get rid of to all of the new (and extremely colorful) stuff that I recently bought that

makes me really happy... and I just have to come to terms with the fact that it's not going to match perfectly like certain other bedrooms I have seen recently. And I think I'm okay with that. : )

Exhibits A and B: (notice the swirly lamp on the left of the second tier)

ALSO, I made a discovery last year that is a wonderful innovations for transient college students (or anyone who is lazy or just fears permenance). Wall Pops, are little vinyl wall paper shapes you can stick on your wall, and they actually look just like paint. The best part is that they peel right off without ripping off paint, so you can adjust them or remove them really easily. Needless to say, this also adds to my helpless jumble of color options... Ah well, I can justify it by reminding myself that I'm still in college. : )

BTW, I'm definitely painting one wall yellow. I love yellow. : )

Book List

Even though Bridget is not my first child, I have been managing to read while I nurse her most of the time lately. :) The way I work it in is that I get all the house stuff/school stuff done when Bridget is awake so that I can spend time with Andrew and Laura whenever she is napping. While she's sleeping we do the reading of longer books and jumping on the trampoline-basically all the things that she would have no patience for. I also try to include Andrew and Laura in the housework so they're getting attention while I'm doing that. Laura is a big fan of doing laundry these days. Then I feel like I can justify reading something of my own whenever I'm nursing Bridget. I will admit that nursing sessions have gotten a little longer since I have been doing this.
Anyway, here is my reading list for the summer:
Surprised by Joy by CS Lewis (I'm about 2/3 of the way done)
The Everlasting Man by GK Chesterton
The Autobiography of Benjamin Franklin
The History of the Calculus and Its Conceptual Development by Carl B. Boyer
Plus a couple of novels and a book I'm reading with a women's study group
We'll see what I actually get accomplished on my list.