homemade pesto

Whoa, what’s up with the comment hiatus people? Maybe I’ll take that as a cue to take a blogging break which might just happen next week. I swear I am getting more and more comments from strangers on posts that are 1-2 years old. Odd indeed. Anyways, I’ll forgive you since you are probably in the midst of summer madness which I can totally relate to. I am afraid that summer’s end will bring lots of tears for this mama. I’m enjoying my time with these kiddos even if I break up 2 dozen fights each day.

Back to my original post:

We have enjoyed lots of delicious food from our garden lately. I love when the kids get a little snack-y I can send them out to go pull a carrot. I devour our tomatoes nightly with fresh mozzarella and basil. Our basil though has been out of control, so to cut it back a bit I decided to make fresh pesto this week. I used this recipe from Food Network. It’s delicious and we enjoyed it just the other night. All I did was throw some pesto in a pyrex, move my chicken around in it and bake at 350 degrees until done. Even my non-chicken lover Gunnar couldn’t complain.

Garden News

Our little onions popped up above the ground and we can’t wait to use them. Here’s Greta holding them up just after picking.

If you can look through the chicken wire that successfully is keeping the cats away, you can see our radishes just out of the ground.

These roma tomatoes are a gift from our compost piles. Last year we must’ve thrown away some tomato seeds and they survived and decided to sprout up in one of the big planters. We aren’t complaining.

Another gift of the compost pile? These squash. Not sure when we ate squash, but apparently they are quite hardy and liked our garden and decided to make it home.

Our cherry tomatoes are amazing. Every day we get to pick tomatoes and more keep popping up everywhere.

And here’s out little harvest for the day. Green beans, carrots, onions, and tomatoes, both heirloom and cherry.

wordless wednesday- the lovely tomato harvest that was awaiting our return from vacation

My Garden Update

I don’t post often about the garden, but I assure you, it’s well cared for. I am currently having a battle with my neighbors cat over digging rights. Other than that, it’s doing really really well. I’ll take you on a little photo tour of what it looks like at the moment. I thought I had photographed the raised beds, but apparently it was in my dream. So here are all the plants other than in the gardening beds. Our one bed that was full of spinach is now totally different. The spinach flowered and I hope they were reseed themselves, but in the meantime the entire bed now is covered in plants that came from my compost soil. Seeds that were in the compost have turned into plants. The bed is covered in cucumbers, tomatoes, and some other yet to be determined plants. It’s amazing to see tomato plants flowering where I didn’t plant tomatoes. And I have never bought a cucumber seed/plant, but I have two blooming at the moment. I’ll have to take those photos soon to share.

Here’s a new Meyer Lemon Dwarf tree that I recently added to the backyard. The buds on it are amazing, and I cannot wait to enjoy the lemons in our nightly tea.

Remember my little tiny tomato plants? Well, they aren’t small anymore! This is a current photo of the tomatoes and I don’t think they have slowed down, we did lose one tomato plant to a virus of some kind, but thankfully it hasn’t affected the others. I’m going to have to put a wire up around the boys window to give it somewhere to grow. The lemon balm, geraniums and marigolds are doing phenomenally well at keeping aphids and other pests away. Haven’t seen a single one yet. Our purchase of lady bugs every few months have helped too.

The onions and chives are doing amazing. I can’t use all the chives we have and I cannot wait til my onions are ready for harvesting.

I’m quite proud of these scallions because they were planted from seeds.

I really really really wanted a succulent planter but all the fancy schmancy professional done ones were expensive so I tried my hand at planting it by myself. Success!

You want another angle of it right?

These baby carrots also were planted from seeds, I have yet to be a successful carrot gardener, so this may be a first.

And my pride and joy, the tomatoes. Here are some cherry tomatoes.

And an heirloom. Can. Not. Wait.

House Project- Outdoor Bistro Table

I have been searching for probably the last 9-12 months for an outdoor bistro table and chairs. It hasn’t been high on the priority list but I always keep my eyes open at flea markets, garage sales, on craigslist, etc. I really wanted something old that I could refinish or repaint. Finally I hit the Craigslist jackpot. And Aaron made a detour one Sunday night to Silverlake to pickup this sad state of a table for $30. The previous owners had attempted to paint it but never did the job quite right or even tried to finish it. Their loss was my gain.

The color yellow made me think that I would like to keep it that way as opposed to the white or black I had envisioned so I decided to give it a try. But a proper try. So I sanded it with some sand paper and then spray painted white primer on it. I used Rustoleum for the primer and the yellow spray paint as well. I wanted to make sure it would withstand rain and sun and outdoors so that I didn’t have to worry about rusting. So a full primer coat was needed. And a heavy coat of yellow spray paint after.

And here she is. Why do I always call my finished projects “she”? Just seems right. I love her.

I’m obsessed with the Tolix chairs that I’ve seen all over the place. But they are a pretty penny. Pretty? Yes. But expensivo? Yes. So I was so excited to score these lookalikes on Overstock, and when I purchased mine it was two for $75, so they raised their price a little. But still worth it in my opinion. I am still deciding what color I will paint them. I am worried about rust, so I’d like to sand, prime and spray paint them as well. I’m thinking a darker red to match the trim of the windows and doors in the backyard.

It may seem like I get a lot of house projects done, but I assure you. I don’t. I feel like my list of home projects grows faster than I can cross the accomplished ones off. For instance, Sawyer’s mattress is still sitting on the floor. Aaron is one day’s work away from completing it. But who has a day?! Surely not Aaron. Poor guy is in the midst of one of his busy weeks at work. They happen a few times of year. But they are never easy to get used to. This week he’s been working nightly til 10 or midnight. One night didn’t actually get home til 3:30 in the morning. And the one free night he had this week, I had to work since I was on parent duty the other nights. But we are almost there. Saturday at 2pm can’t come soon enough!

Maybe if I document my list of to dos on here it will motivate me to get to some of them done:

-complete the boys’ room. beds. wall decals.

-finish wiring the garden with chicken wire and wire for our tomato vines to make use of.

-change out one of Greta’s artwork frames with new schoolwork.

-finish loading the last 4 months of video onto the computer and transfer to disc to store in safe deposit box.

-catch up on my Blurb book which is MONTHS behind.

-sand and paint outdoor stools for bistro table.

-plant more potted plants/trees in backyard.

-work on vertical pallet planter that Aaron scored at work.

-keep searching for new dresser for the boys room, it’s been 6 months of searching and ebay bidding, still no luck in my price range.

-finish 3 tier art/craft tray for kids that I started but can’t finish til I find the 3rd tier.

house project- window boxes

This summer it will be 6 years since we moved back into our home, to a finished, remodeled, beautiful home. It’s hard to think that Sawyer was just one years old when we finished. And that is exactly how long it has taken to complete our window boxes.

Honestly, it was way down on the list of things to finish. First we had to actually furnish the house, which just this year has been completed. We slowly took our time with pieces and made sure we love everything that moved into each room. We have one more bed to complete in the boys room, but other than that, we are happy with everything on the inside. Then the backyard took precedence over those window boxes. I mean that’s where our kids were going to spend their time. And then my work studio took precedence 2 years ago, getting it ready for me to quit the spa and go out on my own. THEN, the garden has taken precedence as well. And planting isn’t necessarily the cheapest thing either. The planters themselves were a pretty penny. I checked online before I went to our local garden store just to make sure I knew what the price should be. Our shelf is deceivingly LARGE, like almost FIVE feet long type of large. I couldn’t put your regular skinny window box there. Instead I chose these beautiful wooden planters that were $74 a piece. The lavender was about $7 each plant, times 8. Plus soil, 3 large bags at $9 a piece. Grand total, you do the math.

So here we are, End of May 2011 and I am thrilled to say our window boxes have been completed.

Here’s an older photo of the front of our house, with those empty sad shelfs below our living room windows. They are just screaming for happy plants.

Here they are after.

I planted two different types of lavender and hopefully by the end of summer they will be a little more filled in. I know the photo below looks a little off center, but they are not, it’s just I was kind of standing to the side.

phone love

Not much time here, just popping in to say hello and wishing you all have a glorious weekend. Ours is full. Seriously, when isn’t it? Sigh. I wish just one weekend we had nothing planned. Oh well. I will leave you with a few iphone photos.

Had a date with the little bald bean this morning. He’s just getting too big. Sigh.

Saw this at dropoff yesterday, news to me.

Our garden lettuce and spinach haul just from yesterday alone.

A snapshot of Sawyer in chess club on Wednesday.

Annual Strawberry Picking Adventure

I love our annual tradition of visiting Tanaka Farms during strawberry season. The kids love it there and I cannot recommend it enough. To kick off spring break I organized for 35 of us to do the tour and strawberry picking last Monday. It was a cool day and not too hot at all. You can see last year’s visit here and the year before that here. My how our kids have grown! I keep meaning to get down there for watermelons in the summer, but I think we will save summer farm trips for Underwood. Here’s some snippets of this year’s trip. Auntie Rachel and Uncle Dave were in town this time and I think they secretly loved it, and my cousin Connor drove down for it too. It was perfect, everyone had a kid assigned to them and I could actually pick strawberries and eat them!

My kids chow down on the tractor tour. They gobble up everything, onions roots and all, bok choy, broccoli, carrots, snap peas. . .

They are so grown now that they don’t even sit by me on the tractor ride! They like to sit with their friends although Soso was kind enough to sit across from me.

If you’d like to plan a trip down to Irvine to Tanaka Farms, you can go during the week if you have a group of at least 10 children, and then they have discounted group rates. Also, you MUST stop by their little fresh produce stand and purchase their homemade ROASTED salsa, you will be thanking me. Seriously. The best salsa I have ever tasted. I was cooking for Monday night family dinner this evening, and a whole container was gone in 25 minutes. Next time I am buying several containers and stocking up.

Wordless Wednesday- Sprouting Seeds

Gardening with Peter

My friend Peter was so generous with his time and resources and came to Greta’s school to have a gardening lesson and get their window boxes planted. You never know what you will get with 3.5-5.5 year olds, but they were ecstatic. I was so mad I forgot my camera at home. So all I have are my iphone photos. But the school photographer was there this day and he documented it well so I can’t wait to see it in our yearbook, school blog, and video. As soon as he came in with the wheel barrow, Peter had everyone’s attention.

We started out talking with the kids about the three things every plant needs and they knew every one. Soil. Water. Sunlight. Then we had the kids guess what type of plants we were going to plant with them. We heard guesses anywhere from apples and pears, basil, lettuce, flowers, tomatoes, you name it. We broke the kids up into 2 groups, I took one, Peter took one. And we got to work. Then we swapped groups so everyone had a turn with the planting.

My group was in charge of making labeling sticks for the plants. We were planting 4 different types of mint. Chocolate Mint, Peppermint, Spearmint, and just plain Mint. The kids had a blast trying to distinguish one plant from the other and were great about their sticks matching the plants. I also checked out some books from the library and we searched through the books and talked about how often we should water the mint and then we talked all about Greta’s garden at home. Then we swapped and my group got to go garden with Peter. Here’s some iphone photos from the lesson.

And the finished window boxes outside the writing house. You can see all the labels(tongue depressors) sticking out of the planters.