Flannel.

greenweddingshoes.com

I love the feel of these photos. Love the flannel. I can totally see Dan and I fitting right into a photo shoot like this. 

Look at what I also discovered. Not sure why it is so amazing, but I can see a lot of good use of this. This website will break down any photo's (with a URL) color palette. Dan should love this. Amazing.

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Outdoors. Beautiful.

Look at all this beautiful outdoor photography. Jealous.

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Harvest Monday

The week of tiny tomatoes and green beans. 

I wish I lived in the south, just for a perfectly large gardening harvest. 

Oh well.

 Each harvest was so so small, but we are now daily getting a couple ripe cherry tomatoes and beans, I can't wait until more are ready!

Sweetheart grape, Oregon cherry, Blue lake bush beans and a few green tomatoes that fell off by accident.

Finally, 2 larger Early Girl tomatoes are ready! I pulled them off while they were still blushing so they could ripen in my windowsill. I haven't tried them yet, but I'm excited. A few more will be ready this week! Also, another zucchini (sigh...). I've got to blanch, freeze, and store all of them today!

Every summer we always get into making homemade pizza. This BBQ chicken garden pizza was super! We piled on BBQ chicken, fresh tomatoes, fresh basil, fresh zucchini, fresh onions, and a ton of mozzarella and Parmesan! I love when I can make dinner with fresh food from our garden! We've made another since this one. I also plan to bring some pizza dough camping so we can make an easy pizza while at the San Juan's.

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Tote Bag

This week has been a week of mini projects. Dan and I both got on a sewing kick (yes, my husband sews...probably better than myself).

I'm pretty proud that I quickly found this fabric and I wasn't too indecisive with my decision to make this cute tote bag. It did take me about 5 hrs, which is far longer than it should have. But I haven't sewn since I made these curtains in February. Most of that time was spent yelling at my sewing machine or trying to figure out how to sew the lining/strap in. I used a tutorial/pattern from a fun sewing website called thimble. The pocket was also super easy and based off of this.

I love the silky teal blue liner. 

I plan to make another small version of the bag (it's actually quite big!) and move my pocket up higher (it is a little low for my liking). I'm hoping it will only take 2-3 hrs next time.

The total cost was probably ~$10-$12.

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Nothing beats BEETS...

This week I finally admitted that my beets just weren't growing anymore. I'm blaming it on the weather. I pulled them all up (along with a few spare carrots) and made some room for my Top Keeper Onion and Marble Red Onion seeds. I've been babying these since and hoping they will overwinter properly. Overwintering is completely new to me. As is most of this gardening stuff.

Since most of the beets hadn't formed significant roots, I gathered and washed all the beet greens. Maybe I'm like a grandma, but I love the taste of beet greens!

Being a family of two and myself the main consumer of beet greens, I decided to blanch them (also new to me, and incredibly easy!) to allow for better and longer storage.

 This will allow the greens to stay fresh longer in the freezer and we can use them in stir-frys. I do prefer beet greens in salads...but what can I do?

With the teeny tiny roots that had formed these past few months, I made a delicious little pot of goodness (see top photo) mixed with carrots and brown sugar. It was delicious, but I wish I had bigger beets!

Hoping my fall beets are more successful....

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Harvest Monday

Here are the harvests after being gone at YW camp for 5 days.

Sadly, this is the extent of my onion harvests. Small lil things...but I won't complain.

Cured onions, a couple baby carrots, lots of Early cherry tomatoes, a couple Oregon cherry and a Sweetheart grape. 

The tomatoes are delicious, I've picked a few more since and I've eaten most of them already...I wish they would all ripen already! It's tough waiting for them! Sadly, I also came home to see that some of my Marzano romas had BER (blossom end rot). I've removed about 10 tomatoes! I'm pretty sad, but hoping the rest will come in nicely. I think they got too much water while I was gone and must also be lacking Ca.

 The zucchini are giants! Ooops! What do with them now??

Today, I spent most of the day planting for fall harvests and pulling up all of the beets that just did not grow. I really don't know why? I think they were much too crowded. My next post will be about how I used the mini beets and the greens.

 In their spot, I planted Top Keeper onions, Guardsman salad onions and Red Marble onions. Most of these should overwinter (except the guardsman).

 I also pulled a few early petite carrots that were in the way.

Yesterday I ate 1 of the bush green beans with a little tomato/onion relish. Delicious! I need to go pick a few more beans! I'm definitely planting much more next year!

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Cilantro + Coriander

Aren't these little white flowers on my cilantro precious? 

This is seriously some of the best cilantro I've ever had. While we were gone for 3 weeks most of it had shot up and tried to flower before we could eat it. But I've been taking tiny bunches of leaves anyways and it's so fresh!

I am letting some of it flower and seed (should be about 3 weeks from now) so I will have coriander seeds. Currently, I don't really cook with coriander and I'm  not sure why. Apparently it's great in curries and soups, which are both things I love. I also just learned that you can freeze cilantro. Who knew? 

I can't wait to have seeds to plant more for next year. 

I'm hoping the seeds I planted this week will come up in time for a fall harvest.

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