daniellukeharris.com

If you haven't seen it lately, check out Dan's art website. He's updated it with quite a few more paintings.

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Plans

Even though summers are kind of crazy in terms of menu planning, I've actually been really pleased with how well preparing a menu has turned out for us! This month we've actually stayed on budget for groceries! This is the pattern that works for us: 1 big shopping trip early in the month, a trip to costco, and a small grocery trip for fresh items. If we can stick to that, we do well budget wise. 

Three weeks into school and I am amazing myself with how early I am coming home. I went home "early" 3:30-4pm every day last week except Friday (stayed until 5pm). I'm not taking any work home and I've been finding time to run with the XC team. I even made dinner most evenings last week! This is pure craziness, compared to where I was last year and especially Year 1. I love it.

So we have to hold out until the end of the week to make our budget, but here is what's on the menu for the next 1-2 weeks. We don't cook a big meal every night because sometimes we are too tired or we eat leftovers. So these 9 menus will get us far...

1. Puff pastry pizza (new!) + green salad
2. Basil Spahetti w/ Cheesy tomatoes + Biscuits
3. Lemon Shrimp Salad w/couscous 
4. Lund-Harris Chicken Tacos 
5.  Red Curry Mahi Mahi (new!) + rice + marinated zucchini & onions 
6.  Lemon-herb Fully loaded Potatoes (slow cooker) 
7.  Grilled Terriyaki Chicken(new!) + spicy sauteed green beans 
8.  Pork Chops(new!) + Roasted beets, carrots & organges 
9.  Slow cooker chili  

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harvest monday 9.26

Things are going a little slower in the garden. We had another surprising week of 80 degree weather. Loved it. But now we'll get some cooler temperatures this week. Maybe this will help all the fall veggies start growing? I miss fresh lettuce and arugula. Oh well.

Sweet Banana Pepper

2nd growth Basil

Finally more Brandywine tomatoes! :)

Weekly harvest

Out of control tomato plants. That sweetheart grape is the most prolific and tallest (about  7 ft?)

• Slowly starting to dream of my 2012 garden. Can't wait to plan things a little bit better!
• I wish I would have been smarter with my fall/winter plantings. I think I'm going to put some arugula, spinach and mesclun mixed seeds under my lights in my classroom, because nothing is germinating outside...
• Still waiting for my garlic to come in the mail. I can't wait to rip out all my mildewy squash plants and put the garlic there!
• Overwintering onions are still doing ok. Again, the germination rate wasn't as great as I'd hoped, but I'll still have plenty of onions this next spring if everything goes right. Wahoo!

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Harvest Monday 9.19

This week, I linked up to Daphne's Dandelions again. Most of the gardens around the country are slowing down, but I'm excited mine is still going! Not a whole lot of variety this week, but I'm still satisfied. :)

The garden has really benefited from a "second" summer heat wave and the first fall showers. I'm happily enjoying picking my cherry/grape tomatoes and watching everything continue to grow in our 80+ weather. 

I finally, finally harvested my red cabbage. This baby was transplanted in....MARCH! Can you believe it? Good thing the purple leaves were so beautiful, I decided to keep it around this long. We used some of it tonight in a Yakisoba noodle stir-fry. Delicious!

Most of this bowl if filled with sweetheart grape tomatoes. The rest are yellow pear, early girl tomato, oregon cherry and a few small san marzano romas.

A few small harvests of carrots, zucchini and tomatoes aren't pictured as they were quickly pulled for dinner or to bring to neighbors/family.

The only disappointment with our end of summer heat is that most of the seeds I planted for a fall harvest haven't germinated. Not sure if they will... My cascadia peas are doing great, but I'm starting to miss fresh garden greens. So far none of my lettuces have germinated. Hrrmph!

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eskimo girl

I quite possibly have the most adorable niece.

Don't you  love these eskimo snow goggles?

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sand dunes

As soon as September hit, out summer weather finally kicked in! The heat was not so enjoyable for the 1st week of school, but it was definitely gorgeous over at the coast. Dan, Jeff and the kids and I went to Pacific City to take advantage of the rare 80 degree temperatures and sunny weather on the Oregon coast.   The beach by the dune was packed with people! 

Of course we climbed the sand dune to get this beautiful view.

"Tough girl" awkward smiles in pacific city

This happy girl climbed up the ENTIRE dune herself. She's tough.

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Harvest...Tuesday?

My garden is totally loving the mini heat wave we've been having in Oregon. My cherry and grape tomatoes are producing like crazy! We love it. No matter how many times my squash plants have succumbed to mildew, they keep coming back. Not sure if we love that.

Harvested Today (tuesday) - Look at my 1st hot banana pepper! Never thought it would get hot enough for them to actually turn red! Also, here is my awkward fat cucumber (we ate it today  for dinner a top our spicy pulled pork sandwiches).

random plant i found growing in our yard. pretty sure it's a pepper. no idea how it got here?

Wow - my corn is actually growing! Pretty sure it'll be tiny though.

So apparently I ended up with everbearing raspberries. Pretty excited about this, since I got the plants from a coworker and had no idea what they would do. I'll get a few berries in...a week or so? If my research is right, I'll then get a bunch more early next summer and again late summer.  Love raspberries.

Beautiful brandywines.

My favorite snack: edamame (soy beans!)

Red cabbage. Is it ready? No idea.

Grows like weeds.

I swear I get a bowl of these every other day or so. 

Finally checked the french fingerling potatoes and decided to pull them. I was too impatient.They weren't as prolific as I'd like. I'm not sure if I pulled them to early? Probably. But I also think that some animal or bird was nibbling on the leaves and didn't really allow them to get to their potential and so they just died down. Oh well. They are fun.

Last...look at this little carrot hugging the other carrot! Awesome.

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Fall Weekends

Besides my other million something goals I have for this upcoming school year, one of my most enjoyable goals that I'm really looking forward to is to improve my weekends.

For the past two or three years, my friday nights (which often start at 10pm if there is a home football game or track meet), have consisted of me falling into my house completely exhausted. All I want to do is sleep, read a book, watch tv, zone out at the computer and basically not even think or exist. It's awful.

So hopefully, now that I'm becoming a little more organized at school and only have to half-way pretend that I know what I'm doing (opposed to completely not knowing what I'm doing), I will have some more time to make my weekends relaxing, but enjoyable.

So some crafty fall goals I have:

• finish crocheting that soft warm brown blanket I started more than a year ago
• make hot pads for the kitchen
• clean out the spare bedroom closet. seriously, it's ridiculous.
• organize my newer pictures. get some more prints. 
• catch up on editing.
• learn how to knit better and make something awesome. amy butler?
• make a quilt (as long as it doesn't cost me a trillion dollars....)
• keep the garden alive. 
• cook + bake more often.
• catch up on family history research. print all records, pics, etc. organize in box or book.
• sew more clothing. skirts + tops + dresses.
• paint living room (maybe more of a spring break thing??)

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homemade.

Last week I went to Bend for Kayla + Dustin's baby shower. I made these burp cloths

and a few appliqued onesies. The onesies were cute, but I forgot to take a pic, so here is an example from where I got the idea.

From Pinterest.com

It was nice to see my mom and sister and family in Bend.

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2ish weeks of harvest

Finally, my garden is in full harvest swing! I've had baskets and baskets of cherry/grape tomatoes, it's awesome! Here are some pictures from the past couple weeks. Unfortunately, I accidentally deleted almost a whole weeks worth of pictures. I also harvested a few baby french fingerling potatoes, a ton more tomatoes, green beans and of course a ton of yellow squash and zucchini. Oh well.

Finally a cucumber! It was delicious. I don't think I'll get many more. :(

Left: the 1st Brandywine tomato. I'm going to try it tonight. This plant would have been more successful, but I accidentally broke off a main stem when it first arrived from the nursery. I'll hopefully get nearly 7 or so more, so it turned out okay.

my crazy wild sweetheart grape plant. definitely the most prolific so far!

My poor San Marzano romas...totally destroyed by BER. They look so gross, nearly all the fruit has BER. But I've been cutting the ends off and they are still delicious. Not sure if i'll plant them next year as the plant grows just out of control. But I'm surprised how many have turned color by mid Aug. Pretty good, for this weather I think.

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