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    T Tuesday: progress edition

    Welcome to T stands for Tuesday…grab a your favorite cup and stay a while.

    T stands for Tuesday

    This summer I’ve been tackling projects and items long overdue on the to-do list. I’m drowning in half finished goals. It’s really beginning to drive me a bit crazy. I start my morning or my 3am bout of insomnia with thoughts of how my day is going to go and then BAM…I get hit with a curve ball or worse yet, am distracted and start another project.  I haven’t even finished a pot of coffee lately, which is totally out of character for me. (Ah ha…just there….see how I worked in a beverage reference) 🙂

    But seriously, the frustration with myself is mounting. Every “not used daily” surface has something in progress all over it and that’s not even mentioning the outdoors. I think I have too many ideas and unfortunately have enough stuff around to get started but either run out of steam, ideas or gumption to continue. I even totally blew up my blog over the weekend and am still working on fixing it. UGH! The blog backup I used definitely didn’t work the way I thought it did….I could not recover what I lost.

    I am feeling a bit of accomplishment with both a personal project and a household one.

    I completed the cover on my heART journal just yesterday.

    heART journal T Tuesday progress edition

    Here are the inside pages. The earliest page was from Feb 2014. Good grief…talk about taking a long time to to 6 pages.

    heART journal T Tuesday progress edition

    Mini-me and I did get her room painted. Here’s an old before and the after side by side.

    T Tuesday progress edition

    What a difference. She’s had the green and stamped flowers since we moved in 13 years ago. It had just been painted so we just left it as is. Definitely time for a change.

    T Tuesday progress edition

    We’re slowly going to be replacing the accessories such as the fabric bins in the cubbies. Mini-me had yet to decide what color she wants for her accent color.

    T Tuesday progress edition

    It’s definitely more sophisticated already. Agh…my baby is growing up!

    So today…I’m going to try my best to finish a thing or two I’ve started. Wish me luck!

    What are you doing today?

  • Blog - Kitchen

    T Tuesday: early harvest edition

    Since school has been out I feel as if I’m busier than before. Not sure how that happened. Yesterday we went to my in-laws house to plant in their garden. I had 3 tomato plants yet to plant from the ones I started back in March. I also planted summer squash, green beans and snow peas.

    So where does the harvest come in, you ask. They have a huge strawberry patch and wanted us to pick. Mini-me and I picked nearly three 5 quart ice cream pails full.

    I also harvested some rhubarb so I could make a batch of muffins. Mini-me and I are the only ones who will eat rhubarb, so I’m cautious on how much I pick. I baked these muffins in the afternoon.

    rhubarb muffins

    I’m really not much of a baker. In fact I don’t like to do it at all. Too much measuring. Rules to follow. Not my thing. But this recipe, which I slightly adapted from the original on allrecipes.com, turned out perfect in looks, texture and taste.

    Rhubarb muffins

    • 1 1/4 cups brown sugar
    • 1/2 cup vegetable oil
    • 1 egg
    • 1 tsp vanilla extract
    • 1 cup buttermilk
    • 2 1/2 cups flour
    • 1 tsp baking soda
    • 1 tsp baking powder
    • 1/2 tsp salt
    • 2 cups diced rhubarb

    sugar crumb topping

    • 1 Tbsp melted butter
    • 1/3 cup organic cane sugar
    • 1 tsp cinnamon

    Using an electric mixer, combine first 5 ingredients and mix thoroughly.  Then add the dry ingredients.  Again mix until thoroughly incorporated. Lastly toss in the rhubarb. This may be easier done by hand unless you have a large paddle on your mixer.

    Place muffin liners in pan and fill each nearly to the top. Next melt the butter and add the sugar and cinnamon. (next time I think I’ll add some rolled oats for more texture) scoop a bit on topping on each muffin.

    Bake at 350°F for 25 mins and enjoy.

    rhubarb muffins

    Today will be spent painting mini-me’s room. She’s picked out a very sophisticated grey. I’ll share some before and after photos when we’re done…hopefully next week for T stands for Tuesday!

    What are you doing today?

  • Blog - Outdoors

    T Tuesday: planting edition

    Yesterday morning before the impending rainfall I hurried up and planted my garden. I had planned to plant over the weekend but when Mr. G went to rototill the garden we discovered millions of ants and larvae under a stepping stone smack in the middle of the garden! Crud! I grabbed a flat shovel and scooped off all the larvae and hoards of ants and threw them away. YUCK! they were crawling all over us.

    While Mr. G went to work with the rototiller, I went inside to look up garden safe solutions to my ant problem. I made a concoction of water, borax and sugar, then soaked some cotton balls in it and placed them in a plastic lid in the freshly tilled garden. I never actually saw any ants drinking my mix. I think it was the heat of the blazing sun that drove them away…that and the search for the larvae. Fingers crossed that they are gone for good.

    In the big garden I have the usual fair…although I am trying cucumbers in this garden again. In previous years I haven’t had good luck with them but this year I purchased some really nice healthy looking plants instead of starting seeds. I planted them close to the fence so they can crawl right up.

    T Tuesday: planting edition

    Some of you may remember last fall that I decided to just leave my herbs in the garden and see what happened. Well the rosemary died as many told me it would but the sage and thyme are flourishing,  I cut back some of the thyme just to make room for a tomato plant. I’m drying a couple of bundles…it smells so heavenly.

    T Tuesday: planting edition

    I made a last minute addition of a jalapeno plant near the gate. I was planning to put it in the deck box garden but changed my mind. Do you see my plant stakes I’m using as row markers??  A pink teapot and a purple butterfly. I think the teapot works for beverage related post…right?

    T Tuesday: planting edition

    My deck box garden has just two things…our favorite little yellow pear tomatoes and the horseradish plant I tried to eradicate last fall. Guess it didn’t work. 🙂 My worm tower is definitely looking weathered like the rest of the garden. After it rains again I’m going to try and find some more worms to live in the bin. I fear some of red wigglers perished over winter as the scraps in the tower aren’t going down as quickly as before.

    T Tuesday: planting edition

    The deck boxes have flower, herbs and onions. I grew green onions from seed in half egg shells this year. Just an experiment. Likely won’t do it again unless these turn out amazing. The shells were hard to crush before planting without crushing the fragile onions. I did find two volunteer onions in the big garden so I moved them to be with their friends.

    T Tuesday: planting edition

    In addition to the onion volunteers, I found some dill and thyme growing from the dirt I had dumped from the pots last fall. Mother Nature can be very persistent.

    I still have 3 tomato plants that I plan to put in my in-laws garden plus whatever seeds I have left.

    We also purchased a CSA share this year. We had joined a different one a few years ago and liked the produce but the cost vs amount we received just didn’t make sense or maybe that should be cents. *grin* Our neighbor has been using this CSA for 7 years now and I’ve been able to see first hand the wonderful boxes of farm fresh veggies they get each week. So excited for it to start. Just a couple more weeks! I’ll be sure to share with you our bounty.

    Playing taxi driver for my mom today unless her plans have changed

    What are you doing today?