Something to Drink

Out on our balcony I have an ugly little plant growing with these little, rather unimpressive flowers.

And I'm so excited about it! My love of chamomile tea started about 6 years ago and now I'm going to try my hand at making my own. The flowers are just about ready to be picked, although I might not get more than a cup or two out of it. Hopefully someday I'll have enough space to grow a bunch of these and have home-grown chamomile tea all year round. :)

Happy Birthday, to Me!

Good Morning!

Guess what? It's my birthday today! Yup, 22 years old. :) I'm probably still sleeping right now because that is what one does on their birthday, sleeps in! Remember my post on shoe love last week? Well my wonderful mom bought me those fantastic shoes for my birthday! I got them on Thursday, but there was a mix up and they were the wrong colour. So we got it all straightened out and they will hopefully arrive at my door in the next few days. I can't wait!

Anyways, since it's my birthday I don't feel obligated to leave much of a post. But I thought I would share the latest stuff from my "garden" with you. My first lemon cherry tomato! Cookie Crumb and I ate half each, and then he got mad at me when I had no more to give him. That must mean it was delicious!

Have a great day!

Pesto Perfecto!

Good Morning!

That's right, Food Friday is back. I didn't forget! This week I made some pesto with my own basil. It was really cool to make something using ingredients that I grew myself. Ok, I only grew one ingredient, but it is the main one. :) Here's the before picture of all the leaves I harvested from my two "Pesto Perpetuo" plants. I didn't take all the leaves because, well, that would be wrong, right? But I got a cup of leaves.

And here is the after!

I looked up a few recipes online and just played with ingredients. This is approximately what I used. All the recipes said that you need to mess around with ingredients and figure out what works for you! I used too much garlic and the pesto was pretty powerful, so I would suggest no more than what is in the recipe below.

Basil Pesto

Ingredients:

1 clove of garlic
2 tbsp pine nuts
1/4-1/2 cup olive oil
1 cup fresh basil leaves (stems removed, washed and patted dry)
1/2 tbsp lemon juice
3 tbsp cup grated parmesan cheese

Directions:

Stick the garlic, pine nuts and olive oil in a food processor until they are finely chopped. Add the basil leaves and lemon juice and keep chopping. I used a magic bullet which didn't work well AT ALL so I did a lot of this by hand. I chopped the basil a bit in the blender then dumped it all on a plate and chop, chop, chopped with a knife! When it is as chopped as you like, add your cheese in and pulse a couple times until it is mixed in. If you plan on freezing the pesto (which you should do if you aren't going to use it up in a couple days), one recipe suggested leaving out the cheese until you are going to use it because the cheese doesn't freeze well.

Pesto is great with just about anything. For supper tonight I went all out with the pesto. It was on the chicken, tossed in with the roasted peppers, and in the tomato sauce that topped it all. We also mixing pesto and mayo for sandwiches! There are so many more possibilities too. Yum!

My First Tomato!

Good afternoon!

I just thought I would share my first beautiful tomato. It was one of a bunch on this branch, but the others had big weird brown spots so I tossed them early so that the plant could use its energy for things that were actually going to get eaten! Two others also ripened before this one, but birds got to them before I did. They must have been hungry, so it's ok with me. There are plenty more that will ripen in the next few weeks, including the ones on my lemon cherry tomato plant.

Anyways, I let Cookie Crumb pick it himself and we gave it a little wipe and he chowed down. Mason and I got one bite each and Cookie Crumb devoured the rest. He only paused occasionally to say "YUM!" :) I also had a chance to use some fresh basil from my little plants in a chicken dish I made the other day. It was totally delicious and just the smell of the chopped basil was divine.

I can't wait to have a garden someday!

Oh, and one more thing. Check out Anna's blog Stunning tomorrow because I wrote a guest post for her. She and I 'met' on twitter and follow each other's blogs. She is a big inspiration and I'm really grateful for the opportunity to reach a larger audience. So be sure to check out her blog. I don't just mean tomorrow, check it a lot. She always has great giveaways and other fun stuff going on.

Monday Morning

Good Morning!

Can you believe that June is almost over? I really can't. My summer is just starting and I plan on enjoying a pretty free week. I will be hunting for jobs, but with our visit coming up next weekend, I suspect that I will probably start working next week.

I know it's been a long time since I talked about my little "garden". So check this out:

Look at my tomatoes! Haha.. they are NOT the ones I started from seed. Those ones didn't make it through a day or two outdoors. The first picture is of my lemon cherry tomato plant, the second is a better bush tomato plant. The second already has some fruit on it! :)

This is my basil. The first picture is of one of my two pesto perpetuo basil plant (that I did not start from seed). The second picture is my sweet basil that I started from seed. While they are thriving with the nice weather, they still have a long way to go!

Then there is my oregano which I started from seed. It isn't dying or anything, but it just isn't thriving. When it gets watered it sort of gets trampled into the dirt and that is why it is this way. The rain really took its toll on these little guys!

 Last, but not least are my chives. They are still really small, but are quite happy! 

And Mason must have been inspired by all my gardening because he bought some organic wheatgrass seeds at halfmoonbotanicals on Etsy and put together a little organic planter! Here is a photo of one week after he put the seeds in the pot. The grass was already 6 inches long! It's quite amazing how this stuff grows.

Well, I hope you all have a beautiful afternoon! I'm off to water my plants. :)

Sex and the City, Beef, and Mistakes...

Good Evening!

I'm just watching reruns of Sex and the City right now. It's the first time in a while that Cosmo has played some episodes that I haven't seen already. Sadly, they never play them in any order at all, so someday I'll have to splurge on the DVDs. 

Anyways, I made this awesome Barbecue Pulled Beef for supper last night. My step-mom always used to make it when I lived with her and my Dad for a while. It is SO delicious, and so easy because you just toss it in the crock pot in the morning and then deal with it just before supper. I don't know where she got the recipe from, so we'll just say she is wonderful for introducing it to me! 

Ingredients:

An inexpensive roast or round steak

3/4 cup ketchup

3/4 cup salsa

1/2 cup red wine vinegar

1/4 cup brown sugar

2 tbsp dijon mustard (ok, you can use plain if you don't have dijon)

2 tbsp worcestershire sauce

1/2 tsp salt

1/4 tsp pepper

1/4 tsp garlic powder

buns (see note below!)

Directions: 

Mix together all the ingredients except for the beef, then add your beef. Make sure the beef is coated with sauce. Turn the crock pot onto low and leave it for a long time! A small or even medium piece of meat should be done in 9 - 10 hours, but a larger piece could take up to 12 hours. If in doubt, allow 12 hours and check after 9 or 10. Pull the meat out and use two forks to pull the meat apart. It should shred very easily. Pour off 1/4 - 1/2 of the sauce and return well shredded beef to the sauce and mix well.

If the meat is done early, switch your crock pot to "warm" and leave it until you're ready. Put the beef on some buns and enjoy! 

Note: I used some whole wheat hamburger buns this time, but there was a lot of sauce so it kind of drenched the bottom half of the buns. Delicious but sloppy. That may be why my step-mom always served this on Italian rolls (they are crusty on the outside and deal with the sauce a little better)

Finally, onto mistakes. I transplanted some of my little tomato and chilli pepper sprouts. Then I got carried away and organized the ones still in the old pot so that they would be spaced more appropriately. Bad idea. They are now hanging on for dear life. One little tomato plant is still doing pretty well, and it's funny that it is the one my son pulled out with his little fingers and stuck in his slobbery little mouth. I guess he gave it a little treat. The herbs are still doing really well, and I'm hoping that the tomatoes and peppers will pull through. I'll keep you posted!

Have a good evening!

Really, Really Back...

Good Evening.

I'm actually back now, I'm sure of it. I had a great break in my hometown. I got a ton of visiting done which was really great and believe it or not, it feels good to be back in the windy city. I could do without the wind, but it's nice to be back on my own turf.

Since we ended up extending our trip for an extra four days, I was sure that my poor little plants would be dead. I thought they would be too neglected... But I was wrong! They grew a bunch and are looking great. Of course they were in serious need of some water, but they were still quite alive. :) Here's the progress...

I also had a little soap adventure today. (The man even made some!) We just made tiny little batches, 1 bar per batch, but the bars are actually pretty big. They look pretty amateur, and the scents took some playing around. The orange and green ones don't have much smell at all and the other two are fairly strong, though not overpowering. The green and orange ones were the same batch, the green is just leftovers from the orange. They both are supposed to smell like grapefruit, but are as I said, odourless. They are enriched with coconut oil too. The creamy yellow one is ylang-ylang with a hint of patchouli and enriched with hemp seed oil. It's really nice. And the pink one is the man's creation. For the record, it was supposed to be blood red (his colour mixing skills are a little rusty). It smells pretty good though, it's orange and lemongrass with a hint of cedar wood. It is also enriched with hemp seed oil. I can't wait to try them out! And maybe try some more well planned projects next time. :)

I also mixed up some homemade deodorant for myself from this recipe at How About Orange. I'm interested to try it, and I'll let you know how it works out for me!

Sunday Afternoon

Good afternoon! I'm just sitting in my sunny bedroom sipping a delicious smoothie that the man made for me :) It's delicious.

I kind of fell off the bandwagon with my blog posts, I did it every day for a few days. That's fine though. I just finished my last week of classes for this semester and I now have to prepare for my exams. I won't lie to you, I have not even looked at what I have to study yet... Oops.

On to more interesting things... My little window gardens are doing great! One of the plants in my larger container (see left) didn't sprout, I think it was the chilli peppers. My guess is that it just wasn't hot enough. I'm ok with that though, I don't eat chillies anyways and it leaves more room for my tomatoes and basil.

Also, I have pretty much been in complete denial about this week coming up, so I took the time to do some sewing on Friday night. I bought some linen (ok, linen/rayon blend because it's a lot cheaper) for the first time. I love it! It is a great fabric, so unique. So I made this little toddler dress. It was also my first time using snaps, which worked out great. Check it out:

It ties at the back, that's what the little strings hanging a the sides are for. I really want to go out and spend my life savings on linen now. However, I will restrain myself. I bought some plain orange of the same fabric and I drafted a pattern yesterday that I'd like to use it for. It will be a short sleeved button-up shirt for my son. Sadly, it may not get done until next week. I really need to devote myself to studying. 

And that leads me to my final announcement. I may be absent for part or all of the next week. My last exam is next Saturday, so I will be sure to post by next Sunday. It will fly by, I promise. I will be back in no time at all!

While I'm gone, check out all my links and past posts, they will keep you busy for a little while at least. :)

Snowday!

Today was a snowy day in Lethbridge. Yesterday it snowed all day and all night, so this morning we woke up to winter. That soon changed, though, when it began raining on top of the snow. Let me just say it was a BIG mess, and the city declared itself in a state of emergency when the power started going out all over the place.

The little guy's daycare was also closed because the staff couldn't get there, so we had a snow day. Just me and the little man. It was lots of fun. Since he started daycare at 7 months old, I haven't spent much time during the week at home with him, just weekends. So we did fun things, coloured, read books, danced, and what not. (Ok, he mostly coloured on his face because he wanted to eat the markers and crayons)

But he was cute all the way along, and so good. No wonder his notes from daycare always say his day was 'Great', 'Terrific', 'Awesome', etc. I lucked out with this boy.
Anyways, another great thing about the day is that my window gardens are getting little sprouts! They are itsy-bitsy right now, but they are there - they are alive!

I could barely get them to show up in the picture, the one of the left is the biggest. :)

While the little guy was napping this afternoon, I whipped this little cape up. He has learned how to play "Super Baby" by putting his hands in the air and making a 'sss' sound, so I thought he should have a little cape.

It must have inspired him because when his dad came home, he tackled him like "Super Baby" would a bad guy.

                                              

I am planning on putting together my first tutorial soon! It will be for this little cape. I figure I should start small. So watch for that. 

Finally, we all went outside in the snow today. It was a sloppy mess by 4:30 p.m. when we got out there, perfect for building snowmen. The little man was especially interested in all the water dripping from the roof and down the drain pipe.

I hope everyone else enjoyed their day, snowy or not!

Good Evening!

I've been thinking about my blog all week. I really want to write on here consistently, but I have a hard time getting going on it. I don't know what to write about. But tonight I have about 500 things to talk about! I will try to keep it short, though, I don't want to bore you.

First things first, I'm just sitting at my kitchen table right now listening to the John Butler Trio's new album "April Rising". Let me just say, I am digging it. If you have never heard of them, I suggest you go to their MySpace or their official website. They're a band from Australia, and they are fantastic. A co-worker at my last job told me to check them out and I forgot to for weeks, maybe even months. When I finally did, I realized how much I had been ripping myself off by not finding them sooner.

Anyways, enough about them, but on the topic of music... My boyfriend is out with a couple friends tonight at a metal concert and I'm thoroughly enjoying the time to myself. (and to be honest, I'm really intolerant about metal music, so it's nice that he can get out and listen to it really loud every now and then, and his friend is the singer! ok... here's their site if you like metal) Neither of us get out much, so I like a Friday night at home to myself.  I just sing at the top of my lungs and dance around the house and eat strawberries and bananas dipped in chocolate. No lies, this is what I am doing right now. Yum.

So onto something more creative... This week I planted my very first window garden! I'm very excited about it, and I'm crossing my fingers that these little babies sprout and turn into something. This year I've been wishing for a garden, but living in a second floor apartment doesn't allow much for a garden. There are free plots at the university, but I don't think I would do well if I had to go all the way out there for it. I got a little kit and then I just bought two other pots and seeds. I'm feeling confident about it right now because I have two lovely pots of plants that I managed to keep alive for the past 5 months or so. This is a great accomplishment for me because I have killed cactuses before. I used to have the opposite of a green thumb, whatever that may be, but it seems my new experience as a mother has done me some good. Or something! Here's some pictures of my little pots of dirt potential!

I will cut this short now because I know that long blog entries do not get read! I'll leave you with my creation of the day.

These are my pretty drool bibs, the first ones that I am selling on my AcireBaby Etsy shop. They are absorbent, waterproof, and stylish. :)

Goodnight.