Everything Grows!

We returned from a week-long family vacation in the north woods filled with water activities, yummy food, and relaxation to find lots of growth in our garden. It is amazing what some warm weather, lots of rain, and a week away will do!




There were a few weeds too, of course, but nothing that 10 minutes of pulling couldn't handle. Actually, I found that they are much easier to pull when they are a bit bigger. We have been enjoying lots of lettuce, and I tried my first recipe with swiss chard: a beef stew with mushrooms, carrots, and swiss chard, served over quinoa from The Whole Life Nutrition Cookbook. Now I need to figure out what to do with our bush of Italian Parsley.

I was suprised to see a few blossoms on the alpine strawberries that I started from seed. Of the three varieties I started, this one (called Fresca) seems to be the most hardy and is the only variety with blossoms so far. Now we just have to keep an eye out for berries and either fight off the birds or build a cage for over the strawberry bed.

Some of the herbs were getting a little out of control, so I cut some to dry. The line in our hallway where we hang holiday cards is out of a job recently, so I turned it into an herb drying line instead.

While I can recognize the herbs in their natural form, I thought it may become difficult as they dry and shrivel up, so I made some pretty little labels with a leftover piece of a watercolor painting I did last year.

Now I just need to find some cute little spice jars. Maybe we will do a little thrifting/antiquing this weekend?

-Jen

Paint Colors

I have come to the conclusion that we are very bad at picking paint colors. I mean, we know what we are looking for and can picture it in our heads, but when it comes to picking the correct color from millions of little swatches, we are very, very bad. As I type this I am doing what I have dubbed the '5-minute test.' You paint a bit of the wall your chosen color and then walk away for 5 minutes. Then you go back and see what your reaction is to the color. I have finally learned this after painting three other rooms in our house the wrong shade of our intended color. If you just stay in the room and keep painting, you loose your vision of what you want and get caught up in painting. That is how we ended up with a bathroom a color we affectionately refer to as Home Depot Orange.

The day after we painted the whole room (two coats!) Home Depot Orange we went back to Home Depot to get the lighter shade we intended for the room to be in the first place. The same thing happened with the pale blue in Noah's room, and the blue-gray of our bathroom. We painted the entire stinkin' room before figuring out it was the wrong color. We did manage to get our bedroom right on the first try. It is hard to mess up beige. Now I am going to head back into the kitchen and hope that the tiny bit of wall I painted in the color we chose is the lovely pale, sunshiny shade of yellow that I am picturing in my head.

Update: Didn't like it. Way too bright. Sigh.