Lounging

We love to lounge in our pjs for a little bit each morning.

Today my baby starts school!

Canning again

I used the rest of the berries we picked from Emma Krumbees to make strawberry jam and raspberry syrup.  The syrup actually turned out to be more of a jam and isn't runny at all.  Since this I got a jam, jelly, preserves book from the library and now I'm armed with some tricks to fix this in the future. 

I also dried my hot peppers to make chili powder and then made some peach & nectarine fruit leather. 

Next up is another batch of not so hot salsa and hopefully some creole sauce. 

Amelia loves food

She loves food a lot and already has the appetite of her daddy.  Here she is eating her latest favorite watermelon.  We literally can not eat watermelon anymore without giving her some to suck on.  She screams otherwise.

So far she has eaten oatmeal cereal, rice cereal, bananas, peaches, green beans, peas, watermelon, and pears.  The only thing she hasn't loved is green beans, but she's warming up to them. 

Walk in my Garden

My garden this year has taken on a life of its own and definitely not followed my plans. 

First I did not realize how much of a weed strawberry plants are. 

I tried to fence these babies in and must trim them weekly but they just keep growing back with a vengeance. 
This picture also shows one of my absolute favorite additions to my garden this year.  I can reach that faucet while standing on the sidewalk and it's hooked up to a soaker hose.  I will admit the garden has been watered a lot more frequently since the installation of this.  So cool!

I'll skip past the onion patch where the onions are all harvested or dead and move on to the green peppers.  I love bell peppers!  They are one of my favorite things to eat and cook with.  Every year I just can't get very many from my plants because just when they are ready to give me a ton of peppers it will frost over and kill them.  It doesn't stop me from trying to grow them every year.  (By the way, sorry about my stupid shadow in the picture.  Jeez, you wouldn't think I'm a photographer or anything.....)

Next up are my tomatoes.  They always seem to get out of hand on me.  I didn't plant as many this year but they're still producing plenty for the amount we can eat & can.

I tried planting seeds this year but when I planted my starters they all died.  Next to the tomatoes were supposed to be mini cucumbers.  After a few weeks I had a vine growing and flowering, so I thought it was the mini cukes coming back  to life.

This isn't a mini cuke plant.  So now I'm thinking either my seeds were incorrectly labeled or I had a seed from my compost bin sprout.

I'll skip over the potato spot since I've already harvested all of them.  At the end of the line is hot peppers.  I'm sure I've already mentioned these babies are hot and they are growing like weeds!

There's about 5 in this picture with several flowers.  I've used them in salsa but there's just too many!  I ended up finding out how to dry and grind them up and now I have a nice supply of hot chili powder. 

This is supposed to be a picture of my compost bin.  The reason you can just barely see it is because one of my decorative gourds that I had last year decided to grow.  Since it is growing out of what I like to call "super-soil" this thing can grow several feet in one day and we've had to cut it back several times so it doesn't overtake our lilac bushes.  

And there are a couple dozen of these on the plant.  This has been a fun surprise to watch grow and after I've harvested all of them I'll just throw the plant back into the compost bin. 

On the rest of the fence are these. 

They have kind of a sour taste and I think they would make awesome grape jelly but I haven't had very many this year and certainly not enough to make jelly.  The grape vine was truly an experiment.  Menards clearances out their gardening supplies at the end of the year so I think the starter was $1.  I figured if it grows it grows, if not oh well.  Surprisingly each year it has done better and better with this year being the first year to produce fruit (I think I planted it three years ago.)  Maybe next year I'll have enough grapes to make a jelly.

Games with Daddy

Would you like to see Amelia's favorite game to play with her Daddy?

I promise it's not as bad as the pictures make it look.  Truly she loves to do this but of course as soon as the camera comes out she has to look at the camera and smile for me.  (Do I have her well trained or what?) 

Usually she has a giant grin on her face the whole time.  I tease Lucas that he is training her to be a stunt baby. 

Bath Time & Canning

For the past couple of days bath time has been quite interesting.  Amelia doesn't want to lay back anymore so she strains to lean forward.  When she tires of this she decides to lean back and arch her back so that she slips into the water.  Tonight I had her sit in the upright bath chair.  She really liked that and was trying to reach to play with the bubbles in the water. 

Last year was my first year attempting canning and I kept it pretty simple only doing salsa, spaghetti sauce, and pickled banana peppers.  I've been more ambitious and braver this year trying many new things.  So far I've already done a batch of pickle relish and salsa.  The salsa turned out pretty hot because I wasn't sure how hot the peppers were in my garden.  Turns out they're pretty spicy! 

Today I spent some time canning.  I made peach marmalade, peach honey, apple pie filling, and apple jelly.  I love having all of the jars lined up on the counter!