Second Breakfast

Last Friday was the 75th Anniversary of The Hobbit.  Kyla's classroom is reading it now and decided to join in the big celebration by having second breakfast at school.

I guess I should have taken that photo before the bread basket (which was really full of hard boiled eggs) was empties by a bunch of hungry 6th grade hobbits.

Happy Valentine's Day!

Tuesday, February 14

You Capture - Pink

Wednesday, April 27


Here is some Easter weekend Pink.  My favorite homemade berry waffles with real whipped cream.

Click here to see more Pink over at I Should Be Folding Laundry.

You Capture - Spring

Wednesday, April 28

Here are some of my favorite things about spring:

my tulips

longer days and my neighbor's tree in bloom.

asparagus, even if it's not from my garden.

and the weather getting warm enough to eat smoothies outside.

Please visit Beth for all the Spring captures.

Happy Birthday to my blog!

Thursday, April 15

Actually Sydney, the baby of the family and the blog have the same birthday, which is tomorrow.  I'm so surprised and pleased to have one of my photos recognized by The Pioneer Woman (one of the first bloggers that I started following) that I had to write about it.    Every so often she posts a photography assignment and thousands of people submit photos and here is the post where she selected my "orange star" as one of her faves for the Macro Assignment. 

Happy 2nd bloggy birthday to me!

I'd also like to thank Beth of I Should Be Folding Laundry for inspiring me to photograph shapes.

You Capture - Fresh

Thursday, April 15

Here a the fresh things around our house this week.  Peanut butter cookies - fresh faced from the oven!

A freshly sprouted "Eye Grow".

And the neighbor's fresh spring tulips. 

Visit Beth for more Fresh photos.

You Capture - Kisses

Thursday, February 18

This week's photo challenge was kisses!   There is one person in our family who is all about kisses, can you guess which one?

When I told the girls the topic for the week, Kyla said, "I bet your going to let Syd kiss me everyday and you'll take a whole bunch of picures to see if you can get a good one!".   Hey, good idea.

Here is a blue butterfly kiss - that's what happens when you forget to adjust your white balance.

The one thing they agreed to kiss in hopes of getting to eat it was a huge chocolate kiss.  I had never seen one of these before. 

Here is my valentine from youngest daughter Sydney.

It said:

If I could hug you every time I think about you ... you'd be smooshed!
That got her some kisses.


Visit Beth's blog to see more Kisses.

The tutu model

Tuesday, January 19 2010

Saturday I took Sydney (blue tutu) to hang out with some of her friends to have a Tutu Tea Party. They were helping my friend Amber model tutus that she makes and sells on her Etsy shop, Ittybittybettys. After the whole thing was over she asked, "Am I a model now?". I snuck a few shots of the girls during their down time.
I thought the cupcakes (made by orange tutu's mom) were too pretty to eat.Click here for a preview from the real photographer, Rebecca Davis at Catchlights NW took. I can't wait to see the rest - they're going to be so beautiful.

You Capture - Food

Thursday, November 27

How appropriate that this week's challenge is food. However we aren't having our Turkey dinner until my sister come over on Saturday. So tonight we had turkey chili and cornbread.

I'm also not much of a cook although I plan to do a little baking. I tried to get some cool photos in the produce section, but they didn't turn out so good. Mostly I've been cleaning house this week, so I offer more photos of my kids' art. First we have a Fruity Cheerios rainbow.

Here's a cornucopia made with foil covered by plastic wrap and colored with permanent markers.
Click hear to see some real food photos.

You Capture - Food

Wednesday, August 26

I almost didn't get anything for this food challenge. I'm really not much of a cook, I can't even remember what we've been eating this week. I meant to take some photos of my birthday dinner, but I was so hungry that I ate it before I remembered the camera. So here is my hard cider, mmmmm.
Here is my friend's burger and sweet potato fries. I like the Dungeon Burger with swiss cheese and mushrooms best. This one has an egg and bacon and I can't remember the name of it, but I really love sweet potato fries!! I'm getting hungry right now just looking at these again.

Here is the zucchini that hid in our garden. I'm still trying to figure out what to do with it. Anyone got a pig to feed? Maybe she can just keep using it to lift weights!

Click here for more food photos.

Holy Hidden Zucchini Batman!

Tuesday, August 18

We have been pretty good about harvesting our zucchini so they don't get too big, but here's the one that got away.
I kept checking the side by the compost bin, but not until I had long sleeves and gloves did I really wrestle those prickly leaves and find this guy.

OK, no time to talk. We're packing up and heading out for our first camping trip of the summer. We haven't been for two years and the girls are very excited. Silver Falls here we come. We'll be back on Friday.

Happy Birthday Papa Don!! (a little early)

Veggies & Snapfish

Tuesday, August 11

Our garden is going crazy! We only have 1 zucchini, 1 cucumber, 2 green peppers and 4 tomato plants. Last week we picked at least one zuc and cuc everyday, then on Saturday we pick 5 zucs, 2 cucs and the only 3 peppers we will probably get, plus a bunch of tomatoes.
Here is the sad part. I'm dying to make some gazpacho soup, but I have this stomach bug that just won't go away. In fact today I'm on the BRATT diet, which means I really can't eat much and I'm so hungry for some veggies!

So far we've all been enjoying having a little garden this summer, which leads me to my next point. There is this Snapfish giveaway and all you have to do is tell about one of your favorite summer moments. We're looking forward to having some great summer moments next week when we go camping. Not sure where yet, but we're going.

Macro Monday - Orange Stuff

Monday, July 27

These pictures have nothing in common, except orange. This is some dried sap that the girls found while playing at the Cathedral Park Jazz Festival.

Last week we went to Kruger's Farm on Sauvie Island to listen to the music and have a picnic with some friends and the farmer there told us to stop watering our tomatoes! Even though the weather keeps getting hotter and hotter we tried it and just a couple days later we found this. Yea for ripe tomatoes!
This Thursday Ashleigh Flynn & Sneakin' Out will be playing - not sure if I'll make it, but we're big fans of Sneakin' Out.

The garden

Tuesday, June 9

Here is part 2 of going local, this time in our own backyard. We ordered 8 organic veggie plants from a preschool fundraiser: 4 tomatoes, 2 green peppers, a cucumber and a zucchini. Sydney is organizing and singing to the plants although she looks more like the conductor here.

We planted our garden in mid May it is so tiny the plants already seem a little crowded. The storm last week almost knocked down our two biggest tomato plants, but they are recovering nicely. We now have tomato blossoms.

And squash blossoms. Sydney is excited about the progress and want to be the first to try our zucchini.

While we're on the topic of local food, I happened to find this at the grocery store the other day. I've heard local flour can be hard to find, but there it was at Safeway. Stone-Buhr flour, made from Sheperd's Grain wheat, grown in the Pacific Northwest.

I also found some great Oregon Marionberry jam at Costco, made by Columbia Empire Farms in Newberg, Oregon. It's sooo yummy and less than $7 for 64 oz. I can't forget to mention that we are also supporting my local part time farmer (and brother) by buying some home grown ground beef. Tomorrow I'm hoping to make it down to the farmers market to see what other goodies we can find.

Going local

Friday, June 6

I recently finished this book, the first non fiction work by Kingsolver, and it was great. I was very inspired. It was all about how her family lived off local food for a year. Here is a quote that really blows me away.

" If every US citizen ate just one meal per week of local & organically raised meats and produce, we would reduce our country's oil consumption by over 1.1 million barrels... of oil every week."

The day I finished the book I found out the Kyla's 2nd grade class would be taking a trip to a farm on Sauvie Island to learn how food gets to our table. I was so excited to share what I had learned in the book with her.

Well, it's taking me forever to get this posted. For some reason blogger wouldn't save my work, so now a week later I'm recomposing. It was a clear and sunny day, perfect field trip weather. From the bus, we could see all three mountains (St. Helens, Adams, and Hood). Here is Mt. St. Helens peeking through the trellis.

Kyla learned to listen like the owls and sneak like a fox (see her making the fox sign).

First stop was the compost pile, where we learned what dirt is made of - mostly worm and several other kind of bug's poo. At first the kids were grossed out, but then they started digging, holding worms and identifying bugs. There were also some veggies growing out of the compost pile, we tried some kale and arugula. The pic on the right show the lovely greens they were growing at the farm.

Next we headed out to learn the life cycle of plants and plant parts. We also identified some seeds. That was tough - don't think I've ever seen kale or turnip seeds. Here are the kids, walking down a row so they can plant some turnip seeds. They also tried some of those purple flowers on the right, chives. Oooh, a little too spicy.

After lunch, we went to a shady grove of pine trees and learned about the food chain and what kind of animals you find on the farm. We searched and found a lot of evidence that owls live on the farm. We also learned that owl pellets are not poop, it's vomit. Owls eat their prey whole and have to get rid of all the indigestibles. Here is the vole skull that we found.

It was a great field trip. Look for part 2 about going local in our own backyard later this week.