Colors Of The Wind Keep Us Steady As A Beating Drum

Christine left for Girl's Camp today. They have good things planned and she will have a great time. I like their theme this year.

SCHOOL'S OUT FOR SUMMER!

Garden (two weeks later)

The whole garden has just taken off!

Pictures two weeks later.

We are going to have more tomatoes than we can handle.  So we will be canning hot sauce, salsa, and whole tomatoes come August/September.

It Is Finals Week

It is finals week.

She gets out of school early every day only to come home and cram some more. Oh, and Panda Express.  Our finals lunch treat tradition. Two more days.  Then she'll be a junior.

Where has the time gone?

To All The Dads...

 Our Father's Day was a good one!  We had a great dinner of steak, baked potatoes, corn on the cobb (Josh and Mere), brussel sprouts (Mike and Adrianne), and Duff's requested Chocolate Eclair Cake.
The kids got him several original long-playing albums from all the musicals he loves: South Pacific, Oklahoma, The King and I, Music Man, Carousel, Fiddler On The Roof,   I am going to frame them and we will hang them at the cabin going down the stairs to the game room.  Perfect.

And our grand-dog-ter, Gidget waking up from a nap.  She likes to sleep on her back with her head hanging off your arm.  Haha!

Father's Day Cookie Bake a.k.a. Personal Progress Project

Shopping for cookie ingredients.

They had a budget of $125.00 for all of it.  The cookies and the wrapping.

I helped them calculate how many ingredients they would need to buy for the amount they needed per recipe/batch of cookies.  They learned a lot.  I learned a lot.  Did you know that there are 37 cups of flour in 10 pounds?  We did a lot of that kind of figuring.

 They went down all the aisles to be sure they had everything they needed.

Christine had also already played 2 lacrosse games that morning.

 Checking out.

 Cookies, cookies, and MORE cookies.

 The girls had an assembly line going on the kitchen table for the wrapping.  It went smoothly.

Now they are all ready for tomorrow.

The cute tags.

We are over-dosed on chocolate chip cookies.

I don't think we will be making some any time soon.

They worked from 1-8:30pm on this part of the project.

Then had friends over and played board games.

(Can I borrow some of their energy?  I went upstairs and took a bubble bath.  I was tired.)

Getting Ready For The Big Cookie Bake

Christine and Leslie are doing all the Father's Day gifts for church on Sunday.  It will be one of their Personal Progress projects.

Leslie came over tonight and they chose the quote/poem, copied it, cut it, punched the holes in each tag, and got all the ribbons cut.

Gifts for 125 men equals:

250 chocolate chip cookies

125 cellophane bags

375 18" lengths of ribbon  125 robin egg blue, 125 white, 125 lime green

They worked from 5-10:30pm.

Garden Update

 After several weeks, here is the garden.  It is coming along really nicely.  We are already using chives, basil, cilantro, thyme, rosemary, and green onions.

FLAG DAY

Happy Flag Day, all.

It's not one of our most serious holidays, but I've always loved the striking appearance of the U.S. flag, and what it stands for.

Take a moment to pause and be grateful.

Tuscan Lemon Chicken

We had this for dinner on Saturday.

It was amazingly fast, easy, and oh-so-tasty!

I also added fresh thyme because I have it growing in my garden and I love thyme with chicken.  It just adds a bit of slighly lemon-ish goodness to it.  I found on my gas grill that it needed to cook the 15-20 minutes on each side.  I did not grill the lemon halves.  It was the first time I have cut the back out of a chicken and flattened it whole.  I used my kitchen shears and 1-2-3 it was done!  If I would have known it was that easy I would have tried doing it long ago.



Tuscan Lemon Chicken
By:  Ina Garten, Barefoot Contessa

Prep Time: 20 min 

Cook Time:  40 min

Level:  Easy
Serves:  2 to 3 servings  (I cut it into individual pieces and it served 5)

Ingredients

• 1 (3 1/2-pound) chicken, flattened
• Kosher salt
• 1/3 cup good olive oil
• 2 teaspoons grated lemon zest (2 lemons)  [I used 1/2 of this.]
• 1/3 cup freshly squeezed lemon juice
• 1 tablespoon minced garlic (3 cloves)
• 1 tablespoon minced fresh rosemary leaves
• Freshly ground black pepper
• 1 lemon, halved

Directions

Sprinkle the chicken with 1 teaspoon salt on each side. Combine the olive oil, lemon zest, lemon juice, garlic, rosemary, and 2 teaspoons pepper in a small measuring cup. Place the chicken in a ceramic or glass dish just large enough to hold it flat. Pour the lemon marinade over the chicken, turning it in the dish. Cover the dish with plastic wrap and refrigerate for at least 4 hours or overnight. Turn the chicken 2 or 3 times while marinating.

When ready to grill, prepare a hot charcoal fire on 1 side of a grill (or turn a gas grill on low heat). Spread 1/4 of the coals across the other side of the grill. Place the chicken on the cooler side, skin side up, and weigh it down with the dish you used for marinating. Cook for 12 to 15 minutes, until the underside is golden brown. Turn the chicken skin side down, weight again with the dish, and cook for another 12 to 15 minutes, until the skin is golden brown and the chicken is cooked through. Place the lemon halves on the cool side of the grill, cut side down for the last 10 minutes of cooking. Remove the chicken to a plate or cutting board, cover with aluminum foil, and allow to rest for 5 minutes. Cut in quarters, or individual pieces, sprinkle with salt, and serve with the grilled lemon halves.

Garage Work Bench

The clean and purge continues.  I think I use that sentence a lot when talking about what I have been doing the last few months.  But I just seem to do better with a simpler life around the house.  And as I grow older, I seem to want a place for everything and everything in it's place.

I am not a horder or 'acquirer' by any means, but it sure creeps up on you that all of a sudden you have all this stuff, and so I keep cleaning out.  For instance,  I kept all of the kids bulletin boards from when they were underclassmen in college.  Why?  They were so worn out and used up, so now they are gone.

The work bench in the garage collects things over the months and year.  We tend to 'set' them on there with the intention of putting them away 'later'.  Later doesn't come.  Haha!  Look how nice and clean and organized it is now.

 This drawer was a tangled mess of extension cords.  All colors, kinds, lengths.  Now they are separated, coordinated, and we know what we have and where they are.  What is your guess for how many I have accumulated over the years????

 In another lifetime, I painted that cute sunflower box!  Now I'm using it for small tools and such.  It brightens the space.

 Everything is grouped with like products and we know what we have and what we don't.  I'm embarrassed to say how many expired things I had to toss.

 Some of my hand tools for gardening.  These were dirty, grimy, gross, and kind of rusty in some places.  I washed them and then used a fine steel wool on them.  It took every bit of garden gunk away.  Then I sharpened them and added new loops to hang them with.  Overtime, the originals somehow broke and came off.  I used an old leather shoelace for one and the wire from a broken pair of ipod headphones for the other.  Abracadabra!  New loops.

This is one of my very most favorite tools now.  It is a Garden Plus.  I got it at Lowes for $5.  You put a little drop of 3 in 1 oil on the screws of your garden tools and it lubricates them like they are new.  Then a dot on the blade and with the handy-dandy sharpener at a 20* angle you draw it across about 5-6 times and your tools are SHARP.  I wanted a Speedy Sharp (which is basically the same thing), but they didn't carry that brand and I find that this works just as well.  I sharpened all my garden cutting tools, a shovel, and even Duff's fishing knife!

Saturday of a Lazy Nature

Duff was up before the sun it seemed to go to the Trabuco building to help relandscape it.  He got home around noon and said it went really well.  They got all the old plants ripped out, the ground amended and conditioned and the new plant materials in.  He is tired and sore.  We pretty much just puttered around the house and enjoyed a Saturday with no big things to do or places to be.

Josh and Meredith went to one of his co-worker's wedding in the valley.  We were on Gidget babysitting duty.  Sammy was here working on the LAST of the AP Euro projects for the year with Christine and Gidgie-Girl loved napping between them on their laptops.

When she is asleep, she is OUT.  Limp as a rag. And she likes to cross her hind legs.

Funny girl.