I'm growing things!!! FOR REAL!!!

I'm so excited! I just got back from a little walk through of the garden and things are actually producing food - yippee!!!!


There are teeny tiny little peppers growing on my purple italian drying pepper plant they are so cute!!! I also have some little cherry tomatoes, strawberries and fava beans!!! The peas are flowering and they are a towering 6 feet tall. The lettuce is ready to pick, one of the celery plants is growing something that resembles celery.

Wow, wow, wow!!! I have the most beautiful roses growing today as well- I'm in garden heaven and I can't wait to see what it will look like next year!

I'm off to see if I can find a sew along to make Avari clothes for the fall/winter...

Yesterday...

Poor Avari was having a tough day yesterday recovering from too much party junk food, and I'm having some serious mommy guilt about it. Why did I feel the need to supply the kind of food that she doesn't get daily and obviously threw off her internal system. Next year I'm going to do a super healthy but great party. In the meantime, we have enough food left in our house to feed an army- I'm sure Kevin and I will pay for it after the week in the pant button department, but it's sure good in the meanwhile!

On Sunday I baked Amish Friendship bread. Sabrina from the Family Place brought a starter by on June 11th and you let it sit and squish the dough everyday for 10 days only adding more ingredients on day 6. At the end of the 10 days, you split the starter in 4, keep one for next time, hand out the other 3 and then with the remaining, bake 2 loaves of awesome cinnamon bread. So... I have 3 starters here that I'll be trying to give away tomorrow.

I ordered a few books yesterday that were reviewed on the Comox Valley Kids website yesterday. They look incredible and I can't wait to get them (I also hid a little sewing book for myself in there as well sshhhhh...). I always feel very guilty about not buying books locally, but usually when I come across a book I like it is at night, online, and on sale. I really need to start carousing our book store more and gather inspiration from instore. The library I'm trying to embrace. Trying. I am truly a book snob. I don't like reading books that look well read. Of course that makes no sense, but I love new books! So, I tend to stick to the New Book Shelf when I go. I also am having a heck of a time logging in to the library's website, to order books that I want and when I get to the library I seem to have forgotten which books I was interested in, so the library tends to get treated second rate by us.

We got out Environment Rebate checks yesterday. What I want to do with it- Spend the entire $300 on a rocking garden! I'm dreaming Peonies for everywhere! But it will get put to an entirely inappropriate use. Tanks of gas. How does that even make sense??? But we really do want to go to Vancouver, and that will help finance the way.

The sun is on it's way out so it's time to go and do more weeding!

Adventuring....

This afternoon I decided that it would be fun to show Kevin and Avari where we went for our Herbal Nature walk a few weeks back. So, we packed all up to go to Craig Park. Craig park is north of town about 3/4 of the way to Lund. There is a big sign off of the highway and the turn off is the same for the Glenrosa Golf Course. They have a fabulous play area, tennis courts and a ball field. To get to our little adventure, we had to drive down an off road road. I wasn't sure exactly how to get there, so it took 2 tries, but we made it!

I have to admit that I need to take a course on adventuring. I would love to do more, but growing up in the city has left me with no natural sense of naturing. I was leading them down a trail but all of the alarm bells were going off in my mind! Are we on the right trail? What if we aren't? What if we run in to a bear? Or a cougar? How old are those bear tracks? Yikes! I also learned that the just 2 set aren't quite ready to go adventuring on those kind of trails! Avari just wanted down the whole time and we were a bit nervous.

So, this evening, we're going in search of some "break in" trails to help get our feet wet and introduce us to a foreign idea!

Birthday Party Recovery

What a perfect day yesterday! The weather was incredible, and it seemed like the kids all had a blast at the party. I had a book exchange so I got everyone to bring a book with them, the kids decorated their goodie bags and at the end of the night they all got a book to take home with them.

We also did the most fabulous thing for cupcakes. This might be old news for you, but I'd never heard of it before! You bake cupcakes right in ice cream cones, and then it's really easy for the kids to handle. I even stole a few ideas from the Today Party that was run a few months ago at Karen's photo study with Comox Valley Kids. We took extra icing from the birthday cake and divvied it up in to little dixie cups and let the kids decorate their own cupcakes. I also stole the idea of putting out a big roll of paper for the kiddos to decorate and they made a wonderful banner for Avari that I think I'm going to get laminated for her (Kevin says that it will cost 100$ so we have a little bet about that going on). Between that, the balloons, the pinata (which was a huge success). My parents know how to throw one heck of a party - I'm not sure what a party would look like without their help!

We are so lucky to have met so many wonderful families since we have moved here. It's a big adjustment to move from college life right into starting a family in a new town but it seems to be going really well. I don't know what I'd do without all of these great kids (and their moms and dads) that we get to spend time with every week! At 2, Avari has more than a dozen friends that she asks for by name on a daily basis, and I think that is so incredible and I can't wait for her to grow up with them. I think that is the greatest thing about a small town like Powell River. There isn't a heck of a lot going on, so chances are you'll get to see everyone at least every week!

Here are some birthday pictures




Craig and Avari in the sandbox





























For all of the photos, you can check out my flickr set
http://www.flickr.com/photos/11254172@N04/sets/72157605741996322/

Looking across the ocean....

those cirrus clouds are not looking promising! They usually only move in before a low pressure system. Hmmmmmmm. The weather report is still saying 19C and cloudy with no precipitation expected for the next 24 hours. I won't go into what Environment Canada says because- hey, they don't have a TV station, how good could it be right? Right?

The cake is making it's way in to the oven as we speak - The cupcakes. Well half of them made it in to the oven alive! Good thing I had planned to make about triple the amount we needed so we ended up in good shape. I definitely need to get an honourary recipe reader.

I'm also fighting what I believe to be a winning battle with this cold. It really has no chance to take hold with the ammunition I'm using. Here's the list of what I'm taking repeatedly over the day.

Oil of Oregano - every hour. I live for this stuff!
Colloidal Silver - a teaspoon 5X a day and a nose spray
Cold FX- I finished off the bottle last night
Oscillococcinum - I only had one dose left so I took it
Thymuline - Not sure if it will help, but it can't hurt
Dr. Rahim's Immune Booster - 3X daily
Some Sinus Homeopathic stuff - as a preventative
Drosera - as a preventative for the cough
Some Amino Acid thing for sinuses
My mom has also lent me a couple of other stuff she has to take

So really, how could the cold take hold? So far I feel nothing but a little aching in my upper back and a really slightly stuffy nose. I mean serious business here!

Off to make some dips for crackers. Please keep praying for the rain to stay away!

Weather is the name of the game.

We've got the food ideas, the cake ingredients, party favours, birthday dress, the weather...

Wait a minute. The weather!

Now, right now the forecast is almost perfect- 18 and cloudy. Partly Cloudy would be the most desirable, but I definitely won't be picky! Especially with the flooding in the US Midwest, and the tornados and hail they are having, and the droughts in Texas. I'll take mild without rain any day!

With the weather not being very pleasing today, I'm enjoying a bit of a couch break while Avari is napping. What I should be doing is scrubbing up the downstairs, just in case the party has to move inside, but I'm optimistic! Rain isn't allowed on the first day of summer is it? The other thing I should be doing is knitting a little camisole for Avari's dress, just in case it is as cold as it is today. I've been in a bit of a needle funk lately though - I get frustrated because all of the projects I want to spontaneously begin seem to need a needle size that I don't have.



The other thing I'm trying to do is will away all of the sick germs that have been floating through the house all week. I'm usually the first one to come down with something, but I have the feeling since Avari got it and I didn't, she didn't get any immunity from nursing so most likely it's just waiting to appear. The only good thing is that it seems to be just an annoyance kind of cold if anything, neither Kevin or Avari seemed very sick - so hopefully I can fight it off silently over the next couple of days and then be all perky for the big party!!!






here's the birthday dress!

T-3 Days

We're in party mode around here!!!! Praying for good weather, and getting together the goodies. It seems like it would be pretty simple to throw a party, but when you're trying to be healthy and environmentally responsible- apparently that is pretty difficult.

Fun, healthy food for the party as well as some goodies. Making a cake and realizing about food dye in the icing. Icky plastic beach balls for the kids. Even picking up a new propane tank for the barbeque makes me feel a bit self conscious. I think this is going to take me a few years to perfect- not a good project to undertake in 3 days - so I'll make it a future goal to make an awesome, fun, healthy, sustainable party. Maybe in time for birthday # 3.

Oh hooray- our fence is finished! We won't have to worry about little munchkins taking a nosedive off of the edge of a yard (it is a 3-6 foot mini cliff). The fence is the cutest, most wonderful picket fence in the world and I'm already planning on next year's plants to put there. It completes the yard so wonderful. Actually, the entire yard will be so wonderful next year. Raspberries, Cherries, Peach-Plums, Strawberries. I think that I will be sad to leave it when we build our hypothetical farm. (Did I mention that I have picked out a plan?)

It's time to put my baby girl to bed for one of the last times before she's a little girl