Strawberry Sweetness

This post dedicated to the Strawberry.

Steve and I have been waiting and waiting for the Strawberries to become sweet, red, and juicy. Well we almost waited ourselves out of any strawberries at all!  Once we were finally ready to invest at our local stand, EVERY local stand was no longer selling the precious little things. Who knew June was their month and July meant they were movin' out!? Well apparently everyone knew in fact. Everyone, but us.

So we set out on a quest to find the last berries in the universe. We landed at Hoffman Farms who were allowing U Pick if you had the time and patience to peruse the fields. Yay!

 We found them :)
 We were SO pleased.

 Steve-o hard at work.

It may not look like I'm busy, but in reality, I filled my bucket MUCH faster than Steve. We were hoping to be able to find a 1/2 flat for jam. Instead we were able to fill 2 buckets for a full flat and have berries to freeze.

View from the picking position. BeAuTiFuL weather. Gorgeous. Sunny. FINALLY. Warm. Scrumptious Sunny Sunshine. 

Perfect morning.

Found a cute stand in the field for my berries to sit upon for their photo op.

 Fruits of our labor. 

 Fast forward 8 hours from the last photo to this of our flats at home. After leaving the fields, I got paged into work (missing out on the sunshine), I wasn't pleased. Steve mowed the lawn, fixed some pipes, worked in the garden... We were tired! But there was jam to be made. 

 Beautiful berries. Oh how we heart you. Thank you for finding your way to our home. We are happy to have you. 

 Bailey overseeing the work. Getting underfoot of two tired worker-bees. The sweet pea just likes to be close. She looks so innocent.

 Ready for the freezer. 

 Add, mix, add, stir... Saturday night date, Strawberry jam we shall make. 

And the final product. Steve is relieved to not have to face a year without Strawberry jam. 

This post makes Strawberry jam seem to be the center of our universe around here. And it was today. And it's the center of this blog post, so I hope you like Strawberry jam too. 

Haven't posted in a while. Here's a glimpse of what has kept us busy. 

 Painting bedroom, which was always a little too green for me, to a fabulous grey. As well as a bathroom too.

 Celebrating Mom's birthday on May 29th...

 ... and Steve's on May 30th. By the way, this was THE most delicious pecan pie ever. 

 Cuddling with puppy dogs. 

 Spending the day at the zoo with my mom, sister and Brayden and Hannah. 

Jumping around having fun.


Getting ready to install hardwood floors.

Wow, long post. Had lots to catch up on! Are you still awake?

Congrats, you made it to the end.

Celebrating May 3rd for the 29th time

Coconut layer cake with Huckleberry Ice Cream

It's my birthday :) Here's a little snippet of how I celebrated and some of the showering of blessings from such wonderful friends and family. Thanks everyone for making it so fun and special!

Working away in the kitchen makin' ice cream cups

Brayden taking Bailey for a walk in the kitchen

Adding candles to the cake with Grammy

Such a cutie pie. Notice the blur? This was the one millisecond I caught on camera he was still.

Me with my yummy coconut cream layer cake.

Brayden helping auntie blow out the candles

Getting in some cuddle time with Hannah

Bad Auntie! Teaching Brayden how to eat right from the cake! No slicing needed :)

New Lamp! YES!!! No more leaning tower lamp from college days

Way fun signs to stick in my herb garden. Love them

Some of the marvelous blessings from everyone! Thank you SO VERY MUCH!

Ha ha ha Showing off her long hairy legs. 

April Update

It's a photo/commentary post on our recent happenings...


I was introduced to Fuchsia Day at Fred Meyer. I loved it! I got 10 plants for $6, 2 hangers with liners for $15, and FREE dirt to fill them. What a steal! You could even bring pots from home to get free dirt, AMAZING. Anyhow, I am SO happy to have 2 new hanging pots in the front of the house for less than the cost of one normally priced hanging plant. Can't wait for the blooms to arrive.


Our new niece Hannah Melissa Kelly arrived at 2am on Easter morning after only 2 pushes and 1 hour of labor. She weighed in at 6lbs 80z and was 18.5 inches long.

She is just so cuddly and warm.

Auntie Christine and Uncle Steve went to visit Easter evening at the hospital.

Proud Grammy and Pa.


I'm looking for new recipes all the time. This was was pretty easy to pull together and tasted good too. Made ravioli out of wanton wrappers and put and ricotta and spinach inside. Boiling them for 2-3 minutes was all it took. Kind of a white dinner, right? But it tasted good.


So did these brownies. Out of a box just wouldn't do for the mister in the house, so he whipped us up these beauties and me oh my boy oh boy were they TaStEy!

Now we go back in time a bit. Here is the mess at the beginning of our garage project.


This is the "work bench" that was left behind for us that was VERY wobbly and not satisfactory. Sorry for the air compressor blocking lots of the view.




Putting up uniform wall covering.


Working hard at installing one of around 7,000 new outlets in the garage. I may have exaggerated that number a bit, but not by much. Can you imagine why we would need so many? Neither can I, but Steve can :)

And beautiful outlets they are! Look how neat and tidy that all looks (well look beyond the clutter at the pretty new conduit along the wall).



Some how I don't have any "along the way" pictures of this build. But this is our NEW work bench built from scratch by Steve. Now this really is a thing of beauty.


Starting to move in... and SO much better than what was there before.


Don't all doggies duck tape their ears to prevent funny lookin' ears later on?

She wasn't very pleased with us. Can't you tell by her expression? But one week later and her ears are all fixed up so they won't crease and fly out when she is older.


Sleeping is still a favorite past time. She loves to be under foot at the dinner table.

A dog's life. Sometimes holding up your own head is just too much. I understand.

That's April so far!

March Madness

March Madness around here I assure you has NOTHING to do with college basketball. We've been busy training the pup and celebrating birthdays around here. Hard to believe it's already March and soon to be April, but boy am I ready for warm weather and sunshine. Anyhow, here is a glimpse into life around here these days.

February is my Dad's Birthday. The last two years I've gifted him a home made dinner from me. Last year it was his choice and he chose Thanksgiving for dinner. The most complex meal he could think of. These are pics from his real b-day in Feb when he got his dinner choices gifted.


I was pretty proud of the cake I decorated for him!


Pa teaching the young one to lick frosting of the candles.

Brayden learns fast. :)

We scheduled this year's follow up home made dinner on St. Patty's day. Yes we had Italian on St. Patty's day this year. I crafted some silly Irish decor for the party.

This is my interpretation of a rainbow of Easter eggs with a pot (pitcher) of gold (fabric/eggs) at the end of it. Hey, this is what I can do with things laying around the house so I don't have so spend money!

I do have a little shamrock pot I filled with greens from the yard and added some green food coloring to the water in my mini vases with the green eggs resting on top. So funky, but it was green so I decided that it was appropriately festive.

So, for his dinner this year, he got three choices under appetizers (he chose crab stuffed mushrooms), entree (meat lasagna) and desserts (he couldn't decide between the apple pie, carrot cake and lemon bars). The mushrooms just got thrown together and they were ok, but needed something. I'll have to work on that one, so they aren't pictured. The lasagna however came from The New Best Recipe cookbook from America's Test Kitchen and it was SUPERB! SOOOO good.


The process of building the HEAVY lasagna

All cooked up and being devoured.


The complete meal
The birthday boy enjoying his meal

SO you know how I said Dad couldn't decide on the dessert option, well neither could the baker Steve either. So he made all three. Here is the dessert buffet (bad picture, sorry). It was so good. Steve being such a great baker is a blessing for my tummy and a curse for my workouts.

Update on the fast growing pup. Her name is Bailey, I'm not sure if that was reported in the last blog or not.

She is very skilled at taking naps.


Taking naps ANYWHERE that is.

She loves to be right under foot in the kitchen. We're working on this one.


Some couch cuddles. She is so delightfully warm so a very welcome cuddle buddy for me.


Won't be able to lift her up like this for much longer. She is just shy of 13 wks and very close to 27lbs. Growing like a weed. Steve estimated about 1/2 lb a day based on her weight gain.



And this one is just one more random pic. This was one of the most simple yet flavorful meals I found on one of the food blogs I look to for inspiration fortheloveofcooking.net
Baked chicken flautas. YUM. so easy to make and they tasted SO good. I love when new things work out :)

Ok, that is it for the update now.