How does your garden grow?

Look how big our garden is now!   It was so small before! 

Go peas go! 

Jamaica - A little late

I just found this post, apparently I saved it as a draft and never published it.  So over a year later....the honeymoon!

Thunderstorms every day!

My "just married" sandals...that I accidentally left there :( 

Yay for towel animals! 

Butternut squash for the picky eater

I recently bought a butternut squash from Trader Joes.  It sat on the counter and I think Zach was dreading the day he would be served squash for dinner.  But I found this great (and super easy) soup recipe! It's spicy and wonderful, and even Zach approved.  

On a side note: apparently butternut squash is part evil, because after I cut it up my hands were SUPER dry and tight, very uncomfortable....I guess it's an allergic reaction some people have.  Next time I'll be wearing gloves. 

INGREDIENTS

• 2 teaspoons olive oil
• 2 leeks, trimmed, chopped and rinsed
• 1 red bell pepper, chopped
• 1 jalenpeno pepper, chopped
• 3 cloves garlic, minced
• 4 cups reduced-sodium chicken broth
• 1 1/2 pounds butternut squash, (1 small to medium), peeled, seeded and cut into 1-inch cubes
• 2 tablespoons minced fresh thyme, or 2 teaspoons dried thyme
• 1 1/2 teaspoons ground cumin
• 1/2 lb cooked chicken, cut into pieces
• 2 cups frozen corn kernels
• 1 lime, juiced
• 1/2 teaspoon crushed red pepper
• 1/4 teaspoon salt
• Freshly ground pepper, to taste

• PREPARATION

  1. Heat oil in a Dutch oven over medium-high heat. Add leeks and bell pepper; cook, stirring often, until the vegetables begin to soften, 3 to 4 minutes. Add garlic and cook, stirring, for 1 minute more. Stir in broth, squash, thyme and cumin; cover and bring to a boil. Reduce heat to medium-low and cook until the vegetables are tender, about 10 minutes.
  2. Add chicken and corn; return to a simmer and cook 3 to 4 minutes. Add lime juice and crushed red pepper. Season with salt and pepper.

Pumpkin Oat Muffins = Rainy Day Goodness

My version of the pumpkin oat muffins I found on this site. The recipe said it made 9 muffins, but big muffins are more fun! Plus I never get to use this muffin pan.

Ingredients:

• 1 cup whole wheat flour
• 1 cup oats
• 1/3 cup honey
• 1 tsp baking powder
• 1/2 tsp baking soda
• 15 ounces canned pumpkin
• 1 egg
• 1 tbsp olive oil
• 2 tsp pumpkin pie spice
• 1 tsp cinnamon
• I also added a few extra dashes of nutmeg and clove.
• 5 tbsp ground flaxseed (just for extra omega 3's)

Directions:

• Preheat oven to 375*F
• Coat muffin tin with non-stick cooking spray or line muffins cups.
• Combine all ingredients in mixing bowl; blend well.
• Pour batter evenly into muffin tins.
• Bake for 20-22 minutes.
• Allow to cool, and enjoy!

Our Square Foot Garden

These weekend we started a garden...

We decided to get baby plants of whatever we could, instead of starting from seeds

Putting the box together

Zach and his "intermediate" carpentry skills....or are they advanced now?

SOIL!

These plants are going to have the best home :)

Broccoli, butter lettuce, regular lettuce, thyme, cilantro, carrots, onion, arugula, garlic, snow peas, swiss chard... I think that's all of them.

16 square feet of goodness.

Wish us luck.

I forgot to look all the way...

Yes, it's time for another supermarket story, nothing like this every happens to me at Trader Joes...I should just not go to other markets. But the other markets have things that Trader Joe's doesn't seem to have, like baking soda...I found baking powder, but couldn't find baking soda for the life of me. Anyway, I stopped at Vons on my way home from Trader Joe's, "I'll just run in super fast and get these three items" I thought to myself, not wanting the groceries in my trunk to melt. Unfortunately the Carpinteria Vons is the least organized market I've ever been in... of course the yogurt would be next to the diapers! ...why did I even check by the milk?

With my items acquired I hurried to the checkout stand, perfect! Only one person in front of me, and they only have one item! I've really lucked out.

It was only after I put everything on the conveyer belt that I remembered how important it was to look all the way. Because that one person in front of me was about 95 years old and didn't have any teeth, and the one thing she was buying was a giant bottle of chardonnay, and, most importantly what she was clutching between her crooked fingers wasn't a pocketbook, it was a bag full of coins. "I have too many pennies at home!" she exclaimed.

Pennies, I'm not even kidding, $ 4.86 in pennies.

"Help me count these!"....she was talking to me. She smelled like alcohol and I had to count her pennies, and in order to count them I had to touch them...and they were sticky.

And this is why I will forever carry hand sanitizer in my purse... and I will not stop when I have dairy products in the car.

I want to ride my bicycle...

So Zach and I finally got bicycles, we've wanted them since last summer. And since Zach loves to match :) he found this adorable pair on sale in Ventura. They look boring in the picture, but they're so cute up close. The boy one has blue accents and the girl one has pink, and they have adorable retro writing on the sides.

"Coffee"

"Cream"

We rode them to Zach's work yesterday, to see how long it would take. I think it was less than 15 minutes. It's SO much more fun to ride than my $79 childhood bike, I want to go ride it right now! but it's still pouring rain :(

Whatever Sarah

I don't have normal allergies. You'll never see me with hay fever, or itchy eyes, or avoiding nuts or fish. I am however allergic to Neosporin. Well since I'm no longer a 5 year old scraping my knees or breaking fishbowls this usually isn't a problem.

But since November (yes 6 months ago) I've had a cut on my nose. It won't heal! Something is wrong with my skin!

So I saw a Neosporin commercial the other day, the one with two boys and a girl and they all peel off their bandaids and still have cuts, except Sarah's is "all betterl" after three days.

So I thought "well hey if it will heal this cut in three days then it's totally worth the rash that I'll get! At least that's not bleeding!"

Wrong. Now I have a cut AND an awkward looking rash. Lesson learned, stay away from Neosporin. And just for anyone wondering, Polysporin does the same thing.

I still put on lip gloss to go to the market

Let me tell you about yesterday's trip to the market.

It started off normal, a little more crowded than usual, judging from the parking lot at least, but then I went inside... every old person in Denver was in there, and every new mom, and about 500 extra people that aren't usually there. There were no carts, they were mopping the floors, restocking everything, it was like it was the middle of the night, but it was 4:30 in the afternoon.

There was a lady in the seafood department just screaming...I don't know why.

They were completely sold out of broccoli?

There was puke next to the chicken.

The checker wouldn't talk to me, I think he was upset about some blueberries on the floor. He gave me my $3 item for $1 because he couldn't get it to scan....I tried to tell him, but he wasn't talking to me, there were blueberries on the floor.

I tried to help bag up my groceries to escape the madness faster, but I guess I'm not allowed.
Apparently a fun pack of tapioca pudding needed to escape too, it ended up in one of my bags, who buys tapioca? yuck.

tastes like horror

So my job is pretty boring, I have to sit at a desk all day, in a VERY quiet room, if you walked in here you would probably be totally creeped out by it, especially if the hummer was humming her usual ear piercing horrible hum, which is the only noise besides the occasional terrifying mumblings of the smelly bleeder...

Luckily I can listen to music, or books on tape, and thus the silence (and the terror) is blocked out a little. The music gets me through the day, so do my desk snacks. In particular my stash of pumpkin seeds, I buy them when I go marketing on Thursdays and then I carefully ration them so they'll last till I market again. I know it's silly, but the saltiness brings me joy,

Let me quote from scripture (or shcripshure if you're Ethan):

"Salt is good" - Mark 9:50

Yes salt is good, especially at my desk, my desk in the horrible silent room.

So imagine my dismay when I came in Monday morning and over the weekend someone had eaten the whole bag. I don't know why you would sit at someone else's desk, go through their drawers and eat their food. It has to be the same person who used to readjust my chair every night, so thank you Mr. Useless Security Guard who uses my desk and eats my salt.

So tonight I will leave the 8 month old bag of generic brand pumpkin seeds that taste like evil, in place of where my other ones were. Help yourself salt thief.

Valentine's day weekend

Zach and I decided to take a trip down to Colorado Springs for Valentine's day this year. We wanted to go to Glenwood Springs, but they seemed all booked up already. But the Springs was super fun too :) We drove down on Friday and had dinner at a brewery that was supposed to be good, and was conveniently right across the street from our hotel. While we were there the couple at the table next to us got engaged, they were super loud about it and we got front row seats.

On Saturday morning we had the best breakfast ever at the hotel's fancy restaurant, for only $6, pretty good deal.

View from our window, almost the top floor

Then we went to Garden of the Gods, apparently it was mountain goat day, so Smokey Bear was there.

me and a big rock

Zach likes to deliberately disobey signs

Stay on the path Zach

Then we went to the Cheyenne Zoo, and spent forever there :) We learned lots of things, like giraffes have really gross tongues, moose like buckets on their heads, wolfs are just ugly dogs, hippos are the grossest eaters ever, and if a zebra, horse, and giraffe had a baby it would look like this:

Hello Okapi

fake giraffe


real giraffe!!

cutest ever


grossest ever

Sweethearts how I miss you

I'm writing this in case you have been searching for Necco Sweathearts this past Valentine's day, could you only find ones with blue and neon colors? Me too. Because Necco decided that the classic candy that's been around since forever should instead have the following flavors:

dishsoap, baby powder, lipstick, and evil.

I found a pretty great blog about it here : http://www.typetive.com/candyblog/item/sweethearts_2010/

"it's like if Coke decided to only make Cherry Coke" - Zach

Curly Girl Method, Simplified!

I'd heard a lot about the "Curly Girl Method" but until now I have been reluctant to try it.  Several things about it were a little too weird for me, like not shampooing your hair (I like shampoo!), not combing after your shower, and not using regular towels. 
Well last week I was so frustrated with my hair (mostly this horrible haircut) and Colorado's extremely dry climate, that I decided to give the Curly Girl Method a try.  And so far it's not nearly as gross as I thought it would be, my hair today feels cleaner (and healthier) than it has in a long long time. 
The method really consists of 6 things:
1. Use a sulfate free shampoo.   It won't lather like a normal shampoo, but it's not as bad as I thought it would be.  The Deva Care Lo Poo is really nice, and it smells like orange sherbert.

2.  Comb through conditioner in the shower.

3. Don't use a normal terry cloth towel to dry your hair, use a t-shirt or microfiber towel.

4. This was the tricky part to me.  If you cut out sulfates from your shampoo, then you also have to cut out silocones from your hair products, because without the sulfates they will just build up on your hair because they're not water soluable.  I thought the only ones without silicones would be expensive organic products, but the super cheap drugstore products like V05 and Suave work too (not all of them, but a lot).

5. Plopping, this is what plopping looks like:

and this is why Zach laughs at me every morning, but it works so well!

6. Diffuse, but don't dry your hair all the way (I really hate having wet hair, so I probably dry it too much but whatever)

The result? I feel like I have new hair! Which is creepy, like someone else's hair is on my head.  But it feels so much better than it did before, so I guess figuring all this out was worth it.

ugh

So I'm frustrated and a little confused. I feel like I'm a little bit of a failure, or a little bit lazy, because I only like to paint certain things....because those are the things I want to paint, those are the things that I'm drawn to. Images where I can use wide brush strokes and bright colors, where I can make changes easily, where I can make it look like what I want it to. I'm not excited when things turn out too realistic. I know that I could paint an apple and have it look like a photograph, but I don't want to, it's not really satisfying. And I've spent a long time trying to loosen up and stop doing that. But I do like my work to be representational, I'm never very happy when I create something that is completely abstract. It somehow doesn't feel valid to me. Like there are far too many options that I haven't explored so this one couldn't possibly be the best one, and there are not enough hours in the day find it.

But then I think, am I only drawn to these certain things because I know that I can paint them well? That I won't have to put in a lot of effort to make it look how I want it to? Maybe it's not that they inspire me, maybe it's that I'm lazy, I haven't had a lot of experience painting the figure and that's why I don't want to? It's hard for me to tell.

Then I think back to the paintings and artists that always inspire me, their subjects are often the same as mine. I don't think I'm lazy...I paint almost everyday it seems. And I'm not nearly as scared of failure as I used to be, but obviously not completely over the "maybe I'm supposed to be doing this" and not actually what I want to be doing.

This post probably makes no sense to anyone but me.

Here's my next problem: I really enjoy the whole etsy thing, it's great because my studio gets cleaned out. It's also great because sometimes the paintings I like the least are the ones that sell, and I don't have to look at them anymore. But here's the problem, the one's that I like the least are the ones that sell! Why?!

Ok I like some of them. But why is it that well over half my sales have been the ones that are fruit?

Here's what it feels like, I spend 40 minutes painting a pear, I list it and it sells in an hour. I spend considerably more time painting something that I feel is more successful in the end, and it just stays in my shop forever. And now I feel like I have to keep painting fruit over and over so that I can keep the rest of my shop open with the things that I like more. Maybe this shouldn't even be frustrating. It's not that I don't like to paint fruit, I do! But I just feel like I should keep painting different things because I feel like a creative failure to do the same type of thing again and again. I wish I had an answer. I also wish cradled masonite panels weren't so darn expensive. I guess I'll just keep painting.