Happy Friday!

Remember when I said that little miss's hair looks blondish red in this picture but that it was a fluke of the sun light?  

Well, I was totally wrong.  We have a big tuft of strawberry blonde hair growing, just like our great-grandfather, two aunts and an uncle.  And I figure that since my hair is brown with red highlights and T's is brown with blonde highlights, then, well it makes sense.  

Either way we think this little miss is just fabulous :)

Instagram Love

Are you on instagram?  I jumped on the bandwagon a month or so ago and love it.  Its the perfect, easy way to change things up when you are snapping pictures constantly!

Here are a few from our adventures around:

Little miss taking an inpromptu nap

Square Burger Date Night

More burger, date night deliciousness 

Frozen Yogurt Date Night with T

Our cheeks are growing cuter and chubbier by the day

Howdy all.  We are still here, crafting, cooking, reading books and avoiding the heat.  Will pick up regular posting soon!

Over the Weekend

This weekend was pretty chill.  Since our week was crazy hectic, we tried to be as low key as possible to recover and get some family time in.  I don't know about you but after having an adventure I really enjoy having some home-body time.  Lots of disc golf, laughter, early bed times, meals shared with family and of course, laundry.

Little miss tried out her Bumbo seat this weekend as you can see by her just chillin'.  She thinks she is a big girl and can sit up, but she can't just yet.  For now though I think we will skip the Bumbo and enjoy that her favorite place is sitting on our laps checking out all the action.

How was your weekend?

Thankful

This week was wild.  W-I-L-D. And its not quiet over yet.  I am thankful for...

...the chance to take the little miss on a quick weekend getaway vacation to meet some dear friends.

...that our thermostat now reads this:

instead of the 95 degrees it read when we walked in the door from vacation.

...that we have family near by that don't mind if we move ourselves and our baby in while the AC gets fixed.

Will be back this week with more on our little adventures, as soon as this momma can get caught up.  But for now, isn't that little bum the cutest?  We are taking to sleeping with it in the air these days.

Basil Harvest

I hope next summer to have a raised veggie garden in the back yard, since you know, this spring I was a tad bit busy having a baby.  But when I did the planter make over I did put a little basil plant in amongst the zinnias, margarita flowers and sweet potato vines.  To be honest, the basil didn't look that hot when I planted it and the planters get full sun all day, so I didn't think the basil had a chance in the Texas heat.  But to my surprise, the basil is taking off like crazy.  In fact, so that it doesn't take over the whole planter, I had to do a little mini harvest.

No stranger to big batches of basil, I tried to figure out how to store it.  In the past I have made the basil into a pesto and frozen it in ice cube trays for adding to sauces and pasta dishes in the winter.  Yum.  However, since its only the first of July and I have already had to collect some, I have a feeling there will be enough for pesto later in the summer.  So I thought I would try my hand at drying my own basil for the winter.

Here's how I did it:

First I clipped the basil from the garden.  I had read that in order to totally not shock your plant you need to leave behind about 25% of the plant.  That way it can continue to grow through the rest of the season and you can do a second harvest in August (hello pesto cubes!).  So I clipped the plant back.

Next, I soaked the clippings in cool water.  Now lots of "pros" suggest not doing this step but its a safe, effective way to clean bugs and dirt off them.  And my desired outcome is dried basil, not bugs in the house.  I soaked them for maybe 15 minutes, fully submerged in a bowl of cool water.

Then I removed the clippings (and took the bowl of water out to water my newly shorn basil plant) and aid them out on a towel to air dry.

Once they were air dried I removed any discolored or yucky looking leaves (yes, yucky is a technical term).  Then I took the ends loosely (making sure that air could flow between clippings and leaves and tied the ends together with baker's twine and hung it upsie down somewhere cool and dry and away from the sun (at this point in the process it can loose flavor with too much exposure to UV rays...or so they say).

When they dry I will take them down, remove the leaves and store them in a glass or plastic air tight container, I will store the leaves whole because I have read that it preserves the flavor better if you wait to crush the leaf when you are ready to use it.

On the whole it was really easy.  I can't wait to use it in my veggie, chicken manicotti dish this winter.  If you had an extra stash of basil what dishes would you use it for?

Tuesday Crafties

I seem to be in a crafting rut.  Well, maybe more accurate is I seem to be in a crafting rut when it comes to the craft projects I actually complete and photograph :)

Remember when I made these finger puppets to send to a little friend of mine?  Well, I wanted to start making a few for Adelaide to build up her little collection.  For some reason I wanted to do bugs, probably because I was inspired by this cute little swimmer.  So here's what I made:

A book worm, a lady bug and a bee.  The photo didn't turn out very well but the bee has hand stitched detailing on the wings.  

Anyhow, I have a few crafties I want to tackle to get me out of my rut.  For fun here is what I am cooking up:

1)  I want to sew a nursing cover as a gift for a friend (I have a beautiful Amy Butler fabric and everything...I just need to you know, sew it) 

2)  I want to embroider a bib necklace to add some edge to my summer wardrobe and try some new color combos.  

3) I need to sew some curtains for the little miss's window in her room.  I have the fabric and style picked out I just need to go buy the fabric and sew the panel up.  Details, details.  

I think that's it for now...What are you dreaming up in the way of summer projects?

Over the Weekend

Happy belated Fourth of July!  We had a great weekend, here's what we did...

My sister K came into town for the holiday and to visit the little miss.  What I love most about her visits is the laid back vibe her visits have whenever she comes town.  She is family that feels like family and not like a guest, so we spend a lot of our time making home cooked meals, catching up and just relaxing.  This time I had a little competition in the "chatting and catching up" department as the little miss wanted to talk her ear off and show her all her new tricks.

 I also love K because we have similar styles of cooking and similar tastes, but she always reminds me of stuff I know how to do but have forgotten, so her visits always jump start my cooking a bit. 

Sunday we made plans with the rest of the family here for a day at the pool and a cookout to celebrate the holiday.  Little miss debuted her ladybug swim suit with the red tutu and I was brave enough to snap some pics of the two of us together (and apparently brave enough to share them on the interwebs).

Little miss even got a little dip in the pool while the pool was still in the shade.  Don't worry we were super safe.  All you can see in this picture is the little cutie in her suit, but there were like 5 people surrounding her and my uncle kept a very close eye.  In fact he kept saying "watch out her cheek is 3 inches from the water!" It was very sweet.  

She loved the swim time, especially since the pool was bathtub warm.  Since I grew up around and with pools I just really love being able to slowly introduce the little miss to swimming so that she will be safe and love this activity as she grows up.  T, K and I loved the swim time because it was a great way to stretch our muscles in the heat playing volleyball, swimming laps and just goofing around.  

The rest of the weekend was spent relaxing and having fun not doing much of anything.  I am super excited for this week on the ol blog.  I have a few little projects to share in the kitchen and a few crafties to share as well, so check back a little later!

How was your holiday weekend?

Smart and Pretty

I have been thinking a lot the past few days about this article from the Huffington Post that circulated around facebook the first of the weeks and our lives with Adelaide.  

When she was born the gifts and packages came pouring in.  Truly we were overwhelmed with generosity.  We averaged a package a day for the first 2 months of little miss's life and have only now slowed to two or three a week.  Needless to say I am still working on thank you's but all of this is probably topic for another post.  Anyhow, one of the gifts that we received in the mail was this adorable pink onesie with a peace sign on it made of organic, fair trade cotton from a friend of mine and fellow feminist from grad school.  The card enclosed said "congratulations on the birth of Adelaide!  I know we were taught in school that pink is bad for little girls and all that stuff but this so darn cute!"

Around the second week Adelaide was at home, I was in her room talking to her while changing her and getting her dressed when I saw my mother in the doorway sort of smiling.  I asked what was up and she said "I love it!" "Love what?" I asked.  From the time Adelaide was born I have said, "You are so pretty and so smart, because you can be both, baby."  My mom had caught me in one of these pep talks.  And like the author suggests in the Huffington Post article, we make as big a deal out of our cute tutus and pink peace sign onesies as we do how much we like to read around here.  Even at nearly 3 months.

There are very clear and specific moments in my life that I can pick out where I was treated like an idiot because I was perceived to be pretty and well the person I had encountered couldn't possibly fathom that you could be both attractive and smart.  If it weren't for my mother affirming and encouraging my love for books, my early and slightly weird for my age interest in documentaries and for the crazy rule in our house that you could only watch a half hour of TV a day unless it was a news show (yes, I was a 10 year old 60 Minutes and Dateline junkie...this was all before cable and the 24 hour news channels so it only really bought you an extra hour a day) who knows if I would have had the insight about myself to know I was both smart and pretty when I encountered people who wanted to minimize my intellegance and the courage to stand up to them and insist that I did indeed need to be taken seriously.  

I appreciated the article, but what I appreciated most was the wide span of women on facebook who shared it--not just my explicitly feminist friends from grad school, but mothers, daughters, dads, pastors and friends.  It gives me hope.