Amberlins recipe

Well my 8 yr old made supper last night. I must say, it was pretty good. She made up this recipe and begged me to try it, so last night was the night.

Last week I made a recipe that I based on this one.
http://www.kraftfoods.com/kf/recipes/recipedetail.htm?recipe_id=109218&e=email

Only replace half of the rice with lentils. I cooked them together, added a little Mrs. Dash and used broth instead of water. I than added a can of corn to the cooked mixture.

Well Amberlin decided that it would taste good in a burrito, so we made the mix again, cooked and cut into pieces some boneless skinless chicken, put into a shell with some cheddar cheese and warmed in the oven for a few minutes. It was pretty good. We put sour cream on top of it and had a filling dinner.

With the leftovers today, I just put in on my plate without a shell, we used them all yesterday lol.

She was soo excited that she made up a recipe and it was good. It just came to her, she says lol. Well that's how I do it too, at least that's a good thing she's inheriting from me!

I'd heard about lentils on a show a while back. They said you can interchange rice and lentils and cook them just the same. By using both you get your carbs and protein together and it's very filling. So instead of 1 cup of rice, and 2 cups of water, use 1/2 C of lentils and 1/2 C of rice and 2 cups of water. Cook them together at the same time. Don't forget some seasoning and your good to go!

gardening!

Well today it is raining, so I thought I would share our progress from the last few days.
We got the edging all around the pond. We had to revamp it a little. It just wasn't enough. Yesterday I finished it off by adding some weed barrier fabric and mulch, a few plants and 13 fish. Here's the before and after. It makes a huge improvement.
It's such a peaceful place to sit. We'll have more plants in there too. Some Canna's will come up along the back and the side.

Mark helped me plant my new rose bushes by the greenhouse on Sunday. After that I started digging up the sod for my garden around the outside of it. It's still to early to plant them, but we have edging to put around it and should be able to get it all planted next week I hope. Here are a few pictures of the progress.

I got it almost all done and ready for the edging, but didn't get to finish it yet. I don't have pictures of that yet. In the process I chopped our satillite cable in half lol, we forgot we buried it right thru there. We got that patched, but now Mark gets to bury a new one next chance he gets. It won't hold up to moisture.

The flowers have come up on the side of the house too. This flower bed is all perennials that I've planted and some were there already. It's really filling out. I hope to build up the beds in the fall, so next year they will be more defined and deeper. This is the first year I get to plant flower, so I'm really excited to get them in there. The siding, windows and roof is all done, so I can go all out. YAY!

Well I'll get more pictures up here in a few days. Not going to get anymore done outside today anyhow. BUT I can sit on my beautiful patio and enjoy the rain showers.

Tata!

Pictures

He crawled in bed with me this morning. They looked so peaceful. Than they woke up LOL



Oh the joy of mother hood. She looks so peaceful and content, and natural. It's so hard to pull out her thumb and stick a pacifier in instead.


She just doesn't look as happy. With all my kids I replaced the thumb with a pacifier. I figure it's easier to take a pacifier away at a year old than a thumb. But it gets harder with each kid. Especially this one. She pulls out the sucky and pokes her thumb back in. And it helps her sleep longer. I come in the morning to find she slept all night (which is AWESOME) and her thumb in her mouth. She's more persistent, I'm really having a hard time not letting her get away with it. At church on Sunday we did this over and over, probably 10 times thumb out, sucky in, sucky out thumb in. lol. sigh

Our garden

Here are our tomatoe plants in the house. They are really sprouting up.
Our greenhouse is now in the center of the yard and will get lots of sun
You can see how much they've grown in just a short time. Here are our beans and squash.

Broccoli, Cauliflower, chives, cucumbers and a variety of flowers.
Squash and some morning glories
This is how we have it set up inside the greenhouse.

Here is our herb garden. So far only the chives are big. I had planted the rest as seeds later. The chives I started with the first batch of starts. They are all starting to sprout thru though. Can't wait!

I took all these photos on Saturday, you can see how much it's all grown. Now if it will quit freezing out I can get them planted in the ground.

Well another day of gardening behind us!

In my search to identify a plant for someone, I found a few good links I thought I would share. I am far from a good gardener. I'm still learning so I'm always in search of some good helps. I've still not found what this plant is, but is sure is pretty. Here's a picture, if you know what it is, please share the info so I can pass it on.

Identify diseases and a cure for your vegetables

http://vegetablemdonline.ppath.cornell.edu/cropindex.htm

Tons of information on lots of different gardening and flowering subjects. Even a search by characteristics for unknowns.

http://davesgarden.com/

Top 10 Gardening Websites for Your Online Tool Shed

http://gardening.about.com/od/toolschool/tp/Web_Diagnostics.htm

I'll let you know if I find the name. So far I can only think it's in the Rhododenren family.

Gardening

Oh what a beautiful day yesterday. We got some gardening done and a walk too! A few weeks back we got our seeds started inside. I'd planned on posting these photos before, but go figure, I got to busy!!!



What I did was used egg cartons. I found out that egg shells work great for fertilizer and you can use the halves to plant the seeds in, than the transplanting is easier into a pot. A few things I would change is not plant so many seeds in each one, it kinda defeats the purpose if you have to break the shell open to separate the seedlings. You can also crush the egg shells into the dirt to get the same nutrient effect.

Well now it's all sprouted and time to transplant, so today we transplanted into large pots. I have more seedlings than I know what to do with of course, but we'll give some away.

Today we hope to get some more transplanted and the greenhouse in order. Hubby moved it into a sunny spot last weekend, so I can fill it up this year. We stopped at the library during our walk yesterday and got some books on greehouse gardening. I've never had a greenhouse before, so this is a new bit of fun for us. I'm very excited to have the possibility (since I'm not sure if it will work yet) to have some vegi's year round in there. I've got some space around the outside to plant some squash, tomatoes, melons and berries too. I'll keep you posted as we progress. Yesterday all I did was covered the floor with newspapers to kill the grass. It works great as a weedbarrier so I figure it should work to kill the grass for me too.

Well gotta run. We are off to town for a bit.

Chicago, IL

Sorry I've been MIA lately, but I have good reason, really!

Here is some of what we've been up to. We took a "mini vacation" as the kids called it to Chicago, IL. Having never been to a "BIG" city before it was quite the experience for us. The sky scrapers were so tall, and there were so many people. I know it gets busier there than when were there. The SIDEWALKS have speed limit signs on them. I'm not kidding, they said, "when congestion is heavy, walking pace only" or something along those lines. The crosswalks were fuller than the road, there were more taxi cabs than cars, and more taxi companies than types of cars lol. It was alot of fun. I'll fill in more later, but here are some pictures. If you ever get to go, take a camera, we didn't stop in the downtown area, just drove thru.



The Sears Tower

The Donald Trump tower.