Refrigerator Garlic Onion Dills

Upon investigating in my garden the other day I came across three gigantic cucumbers, and since my internet searches failed to yield a satisfactory refrigerator pickle recipe (ie. no sugar in 'em), I did what I usually do anyway: I made up my own.

Here's what I did: I scrubbed the cucumbers and cut them into spears that would fit well in my jars (old pickle jars that I've saved). To make both jars I boiled 2 cups water, 4 cups distilled white vinegar and 1/4 cup kosher salt. I put into each jar 3 large cloves of garlic (peeled and gently flattened with the broad side of a butchers knife), 1/4 of a large onion, sliced, and 1 Tbsp. dried dillweed. Then I packed them full of cucumber spears and poured the boiling liquid over them. I screwed on the lids and let them cool to room temperature before placing them in the fridge. During this time they went from bright green to a sort of olive green (see below, jar to the left is at room temp, jar to the right has just been assembled).

And that's it! I tasted them this morning (about 16 hours later) and YUM! They are really delicious and still crunchy. Even Esther likes them. :)

New look

I decided to mess around with Blogger's new design tool. I wanted a blog with a bit more color. So I will probably change it back to white again soon, so what?!?

Tomatoes!

I LOVE summer for one main reason: garden-fresh, fully ripe, sun-warmed tomatoes... Mmmmm...

I love living on BLTs...

...tomato salads, bruschetta, and homemade salsa. ahhhhh...

Is there anything better?!? Praise the Lord, the God of creation, for making tomatoes! :)

Thoughts on Home Schooling

A good friend of mine turned me on to a method of home schooling that I'm getting really excited about. The more I debated home school or public school, the more I wasn't sure which I really wanted. Home school seems so daunting and so "teacher-dependent" that I was certain I would fail at doing it well. Public school is convenient and, however coersively, already paid for.

Now enter an important video series: The Truth Project. A very excellent series by Focus on the Family that does it's best to expose the lies of the world and the Truth that scripture has laid out for us. This series has turned my heart more than ever to home schooling, since the ONLY absolute truth we have is scripture and therefore everything we "know" should be based upon it.

Talk about a daunting task.

Now enter the creator of the method my friend mentioned: Charlotte Mason. In some resources she is referred to as "the mother of home schooling," although it is clear that home schooling existed before her books were published.

I've requested a hold on her 6 volume book (!) at the library and will let you know what I think, but from the sections I HAVE read she seems to have a very unique and amazing way of teaching children that requires very little preparation on the part of the teacher (as far as breaking everything down and spoon feeding it to them).

I think I can do this. Really.

Camping at Bulltrout Lake

We finally braved a family camping trip with Esther this year. We weren't sure how she'd do but are pleased to say that she LOVED it. She's definitely going to be an outdoor girl.

The guys (Aaron, Dad, and a friend, Wes) had been backpacking for a few days already and then my mom, Esther and I went up to meet them. We met at Kirkham Hot Springs, where we swam, had lunch, and Esther got to experience chipmunks firsthand. She ran around trying to catch them, then we showed her how to feed them. She was thrilled when, finally, a chipmunk took some food right out of her hand. No picture of that one. :(

Then we drove to our campsite, about an hour away, Bulltrout Lake. We had dinner, Creole Chicken and Dumplings, and set up camp. The next day we hiked up to Sawtooth Lake. It was about 8 miles roundtrip and Esther did really well being carried around all the way. Friday we did nothing and loved every minute. Saturday we packed up camp and stopped at Redfish Lake on our way out.

Gnawing on a chicken bone. Mmmmmm...

Ready to go hiking

Halfway up to Sawtooth Lake, smelling the flowers.

Looking at more flowers.

Sawtooth Lake with Mt. Regan in the background.

Essie with Grampa, who carried her most of the way up and back.

Naptime, on the way back down.

Aaron calls this the "welcome to parenthood" sandwich. All the "stuff" that Esther didn't eat, pieced together so he could eat it and it wouldn't go to waste. :)

What?

Esther sitting on her stump (see video at the end).

On the beach at Red Fish Lake.

Tentatively testing the waters. It was cold, hence the hot chocolate in my hand. :)

Bedroom redo

So, this is my room now. I can't seem to find a picture of how it looked before, but I can say that it was a dark olive green, which, at the time, I loved. After about 2 1/2 years of dark olive green? Not so much. I have come to the conclusion that, despite what I thought I liked, I really love white (or whitish) walls.

Now, this is not an easy confession to make. As my mom will tell anyone, I have LONG given her a hard time about her obsession with white. I would tease her when she said she was painting a room a "color" that was the palest possible shade, and thus "a shade of white." The only way I could explain finding the perfect shade of off-white for my walls (which my mom has been hunting for her entire adult life) is: divine irony. Yep, I'm sure God found that very humorous. :)

I can't tell you how incredibly liberating it was to 'fess up that of all the photos in my "decor file" (more on that later) the overwhelming majority of the rooms had white (ish) walls. Therefore, I should have white walls. *ouch* The style and accents were so different from my mom's style that I had automatically rejected white walls along with much of what I associated with "mom's style." Thankfully my decor file set me straight and I will never again stray...

...now to paint over that horrible blue in the office. What WAS I thinking!?!?

Magazine Page Starburst Thingy

Alright, here's what mine looks like:

I put my foot in there to give an idea of how big it is.

On the tutorial where I got the idea they had done the tubes all the same size and they were straight, not cone-shaped. It looked cool, but kinda flat and too uniform for my taste. So, I decided to do cones of various sizes and then to layer them (some of them don't reach all the way into the middle and thus stick out further on the edges). Also, the site I looked at had wired them together. That just seems like a pain, so I'm going to cut out a big doughnut shape from some sturdy carboard and hot glue my tubes to it.

That said, if you want to duplicate it all you need are some old magazines, a glue stick, some cardboard and a hot glue gun. Roll the tubes with the torn edge facing you so that it'll be on the inside, with the clean edge on the outside. Experiment with different sizes of tubes and cones. You could also do this with cute scrapbook paper, newspaper, old book pages, anything you can think of for a uniquely "you" look. :)

I'll post pics of my bedroom once I have this hung up, i.e. next week!

Okay, okay...

So it's been two weeks not one, and I'm determined to get better...

Bedroom is coming along, but I'm not done with my project yet. In fact, I haven't worked on it in, um, two weeks. But, I made this today:

And I've been really enjoying my yard is this fine weather. Here's some flowers, just for you:

And, yes, we'll be trying to update more often (ahem, WEEKLY) because we are THAT cool, and I know you really wanna know what we're up to:

I am currently obsessed with following some very creative blogs and I will be trying out a lot of the projects I've found and posting pictures of my actual project and links to the tutorials. Many of them can be made with what most people have in their homes. Upcoming: Recycled magazine page wreath (or starburst type thingy). It's cool, and almost done! I'm planning on hanging it above my bed in my new room (it's undergoing a paint job and some restyling).

California Trip

I really, really, really have to be more on top of this... I'm thinking I'll start blogging weekly so that I can actually do some fun blogs instead of the typical "Here's all the stuff we're doing and 100 photos of it all!" Yeah, maybe weekly would be good...

So, here's all the stuff we did in California and 100 pictures! :)

Aaron's best friend from high school lives down in Southern California, so we mostly stayed with him and his two boys. They picked us up in Burbank on Friday at 10pm and we got in bed around midnight...



Day one: Got up late and drove to Laguna Beach. It was a little overcast and cool, so Esther and I played in the sand while the boys braved the water. Isn't that the cutest little beach baby?!?



After Laguna Beach we went to Loma Linda to have a BBQ with Aaron's Brother Tony and his family. Then we played in the pool:

Day Two: Went to church with Brett and then we all took naps. Drove back out to Loma Linda where the Logans (My sister-in-law's parents) made us cedar plank salmon on the BBQ. Amazingly good! We spent the night in Loma Linda at one of Tony and Bridget's friends' homes. They let us use their entire house while they were out of town. Such a blessing.

Day Three: Went out to coffee with Bridget and her mom, Nancy. The guys went for a bike ride and then we all went to the pool. Bridget also took me out to get Boba tea. I decided against the tapioca part and just got a Taro-coconut slush. It was good at first and then, um, interesting. Sorry, Bridge. We drove back to Brett's place and then went out to dinner with some friends of mine from Bible School. It was wonderful to see them again and catch up.

Day four: Went for a hike up at Idyllwild. It was a nice change of pace and scenery. Esther loved it, but couldn't wait for her nap, so she fell asleep in Brett's arms on the way down. I carried her the rest of the way and Aaron took lots of pictures of it 'cause it was pretty cute. :)

Before the hike

Brett's boys: Trevor and Dylan

View from the trail

Essie and Daddy. :)

Sleeping baby. She was like a little sack of potatoes.

After the hike we went out to In-N-Out. It has to be done, they really do have great burgers and fries. We BBQ'd at Brett's that night and made lemon drop cocktails with lemons from Brett's yard. Yeah, he's got lemons, oranges, tangelos, kumquats, and two grapefruits. We had fresh squeezed orange juice for breakfast the two mornings we were there. I'm a little jealous.

Day five: packed up and headed out to Oceanside. Got tacos for lunch, went grocery shopping and then hit the beach and pool/spa.

Esther, ready to go?

The Condos we stayed at. Pretty rough huh?

That's the pool in the center, and the beach just beyond that. Not bad for a free place to stay. :)

Melissa, Bridget and me on the pier in Oceanside. We just went out for shakes and fries at the restaurant at the end of the pier. Bridget and I also went for a run from the condos out to the end of this pier and back. It was wonderful. :)

Esther loved the Coi pond at the condos. They have a dispenser so you can feed them.

In awe of the waterfall.

You can't really tell but under the waterfall is the rec room. They have a gym, pool table, foosball, and a big screen TV. It's REALLY nice.

At the harbor for fish and chips.

My adorable niece and nephew, Reece and Malachi, looking at the seaguls and squirrels on the rocks.

Bridget with our girls. :)

The girls with me. I love how their outfits go together!

All of us at the harbor (From left to right: Nancy, Malachi, Roger, Reece, Andrew, Melissa, Tristan, Me, Esther, Aaron, Bridget, Tony, Dylan, Trevor and Brett)

The killer sandcastle we all built.

We gave up on Esther's swimsuit. She was filling it with sand.

Pickup game of volleyball with some local teens.

Esther wearing daddy's hat. :)

All in all, a very memorable trip. I'm so glad it worked out well and that everyone was able to make it happen.