Cans

A few weeks ago we had a work in the house kind of day however since one of our outdoor activities that week was to go berry picking. (Do people outside of the pacific northwest do that?) We came home with 15 pounds of blue and raspberries that I really had to process. It's a good thing D put up that amazing shelving unit for my jars because I've already made more beans, green beans, blueberry syrup, maple walnut syrup, and that raspberry jam. Every summer, I need to make at least a double, sometimes a triple, batch of this since the boys go through a pint every week to two weeks. They love the stuff, and I'm so happy that it's something I make with my own two hands that they can't get enough of.

My mom, knowing my family's love of pb&j, decided to do a little canning of her own and brought up more (I don't think she realized how much I'd made myself). I now have 10 pints I canned, another 12 half pints from my mom, and this weekend she brought up 3 oyster jars of jellies she made. And I still wanted to make some more apple butter (OH MY YUM!!), roasted romas and garlic, and our usual peaches and pears. Thank goodness I have collected all those jars over the years. Here's to my adventures in canning.

It's no secret . . .

I have a strange obsession with jars. Canning jars to be specific. When we moved into our new house, I discovered that I had boxes of empty jars. Seriously, boxes! My husband was exasperated, he just couldn't imagine what I was going to do with all those jars, and frankly, I didn't really know either.

Last summer, after a productive evening of canning (something I'd only ever done on a very small scale before), I looked at this crazy little lip we had in the staircase down to the basement and thought, "Wouldn't that be a great place for all my jars of self-preserved food?" So D and put our heads together and came up with this amazing idea of building some shelves there. Then, two shelves was about all I needed, but I keep finding more of those jars as we continue to unpack. And thanks to a good friend, I have now discovered the joys of pressure canning and all the yummy foods I couldn't preserve before (especially all those dried beans we love to eat.)

This weekend, D got to work expanding my little shelving system, and this is what he finally finished for me. There is still some room to grow here, but not much. If I end up canning all the things I'm interested in this summer, this little space is going to be an absolute wonder to behold!

Little Fryes and Mud Pies

School might be over, but the kiddos got to hang out with Teacher Kris one more time this year. Her family has a little cabin on the water that they invited (get this) all the families from the two classes she teaches at the preschool. The boys had a blast! Liam learned how to use a clam gun (though it was used for some kind of bay shrimp I'd never seen before, not clams) and Noah decided to bury himself in the sand.

And okay, I know these pictures make it look like we're just hanging out in some kind of mud flat, but really we were out  at low tide on the Puget Sound. When you go out there, you know that you're not stepping in mud, but quicksand. If you stay in one place too long, you will find yourself sunk in up to your knees, and there were plenty of parents needing a hand out of their little holes, myself included. But we all had fun, so it was totally worth the 17 loads of clothes I had to wash (I might be exaggerating. Maybe.)

The Boys' New Toy

We have one of those crazy little gravel patio areas that townhouse builders euphemistically call a "pocket yard." And our builder, thought he would be so clever as to add a little deck in this area. Let me tell you, he wasn't very clever at all. What he ended up doing, was making our only real outdoor space completely unusable. The deck was too small to use for anything, and worse, it took up so much space out there, that we couldn't even use the area around it. Thankfully, we are a handy lot, and were able to turn that deck into a step, and free up almost the entire area for the boys. 

But once that horrible deck was gone, I began to focus on our hodge-podge sandbox. Back when we had a giant yard, we thought it would be a great idea to use two of those blue rigid kiddie pools to make a sandbox, and it worked famously until this year's snow cracked the top pool. So now rain went in, but couldn't drain out and the boys found they had a pretty nasty little mud puddle. 

Awhile ago, I found this sandbox on Pinterest, and I fell in love. But much to my chagrin, it is made in the UK. Turns out, it wasn't too hard for myself and D to put together for the boys. We were even able to recreate the top and how it turns into two benches for the kiddos to sit on.  The best part was that we were able to reuse the boards from the deck to make the main body of the box. We used some boards from an old bookshelf for the top, and discovered we only spent maybe $20 for the hardware. We left large gaps in the bottom of the box to allow all that Pacific Northwest rain to just drain on through. And used some landscaping fabric as a liner to keep the sand in the box. We'll see how durable that turns out to be. I'm very happy we made this, and the boys love it!

Rainbow Pancakes with a side of Soapbox

Photo Credit: iambaker.net

Over the past week, my kids have been eating whatever I could scrounge out of our freezer since busy Mama forgot to buy their Cheerios on the last grocery store run. Noah asked if maybe we could have pancakes on Saturday, and to make up for my less than stellar meal planning, and because we generally do have pancakes on the weekend, I agreed.

I've gotten pretty bored with the same old plain pancakes, and for weeks have been trolling Pinterest for some new ideas. I've seen this pancake photo over and over, but didn't make them for a variety of reasons. Late last night, I decided to take a closer look at them and possibly surprise my family with Rainbow Pancakes for breakfast.

Photo Credit: seechristinerun.blogspot.com

While I was checking out that post, I noticed she'd linked to another one of her posts regarding how she deals with people she calls Rainbow Pancake Haters. Because I was curious, I clicked on the link. Turns out, she's had some people leaving nasty comments on her blog about her not only feeding her children pancakes ('worthless nonfood') but berating her for putting so much food coloring in the pancakes that they look like 'melted plastic'. Some of those nasty posters went so far as to tell her she was a horrible mother. What?!! She's a horrible mother because she wanted to make a fun home-cooked meal for her children? Where do those people get off? Anyway, I decided then and there to make these pancakes for my boys this morning, just to spite those posters and to support Amanda over at iambaker.net. Here is our version, fed to my little men just a few hours ago, served with greek yogurt 'clouds'.

I've been gone a lot lately, and the kiddos are starting to feel it. Between Weight Watchers, preschool meetings, and work, there have been more dinners made by Daddy and eaten without Mommy, than there have been meals with her. So when I got home last night, D was working hard at the kitchen table on a project. Turns out Noah, our eldest, has been asking every night for D to make him a card and to draw his own picture in it so Noah could, "Know Daddy loves him and see what he looks like." 

A few months ago, when we instituted a policy that Noah had to stay in his room until his alarm clock went of rather than running around the house in the wee hours of the morning (I am SO not a morning person), he started getting really upset. Turned out he wanted to be sure that he could say goodbye to Daddy when he left for work. Our compromise was that D would write him a note every day, and Noah would stay in his room. But months have gone by without him needing it, so I thought we were beyond that. I guess maybe my being gone so much in the last few weeks may have brought back some of that old insecurity. But it also brought out D's inner artist, so it wasn't all bad. 

By the way, he's not really cross-eyed in real life. =-)