Drywall

We spent Sunday at my parents house working on drywall.

Here is how the house is looking these days:




When you walk in the front door there is a long "great room" with two bedrooms directly in front of you.




The kitchen is off to the left


To the north of the kitchen is the bathroom, laundry room and stairs to the basement. The basement will have a bathroom, bedroom, tv room and storage.

The view from their living room is the river. Doesn't get much better than that!


My nieces spent the day playing outside. They love all the cement at grandma and grandpas so they can ride their bikes on it.


Here is the newest addition to their family. Their birthday present from Aunt Cindy.


Her name is Bibbles. She's a toy poodle.

Congratulations Amanda!

We had another fun filled wedding weekend this past weekend.

Here is the beautiful bride and I:


The bride and her dashing groom:


I didn't get a close up of her bouquet but you can kind of see it in this picture:


I also didn't get a picture of how the hall was decorated but it was very pretty. She used mason jars as the centerpieces. We all had mason jars w/ handles to drink out of.

Here's a pic of the hubby and I:


We spent Sunday at my parents house. Pics of that to come tomorrow!

Freezing Zucchini

It's that time of year again. Zucchini explosion.


This year I've decided to try freezing some. I've never done this before so it's kind of trial and error. With this batch I grated some and will use it for bread/bars/muffins. I will later try and do some chopped up for soups.

Of course I started out by washing them and cutting the ends off but I also figured I should take out the seeds.


I used my handy Pampered Chef tool for this and it worked perfectly.


I left my hand in the pic so you could have a reference for how big this zucchini was. I got a little more than two cups with this size.


I used side of my grater that is on the left. I figure this is more grating, the one on the right more shredding.


This is what it looked like when I got it grated.


Now for the dilema. Do I freeze w/ all the juice or not? Since we're going w/ trial and error here I did both. Since I am going to be baking with this batch of zucchini I figured it'd be better to go w/ less juice.

The first bag I just grabbed some off the top here w/ some that was sitting in the juice. I didn't pour all the juice in, just didn't squeeze it out.
Looked like this.


Next I decided to try some strained.


Looked like this:

Still some juice but not quite as much.

Next I decided to press the zucchini w/ my hand while it was in the strainer. Looks like this:


Once again, still some juice but not quite as much.

We shall see how it turns out! I'm using the Ziplock vacuum bags this year. I like them. It helped to let the part w/ stuff in it hang over the edge of the counter while I sucked the air out so the juice stayed out of the way of the hole you suck the air out of.

Congratulations Tami!

I have to say congratulations to my friend Tami. Even though she's been married for over a week now, I still need to do it.

So Congratulations to the Mr. Dr. Tami Logenhardts. :) You're going to have a long and happy life together.

The beautiful bride and I.


We started the day off at the spa.

If you live in or around Lincoln and want a pedicure, the place we went is the place to go! It's called Ambience. It's over by Williamson Honda. They were some in depth pedicures. Much nicer than anywhere else I've ever been. They used orange slices and hot milk, hot stones, hot towel wraps and much more.

Here is a shot of her reception the night before the wedding. She used big paper lanterns as the main decoration and they really spruced the place up.


Here's a couple pics of her bouquet and the bridesmaid's.



The good lookin' wedding party :)

Humidity

This is how gross it is in Nebraska today.


All the windows in your house fogged over is not normal. Maybe in Hawaii but not here. :(

Burp Rags and Minky Blankets

I got a bunch of old gerber cloth diapers from my sister that she had used as burp rags. They are a little stained which is fine; they still work. BUT, I thought it would be fun to give them a little decoration.

Here is some of what I did:










I also make a blanket and a tag blanket with some minky fabric.
The minky is harder to work with than I would have thought. It is stretchy so you have to use lots of pins and it sheds.
I sewed these inside out first and then flipped them and went over them again on the outside.
Here is the blanket:


Tag blanket:

Laundry

Guess what else I did this weekend?



Dried my clothes on my new line! I'm way more excited about this than I should be but it just kinda makes me happy. :)

Garden Update

I went to check on my garden last night. With the holiday last weekend this week has gone really fast and we've had some rain so I haven't worried about it. I knew I needed to til. Well this is what it looks like:



I think it's angry at me. It wants to go back to the "pasture" it was before I disturbed it. I think I'll do some weeding tonight.

Oops, the above was supposed to be posted on Friday. I must not have clicked the right button.

I did get to til on Friday so the garden is looking MUCH better. Everything is growing although it seems to be not as big as the stuff in my moms garden.
I took these before tilling so excuse the weeds:
Pepper - this is the only plant something seems to be eating. Not the other peppers either. Just this one plant:


Beets I planted from seed a little late:


Chives from seed:


Cucumbers from seed. These viney type plants grow much faster than other stuff:


Dill from seed. Even if I never use it, it'll make me happy just to smell it while I'm out there:


Potatoes from starter potatoes:


Red onion started from seed:


Yellow squash:


Watermelon:


Zucchini:


Yellow onion from sets:


Tomatoes:

Glider

I am borrowing my sisters glider for the nursery but it was very sun bleached. She gave me the go ahead to recover it so of course that is exactly what I did. I forgot to take before pics but I laid the old covers over the chair to give you an idea.

Before:


After:


I still have a little work to do to the back cushion but it's almost ready!