Light up your nest.

I love the New Haven Chandelier from anthropologie. I think it'd be great in a nursery or small child's room. Here's the description from their site: Sheltered under a peaked bower of woven ginkgo branches, a hooded warbler watches over her nest, warm with illumination from a trio of radiance.

My name is Tina and I'm a canaholic.

Can anyone say intervention? I really will stop soon. After tomato sauce, blackberry jam, blueberry lime jam and .............. fine, I'm not stopping. This weekend I canned crushed tomatoes (some with italian herbs and some with mexican spices), blueberry jam, vanilla-plum jam, salsa, and tomato preserves. I have a lot more tomatoes and cucumbers to go.

What's a girl to do with all these tomatoes?

I'd say: juice, paste, sauce, jam, salsa. Hmmm . . . there must be all kinds of things I'm not even thinking of, right? I plan on canning these babies tomorrow. I'll let ya know. We went to the annual Grainger County Tomato Festival in Rutledge, Tennessee today. Home of the Tomato Wars (which we missed, but saw lost of folks wearing the remains of overripe tomatoes on their backs.) It was a fun day. Lots of interesting foods and music. And of course lots of farmstands. We walked away with these, peaches, new potatoes, and poblano peppers.

More cucumbers!!!

And what did I get from my little garden today? Of course, cucumbers. (And some tomatoes, but mistly cucumbers!) I guess it's time to try bread and butter pickles.

Pickle Spears.

I had a ton of cucumbers. Gave some away and made pickle spears this time. Still dill. I am hoping to recreate the fried dill pickle spears from a local barbecue restaurant in about a month, once they get good and dilly.

Weekend Harvest.

More veggies from our garden. We had quite a haul this weekend from our little garden. 2 eggplants, 3 pounds of green beans, 20 cucumbers, 33 grape tomatoes, and 3 big beef tomatoes. Can anyone say pickles?

Zucchini babies.

I made baby zucchini loaves to take to my co-workers last week. They all enjoyed it. I used the Paula Deen recipe.

Jelliriffic.

I've branched out from jams into jellies. I have a huge amount of mint, so I made mint jelly. I also tried grape jelly, which is a multi-step process (first you gotta make grape juice.) It really wasn't that hard. Time consuming, but not difficult at all.

Wii think wii are mildly addicted.

Our anniversary is this Thursday, but we got ourselves a wii last week for an anniversary gift. It's so fun! We aren't really into the adventure-type games with the regular controls, but we love the sports ones. I want the Dance Dance Revolution thingy next.

In a pickle.

I made pickels today with my homegrown cucumbers, Dill Pickles to be precise. It was fun, something else I hadn't done before. I about to be inundated with cukes, so I'll be trying out some other pickle recipes soon.

Deep freeze.

I made blueberry-nectarine freezer jam Friday night. The recipe was from the Ball Book of Preserving. I'll be making those apples into applesauce sometime tomorrow!

Veggie Tales.

Green beans, cucumbers, swiss chard, grape tomatoes, jalapenos and baby carrots! Can't wait to make pickles and cook up the rest this weekend!

We heart the zoo.

With Scott studying for the CPA exam we can't go too far on the weekends these days. So we visit the zoo! Less than 10 minutes from the house. You can't beat that! These are some of our photos from the 4th. Nigel (our basset hound) bears a striking resemblance to the rhino. Thank God he doesn't have a horn.

We're jammin.

This was my first attempt ever at making jam. It was pineapple-strawberry and tasted pretty good, but was foamy. I have greatly improved since. Will post photos of blackberry jam and parsley-dill champagne jelly soon!

Our first tiny little harvest.

Yay, beans!

Sew lucky!

I came home the other day to find an unexpected package at my front door. My sister-in-law sent me a new sewing machine. She got it for free through her job and since she doesn't sew . . . it's mine all mine! Yay! I haven't gotten around to sewing just yet as I am in the midst of reorganizing my craft room, but I WILL!