Jumping Ship

I'm done here. Going over to the new place:

http://cafe-eclectic.net

Come check out the new digg.

Chance

I've been MIA for awhile. But today, I don't have time to fill you in on what I've been up to. Instead, I want you to send some good thoughts to Chance.

Chance is our tenants' dog. He is 9 months old and just got hit by a car tonight. He got out of the fence and ran onto the street. The lady who hit him was very upset, and good thing she wasn't driving fast. We took him to our vet since theirs isn't 24 hours. Doc thinks he is doing well so far, using all his four legs, and not coughing up blood. He is in shock and doc is treating him that tonight and going to take XRay and blood work for tomorrow.

The poor thing is so scared I felt really bad leaving him behind by himself.

So please, say a little prayer for him tonight.

List? What List? Obessessed? Me?

Yeah... I like to make lists and I wish I have lists for EVERYTHING, but it doesn't always happen. But I saw this contest on CostumeChick's blog from here so I decided to join the fun.

Here's how this works-

1. Head to your blog and post your summer knitting goals list (you must have at least 1 goal!)
2. Be sure to link to this contest in your post
3. Stop back and leave the link to your goals list with Mr. Linky (by midnight, June 20th!) to be 'officially entered'
4. Spend the summer, attempting to stay at least a little bit on track, tackling one goal at a time
5. Have fun with it

So here it goes...

1. Finish 2 more shawls to keep up with 2klace.
2. Knit at least 1 pair of socks for Summer of Socks 2008.
3. Knit and felt my card basket for the wedding.
4. Finish the 2 cardigans for Schaefer.

I think that's what I want to accomplish for this summer, assuming summer ends around 09/20/08, which is my wedding day. Yeah... I better get going to do that list now.

Strawberries Overflow!

So what do you do when you have too many strawberries on your hand?

Strawberry cupcakes!

I went to Big Y last week and saw that they have buy 1 get 2 free on strawberries - how could I say no? But now I have way too much strawberries! Granted I already finished the ones I picked from Lyman's, but still, I have 3 quart of strawberries sitting in the fridge staring at me!

I followed the recipe from Vanilla Garlic to a T and the strawberry sauce and strawberry frosting recipe makes a lot more than I needed, so I put them in the fridge for another batch later this week.

Besides working on the cupcakes, I also worked on the invitation a bit.

I know, not much to see, but it's getting there. I also worked on the wording a bit and coming up with some dilemma on how I want to lay it out, but I'll wait till David comes home this weekend and ask his opinion.

I'm gonna go eat cupcakes now.

A Weekend Of Fun

What did you do this weekend?

Saturday morning, our new lawn guy came, and he did an AMAZING job cleaning up the yard.

Even the dogs didn't know what to do with it!

I went to my weekly farmer's market with Archiknist and we came back to the house waiting for a few others to show so we can go try on my wedding gown. Now, I was too excited to see my gown and didn't take ANY pictures!!!!! But no fear, my readers, I'm going back on Thursday to do my first fitting so I will make sure I take a picture then.

While I was there, I was tying out different veils. The one I liked was $195!!!! WTF??? So I looked online and found this - yup, only $63!! I'm pretty sure I'll be getting that. At first I didn't want to have a veil, but I saw a very similar one on a magazine and just loved it.

We came back to my house for some BBQ and crafting. It was too bad that the weather wasn't so great so we couldn't be out to enjoy my new swing:

We are going to use it for our "altar" area. We will take out the awning part, and the swing, and I'll decorate it with some fabric and ask my florist to get some hanging plants for the four corners. I really like the look of this when I first saw it during my research, so I'll do something similar, minus the crazy flower on the top.

Today I went with Beth and Ola to Lyman's Orchard for some strawberry picking. It was a lot of fun looking for those ripen red, juicy berries.

Afterwards we went to the Apple Barrel to see what's in season and what they got. There are lots of canning stuff for sale (mmm... jam...) and pies. But I came home with these:

YUM. Can't wait for mid-July for the other berries to be ready.

On other news, I worked on my invitations, and here is what I got:

Yeah, the outer pockets are finally done! I can finally move on into the inside of the invitations. Speaking of that, I got these in the mail:

I'm going to use these vintage postcards as the response card. I think it would make a cool scrapbook when it is all over. I just hope everyone will actually return the response card!

Oh, and it's 97 days till the big day! :)

As far as gardening, I've been kinda on hold since I couldn't move all the blocks needed to do the raise garden and David is away for work, all the seedlings have been just staying in their starter container and waiting. Hopefully it's not too late. So without further ado, here are some pictures of the herbs:

See how awesome those herbs look? And I use some for dinner tonight:

I had some Greek pasta salad at Ola's house not too long ago, so I decided to try my hands in it with some of my herbs.

jennsquared's Greek Pasta Salad

1 box of pasta of any kind
1 small can of chopped olives
1 and half cup of corn (I grilled some corn last night so I used that)
1 shallots, finely chopped
1 scallion, finely sliced
some parsley, finely chopped
some thyme, finely chopped
1 tsp dry basil (use fresh ones if you have any)
some garlic pepper seasoning
salt
olive oil
basil pesto grapeseed oil (just use more olive oil)
apple cider vinegar (use whatever light vinegar you have on hand)
crumbled feta cheese

1. Boil a pot of water and cook the pasta until al dente
2. While the pasta is cooking, chopped up all the herbs
3. When pasta is ready, drain well and let it cool a little bit before mixing everything together
4. Serve slightly warm

Hope you all enjoy it as much as I do. And feel free to leave a comment on your variation!

Where Did The Socks Go?

And you say whaaaaaat?

Well... Let me back track a bit. Last Thursday, work sent me to NYC for East Pack Expo. With such a short notice, I decided to cast on a pair of easy socks to knit while I am walking around in the expo. I started them while i was on the train, and once I got out of Grand Central (no photo there... DOH!) I started walking towards to Freefoods for breakfast. While walking, I show my pair of socks around town:

Time Square was a little dark due to the clouds. Oh well. While I was at Freefoods, I had a hard time choosing what I want to eat since there were so many different awesome organic foods there, but I settle for these:

My melon smoothie and mango. The smoothie is made with honeydew, goats milk yogurt, honey and mint, and the mango was infused with agave syrup and mint. I also got an organic bagel with organic cream cheese - SO YUMMY.

Sadly, I would say that's about the highlight of my expo trip, since the trade show isn't THAT exciting. I did have one person come up to me while knitting and asked me if my needles were "medical devices". HUH? Yeah...

Saturday I went to Dream Come True Farm with Archiknist. I swear I thought we were going to melt while we were there - it was SO. HOT. And it still is! While we were there, we saw two Nigerian goats. They were so tiny and cute!

That's a mama goat!!! Isn't she cute and tiny? :) She actually provides the milk that makes the soaps the farm sells! So awesome. There are also llamas, alpacas and sheep on site. I was so good and didn't buy anything!!!

Speaking of anything, a box showed up in my house few days ago:

A drop spindle and lots of rovings! When I went to MDS&W last month, I went to the ravelry party, but due to time constraint, I didn't stay for the raffle and gave my ticket to Anarchy, who I met during the party. Apparently my ticket won, and instead of keeping the drop spindle, she messaged me in ravelry and sent me the spindle, and threw in some roving for me to try too! Knitters are SO generous! I haven't had a chance to try it yet, but I'm thinking of doing that this weekend.

Another thing I received this past week was this:

It's the Amish Friendship Bread from Knitsheady. Today is day 9, and tomorrow, I need to split it and bake it and give four of the starters to four friends. It's a good thing I'm going to SnB tomorrow :) I saw this on the internet a lot, and apparently it's quite a popular thing to do - although it is my first one ever.

So no knitting to show this post due to these:

I've been busy making my wedding invitations. I decided that I really like the one I saw online but didn't want to pay the hefty price, so I bought whole sheet paper and am making them myself! I want to mail them up at the 1000 Islands so I got less than a month to finish them. I better hurry! It's a good thing I'm almost done with the cover :).

Well, I'm off cutting more paper. Maybe next time, there will be some knitting to show, or maybe even garden stuff! :)

I Don't Have A Black Thumb!

And to prove it to you, here are some evidents:

I planted these few weeks and and Mick got his face in it and I thought I had lost hope. But plants are funny things and Mick apparently didn't eat all the seeds! I know for sure there are chives and cilantros in it, and I think the third kind is oregano, but I can't be sure. Once all the herbs are tall enough, I'll replant them and thin them out a bit.

I bought some peppermint and thyme awhile back (when it was still very cold) and had them in the original container on top of my microwave in the kitchen by the window. They did really well and when I planted the seeds above, I transferred them into a planter we had from the original owner. They are doing really well, as you can see.

I bought this pot of parsley from the farmer's market back in May and it actually have more leaves than before! I'm pretty excited at the fact that I haven't killed it yet. I seems to do very poorly when it comes to cilantro, parsley or basil.

I was feeling adventurous on Saturday and seeded some broccoli and cantalope. Today is Wednesday, look at how tall they are!!! I bought the growing system from Lowe's and I love it! I can't wait for them to be big enough to transfer them into my garden (hopefully this Sunday!)

I bought this container sunflower last Saturday from the farmer's market. It's so nice to have something bright and happy inside! If he has more this week, I would love to get my hands on another pot for my office!

So I think I have proved to the world that I'm not a black thumb anymore. I find myself really like gardening when it doesn't involve digging the ground and encounter bugs and such. So I think I'm going to do a raise garden to transfer all the veggies and herbs in. David, of course, would be one the building it. In return, I will try to seed some watermelon and cucumber for him :). So now onto things that just shows up in my garden year after year:

Look at the GIANT hosta!!!! I have three of these giant ones on the right side of the house, 2 of a different variety but still huge on the left side of the house, and I have a bunch in the back of the garage. I think when they bloom, I'm going to cut the ones from the back of the garage and arrange them and enjoy them indoor. But can anyone tell me why they are so big? My neighbors' hosta are like quarter of that size!!! Not like I'm complaining or anything... Just curious.

I have no idea what these are - they show up in the crack of the asphalt by the garage, and there only. One on the right, one in the middle, and one on the left. I didn't plant them, and they can very well could be weeds, but they are pretty so I didn't pull them out.

These pansies are in a container and just keeps on coming back each year! They are the small kind. I actually found the planter near the garage by the trash cans when I moved in and the whole thing looked dead. When the spring came, lots of weed were on it, so I pull the weed out, and some of the greens started to show up. Next thing I knew, part of the container had some pansies in it. Lucky for us, I was too lazy to empty the dirt to reuse, so now we have a container full of pansies. One thing though - I thought pansies are annuals? David's theory is that they must drop seeds every year and it just keeps on coming back because of that, which will support the fact that it was only a quarter of the container full the first year, and this year it was completely full. I'll post a picture of the full container the next time I post about the garden.

This showed up this year. It wasn't around last year. If it was, it didn't flower. I am not so sure of what this is. By looking at some pictures online, I'm guessing it's a type of peonies. Anyone had any ideas? You can tell I don't garden by this, right? The plant gave me so far 2 full flowers, two on the way (one bud is still very green.) It smells beautiful and I want to cut it and bring them in the house! I wish I have a whole shrub full of the flowers!

The tiny bug (I think bee, not sure) showed up just in time for the photo shoot! No idea what this is either, but it was cute and pretty. I have no idea what this one is either:

They are right next to each other in the back yard where no one goes. They were pretty so I had to snap some pictures.

And finally, my fruit tree:

I think I have two or three of these in the back yard and I think they are pears. Last year the yard was a mess and I didn't get to see what they were until it was too late. I'm gonna try to keep tabs at them this year. Maybe, just maybe I get to eat some fruit out of my tree this year.

So that's it folks! I am very excited about the whole gardening thing - for how long? I'm not sure, but if I have some success at the veggies I'm sure I would keep it up next year, and maybe started it earlier! So for those folks who knows what flowers and plants I have in the garden, would you be nice and leave me a comment and let me know? Also, what books/websites do you recommend on reading up? All advise welcome!