Crazy Mutant Tomatoes

Ok, so you probably saw my crazy wacky carrots (July 16th post) and now I'm sharing with you my crazy wacky tomatoes. I found this one growing, and thought it was two. It reminds me of cell division when the process goes wrong and doesn't complete itself. Or when you're supposed to have twins but they never separate and get born sharing a head or some legs.



And this one is green because a stupid bird found it and pecked out the side of it. (Of course, the birds always pick the biggest best tomato to peck at. Couldn't they pick a small weird one? Do they really know the difference?) Anyway, I decided to cut it up and see what it looks like inside. I though it was weird how there are so many little sections inside. It's kind of like a bunch of small tomatoes grew together. It would have been a good one, but I have a lot of other good tomatoes still so it's ok.



My gardening expert friend told me that they leave some fruit on their fruit trees for the birds. They pick what's convenient and don't worry about the rest. From his extensive studies (and this is his opinion--not church published doctrine) one of the many things in Sodom and Gomorrah that made God mad was that the people were selfish and didn't share their fruit with the animals. They covered all their fruit trees completely so the birds couldn't even get to the fruit at the top. That's not why I took the nets off my tomato plants though...The leaves got stuck in the netting and it seemed to be not a good thing for the plants. I try to pick off all the tomatoes that are red or near-red so the birds aren't so attracted to my garden area. I guess they like green tomatoes now. I'll have to put up some pictures of the pumpkins soon too. Two of them are turning orange, and one of them is pretty large! I'd say it would be a $15 pumpkin at the grocery store! Gardens are great!

Curtains!

I finally finished the curtains for the bathroom...the ones I started back in the beginning of August. They look really good with our theme of blues/greens, and helps keep the bathroom from feeling like a greenhouse in the middle of the day when the sun shines in. Ta Da!

Yummy and healthy snack

This is another great thing from the garden: Zucchini and yellow crooked-neck squash. It's really good steamed with a little salt. Next year I want to grow the other kind of squash though...something like butternut or acorn I think. I want the kind you can cut in half and throw in the oven, then eat the insides with butter and brown sugar. That is more like a treat than a vegetable!

The fruits of our labors!

Well, as you know we have a garden. We have finally begun picking and using our peppers. We made delicious fajitas with some of our bell and other sweet peppers, and white globe onions. So good!


We also made two batches of salsa (a gallon each) with our fresh tomatoes, tomatillos, bell peppers, gypsy peppers, giant marconi pepper, jalapeno pepper, sweet banana pepper, anaheim pepper, and again the white globe onion.


As you can probably tell, Greg really likes this salsa. It's great using your fresh garden produce because it tastes great and it's cheaper!

My Cute Little Tree!

This is my cute little tree. I adopted it awhile ago, right before summer officially started. I was very sad as it seemed to die. If you just glance at it it does look dead.

BUT! There is hope! This is a little leaf of hope.


And this is a bigger branch that seems very much alive!


I'm so happy to see it coming back to life. The plan is to take care of it now, and then when we move into a house that we'll stay in for awhile I can plant it in the yard. I'll let you know how it works out...in a few years...

Cake

I made this yesterday as an experiment inspired by my Grandma's Black-bottom Cupcakes. It's pretty easy too! I just mixed up a chocolate cake mix and poured it in the bottom of the circle pan. Then I mixed a package of cream cheese, 2 eggs, a teaspoon of vanilla, and about 1/2 cup sugar. Then I added about 1 cup of chocolate chips to that, and then poured it on top of the chocolate. I actually used a ladle because both things are very liquid and you can't really spread it on top like frosting. Then I baked it for a long time at 350 degrees. Sorry, I didn't keep track. It kept taking longer than I thought it would, so I just baked it until it wasn't wiggly in the middle anymore...probably 45-60 minutes? You can try something like 40 minutes and then check periodically til it's done. It's very good though! It kind of changed when it baked, so it actually has a layer of chocolate, then a layer of the white part, and then chocolate on top of that. If you are really excited about chocolate, you can mix chocolate chips in with the chocolate batter too...that's very good as well.
Enjoy!

Tablecloth!

I finally got tired of our ugly old vinyl tablecloth that had little holes torn in it and wouldn't wipe clean all the way. I also got tired of our stupid squares of carpet that we kept (from when they put in new carpet here) and have been using as floor mats in the kitchen. They were only supposed to be there for a short time until we got real mats, and then I kind of forgot how stupid they looked and never got normal mats. Anyway, so I went to walmart and found a couple mats that I really liked and thought weren't too flowery for Greg. Then I went to pick out some fabric for my table cloth (all the table clothes already made were ugly, like the old one I just threw away.)

I spent a lot of time looking through the fabric, then unhappily picked one that was kind of ok. I just couldn't find one that I loved. But then I couldn't find the lady that's supposed to cut the fabric, so I went looking for her. Then I noticed some really pretty fabric with grapes and vines, so I quickly traded that one out and got it instead. I was so happy to find something I liked a lot. And it matched really well with the mats I got! (Matching is very important to me.)

So this is the finished product.



Look! A wild oven mitt in it's natural habitat! Can you see it? That was the most exciting thing I found when I got home! The table cloth matches the oven mitt and kitchen towels I already had! I didn't even know that when I was at the store.



And this is the floor mat that kind of matches. It has grapes anyway.



And this is the sad part of the story. The first time we sat down for dinner and I put my plate on the table I realized in utter horror how badly the plate color/design clashes with the table cloth! How sad! I remember my mom would always have pretty paper plates (like for Thanksgiving or Christmas) that match the place mat she made that matches the table cloth that matches the color of food on the table...



So I decided to switch out my dishes with the set Summer gave me for half the year. Those plates are just white and go better. Then I will take my pretty blue plates to the fabric store and find some fabric to make a matching table cloth. The question is...Will my floor mats and heat pads still match? Hahaha! I think I will just have to not worry about that part.

Purse!

I went to visit my parents a little while ago and my two sisters came at the same time. It's tradition to always have a project to do when we all get together, so this time Summer had the idea for us to all make a purse. I was excited because it gave me a chance to sew and they could show me how and help me with the hard parts. Most of the purse was pretty simple, and was a good way for me to practice sewing in a straight line and around a curve. Mom and Wendy finished their purses in one day, but mine kind of dragged out longer. The end part was really difficult, so Mom helped with it. The bottom is an oval and you have to fit it on and sew it together, but it really doesn't fit together, and the sewing machine doesn't really go in a circle like that....somehow Mom got it to work and then I finished it up. I had fun with the zig-zag stitch, going around the raw edges and making them look smooth and finished. I went around the bottom of the purse twice with that just because it was fun.



And now I have a really cute purse! It was kind of fun to see what fabric we all picked out. It really showed each person's personality by the color and pattern on the fabric. Mine was bright blue (everything I love is blue) with flowers and butterflies, Wendy's had cute cherries on black for the outside and cherries on white for the inside, and my Mom had a really pretty fall looking material with fall colors that looked like trees, and the inside was pretty sparkly swirly red. I was kind of surprised Mom didn't make hers blue because she loves blue a lot too. Summer didn't make a purse because she was just helping me, but the purse she made at home was pretty cute with flowers and pink and brown.

And when my girls at church (I teach the mia maids) saw my purse they all said how cute it was and that they wanted to make one too! So we might have a couple mutual activities to make them purses.
Thanks for the idea and help Summer!

Making Applesauce

A couple days ago Greg and I picked a bunch of apples off a tree on the side of the road. There were so many! If I had a ladder I could have gotten to a lot more. Anyway, now I'm making applesauce!



I spent many hours peeling apples yesterday. I started at about 4:30pm, and cleaned things up around 11pm. Greg helped for about 45 minutes while I made dinner. I just got myself set up in front of the T.V. with all the apples and a cutting board and box for garbage and got to work. This picture is about 3 hours into it...I didn't know that Greg was taking the picture. (Wednesday night)



I'm probably going to dream about peeling apples now. When I was picking blackberries at mom's house I would see bushes with clumps of berries hanging down whenever I closed my eyes. Now I see tiny green bruised apples. I still have about 1/4 of the box left to peel today. It sure would be nice to have one of those peeler corer slicer things. I was wondering if it would even work though, for these tiny apples. They might be too small for it to do the job very well.



It's kind of tricky with the slicer we have. The tube that gets cut out for the core is so big compared to the apple. It would be just right for the big apples you get at the store, but it takes a lot of good apple with it.



Either way, the apples were all free, and the sauce is so good. It's worth it.

(A couple days later)
I'm getting back to this post because I finally finished the applesauce! A friend let us borrow his apple corer/slicer/peeler and we picked some more apples at his house. Greg used that new tool to cut up all the rest of the apples while I got to work food processing them into smaller pieces and cooking it into applesauce. (I left some chunks though--it's better a little chunky instead of like soup.) As it started looking like applesauce, I added some sugar, a little brown sugar, lots of cinnamon, a little lemon juice, and a couple quick shakes of ground cloves. This applesauce turned out really good! It smelled like apple cider while it was cooking. The final count was 16 quarts, which might be just enough to last the rest of the week. Well, it will last longer than that if I use my will power, but this is good stuff!

I'm learning to sew!

I've had a sewing machine since before I got married, but I haven't known how to use it. The plan was that Summer and I would buy sewing machines, and then have sewing lessons from Mom...



Well, I ended up being too busy dating this really great guy, and then we got married and moved away.



I only had one sewing lesson with Mom. We threaded the bobbin and threaded the needle. I also did a few test runs to see how to make it do different kinds of stitches, and that's pretty much it! So when we moved into this place and I saw the ugly horrid dirty broken blinds (or place where the blinds were) I decided I would just have to replace them all with curtains.




Now I'm on a quest to learn how to sew. I was kind of afraid to start by myself, thinking I might do something really bad and break the machine or the needle...But after some encouragement from Wendy, I decided to just go for it. Greg is pretty good at sewing too, so I felt better that he was around and could help me figure some things out.



I was glad the thread was already in the machine and on the bobbin. It just happened that it matched the material for my first set of curtains, so I got started pretty fast. I will have to change the thread for the next set of curtains though. The rest that I make will all be more of a creamy white color. We decided to just make bla boring curtains that match anything, since this is a rental and we will be leaving them here. I'm excited to make better curtains that I really like for our next home. (Hopefully that won't be a rental.)



I wanted to do this post when I finished the first set of curtains, so I could show you the finished product, but I will have to just post that picture later. I'm going to Girl's Camp tomorrow for a week, and then when I get back I will go visit my parents for another week...so it will probably be awhile before I get back to work at the sewing table now.

(p.s. Sorry that last picture is sideways...I didn't notice until just now, but I really have to pack for Girl's camp, and I don't feel like going back to fix it.)

(p.s. again...Do you like my plants in the background? The bigger one is the zebra plant, and there's a cactus and a peperomia too. I don't know what the other one is called.)