Tuesday, May 31, 2011

Comicon

Memorial day weekend now means downtown is transformed into zombies walking the street, princess leah look alikes, darth vader, hell boy, star trek and most super heros, comic book villains, etc will be found on the streets in downtown Phoenix. 


My assistant Sasa and I sporting our spock ears

James with the batman villain the penguin....

Friday, May 27, 2011

More baby shower pics

Monica and her adorable son Sebastian

Angie and Cari

Such a cute diaper cake that Molly made for Angie

Angie had the cutest little helper during the opening of gifts

High School reunion time!  Megan, Angie, Mel and Monica.  We missed you Mandy!

What a cute little baby bump Angie has!

Wednesday, May 25, 2011

Baby Shower Bonanza

Last Saturday I had the priviledge of having my dear friend Angie's baby shower at the house.  It was a great team effort.  Check out that beautiful fruit bowl I made....

Megan did the decorations and made those cool tissue paper balls

The baby clothes hanging were actually worn by Angie when she was first born

Mandy did the favors- so cute!

I bought the cake from nothing bundt cakes!  SO YUMMY!


Cari brought these containers for the punch

Cari did most of the food and Mandy did the meat and cheese trays.  Next post:  Some pics of the mom-to-be with the rest of us!

Nature's Bounty

This was yesterdays 'loot' from the garden!!!  Radishes, tomatoes(the green ones were knocked off the vine by the dogs and we are hoping they ripen), 2 more gargantuan zucchini's that I shredded for zucchini bread.  I also tried my hand at zucchini pancakes.  I wasn't thrilled with those....  I also found a recipe for zucchini chocolate cake, which I cannot wait to make.  The zucchini bread came out AMAZINGLY! 

Tuesday, May 24, 2011

Construction Crew

James came home with a 14 page print out titled, "Make your own Planting Station".  He said, "I thought we could build this.  I affirmed that we could certainly try and so we went to home depot and got everything on the list.  He's been itching to get this awesome miter saw out of the box and put it to use so here it is. 

Here's the happy builder in action.  Note the sweet apron he's wearing!

After I took pics of him and set the camera down, he thought he'd give mea  taste of my own medicine. 

I put the camera down and didn't really do a great job getting step by step pics of our master piece but as you can see, he's putting the leg supports on in this pic. 

Here's the finished project.  If you would like to try your hand at this project, click HERE  to get the pics and plans.  I have to admit it was a lot easier than I thought.  If we can do it, I am pretty sure anyone can.  I get the sweet job of reading the instructions then telling hubby what he/we need to do next.  I am feeling really proud of our accomplishment today.  Now James has an outdoor workbench for all his projects.

Monday, May 23, 2011

Projects and Protesters

Yep, home depot seems to be a weekly spot for us.  Jimmy decided he wanted to try his hand at a project so here's the raw materials.  We also got a bunch of wood screws, wood glue, and another couple of pieces of wood.  I will keep what we are building a secret until the next post.  I will just tell yout that it is supposed to take 3 hours to build and we are going to try it tomorrow.  I will make sure to take pics before, during and after the project.  Hopefully there are no casualties like thier were last weekend with the shed.  We have a long list of directions to keep us on track so this should be interesting.....
I was inside the other day, looked out and saw Rosie in the pool.  She loves the first step and she gets in a drinks the water.  Her and Phoenix have fresh water, under the patio but they prefer to drink pool water.  Makes me wonder what all those chemicals are doing to thier brains. 

Thursday, May 19, 2011

Zucchini, Zucchini and more zucchini

Well, you can see here that we got more fruit today.  They are huge and there are many more cooking up on that vine outside!  I shredded some for zucchini bread.  It's in the oven now and it is smelling great!

Dry ingredients, lots of cinnamon and other regular bread type stuff like flour, baking powder, soda, etc.
Here's the batter.  Yep, 2 of these bad boys.  I'll most likely take them to work.  Sharing is caring right?  Any more zucchini ideas?  I will definitely do what Charlotte suggested:  shred the zucchini, freeze it in cup or 2 cup measured batches for use later and she said she had a chocolate cake recipe with zucchini.  Oh yeah- can't wait to try that!  I will most likely bring some of these zucchini to work also since I will definitely not be needing 100 cups of zucchini in the freezer!  Any takers?

Tuesday, May 17, 2011

Latest creations and multipications

Baking makes me happy.  It seems to make others around me happy when I bake too.  The banana bread is my specialty.  The cookies are called crisp oatmeal cookies.  There's oatmeal, coconut and chocolate chips and they are the perfect mix of crisp and chewy.  It does not get much better than these babies.
The previous post has 2 of these.  We ate 1 with dinner and we picked 2 more.  THEY ARE MULTIPLYING and we have enough zucchini to share.  I wish the state fair was next week because I would enter one of these to win the largest veggie contest!   Do you or anyone you know want a zucchini?  I thought about making zucchini bread.  Any other ideas for zucchini?  These guys are huge and there are more out of the vine.  The tomato plants are just teaming with fruit that will hopefully ripen on the vine soon then I will be showing you pics and hoping you write a comment so that I can give you some home grown tomaters. 
More beautifully yummy cookies.  Feel free to leave a comment with some zucchini ideas or offering to take some of these off my hands!

Sunday, May 15, 2011

First Harvest


HUGE Zucchini!

Store bought Zucchini, not looking as awesome as our home grown!
James and I check out our garden daily.  I have been looking at our zucchini and telling James a couple of them are ready to be picked!  Finally this morning, he picked these two beauties.  The plants are teaming with fruit.  The tomato plants are huge, the zuchini plants probably have 10 more zucchini growing. I can tell you that there are none as big as these in the store!   I cannot wait for the cherry tomatoes to ripen on the vine.  We also have yellow pear heirloom tomatoes that  are growing like crazy.  So, now I have to incorporate these beauties into a recipe. 

Sunday, May 1, 2011

Puppy Love


Phoenix is smiling

It's been a while since I have graced you with a needy boxer blog post. 



Rosie loves to pose for pics
 

We got home from vacation and Phoenix and Rosie made it known that they weren't happy that we had left them.  The next day, they had forgotten all about it.   We took them to the dog wash, which they love.  If I remember I will take pics of it next time we go.