Month: August 2007

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C is for Curry

Foodchickencurry

Yum!  I just whipped this up the other night, and it is easy, relatively healthy, and de-LISH.  If you
think you don’t like curry, give this a try – Chris doesn’t
particularly care for Indian dishes, yet he did really like this.  Its
not too overpowering, and is very tasty!  It’s made in a slow cooker,
so there is very little prep – you just chop a few things up, throw
them in the pot, then eat in about 4 hours!

Easy Chicken Curry

Ingredients:
1 lb Boneless, skinless chicken breast (uncooked), cut into 1" pieces
1 lg Yellow or orange bell pepper, cut into 1" pieces
1 lg Sweet Onion (such as Walla Walla or Vidalia) sliced into 1/4" thick rings
1 14.5 oz can Italian Stewed Tomatoes
1/2 cup pineapple salsa
1/3 cup water
2 Tb cornstarch
2 tsp Curry powder
1/2 tsp ground Cumin
1/4 – 1/2 tsp hot sauce, such as Sriracha
1/2 tsp Garlic powder
Salt & fresh ground pepper to taste
3/4 cup Cashews, divided
Cooked white or basmati rice (to swerve chicken over)

Instructions:

1.  Put chicken, peppers, and onions together in the slow cooker; pour tomatoes over top.

2.  Mix together remaining ingredients and pour over chicken mixture.

3.  Cover and cook on low for 4 hours or until done.  Stir only once or twice.

Serve over rice; top each serving with 1-2 Tb cashews.  Yield:  6 servings, with about 1 1/2 cups per serving.

Enjoy!

I’m off to my sister’s place in Hillsboro, OR area for the weekend.  I’ll be back on Monday sometime, and will blog more then!  Take care!

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Checking In

Mmbackyardjourneys

Sorry I was gone longer than expected.  I had a wonderful couple of days off with Chris for my birthday, but we had several things come up since, including a death in the family.  The funeral is on Thursday, then Ben and I are spending the weekend with my sister down in Oregon, so my posts will be a little scattered for the next several days.  I will check in tomorrow, but wanted to let you know what was up.

In the meantime, I have been a bit more on the ball on The Weed Patch blog, and I also found a bunch of art photos I forgot I had (including the one above), so I updated my gallery on my website (or you could look on my Flickr too).

Hope you are all having a lovely week – until tomorrow, nighty night…

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Store Blogging & Birthday

Snohomishtrip13

Hi all – sorry for being so quiet, but we’ve had a lot of fires to put out lately, and I’ve been at the store most of the time.  I am still thinking about my encyclopedia letters – I have C picked out, but so far no D or E.  But it’ll come to me!  I probably won’t pick up again until after this weekend, as for my birthday I get two whole days with just my husband.  I don’t even want any presents, I just want to walk and drive around, holding hands, looking at things and talking about everything we love.  Likely we’ll stick around Snohomish then, because I love this little town, and living in it hasn’t reduced its charm.

Snohomishtrip5

I have been doing some blogging on the store blog, though, so if I’m quiet here, chances are I’m not quiet there, and vice versa.  I think it might take me some trial and error before I strike the right balance between the two blogs, as much of what I want to share on the Weed Patch blog I would also love to share here, but is it tacky to cross post?  Oh, I’ll figure it out.

Anyway, these are photos of a trip we took to Snohomish before we moved here.  Ever thought of even moving here.  In fact, I don’t think we were married yet in these photos.

Snohomishtrip2

Two sets of lovebirds…

Snohomishtrip1

Have a lovely weekend, Happy Birthday to me!

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Technorati

This week I purchased Somerset Studio’s newest special publication called Artful Blogging. If you love browing blogs for visual eyecandy and a peek into the lives of kindred spirits, you’ll enjoy this magazine. I understand it is going to be quarterly. I recognized about a third of the artists featured – its fun reading about why they started a blog, and what it has done for their lives.

In the back of the magazine, they give you some blogging tips and tricks, many of which I was familiar with. I hadn’t heard of Technorati, has anyone else? Apparently it is a search engine that specializes in blogs, so you can post your own blog in there, and search for other people’s. I’ve just created a Technorati Profile. I don’t really know what that means yet, but I guess I’ll find out.

More Encyclopedia of Me Meme to come…I may not have all 26 letters done by my birthday, but that’s OK. I’d rather have it late and genuine than on time and rushed/not really thought through.

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B is for Ball, Birthday, and Benjamin

This has been a pleasant week so far – a good mix of productivity at home and at the store, one-on-one time with Ben, some visits with friends, and some artsy stuff done too. I always forget day to day what I’ve done, and thus can’t recall what progress I’ve made on my to do list, so consequently I’ve started keeping a weekly to do list – each weekend I write up a list of things to complete during the following week. Sometimes in the morning each day I’ll highlight what I’d like to get done that day, to help keep me focused, but I mostly like to keep things open because with the store, a baby, and the nature of life in general, you never know what kind of a schedule you’ll have.
I love lists. I love to cross things off a list, even if it is "take a shower." The list for this week had a little bit of everything, like take a walk, vacuum, enter products onto The Weed Patch’s website, crochet some flowers, play with Ben, cook dinner, etc. B is for Ball, because I crocheted Ben a ball to play with (see photo above). It is just plain Red Heart verigated rainbow yarn I have leftover with something else, but it crocheted up into a really nice big ball. It has a bell inside to give a little jingle, and I didn’t fill it too full, so then he can grasp it. Earlier this week I had picked up the unfinished project to move it out of my way, when I noticed his eyes following it. He really stared at it! So, I finished it right then and there and gave it to him to play with. He grabbed it and put it in his mouth (well, not the WHOLE thing, as it is the size of a pummelo).
B is also for Benjamin, of course. I couldn’t possibly do a B entry without including him. What kind of mom would I be?
This is Ben having a bath in our kitchen sink, about a week ago or so. I think these are all a week or two old.
This is him chillin’ with Grandma at the family reunion two weeks ago. He does that a lot. Just chillin’.
He attended his first birthday party this last Saturday. Our goddaughter Elise turned two this last Friday, and there was a big fat party for her – with a Curious George Theme. Andy describes the party rather accurately and amusingly, so I’ll let him tell the tale.
It occurred to me at the party that within a few years, if things go on as currently planned, our casual get-togethers with our two best friends are going to be just like that – a dozen children running around to keep track of. As there were about that many children at this party, and all under kindergarden age, it gave me a little taste of reality. I liked it, fortunately, but whew! Am I going to be tired. And BUFF.
But happy. 🙂
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A is for Armadillo

 

Well, A is for Alphabet. I love the alphabet – what a great invention! Symbols that stand for certain sounds, that when you put them together in a myriad of ways, you can communicate with people. How cool is that? I wouldn't be able to blog otherwise, let alone share in the knowledge of peole I'd never met, except for whatever memorized stories had been passed down from generation to generation.
 
This alphabet card is part of a set that I received as a baby gift for Ben. I love them! The illustrator is Melissa Sweet – she does darling works that mix fabric collage with watercolor. I especially love how broad the animals for each letter are. C isn't for Cat, but for Camel; D isn't for Dog, but for Dragonfly. How fun is that?
 
 
 

 
Ben also has an alphabet quilt, courtesy of his aunty Holly, which I unfortunately haven't been able to hang yet. I knew she was makingme a quilt, but had not expected this – it just amazed me. She appliqued one object for every letter of the alphabet, with Dick & Jane and ABC fabric quilt blocks making up the rest. Some of the letters are what you'd normally expect, such as A for apple and B for ball. But with other letters she was even more creative. I found N is for Night, and Z is for Zipper to be among the most unexpected. A nod to the guys was T for Trogdor, a Homestar Runner character that they like, and Y is for MX + B (which is a mathmatic formula that eqals Y, which you probably recall fom high school). W is for Weed Patch, our store, and she appliqued our logo. I love this quilt. What a gift!
 
 

 
 
This is a letter A that I started in pen and colored pencil – I was going to do a whole alphabet, until I realized how long this A was going to take and I gave up for other things. I would love to do an alphabet book, in felt, like a touch and feel book, for Ben. I saw something like what I'm thinking on Flickr once, but now I can't find it at all. Oh well.
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Encyclopedia of Daily Life

I have gotten a little behind in reading the blogs I enjoy keeping up with, and today I read a lovely blog from Bella Dia, who shared a wonderful idea for a series of postings. She calls it Encyclopedia of Me Meme – I have no idea what Me Meme is, so I’m just calling it an encyclopedia of daily life. Here’s how she explains it: Starting tomorrow, August 1st, I’m going to make a post each day of the month beginning with ‘A is for…’ and on the 26th day, ‘Z is for…’ My posts will be different random topics that somehow relate to my life and at the end I should have something similar to Amy Rosenthal’s Encyclopedia of an Ordinary Life. "

I think this sounds just wonderful! I love questions and prompts like this, I always write better that way. I’m afflicted with this awful problem where I think of all kinds of interesting things when I’m out and about, no where near a writing instrument, but when I get to the computer or journal, I can’t think of anything useful to say whatsoever. Or, if I can think of something interesting to say, I can’t think of how to write it, so I sit there and stare at the screen or blank page. That’s why some of my favorite books are those where the author has written about topics I think about, and I spend the whole time pointing in my head and saying "yes, I know exactly what you mean!"

So I’m really looking forward to this, although I’m hoping I can commit to it. Normally I wouldn’t worry about it, and would just write as it comes to me, but she started this on August 1st and my birthday is on the 26th, so if I keep up that means I’ll have a whole alphabet of life to look back on. I am also afflicted with a remarkably poor long-term memory (when it comes to my life experiences – I can remember numbers and what products we sold at the store two years ago, and things like that, relatively well. But I couldn’t tell you what my childhood lunch box was, or what trips we took every summer as a family. Sheesh!), which is why I took up journaling, and now blogging, in the first place.

I don’t really know what A is going to be tomorrow, or what any of the other letters are going to be, but I’ll just go with the flow and see what happens. Let me know if you are participating, I’d like to read what other people are doing. Its not too late to join in!

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I like this guy.

"In Seattle you haven’t had enough coffee until you can thread a sewing machine while it’s running." – Jeff Bezos, Amazon.com founder

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Breakfast in Tub

I had a nice morning today. Well, at first it wasn’t so nice – I kinda feel like I’m coming down with something, and I did something rotten to my neck because I can hardly move it. So I took a bath to see if I could loosen it up a bit. Aaaaahhhhhh…. I haven’t taken a bath since before I had Ben. (Well, I’ve bathed, I just haven’t taken a bath. So, here I am in this gloriously yummy water, complete with orange and peppermint essential oil, when Chris brings me my favorite tea, then proceeds to make me breakfast and bring it to me in the tub. He hands me this mess of eggs and veggies, which really didn’t look all that good, but it was GOOD. Really good. He just brings it in, and says he hopes it tastes good, then "oh, and I took photos for your blog." That was the best part, it cracked me up. Now he’s taking photos for my blog. I love it.

It’s kind of hard for me to remember to take photographs of my life, which is especially unfortunate as I never seem to remember much of anything unless I have photos to remind me. Blogging has been a wonderful way for me to start taking more photos. So has having a baby.
We’ve been pretty busy around here, but pleasantly so. We’re starting our most difficult and exhausting, but fun time of year – converting the store to fall! Within about two weeks we should have all the fall stuff out, and it is so much fun. I don’t know what it is about September and pretty much the rest of the year – it’s like a universally loved season. I really enjoyed spring this year. And I am thoroughly enjoying summer. But autumn….oooo, I can’t wait…
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More crafty inspiration (but again, not from me)

 

I'm capitalizing on my friend's blog today, partly because I'm running out the door and don't have any photos of things handy, but mostly because I just LOVE the crafty things she's posted today. Like me, she has one child, but hers is running around, can get into things, and I imagine takes more time to look after than it does for me with Ben. Nevertheless, she has several crafty artsy projects she has finished and is working on. I'm encouraged. I'm also inspired to sew. Again.

Anyway, check it out!