Here I Go....

Tyler and I went to Joann's yesterday and picked up the rest of the fabric that we needed for his Halloween costume. He found the pattern about a month ago when the store started bringing out their Fall/Halloween merchandise. He wanted to be a chef, so that's what we are making (the one in the lower right hand corner).

I picked out some white twill for the chef's coat and hat and some cotton chili pepper material for the pants. I've got the material all laid out and I'm ready to start pinning the pieces down. This is the time I always get paranoid that maybe I picked the wrong size. He wears a size 3t shirt right now, so I guess I should just go with the size 3 pattern...I just don't want it to end up too small or something! I hope it turns out cute, but it probably won't top last years scarecrow costume!

My latest reads

I just finished reading Nineteen Minutes and the Kindness of Strangers...two books that I happened to pick up at Costco.

I had never heard of Jodi Picoult before, but apparently she is a pretty popular author. Katrina Kittle was new to me as well, but I found both books enjoyable to read. Nineteen Minutes is about a shooting at a high school and the aftermath thereof. The Kindness of Strangers is a story of incest and how it rips a family apart. Both of the books are heartbreaking in a wow...can you imagine, sort of way.


I picked up a new book while I was out today....To Kill a Mockingbird. I read the story when I was in high school, but that was over 10 years ago. It's the book selected this year for Yakima's Big Read. It's a program where the entire community is encouraged to read the same book and are then invited to discussions/lectures at the local libraries. I don't know that I'll be attending any of the discussions, but I don't mind re-reading a classic novel.

Pear Party

Today we went back to the Orchard for their big Pear Party or Pear Fest as it is more commonly known. They had all kinds of pear/cheese platters out for sampling. Our favorites were the Red Bartlett pears and the Asian pears.

Here is the variety box of pears they had for sale...don't they look yummy? We just stuck with our favorite and got a sack of the Red Bartlett pears.

Inside the barn they had even more tasty samples of food and free recipes to take home. They had some pear pastries that were great and I liked the Oatmeal Pear Cookies too. There was some Caramel-Pear Butter and a Prosciutto-pear appetizer that Rick liked. Now I'll need to go through the recipes I snagged and decide what to make first!

Some more pages

Here are some of the scrapbook pages I finished this week.

This layout I completely and shamelessly copied from the August 08 issue of Creating Keepsakes magazine. After a while, you just need some help coming up with new ideas.


Similarly, I copied this layout from the July 08 issue of Scrapbooks, Etc magazine. I never would have thought to make a giant sun on my own, but I think it came out nice.

Cheeeese!!

At least I can take full credit for this one, but is it as cute as the other two?

Non-flat cookies and more....

Tyler has been sick the last couple of days, so I've been doing the thing were I follow him around all day with a box of tissues...followed closely with hand sanitizer for me. Arrgh, I guess that's what I get for taking him grocery shopping with me. When will he learn to keep his hands out of his mouth?

For dinner tonight I made Chicken Rice Pilaf. Mmmmm, just like Mom used to make...but with the addition of peas.


But wait, it gets better! For dessert Tyler and I made Chocolate Chip Cookies. Here is the link. Don't they look pretty? They're not flat or anything...and I cooked them...me!

Tyler didn't eat much of his dinner, which usually means no dessert. However, I had mercy on him (he is sick and all) and let him have a cookie. Okay, so who else wants one...I'm not about to eat all of those by myself!

Fresh Fruit

Yesterday, I passed on the not so great looking fruit at the grocery store and decided to head straight to the orchard. The fruit is always better and priced lower than the grocery store anyway.


With so many choices, we ended up taking a little bit of everything. We got some apples, pears, nectarines and blueberries. Yumm!

Don't those apples look good? Makes me want to start looking in my cookbooks for a few good apple recipes. I'm suprised I don't already have some on hand, with Yakima being the apple capital of the world and everything (well maybe not the world but probably pretty close). The Yakima Valley is even home to two applesauce/apple juice producers...Seneca and Tree Top. I better get on the ball and show some hometown support. How about some apple pie?

One tomato, Two tomato

a gazillion tomatoes more! Yes, I've said it before and I'll say it again...17 tomato plants is waaaay too many for our small 3 member family. But in my defense, the little bitty tomato plants looked so small in the nursery that it was easy to over estimate how many we needed. Oops!


Tyler and I did our normal Sunday grocery shopping today, but not before a quick stop at the park. We got there kind of early and Tyler almost had the whole playground to himself. Sounds kind of nice to me, but not so much for Tyler. He loves playing with the other kids, so he missed out a little on that.

I've been trying a lot of new recipes lately, so I thought I'd take the easy route today and do a simple dinner. I'm going to heat up some Ivar's clam chowder that I bought at Costco. It's supposed to be a really great clam chowder from Seattle (not the same as the glorious chowder I ate at the Pike Place Market, but hopefully in the same league) so I'm crossing my fingers that we all enjoy it.