Kid chef hat, apron and skirt

Not a lot has been happening in the garden lately, but creative projects have not been lacking around here. Maybe a few posts back you remember seeing a boys chef hat and apron I made. Recently I have been working on another chef hat and apron for my niece for Christmas. And my daughter wanted a Christmas skirt. She also tried her foot at sewing a strait seem or two.

We had a bunch of left over Christmas material from several Christmas' ago. Last year we crafted this t-shirt. We put elastic in the sleeves and waist and put bows on the sleeves and uses some Christmas fabric to make a Christmas Tree with a ribbon at the top. Yesterday we decided to make a skirt with more of the left over fabric. She loved it so much she doesn't want to take it off.

And this is the most recent Child's Chef hat and apron I made. I thought it turned out even better than the last. Practice makes perfect (or better anyway)! I think that my 4 year old niece will absolutely love it! I hope!

Harvest Monday 11/12

I didn't post last week because there simply isn't much going on in the garden except maybe a bit of an overhaul.

This was last weeks harvest

This weeks harvest. All these peas went into and orange chicken stir-fry for dinner last night.

2 new 8 foot beds! I transplanted the pak choi here and planted my garlic. Hope the pak choi survives its move, it just wasn't getting enough sun in its previous location.

This 4X4 bed has been covered to try to extend the harvest a bit longer. These are the purple snap peas.

and at the bottom of the covered bed there are about 8 spinach plants and 4-5 lettuce plants and one cilantro. They are all quite small still but hopefully will give us something. Something kept eating them down to the ground before I got the cover on, now they have some protection from not just the cold but the critters!

Child's Apron and Chef's hat

While the garden has not been producing much these days, we have had a chance to use some of our frozen reserves!

I recently bought this set at Target for the kids, there is only one. My dd has taken claim to it and I thought maybe it did look a bit girly so I decided I would get to working making one one for ds.

DD has made some pumpkin gingerbread with me in her new little bunt pan. It lasted about a minute! We love this pumpkin gingerbread recipe we found on Allrecipes.com, it is one of our favorites.

Well, here is my work. An apron and Chef's hat with little airplanes on it. He loved it and wanted to make something right away. And when I say right away, I mean the boy was downright impatient! ( I needed to clean up the kitchen first!)

So, here he is helping me make pumpkin cranberry bread. He really likes it but I think the Pumpkin gingerbread is better, and the cranberry nut bread recipe on the back of the cranberry package! Can you tell we like pumpkin around here? ;)

Harvest Monday 10/29

It is Harvest Monday at Daphne's Dandelions. Join the fun.

This week I made this birthday cake for my little birthday boy. He loves Mickey Mouse. He had a great party with all his little friends and he loved his cake.

This is my one and only harvest. Several more Purple Magnolia Sugar Snap peas, a couple of Alaskan peas, a few more raspberries, Matt's Wild Cherry Tomatoes and a small head of lettuce, that will be good for some sandwiches.

A bit of broccoli is beginning to show its head so maybe in the next few weeks I will have something new for the season to add to my harvest totals. It is getting quite chilly around here and the cool weather stuff seems to be enjoying it and producing a bit more flowers.

Happy Birthday to my baby!

This time I did a Frozen Buttercream Transfer  on the cake for the first time and I am quite happy how it turned out!

I taped a reverse picture to a glass cutting board and taped wax paper over it and outline the picture in black frosting with a number 1 tip. Then I began filling in all the colors, 7 in all.

Then I topped the entire thing with a layer of buttercream frosting and layed another piece of wax paper over it and smoothed it very slightly, then put it in the freezer over night.

I mixed two box mixes together, Pillsbury Strawberry and chocolate and ran a toothpick through it to give it a marbled look. It turned out great but forgot to take a pic of it coming out of the oven.

Completed cake. I turned the frozen buttercream picture over onto the frosted cake and frosted around the edges. I think it turned out great!

I'm 3! (Good morning birthday boy!)

Tiny Harvest Monday

It's Harvest Monday at Daphne's Dandelions where I am sure many of us are hoping we can keep our harvests going well into the winter months or at the very least, late fall!

 My harvest is super small this week but I hope that some of my cooler weather veggies will be harvest-able, and pick up before super cold temps set in!

I am still getting a small amount of raspberries which we are berry happy for! ;)

The snap peas are picking up a tiny bit. The cooler weather is doing them good. I wish they were showing signs of greater production though. I probably have almost 24 plants out there (that is what I started with), and this is all I have to show for it, small handfuls of peas that disappear very quickly! And, the very last bean! The plants have been pulled and this was the only one left. I can barely get to the strawberries before something else gets to them. I see one looking nice and almost ready and the next day, it's gone! Or has a giant slug hole in it! Eh, they will be done soon anyway. I'll work harder to keep the pests away next year!

This week is my youngest son's birthday. He will be 3. Good grief! The days sometimes seem to drag on forever but the years are just flying by in a flash of the eye! I will be making his cake again, though I will probably not beat, ever, last years treasure chest cake. The treasure chest post gets the most hits of any post on this blog. It is very popular. This years theme is Mickey Mouse. He is also Mickey Mouse for Halloween, as you may have seen last week. He will be sporting his costume for his party.

I will definitely post a picture of him and the cake later this weekend.

Harvest Monday 10/15

It is Harvest Monday at Daphne's Dandelions! Come join the fun!

It has been a slow week in the garden. I have been working more on Halloween costumes. 

I made the Pink Pumpkin, as you may have seen last week. I made her leaf necklace with felt. I made Mickey Mouses gloves and shoes out of old baby towels, and stuffed a couple of small scrap made pillows to make the shoes all puffy. Gramma made the Pumpkin's hat and the Mickey Mouse hat and body suit. I am so proud of our work. They look so cute! And then of course Bumble Bee I did not make, I wasn't even going to attempt that one! Maybe he will choose something a bit easier next year! MIL and I have made some super costumes the past few years, way better than the store bought ones!

 

This morning I had a nice pile of raspberries and tomatoes. A few Purple Magnolia Sugar Snap peas, and an unknown tomato. This is the first tomato I have gotten off of this plant so we will see what color it turns.

I worked on a bunch of tomatoes that had turned red on the counter, I canned 7 pint jars of salsa, 4 Quart jars of tomatoes and 3 pint jars of tomatoes. It was a bit of a pain because I live in a split level and the kitchen is upstairs, and have a glass top and you are not suppose to use the granite water bath canners on the glass top so my wonderful dh carried a full canner with jars and water down to the grill burner and back up while it was boiling hot. Maybe I should find a canner that is not granite! I love my glass top and sure don't want to ruin it! But all turned out well.

We also had some pac choi this week. Dh and I love it but the kids have to force it down. Actually, I need to find a good variety because the varieties I have do not taste as good as the ones we first tried from the store. We only first tried it last year when my daughter learned about it on Kai Lan(a Chinese cartoon) and wanted to try it. Of course I encourage them to try all kind of new things from the garden!

Harvest Monday 10/8

Hop on over to Daphne's Dandelions for some fun harvest sharing time from all over the world! It has been a busy week!

boy the pickens are getting slim in the raspberry bed!  :(

 Frosty mornings were predicted for several days so I decided to pull all the peppers, tomatoes, sweet potatoes and whatever else wouldn't make it.

small sweet peppers

Blushing beauty pepper. They start out sort of white like the small one and turn a bright shade of orange. I wasn't sure if these would make it, they got kinda wilty a few times and I didn't know if it was the disease hitting the pepper bed or just heat and drought.

The last few Dragon Tongue beans, last Georgia Flaming Hot pepper and a zucchini.

All the bell peppers, mostly turning red in a bowl on the table already!

Last of the sweet potatoes, definitely smaller than the first round. But still happy!

A few left over potatoes. I would have left them for next year but we are totally rearranging the beds and building a couple of new ones so they would not have been left undisturbed.

The tomatoes showing a bit of ripening.

Green tomatoes, though a lot of them are already turning.

A giant pile of cherry tomatoes. I did not completely pull these plants though so we will see if any more come out of the garden.

A few more beans before the plants are pulled. Still getting a tiny bit of raspberries!

The oregano got a haircut. Another zucchini, maybe the last. And probably the last of the beans, we'll see.

Thyme and Rosemary also got a haircut.

And how do you like this little pink pumpkin I grew sewed? She is still waiting on a hat from gramma but she is in love with her costume, she thinks it needs more stuffing, but she can hardly move as it is! This costume was her idea based on her favorite book Pinkalicious and the Pink Pumpkin.Great little girls book!

Happy Harvesting!

Harvest Monday 10/1

Welcome to Harvest Monday hosted by Daphne's Dandelions

Found a couple more Kennebec potatoes, as soon as I pull the other plants out of that tub I am going to dump it to see if there are more. Lots of cherry tomatoes coming in still. And a few raspberries.

Bell peppers seem to be turning red at a smaller size. Guess they know the cold is coming.

I don't know, but this may be the last Zucchini for the season, they seem to be taking weeks for one to mature in this cooler weather. It took this small one about 3 weeks to get to this size. The Sugar Magnolia Sugar Snap peas seem to be picking up just a tad.

There is one more Great White, the one with the stem. It is not very big, it is from another plant that has had a lot of difficulties this season and this is the first tomato it has given me.

The first Pac Choi of the season! Can't wait to enjoy that.

And this is my solution to curing the sweet potatoes. It seems to be doing quite well. I blocked off the bottom with Styrofoam so the heat and humidity would not escape and I have a heat lamp and large tub of water and they look like they are healing up quite nicely!

Happy Harvesting!

Harvest Monday 9/24/12

It is Harvest Monday at Dahpne's Dandelions! Join the fun and share your harvest or just look around!

Last night we had our first frost, almost a month early! Mid October is usually our first frost. So, the garden is all covered in sheets right now and it is suppose to get back into the 80s this week! Trying to extend that harvest!

Raspberries and cherry tomatoes and beans are slowing down. I am getting a few Sugar Magnolia Purple Snap peas. If you saw my last post, I wrote about my peppers and the diseases that are taking them, but I am still getting a few.

The second Georgia Flaming Hot Pepper, and there is one more. I am afraid this plant got too shaded by the larger bell pepper plants to produce much more. And I found 2 little potatoes, I may find more as I start pulling everything up, I just don't want to disturb the roots systems of other nearby plants.

Oh I am so excited about this sweet potato harvest so far! That one in the middle has a ruler on it, it is almost 2 lbs! I still have more to dig up but these are probably the largest ones. So excited, but now I am working on figuring out the best way to cure them. They need to be "cured" for about 2 weeks in a high temperature and high humidity environment. This has not been easy. Right now they are in the bathroom with a heater and a humidifier, but DH is trying to find a heat lamp to put in the mini indoor greenhouse and I will put it in there with a tub of water. Hope we find a good solution. How do you cure your sweet potatoes?

Hate to find a tomato turning and pick it to find a giant spot a worm has been eating on.

These are the smallest  carrots from my season, but the best tasting. No green shoulders or bitter taste and chilly weather has been good for them! :)

One of our other new neighbors gave me these little HOT peppers. They are tiny. Anyone know what they are? The plant looks like it has purple leaves. I may save the seeds and grow one. These are smaller than the Matt's Wild Cherry Tomatoes, smaller than this dime.

Hope everyone is getting a great harvest!