Shower Demolition

My parents wanted to keep Elizabeth for a couple of days, so while she was gone, Travis & I demoed the master shower. We're in the process of getting a couple of bids for the tile work because even though I can learn, if it's "cheap" enough, I don't want to learn!

We haven't been showering in here because Travis was afraid that the pipes might be leaking in the wall. Well, it was. But the good thing is that the damage is not so bad and he'll be able to fix the rotten boards with few problems (hopefully).

Before:

I got to whack out the first few tiles. Yes, that's chicken wire and concrete holding the tile on the wall. There's also a layer of sheet rock behind that nailed to the studs.

Travis did the rest of the demo and I cleaned up all of the debris.



We still have to chip the tile off of the floor and remove some more sheet rock from around the outside of the shower, but we're closer to having new tile in the master bath!

One Palm Down

Palm tree, that is. We have two palm trees in our front yard and we didn't like the small one. (I don't like either tree, but that's not the point.) It has a really hairy trunk and the fronds keep dying because it's so dry here and we just can't keep it watered enough. So, yesterday, Travis chopped it down.

You know that Elizabeth has to look on and make sure he's doing it right!



Yay! No more small palm tree.

Now, if only some grass would grow...

Grape Jelly

I wrapped up my preserving for the season with Champanel Grape Jelly. I am blessed enough to be good acquaintances with the owners of a local vineyard. They are wonderful people who also frequented my Farmers Market stand. I called them up to ask if they would have any grapes for making jelly. A few weeks ago they had been pruning some of the later producing grape vines (a lot of grapes mature around the fourth of July and I had missed that window!) and held a few gallons of grapes for me. (This jelly was made during the last week in July...I picked the grapes up the day after they called me.) The owners love to see Elizabeth, so we had ourselves a nice little visit. Not only were they generous enough to give me the grapes, but I also left with two bottles of her award-winning wine and a jar of their own jelly from a different grape. The wine is fabulous! I'd buy a case!

The grapes.

They were not all ripe, so I sorted them out, choosing the ripest. I needed roughly 3 pounds of grapes to equal the 4 cups of juice for the jelly.

After washing the grapes, I mashed them with a potato masher to release the juice and crack the skins.

Add 1/2 cup of water and bring to a boil. Then reduce the heat to a simmer for 10 minutes.

Then, pour the fruit into 3 layers of cheesecloth, tie closed, and let it drip into a bowl. I'm a little too impatient for this, so I held the bag and squeezed it gently with tongs to get my four cups of juice.

Pour the juice back into a sauce pot and add 7 cups of sugar. Constantly stirring, bring to a rolling boil.

Quickly stir in the pectin and boil for one minute more.

Remove the pot from the heat and ladle into jars. I decided to use half-pint jars for this jelly. They look so cute! (And I was out of pint jars!!) Put lids and rings on the jars, load into a boiling water canner and process for 5 minutes.

Remove the jars from the canner and let them cool. Check the jars after they have cooled to make sure they have sealed. Then store in a cool, dark place until you are ready to try it out!

The photo does not do the jelly justice, because it turns out to have such a pretty deep purple color that is almost transparent. Just gorgeous!

Pickling Jalapenos

I could not find a recipe to follow to pickle jalapenos, so I borrowed one from Travis's aunt, Karen. Jalapenos might have been my favorite to can mainly just because they look so good in the jar!

Wash the jalapenos. Ours were all sandy from the garden.

Cut two small slits in the pepper. This is to let the pickling solution into the cavity. Be careful when doing this; if you get the juice on your hands and then rub your eyes, you'll be in for an unpleasant day.

Pack the jalapenos into jars with a clove of garlic. I had both green and red peppers (more green than red), so I made sure to pack a few red around the edge of the jar. I think that pint jars work much better for jalapenos. It is easier to pack into a pint jar (I bought wide-mouth pints for this and my hand fits into the jar much easier) and, unless you eat jalapenos all of the time, you won't use a quart up fast enough.

Pack in your mix of spices. My recipe called for celery salt, mustard seed, coriander, and cumin. I mixed equal parts of the spices, enough for 1 teaspoon of mix per jar.

For the liquid, bring 1 cup vinegar, 1/4 cup water, 1/4 cup olive oil (I used extra virgin, it's what I have on hand), and 1 teaspoon of pickling salt to a boil. Fill the jars with the liquid, leaving 1/4-1/2 inch of headspace. Remove the air bubbles and place the lids on the jar then screw on the rings.

Load into your pot and process in a boiling water bath for 10 minutes.

Remove and cool. After they have cooled, check your jars to make sure they have sealed. Store sealed jars in a cool, dark place. If you had any jars that did not seal, put them in the fridge.

I had good luck and all of my jars sealed. I just love the way they turned out!

Canning Figs

This is the first year I've ever had fig trees (we have 2) and they produced lots of figs. These figs were roughly half the size of a golf ball. Since I had already made some fig jam, I decided to try my hand at canning figs.

Wash the figs, leaving the skin and stems intact.

Blanch the figs for 2 minutes in boiling water and drain. Prepare a light or medium syrup. I prepared a medium syrup which means boiling 3.25 cups of sugar into 5 cups of water.

Gently boil the figs in this syrup for 5 minutes.

I canned my figs in quart jars, so I put 2 tablespoons of lemon juice in each jar. Then you pack as many figs as you can into the jars, pushing gently on the figs to pack them well without breaking the skins. With our small figs I was able to get at 100-105 figs in each jar. You then fill the airspaces with the syrup that you boiled the figs in. Leave 1/2 inch of headspace at the top of each jar. Remove all of the air bubbles. Put on your lids and rings and load into the boiling water canner.

Process quarts for 50 minutes in a gently boiling water canner.

Remove and enjoy! We had one jar that did not seal so we put it straight into the refrigerator and have been eating on them. The other two jars both went to silent auction baskets for family reunions.

Super Cutie

Elizabeth was dressed so cute in some hand-me-down shirt and sweat pants (thanks Megan and Hannah) that I couldn't resist taking a couple of pictures of Elizabeth. Here she is posing on our guest bed.

And here she is showing off her new skill: climbing the dining room chairs and standing on them to get to anything and everything that's on the dining table. Bad news!

And unrelated to the clothes, Travis took a picture of Elizabeth & I reading our books. She does like to read...just like me!

Summertime

Yes, summer is in full swing around here. Since we don't have school to look forward to (for many more years...) our summer isn't winding down quite yet. Elizabeth loves playing in the water. We stripped her down to her diaper and let her play in the sprinkler. She's ok as long as it doesn't spray her a lot in the face.

She also got a small swimming pool for her birthday that has a hippo canopy over it. I didn't have anything but the ole lungs to fill this thing up. Let me tell you, I was light-headed and dizzy after I was finished, but Elizabeth was so excited and clapping and laughing as I was blowing it up that I couldn't stop! Momma didn't want to disappoint! These are pictures of her trying it out in the living room first. I haven't gotten any pictures of her in the pool, yet...I just keep forgetting my camera inside after she's already in.

She sat so pretty for some "pouty" poses.

"Hey, this pool is as big as I am!"

Since this was a one baby pool, we brought our other pool home from my in-laws and Travis blew it up with the air compressor. That pool is big enough for her and I to get in together so there will be no pictures of that when this albino-except-for-her-farmers-tan is in her bathing suit! I just wouldn't do that to you! I will try to get some more pictures of her in it, though!