Battle of the Zucchini Fries

My sister is out of town for a couple weeks and has asked me to take care of her garden while she's away. Since she'll be gone for a while, she's also said that I can have any produce that ripens while she's gone. So far, while gone, her garden has produced two MOSTER sized zucchinis. No joke. These things are practically the size of my one year old:

I put out a cry on Facebook for good zucchini recipe suggestions as my main go-to recipes for zucchini aside from dunking raw pieces into ranch dip are Angel Hair Primavera and Antipasto Pizza....and I've got about 8 times as much zucchini as either of those recipes needs. When my cousin suggested frying it, I was reminded of some zucchini fry recipes I'd seen on pinterest and thought I'd try something like that. When I ran out of bread crumbs half way though making the baked fries, I thought I'd try frying some up as well and Battle of the Zucchini Fries was on!

Panda Pancakes!

I've been seeing pictures floating around pinterest of some awesome pancake art. Most of them are from Jim's Pancakes - who has brought pancaking to an art form. Amazing stuff. Check it out if you are looking for awesome pancake inspiration!

I'd had the idea in my head to do panda pancakes for a while. I tried the "blob" technique where I just blobbed the batter onto the pan, and while it looked okay on the griddle:

It did not look so great when I took it off. So un-great in fact, there is not even photographic evidence of it's existence.

For my next attempt, I decided to try watered down batter in squeeze jars. These turned out much better:

Here is how I did it:

Box o Books: DIY Home Storage

Like any good little Bonham, our kiddo has a TON of books. This is apparently genetic since Mommy and Daddy own an awful lot of books as well. Our living room can get quite messy as Kaypha is still a little guy and isn't very good at putting books away on a bookshelf (where the books had been living).

He does, however, love putting things inside of stuff. One of his favorite games is to put little items into a bucket and then dump the bucket out and put everything back into the bucket again. I decided to try and use this to my advantage in order to maybe get a little help cleaning up and deciding we needed a bin system for storing books. Regular bins aren't cute enough to put out in the living room and baskets can be pricey (I didn't already have one that was the right size to fit under my table). Instead, I threw some craft supplies together and came up with this...

And the best part was that is was free because I made it from stuff I had on hand. Ya'll know that free is my favorite price!  Here's how I did it:

Made in the Shade: My DIY Kid Play Tent

A few months ago I saw a few different designs for kid reading tents floating around on Pinterest. I love the idea of a little reading spot or shade nook. I wanted it to be super portable, though so I could take it to the beach, park or grandparents house. I tried a couple different ways to make them and ended up with this final design:

I love it because it is super portable, sets up in less than 3 minutes, and doesn't take up much room to store.

DIY Ginger Syrup for homemade soda

My family has been trying to find healthier alternatives to traditional soda. High fructose corn syrup (HFCS) is not only horrible for you, but almost all of it is made from genetically modified corn - which we oppose on moral grounds. Plus drinking lots of extra calories is bad for you. Diet sodas aren't too much better. And with all the hub-bub going around about caramel coloring causing cancer, it's enough to make you give up soda altogether.

Except I'm addicted. I think it's the bubbles. I find plain club soda has a weird bitter taste so I still need it flavored somehow. And it needs to be inexpensive.

I've seen a few recipes for infused syrups that you can use to make homemade sodas floating around online about thought I'd give it a shot.  I love that I have 100% control over what goes into it and it's not pricey! It turned out pretty tasty, too, if I do say so myself. Plus I think it makes a fun inexpensive gift. So without further ado...

Pop-Mania Part 2: Blueberry Lemon Pops

The Pacific Northwest heat wave has waned quite a bit but nobody needs to twist my arm to eat tasty frozen treats! These pops turned out tasty and creamy with a bright lemony flavor that I love.

Tasty Pop Flavor #2: Blueberry Lemon pops

Blueberry Lemon Pop Recipe:

• 1 box vanilla pudding mix
• 2 cups of milk
• 1 cup vanilla flavored whole milk yogurt (I used Stonyfield)
• 1 lemon
• 3/4 cup fresh or frozen blueberries
  

Mr. Mustachio

I love a good mustache on a kiddo. We did mustachio Valentine's Day cards this year and when I found out the my friend, Patti's, new baby is going to be a boy I wanted to help spread the mustachey love with....

Mustache Binkies!

They were super simple. Some brown craft foam, some mustache shapes from the internet, some glue. Slap it on some brand new binkies and you have a super cute baby fashion statement. 

Kaypha is nearing the end of his use of the binky (hopefully!) but I made one for him using an old binky so he could model it for us:

Pop-Mania Part 1: Piña Colada Pudding Pops

It's been warming up here in Oregon. I'm a classic Pacific Northwest girl: I start to melt once it gets above 85. So in preparation of our heat wave (stop laughing...I realize that's about 20 degrees shy of what constitutes a heat wave where some of you are from) I've been experimenting in the kitchen to develop some tasty frozen concoctions to help us make it through some hot days without air conditioning.

Tasty Pop Flavor #1: Piña Colada Pudding pops

Piña Colada Pop Recipe:

• 1 box vanilla pudding mix
• 2 1/4 cups of milk
• 1 can of pineapple chunks
• 1/2 cup Cream of Coconut

How Does Your Garden Grow?

This is the first year I've really gotten serious about doing a garden journal. I've been taking pictures of my garden in progress to put together into a photo book at the end of the season. I've also been labeling some of the photos with what kinds of seeds I used so I can keep track of which things are doing well.  The first one I did of my plants in May looks like this:

If you save your layers in photoshop and keep standing in about the same place, you can drop a new pictures in every so often and just make minor adjustments to make sure the arrows are still pointing at the right plants. I love watching the progress of how things are growing.

Here are some progress pics of my front planter (One pic for each month. Also, if you'll remember, it used to look like this!)