Our Garden

I wanted to post some pictures and stories about our garden this year.
It was certainly a learning experience.  I look forward to future years of experimentation and delicious produce.
We were amazed at how large the plants got.  We took this picture at the end of July, and the plants got even bigger after this.  Not much taller, but they did spread.

One of Jeff's co-workers kindly gave us a few basil plants for a housewarming gift.  They came really close to dying, but then ended up flourishing and spreading.  In fact, they turned from green to a really pretty dark purple.  At one point we gave a bagful to my sister Suzanne, and our car smelled like basil for several days afterwards.

We ended up having so much produce lying around the house that Cosette started treating them like toys.  She liked to balance on top of large zucchini, line windowsills with tomatoes and green peppers, and carry squash around the house.

It was really crazy for a few weeks when our peaches were ripe.  We were outside almost daily picking rotten peaches off the ground so the flies and worms didn't get too bad.  I also enjoyed climbing the peach tree to reach the good peaches before they fell.  I froze several bags full of peaches, canned 7 jars (my first time canning!), and also made peach cobbler, syrup, sorbet, and fruit leather.

Accumulated peach pits

In addition to freezing peaches, I also cut up and froze green peppers and zucchini.  Some of the zucchini was blended up to be used in baking breads and muffins, and some was sliced and blanched for use in smoothies.

Freezing sliced green peppers

Frozen zucchini chunks for smoothies

Cutting up a few giant zucchini for blending

Five zucchinis blended up for freezing

Put freezer bags over an empty yogurt container 

5 zucchinis = 29 cups to freeze for future muffins and breads

Here are some pictures of our pumpkins.  I tried to account for all of the pumpkins we gave away, but I gave a few to my mom that I didn't get a picture of.  I estimate that we had around 30 pumpkins total.

Our neighbor Elsie picked the first pumpkin in our patch

Pumpkins selected by my nephew and nieces
Olivia, Jonathan, Audrey and Madeline

Cosette choosing her pumpkin

These pumpkins at my sister's house came from our garden
(all but those on the top step)

Jack-o-lanterns we made with our own pumpkins,
along with a bumpy yellow squash for decoration

When our garden was peaking in production, we were harvesting several grocery bags full of produce every day.  Towards the end of the season we were able to let one or two days pass in between harvesting, and the numbers started dropping off.  We took a picture of our last day of harvesting produce before we started ripping out the dead and dying plants.

Our last day of produce

So there are some highlights of our garden this year.  Next year we hope to plant a larger variety of vegetables, as well as start a berry patch.  I'm excited for the years to come, but I'm also grateful for the break from gardening that we get in the winter.

Leaves and Snow

It cracks me up that these pictures were taken less than 24 hours apart. That's Utah weather for you!
On Saturday we spent time out in the yard raking and bagging leaves.  This is an activity that I enjoy, and Cosette does, too.  The weather was gorgeous - around 60 degrees.  We were wearing light long sleeves and only had hats on because it was windy.

And then today we had our first snowfall of the season.  The flakes were big and beautiful, and it snowed off and on for several hours.  Cosette got really excited and asked if she could play outside.  Ironically, I had just bought a pair of adult snow pants at Walmart on Friday, so we got all dressed up and ready to go.

Silly girl 

Love the mix of purples, pink and red

I was surprised that the snow actually stuck to the ground, given how warm it was yesterday.  We tried to make snowballs, but they just became ice balls full of leaves, so we decided to make pictures with our feet instead.

We made three smily faces in the yard

Having fun making designs in the snow

Rose in the snow

Jeff took this pretty picture of one of our front roses covered in the icy snow.  Fortunately, I had cut off most of the roses just yesterday and put them in vases around the house in anticipation of colder temperatures.  I had no idea how timely it would be!

So there you go.  Back to back days of fun spent in the yard with leaves and snow.  Happy November!

Halloween

We hope everyone had a Happy Halloween!  We sure did.

On Monday night we carved our jack-o-lanterns for Family Home Evening. Cosette loved hers so much that she slept with it in her room that night.  I thought it might be a little scary for a night light, but she disagreed (I used battery operated tea lights, so no danger of a fire hazard).

Cosette's silly faced pumpkin

Christine's "pumpkin pi"

My favorite: Jeff's mathematical pumpkin

Now, let me explain Jeff's pumpkin a little.  He came up with the left side of the equation first to look like a face.  But then he figured out a way for this equation to actually make sense (and no, x does not equal eleven times v).  There's a trick to it. I'm curious to see if anyone can figure it out.  I'll post the answer in a comment.

Happy cheerleader

Cosette dressed up as a BYU cheerleader for Halloween.  We borrowed the outfit from my sister Suzanne (thank you for providing us with a costume for the third year in a row!), and I found the cute hairpiece at DI.  She got to wear her costume three times this month: on the day of BYU's Homecoming game, when we went down to Provo for a Math Education Alumni Breakfast; to our old ward's Halloween party the Saturday before Halloween; and she wore it all day on Halloween.

Trunk-or-treating

Mmm, candy

I love this cute pose!

I really enjoyed taking Cosette around the neighborhood for trick-or-treating.  Sadly, it was colder than I anticipated and Cosette wanted to come home after only a few houses.  But it was still fun.

My House Project #1

When we were looking at our new home, Christine and I noticed that the fence to our back yard didn't have a gate on the north side of the house.  Christine asked me to build a gate, so that is the first project I set out to do.  I purchased supplies a few weeks after we moved in, but after having surgery I wasn't able to work on the gate for a little while.  About two weeks ago, I finished the gate and Christine helped me hang it in place last week.
I feel really proud about being able to build something.  It was a fun project.  I even used my CAD software at work to design it and show Christine what I had envisioned.  I think it turned out pretty nice.  So without further a do, here is the before picture and the after picture. I think time and weather has faded the color of the fence, so we'll need to re-stain it to match.

Before

After

Fun Pictures

I thought I would share some fun pictures and moments from our lives recently.

Play-doh has been a fad recently.  I let Cosette play with it in the play room at first, but after smashing it (accidentally) into the carpet, it has now been regulated to the table.  She especially loves making pancakes that she breaks up into tiny pieces and feeds to her stuffed animals.

We drink a lot of smoothies at our house, and Cosette often enjoys them to the very last drop.  She's gotten pretty good at drinking from a cup, but she drinks the majority of the smoothie through a straw so it doesn't get too messy.  But I let her drink the last little bit "like a big girl" (without the lid), as you can see in the pictures below:

Tapping the bottom to get every last drop

Happy mustache 

Mmm, yummy

The other day Cosette found one of my t-shirts lying around and decided that she wanted to wear it.  She called it a dress, which I guess it is on her.

Overall we're enjoying life and all it has to offer.  I can't believe how big she's getting!

New Couch

We've been keeping an eye out for deals on furniture since we moved into our new home.  For the past few weeks we haven't had any seating in our front room besides the piano bench, and the leather couch in our family room downstairs is getting pretty run down (the cushions all have rips).  We've been looking for a love seat and two accent chairs for the living room and a sectional for the family room.
Our family room isn't very large, so I really wanted to have a sectional to be able to maximize the seating.  A lot of the sectionals we looked at were way too big, too deep, or not the right style.  For example, I didn't want the type that looks like a whole bunch of chairs put together, because it limits how many people can comfortably sit on the couch (and my goal was to maximize seating).
We were thinking that investing in a quality sectional was going to be a year or two down the road, and then we found one at Costco this past week that was both functional and economical.  So we decided to go ahead and get it.  We rented a truck to get it home, and then my brother and a neighbor kindly helped us get it in the house.
Here are some before and after pictures:

I love our new couch!  I'm hoping that it will last our family for a good long while.  We're not letting Cosette jump on this couch, for starters.  She wasn't too happy with this new rule, but we really should have enforced it long ago.  I just didn't care enough about the old couch to make her stop jumping on it, which probably led to its sad demise.
For now, we've moved our old couch into the front room.  It's really nice to have somewhere to sit when you first walk in our home.
Another reason I wanted a sectional in the family room was to divide the room into two spaces.  I've always wanted a computer desk in a high traffic area in my home rather than an enclosed office, and I thought that along this wall beneath the dining room would be a good spot for one.

This may be a space that evolves over time to meet our needs.  It could be an office/homework space, a reading nook with a bean bag or video rocker and bookcase(s), an area for toys if we convert our toy room into something else, etc.  We may build in shelving along the wall, to match built-in shelving we're planning to add around the fireplace.  But that's way in the future - probably 10+ years.  For now, I'm not exactly certain what we're going to put there, except maybe a video rocker for Cosette to play with.  But if you have any ideas or suggestions for this space, feel free to share.