Monday, er, Five

Tip Five: 

#1- My sister Melissa has been staying with us this week. She's been homeless as she's waiting to be able to move into her new apartment and decided to crash at our house for the week. I can honestly say I've never loved the time period between when you have to move out of your old college apartment and when you can move into your new college apartment so much! We've loved having her. We've eaten some good food, played in Lydia's little pool, and put her to work helping us get our yard ready for our plants this weekend. (That girl is buff! She was helping me put topsoil in our front flowerbed when we discovered a giant rock buried in the clay-dirt. She singlehandedly dug it out leaving a gaping hole to fill with topsoil. So glad she was there!)

#2- We made salsa with my awesome family last week and had these beauties left over: After a few google searches I discovered that the small cans of chopped green chilies that we love so much are actually anaheim peppers, which are the peppers in the left two bags. We read that you can just chop them and freeze them and then use them instead of the cans. I was really excited and the day after we got home from Morgan, I pulled out my chopper and got to work. I chopped and froze a bunch of anaheims. I roasted some then froze them in little piles. I seeded, halved, and froze the jalapenos. It was awesome! Except for the fact that I didn't have any kitchen gloves so I just tried to do it all with my bare skin. I thought that I'd just hurry really fast and it would be fine. Cue me spending the rest of the day soaking my fingers in a bowl of milk and baking soda. Skin. Was. On. Fire. Haha. All's well that ends well. I can't wait to start using these chilies instead of the cans.  

 #3- My Grandma Knowles was in town and so Lydia and I went out to dinner with her. Melissa (and Blake) was able to come, my cousin Ashley made it, and my Aunt Berthene was there as well. It was so nice! We had a great time catching up and spending time together.

#4- We finally installed a baby gate at the top of our stairs. I love it! It's so nice to be able to just lock the gate and not worry about Lydia climbing over the obstructions that I have been putting it away. It took us so long to put it up because we had to install it into the baseboard and that was causing some problems. (Our pretty 6" baseboard is too tall to just put the gate above it.) I picked up an extra piece of baseboard from a neighbor and when we were in Morgan last weekend, I asked my dad if he would cut off a couple of inches for me so I could finally install the gate. His response? "Cut off the end? Well, do you want a shape? A heart? A star? I can make whatever shape you want!" I laughed out loud. Honestly, I hadn't even thought about making that piece look pretty. I was just going to cut off the end of the baseboard into a square so that I could hang the gate. I had already resigned myself to an eyesore at the top of the stairs for the next ten years as the tradeoff for a functional baby gate. But my dad pulled out the big guns and after I printed off this quatrefoil shape for him he made this beauty for me! Melissa helped me hang it and I love it so much!

(I have to confess, I screwed three giant screws into the wood for safety and then photoshopped them out so you could see how pretty it is. I'm going to pull the giant screws out, countersink them, then putty and paint over them. So this is what it will look like.)

#5- Hello, my name is Shantel. Once upon a time I grew two big beautiful zucchini plants. I planted them late in the season and so they just barely started producing. Here is my first homegrown zucchini.

Unfortunately, the story doesn't end there. My beautiful zucchini plants (which I am still kicking myself for not taking a picture of) just happened to end up in the center of a giant sink hole. And so, in preparation for our giant planting day, Melissa and I knew that we had to transplant the zucchinis, meaning, we had to dig them up, put all the fill dirt down, then plant them again. My research on the internet said that this was not going to be easy. Boo. But it had to be done. We pulled them out and in minutes they started wilting. After filling in the almost 10" deep sink hole, we planted our babies back into the soil and they were practically dead. I'm so sad! They wilted down even more than they are in this picture. I keep holding out hope that they will come back, but I'm afraid my first zucchini that I picked is destined to be my last. So sad! The worst part is, I didn't take a single picture of my big beautiful zucchini plans and didn't show them off to hardly anyone. *sigh* Next year. Next year.

 I had this post almost completely finished on Friday, but my Friday's are evolving into fairly busy days lately. I might have to come up with something else to post all my random tidbits from the week. But until I do, I'll probably just keep posting these Friday Five's whenever I can get them done. Also, Saturday was a huge success where we planted a bunch of plants and a couple of trees in our front yard. I can't wait to finish and then show you photos. Yay!