Chicken Pot Pie in a Dough Wreath

Pillsbury has it _goin'_ON!

I'm not kidding, this was bombdiggity in the quick & yummy dinner department. I just wish Pillsbury would figure out a way to make their crescent rolls without hydrogenated oil. I will try the next one with the Trader Joe's crescent rolls, but honestly, I know it won't have the same flavor as tonight's version.

The Pillsbury original recipe is here from my pinterest board "bon", for you Pillsbury purists. Otherwise, here goes with my changes...

Oven on bake at 375* {that didn't change}

2 cans crescent rolls (I'm not going to discriminate here) and arrange them like Pillsbury suggested

{pic cred: Pillsbury, duh}

2 cups(ish) cooked shredded chicken***
1/3 cup cooked up (from frozen) green beans (okay, I am going to discriminate here, Trader Joe's all the way)
1/3 cup cooked up (from frozen) corn
1/3 cup cooked up (from frozen) peas
1/2 cup crispy onions (the kind you put in old skool green bean casserole)
1 carton cream of mushroom soup (discriminating _again_, but this time, Whole Foods gets the nod)
1 decent splash of 1/2&1/2 to taste


***by cooked chicken, I mean, toss those jokers in a pot of 1/2 water, 1/2 chicken broth, some poultry seasoning and boil. boom.

So, mix up all the cooked stuff with all the not cooked stuff. Scoop it out around the dough, pull the dough over from outside to in, pinching in down a bit. The end product will look like a dough wreath and everybody needs a dough wreath in their life. Trust me.

Bake for 25ish minutes, goldy golden brown.
Voila!

MyMister gave it two thumbs up. It really is just as easy as it is delicious. Enjoy & thanks Pillsbury!

Freezer faux pas...

If you are anything like me, you don't meal plan. It is so LIMITING. I mean, really...

• What if by Wednesday I don't want pork chops?
• What if nothing on the plan sounds good?
• What if you had a crap day and you don't want to cook anything and everyone is left to fend for themselves? {Please tell me you have "Fend for Yourself" nights?!}

Here you've thawed and now you have all this stuff you are committed to cooking and if you don't, it all goes bad! Ugh. That's so not cool. Waste of time, money and resources.

So, I buy stuff as I think of it. Most of the time an item or two will go in the fridge and I will at least commit that *a* day that week will see those items cooked, maybe even served. The rest goes in the freezer and of course we have the inside freezer and the chest freezer, because, you know, Armageddon and all {not really}.

Let's leave the busting at the seams pantry for another post. That actually hits on other topics like "No, you can't eat that can of pineapple chunks! I bought it for the pinterest recipe for... for... whatever, eat the pineapple. I can't remember."

This week we hit the hamburger lotto! We buy a particular brand of ground up cow that I don't have nightmares over. It is really yummy and always looks like meat should. {If you have anything bad to say about the beef industry, please don't share. I have enough phobias at this point. I think MyMister would snuff out my tiki torch and kick me off the island if I develop another.} So, each pack was marked $2.25 off! SCORE! So we bought six! And into the chest freezer they went.

You would *think* we'd be having hamburger this week. Nope. Chicken. It was a chicken kind of night Friday. No, I don't know why - it just was. And it was my favorite brand. {Tiki torch disclaimer here over the poultry industry, too, please.} Sadly, the brand is no longer available at Winco, so I am having to scour for a replacement product - so far, Trader Joes seems to have the front runner. Here we were, Friday night and I'm using the last of my favorite chicken. DENIED. Turns out, it was a pack that had gotten buried in the bottom, carbon dating probably around Neanderthal ago. As it thawed it was screamingly evident that it was severely ruined by freezer burn. We ended up being vegetarians Friday.

So while I pushed my mushroom and asparagus risotto around on my plate without a hunk of chicken to mop up the sauce, I realized I needed to come up with some sort of a system where all that wonderful hamburger doesn't go missing in our arctic tundra in the garage. Honestly, there really could be a Wooly Snuffleupagus suspended in time in the frozen walls of our freezer. I knew we had shelves in there, but those have usually just been catchalls for anything smaller that I didn't want falling through the cracks into the abyss. Turns out, they can ALSO be used in OR-GA-NI-ZING. Yep! I know, I was shocked, too!

The packs I had already in the freezer are in the front {truth: I asked MyMister to dig through all the randomly collected frozen foods and gather any and all hamburger}! Oh my word, IT'S ORGANIZATION STEP 1! AND with a double whammy of "Shelf is full, so I don't need to buy more yet" built-in indicator!

Clearly, by the view to the right of the shelf o' beef meat {another truth, I rarely buy any other beef type meat - I have no clue how to make it edible}, I need to continue with my organizing. There's three other shelves and the entire bottom of the freezer. All willy nilly thrown in. For those of you that know me, that isn't a surprise at all, is it?

Throwback Thursday post... A year back... Okay, fine, or five...

Almost 5 years back...

There it was.  The gate.  The gate that never was... 

Okay, it WAS a gate and it DID have an original location - out at the front arbor... but MyMister lovingly built it too short to be functional.  So off it came and promptly stored to his chagrin.  His chagrin was not the "off it came" part, but the "promptly stored" part.  He dislikes clutter.  I seem to have a penchant for it.  Ahhh God is a funny, funny Dude with His romantic pairings, isn't He?

Here we are, Spring 2013 (sooo, this was a draft I found, collecting dust...) and today (in Fall 2017), I present...

THE GATE OF INSPIRATION IN ALL ITS GLORY!

Yep. A lot has taken place since this post was originally drafted. Not only is the back yard fully bricked, so is the front! AND with raised flower beds! Yeah. There's gonna be a whole lotta updatin' going on 'round this here blog this fall. 

I'm feeling a bit writery lately. A bit, wordy and pictury. Pretty things, nice words, feel good stuff as I sift through the not so feel good, nice or pretty parts of life. It's not that those things don't happen in our WeWyntWorld life. I just don't want to rehash what was already sucky when we experienced it, you know? I mean, really - would you rather I *not* crop the above pic on the left so that the little pile of dog poo was clearly visible? Exactly. You, too, have the analogical little piles of dog poo in your life that you have no issue cropping out of your analogical pretty garden pics.

Until next blog (much sooner than 4ish years, I swear)... ~me

Yoga v. God

There comes a time in a mom's life when she realizes she isn't just a woman on a mission, isn't just a Donna Quixote, isn't just flat crazy.  That moment of realization is a moment that I experienced in slow-motion, as if watching from a distance, and dare I say, as if I had experienced an out-of-body-not-my-mind moment... So many thoughts, so many emotions... I actually am a real person-not-just-a-crazed-mom; I am truly in this life-long commitment of parenthood for just this very fleeting moment of joy. I can see beyond the chore-dodging, schedule-stalling, fib-fashioning, homework-fussing... and see the flicker of the woman my daughter is to be in God's plan.   

We were at yoga.  All three of us.  Dad up in front, my girl at my side.  I was ready for the drama that usually ensues when she is faced with activity she doesn't want to partake in:  The eyeball rolling.  The full body drop because she is SOOOOO TIRED.  The look of pure irritation.  And yet, none of that happened.  

Instead... nothing prepared me for that one moment when I looked over and her feet were firmly planted on the yoga mat, arms open wide.  Her upper body was turned with confident posture.  Her head poised "just so" and her features were calm but determined.  Doesn't that all sound just like what her future in God's plan will be if she learns to be silent, obedient and stops to listen to Him?  

Feet firmly planted, open, confident posture, calm but determined...

I can't describe it other than to say, you CAN have a surreal yoga versus God moment.  

God wins.

Blessings in New Friendships

You know, nothing brings your home to life more than new friends coming over and exploring your place for the first time.

Last night Cap'n Jack and I cooked a regular, any time meal for some new friends from church.  The idea was healthy and easy.  Some whole wheat penne, big beautiful (ON SALE - really cheap, already shelled and deveined) shrimp from Alaska WHOOP WHOOP, roasted asparagus and sundried tomatoes.  Add a quick little side salad and it is done in 30-40 minutes!  It is honestly one of the easiest meals to toss together.  Now I have heard some people may argue that if pasta is involved it can't be healthy... I say, everything IN MODERATION.

I am a caregiver for my MamaMia who is a diabetic.  Without *some* carbs, obviously the more complex the better to slow the metabolizing of the carb so as not to spike her blood glucose, she would not be able to function.  Whole wheat pasta, paired with a healthy fat like olive oil,  some fiber and some protein and you have a perfect diabetic meal... IN MODERATION.  I do not pile on a heap of pasta, just an appropriately calculated carbohydrate serving.

However (and I always have a HOWEVER to throw in), I absolutely say that YOU DO WHAT WORKS BEST FOR YOU.  If your choices are producing a healthy body, soul and mind... THEN GO FOR IT, BABY!  That's between you and Your Maker.  :)

UPDATE: Here's the recipe from last night... 

SHRIMP PENNE TOSS

3/4c. dry whole wheat penne per person

5 large shrimp per person

1/4lb asparagus per person

3tbsp sundried tomatoes per person

granulated garlic, olive oil, butter, fresh parm, sea salt, cracked pepper

Cut up asparagus into 1"-1.5" pieces, shake on healthy dose of granulated garlic, 

sea salt & cracked pepper, coat with olive oil and toss.  Roast at 425* roughly 30 minutes.

Boil up penne to al dente in pot of water with sea salt & some olive oil.

Cook up cleaned/deveined shrimp with sundried tomatoes, olive oil (&bit of butter if needed).

Toss all together in giant bowl, add a bit more olive oil if needed, top with fresh parm!

... Oy vey, that was a lot o' preachin' goin' on from atop my own little soap box!  I had to step away from the laptop and take a garden break!  I deadheaded some snapdragons, pulled out some withering leaves from the OkieDokies (aka artichokes), rinse and fill up several waterin' holes for my feathery friends and eat my first blackberry of the season!

 There is a bumper crop shortly behind this little guy!

I find it so sweet that God "emailed" me this verse today,
in light of all things I consider blessings...  I count my garden and my friends... Twice...

James 3:17-18

But the wisdom that comes from heaven is first of all pure; then peace-loving, considerate, submissive, full of mercy and good fruit, impartial and sincere. 

Peacemakers who sow in peace reap a harvest of righteousness.

So, the short and (unintended) long of my recap of last night... THE LADIES WERE SIMPLY AMAZING.  They were a breath of fresh air in WeWeyantsCottage, bringing to life all the little details of our Unser Ewiges Heim (Our Forever Home).  And they are all welcome here any time.  I so appreciate their kindness and new-found friendships.

Blessings to you all on this wonderful morning (oops, 33 minutes into the afternoon already!).  I will close with my facebook status from this morning "coffee, birds, HGTV and bloggin'... great way to kick off my Saturday! oh, and let's just throw in a little light reading while I'm at it... "What we need is nothing short of a kingdom revolution." ~John Burke, Soul Revolution"

I kid, I KID!

Welp, after searching the www, I found that Homemaker's Hideaway is WAY OVER DONE. So, back to the drawing board I went... and what did I come up with?  Nothing all that exciting or original.  WeWeyantsCottage.  It'll certainly do, though, because my whole life is a smattering of We, of Weyants and of our beach Cottage calm life... So there ya go, WeWeyantsCottage it is!  

What's been happening here at the Cottage?  ARTICHOKES!  They are so cool!  I bet I get to eat one this weekend as a matter of fact!  

Also at the Cottage it has been a matter of reduce, reuse, recycle... AND GLASS!  Lots and LOTS of glass!  Mason jars, apothecary jars, canisters...  I just love me some beautiful clear glass these days!  Let's see, AH YES!  STAINLESS STEEL!  OH!  And lest I forget... CAST IRON!  It has been so nice just trimming back on things, finding treasures from flea markets and such, passing on items I no longer use, making room for less but better...

And after all that going on, we headed out for the weekend with some really amazing friends to celebrate their marriage!  This was our VIEW (thanks to sniqueaway.com)...  

Isn't it amazing?  Water's Edge Inn in the sweet town of Tiburon.  Ahhhh what a wonderful weekend it was, complete with a guitarist and here's his pic...  

(I kid, I KID!)

...impromptu appetizers on the deck with lots and LOTS of laughter.  THANK YOU FRIENDS for sharing your celebration with us!

The Mother's Day weekend ahead should prove special here at the Cottage.  I pray our Heavenly Father blesses you with family and friends to celebrate with no matter your title: grandma, mom, aunt, other mother, friend... They are all blessings and honors.  I pray you all appreciate your own role where God has cast  you.

And the winner is...

Homemaker's Hideaway!

After careful deliberation and funny snorts and giggles from my fam... Hideaway won!  Here is the 2nd draft list, in no particular order, that might give you a grin...

Homemaker's Hammock
Hollering Homemaker
Homemaker's Hideaway
However Homemaker
Hooligan Homemaker
Homemaker SchmoMaker
Homemaker Hallows
Homemaker's Handbag
Havering Homemaker
Hobknocker Homemaker

I was rather fond of both However and Hollering... okay, AND SchmoMaker... But the fam really did reel me in on those. 

Next up, a new profile pic and a, a, oh a doomaflocky... what is that thing called?  Well, a little pic that replaces the orange B... Gotta find one of those, too. 

But that's for another day when I'm not so tired.  Ever have one of those nights where you wake up and check the clock to make sure you don't oversleep... EVERY. 15. MINUTES?!?!  Yeah, both Cap'n Jack and I had one of those nights last night.  So, now I am off to say my prayers - one of which will be that the antihistamine knocks me out!

Hello dear friend, it's been quite a while...

Things at the Homestead have been busy.

Well, busy in the sense that I have been creative in very few ways... yet on the go in more ways than one. 

I am a caregiver - I think I have mentioned that before.  It has been a wild ride here lately.  Between appointments, counting to ten then backward again (and sometimes, rinse and repeat), errands and taxi service - let's just say apparently God has given me an extra 8 hours a day to make it to my job, schlep kids, cook semi-family acceptable foods, tidy (Cap'n Jack does the real cleaning), ministry stuff and such, oh and sleep a bit... well, you can see where the math on a 24 hour day is really A MIRACLE. 

Thus, God must have gifted me extra hours.

However, (the however never left) HOWEVER, that is all going to change as of this weekend!  I have had a week of staycation, it rained and rejuvenated all of God's glory and now to kick off the Refreshed Me... I am going to update Homemaker's Mercantile with an updated NAME ('bout time - The Merc is sadly a memory of over a year now), and The Homemaker is back up and running!

Stay tuned!

Parmigiana di Melanzane Arrosto Pizze... oh così bene! Or so I heard...

(Roasted Eggplant Parmesan Pizza... oh so good!)

A woman on the run... wait, no. Back that up. A woman on the GO! Yes, that's much better. Wouldn't want any of you to think The Homemaker was going to show up some time on America's Most Wanted! So, yes, back to being on the run, GO.

The Girl is doing Color Guard (and pretty fab at it, if I do say so my Homemaker self!) and is there from 830a-430p. While she was off twirling flags and dancing her heart out, I doowopped over to YFC for my daily delight. I heart that place. Yes, that WAS my FB status yesterday! After working in an unusually extremely quiet office (now THAT part I didn't much like - I'm more of a hub-bub kinda girl) I headed back to the school to pick up The Girl so I could race home, prep dinner, explain step-by-step instructions to The Girl so she can go out into the world and be able to feed herself something more than drive thru...

ALERT: insert complete bunny trail here...

(When did THAT happen, by the by? Drive "thru"... Was "through" stripped of its prepositional title? Of course I had to go in search, but bottom line, "thru" won out by a sign... A dollar sign... Less letters to print on the other kind of sign. But I also found this from Grammar Girl's website which I thought was hysterical enough to merit a SOL: snort out loud:
"Wow. So in some informal instances it appears that it is OK to use thru; but I think I'd be remiss if I actually told you to go ahead and use it. My impression is that using the spelling t-h-r-u is kind of equivalent to dotting your i's with little hearts: people will know what you mean, but they'll think you aren't a very serious person. I would definitely stick with the more formal and widely accepted spelling: t-h-r-o-u-g-h." from Grammar Girl's website.")

Back on track, what was I saying? Oh, right, pizza. I decided to create a new recipe: Roasted Eggplant Parmesan Pizza! I took the Ichiban eggplants from our garden, peeled MOST of the skin away and left pretty little purple stripes, cut into 1/4 inch thick slices, tossed with sea salt and EVOO:

 

I laid them out on a Pampered Chef baking stone and roasted them for about 15 minutes, turning over once, at 450* and this is what the little dandies looked like:

 

As The Girl sat patiently and watched me lay out the rest of the ingredients:

I had her write down these instructions: 1) schmeer the zhuzhed pizza sauce (add a small can of tomato paste to the packet of pizza sauce that comes with the Boboli) over the thawed Boboli pizza crust, 2) spread some shredded mozz over the sauce, 3) lay out the roasted eggplant, 4) sprinkle the chopped up fresh basil and oregano from the kitchen garden over the eggplant, 5) top with fresh parmesan, 6) bake for 8-10 minutes... So THIS is the pic The Girl took of the masterpiece!

I mean, com'on!  That is ONE SEXY PIZZA, RIIIGGGHHT?  (and you all know The Homemaker doesn't throw around the sexy card lightly!)

So there I was at 8:03pm, listening to others speak, watching Cap'n Jack wilting with hunger and both of us are thinking of that scrumptious new recipe just waiting for us at home! We get home and the pizza stone is EMPTY.

I asked The Girl, "there ARE leftovers, right?"  "Oh yeah, in the fridge!"  I was so relieved!  Until... I see... TWO measly little pieces of pizza... sitting there... by themselves... not even leftover roasted eggplant leftovers to nibble... Of course I gifted Cap'n Jack with both pieces... Hello!  He is a grown man!  TWO little pieces?  

I had grapes.  (Right now I hear in my own personal internal movieland-world-of-a-brain the line from Dirty Dancing, "I carried a watermelon." But instead, see Baby in your mind's eye, looking awkward and irritated saying, "I had grapes?")

The Girl and MamaMia were in SO. MUCH. TROUBLE.
REALLY?! (that's another blog, but so flipping appropriate here.)  Anyhoo, I know I told some of you out there in RealLifeLand that I would purge the emotion and not bring it up again.  I fully intended to stick to that, until I came across these beautiful pics of that artwork called my new recipe.  Hopefully I will be able to duplicate it this coming weekend... AND EAT THE WHOLE THING MYSELF!

The HomeMuchier

The Homemaker has deemed today "Much More Muchier Me Day"! I WENT BACK TO PLATINUM SPIKEY BLONDE! Well, since you all haven't necessarily SEEN my mugshot, you will have to trust that the last year has been sort of a Disney-soccer-mom-helmet-head kind of year... But today I am a Muchier Me!

The fun part was greeting Que Sera Sera at the front door with the new 'do! And did we have some fun today! I am almost done scrapping my wedding photos from SIXTEEN YEARS AGO (this coming December) and having a blast reminiscing. These are the two 2 page layouts I completed...

All day we nibbled on the num-nums QSS so kindly brought along to share and I kept well-hydrated with my new fav: cucumber water! What? You want the recipe? Well, okay, it's a doozy... 1 glass, fill with ice, slice cucumber, place 4-5 slices on top of ice in glass, add water! TA-DA! It is so stinkin' awesome!

Anyhoo, just wanted to pop in and say Hey! Have a fab Saturday Night!
~Much More Muchier Me, The HomeMuchier

LIST? I don't need no stinkin' list!

Well, my pre-chemo brain didn't need no stinkin' list, but post-menopause brain is relieved when I have one!

Tonight we have two new friends coming over for dinner! I love it when company comes to town! So I dragged The Girl to work today do we could shop for a special wedding this weekend... Oh how I love going to weddings! And so rather than drive all the way home, she was the lucky winner of "A Day At Work With Mom!" (and the crowd goes wild!) The Girl? Mmmm, not so much. Nonetheless, off we went to YFC, then to lunch at LaBoulangerie in Fig Garden Village, a bit of wedding and early Christmas shopping (shhh, Cap'n Jack already has gifts under the tree!) and then, joy-of-all-joys, WINCO! You'd think I was making The Girl run lapse in the sweltering sun while wearing a thermal snowsuit complete with mittens, dragging a fully smoldering BBQ pit behind and jumping through a hoop on fire. I so could have made the trip miserable for her... I could have gone aisle by aisle, reviewing each familiar catagory of food to verify, "Let's see, do we need a bottle of sparkling apple cider this week? Do We have a back-up jar of mayo already in the pantry?" But no...

The Homemaker came prepared, LIST IN HAND! The Girl should thank her lucky stars we didn't rely on
the failing memory banks! We were in, through and outta that grocery store quicker than you can
say "paper or plastic?"!


(And I only had to send her back to the first aisle once for an item I forgot even though it was on that blasted list!)

Suitcases Schmootfaces! I want a TOWER!

Good morning alarm. Good morning light. Good morning pillow. Good morning bright. Good morning yawn. Good morning sweet. Good morning room. Good morning feet.

This is what I realized I wake to every day... And yes indeedy I do consider myself blessed...

I think I may have already shared the story of that framed photo, but I'll share again in case one of my 12 friends that follow the blog are out of the loop... That is a photo Cap'n Jack took of The Homemaker teaching our Girl the fine art of chasing seagulls.  It was a glorious New Years Eve Day in 2003.  God blessed me with that moment and Cap'n Jack blessed me with the memory.

A day before I took this pic, the decor was a bit different.  I had a suitcase propping up the pic rather than the breakfast in bed table.  Which got me to thinking.  So I went through the house yesterday and realized something...

Hi, I'm The Homemaker and I have a suitcase fetish.

I had also broken a major decor rule that I have tried years to abide by and it just flat snuck up on me... I had suitcases strewn throughout the entire Homestead!  WHAT ON EARTH was I thinking?  I was thinking THESE ARE STINKIN' CUTE!  That's what I was thinking!  But alas, once one discovers one's own weakness, it is one's own responsibility to fix it.  Suitcases Schmootfaces!  I WANT A TOWER!

Yes, that is the crown molding you see at the top of the photo.  Yes, that does mean I have a tower.

A TOWER O' SUITCASES!

Ahhh, my day is complete.  ;)

And The Homemaker says... PEACE OUT!

Welcome to the Disneyland birthday party weekend!

Let the celebrating commence!

What an amazing place, Residence Inn Marriott Maingate! Our room is nearby the front so we were able to see Disney's Nighttime Fireworks Spectacular... Perfectly timed at our arrival...
Mickey 8:•) had it all planned!

What better way to start a vacation than with S'MORES?!

(HIDDEN MICKEY ALERT!)

So we are settled in, the girls are already asleep & now The Homemaker is going to do some home-away-from-home tidying up... Heavenly Father, thank You for this time with The Girl, her ZBFF and Cap'n Jack, MY Cap'n Jack, not Mr. Disney's version. And all God's mouseketeers and The Homemaker say Amen.

GadZukesLasagna - NOT!

A shining example of why one should not panic that there isn't enough squash!


MamaMia grabbed the zukes we harvested the other day and she promptly steamed the daylights outta those little buggers (her fav way to eat them). Oooh I was hoppin' mad because I had my own plans... GadZukesLasagna! Layer marinara, pasta, ricotta, zukes, repeat. Well, in light of said prior usage, I figured "just elbow marinara, thanks".

Cap'n Jack went out to water and came back in with another round o' harvest dontchaknow!  Rather than let those, too, suffer a sauna death at the hands of MamaMia, I snatched them up & rightly stuffed 'em with a mix of Italian panko breadcrumbs and some Apocalyptic Parmesan "cheese"!

Okay, okay, barely one step up from the sauna-steam-beyond-recognition method simply by crossing over into Preserv-O-Matic cheese products, but hey, at least we can eat them with a fork and not a straw!

Heavenly Father, thank You for providing this day, the bounty of our kitchen garden... and Apocalyptic Cheese.

Humbly, The Homemaker and all God's children say, Amen.

boun·ty [boun-tee] –noun

1.a premium or reward

2.a generous gift.

3.generosity in giving.

I say, D) all of the above!  Oh my word had I known what a joy this little garden endeavor, no wait... adventure!  Garden ADVENTURE!  If I had know what a joy it was going to be, I so would have put my sweet Cap'n Jack to work much sooner!  Tomorrow night we shall have squash pasta bake!  It's a bit of a spin on lasagna, so I'm certain with all those yummy pasta carbs on board it is sure to be a hit.  ;)  Okay, have I rambled long enough to keep you in suspense, waiting for a glimpse of the first of our harvesting efforts?  

TA-DA! 

I mean, really!  How stinkin' cute is that little basket o' bounty I ax ya?!?!  ;)  Heavenly Father, I thank You sincerely for the wonderful gift of these little miracles.  I planted seeds and little sprouts and the next thing I know, You have given me vegetables.  You are amazing.  I love You.  Amen.

♪♫ Hot Child in the City... ♪♫

Okay... we went from 65* to 95* in under one week.  That. Is. Just. Wrong.  HOWEVER, and you know I always have a "however"... However,

WE HAVE OUR NEW GARDEN POOL! 

Oh if only I could get the video of Cap'n Jack getting in the ICE COLD WATER for the first time!!!  That was PRICELESS... it totally took his breath away!  But today... today it was PERFECT.  It cooled me down and I was so relaxed after sitting in it for just ten minutes after work today.  Ah-may-zing!

♪♫Hot child in the city...♪♫ NO MORE!

Let's rewind a bit, shall we?  

This weekend The Homemaker got a little HomeBakery and a little HomeCraftery.  First, there was MamaMia's birthday!

She turned 66!  I baked her a little carrot cake!  

With a little real cream cheese filling (may as well use that last bit up that's in the fridge) and just your average, every day Betty Crocker can of "WHAT THE *^&^%$^*(($#@! (no, The Homemaker kept it clean... but one of these days I AM going to actually shout "ASTERISK! UP ARROW! AMPERSAND!...") WHY IS THIS CAN OF CREAM CHEESE FROSTING OPEN, HALF EATEN, SMOOTHED OVER AND PUT BACK IN THE PANTRY UNREFRIGERATED?!?!"

Yep, The Girl.  Her logic... "I USED A SPOON!"  Riiight.  

That makes sneaking it and putting it back without 'fessing MUCH BETTER.  Off she and Cap'n Jack went to the grocery store... and she had to go in all by herself, find the same frosting and purchase it.  I know.  Doesn't sound like much.  But her little 13 year old heart that doesn't like doing that by herself... yeah, that heart was going THUMPITY THUMP big time!  Anyway, once the frosting arrived...

I thought it turned out rather cute in all its little rectangularness!  

The next day, I ran out of plant tags.  Off to Home Depot we went!  PLASTIC?  I'm sorry, plastic plant tags?  Um, no no.  That just won't do.  OH!  But look at this plant!  And that one!  Oh we need that one too!  So, no plant tags in hand but we did leave with a nice little assortment of plants... (please note, at this point, my toe still fit in my new "garden shoes", aren't they cute?!!?...)

And here is the little vignette I worked on... the double stack galvanized steel planter!
 
Cap'n Jack cut out the bottom of the top pail, stacked it on top of the full-of-soil bottom pail and TA-DA!  HUGE planter!  Okay, so all I did was add all the little flowers and the clay pots to zhuzh up the joint!  (yes, his job had more sweat equity.)

After Home Depot, though, I still hadn't any plant tags!  I headed off to Goodwill... PRAYERS ANSWERED!  Well, the supplies for said answered prayers anyway!

So Saturday evening, with the Mockingbird going through its repertoire, I poured out my treasures onto the potting bench and began to create... stuff.

Copper tags, some random forks, a sharpie marker and a piercing tool...

 Then, with the spoons... a sharpie marker and some clear nail polish (totally borrowed that idea off of some random pic I stumbled on when browsing Pinterest!)...

So, that all happened AND (rewind a bit to when I made mention of my cute new garden shoes...) I got bit by a bug on my pinky toe... and it swelled... and it SWELLED... to the point that by Sunday night the pinky toe was PINK/RED and the welt was growing whiter and BIGGER AND WHITER by the minute (YES, I itched it, okay!)... so I took two antihistamines and called it a night... then I CALLED IN for the day... then I napped some more... 18 hours later I came out of my antihistamine induced semi-coma.

Stoopid antihistamines.

Whew.  What a weekend for The Homemaker!
And all God's children and The Homemaker, too, said Amen.

'maker, 'maker, how does your garden grow...?

I am NEVER going to reference another children's story AGAIN!  Yeesh!  The whole "Mary, Mary, quite contrary" is horribly descriptive in wicked detail!  That's just awful!  So, from there, I must say, I am rewriting the little ditty to be happy and light...

The Homemaker, Oh Homemaker, 

How doth thine garden grow?

QUITE SPLENDID INDEED!  

Oh the petals and the leaves, they do sweetly plead, 

Water and Speak kind Love upon thy row!

There! Enough with all the doom and gloom of the yucky children's limerick. 

Honestly I wouldn't have EVER thought that gardening would be so much stinkin' fun!  I mean, really, watering and weeding and planting and tending... None of that SOUNDS fun until...

Until you press upon that lovely little gate latch, step into the sweet surround of the reclaimed picket fencing given new life, hear the soft crunch of the pebbles beneath your feet (note to self, find some garden clogs and overalls ASAP), and then hear the click of the latch behind you... behind you... the same place the day's worries and cares are left... behind you.  It is just no wonder at all that it all began in a garden.  God wanted us all to know how much He loves us by starting us out in such a place of tranquil peace, joy and beauty... What a blessing.

(insert sound of screeching brakes here)

And theeeennnn, apparently gardening is an "older people" thing.  That is, according to... The Girl.  As we were sitting out on the back porch last night enjoying our potbelly stove and roasting marshmallows (after enjoying crostini with garlic sauted mushrooms and a cucumber/red bell/shrimp cocktail - YUM),

she turns to us and says, "What's with this whole gardening thing with older people, anyway?"  As if it is some sort of disease or ailment!  We chuckled until she said, "What about the POOL?"  Uhhmmm, yeah, see funny thing... If you do the math, a pool is going to cost right in the same ballpark as a car.  In two years, The Girl is going to be using one of the vehicles we currently own and that will leave us with the need for a third.

HOMEMAKER GETS A NEW SET O' WHEELS, I SAY!  Champagne in color, two-seater, sporty little roadster, 5 speed, convertible, she will be christened "Betty"... Er, whoops.  Sorry.  Back to the story...

The Girl doesn't get that nowhere within the garden we have planted, nor any other garden in the world, GROWS A MONEY TREE.  Not to mention, she does indeed believe that a certain upscale, mass-producing, highly caffeinated establishment will pay her so well at the part-time job she plans to just simply acquire by her sole decision, that she will have money to burn on a car, the insurance, clothing spending money, etc.  While I am certain they are a fine employer that pays generously, I do believe The Girl has done lost her mind on how real world finances turn!  Anyway, she wasn't at all amused with the concept of a water trough for a pool.  Welp, she can just sit and sweat whilst we dunk through the summer months of triple digits!

As for our belle petit jardin, it is just simply splendid!  I know, I know!  I already used the word SPLENDID, but honestly there isn't any other word that could describe how that little patch o' fenced in dirt makes me feel!  Seriously, I can not explain it.  I have the picture below (there's the spoiler alert - too subtle?) saved on both my work and home computer desktops as well as on my cell phone for a wallpaper!  Talk about PEACE.  Just looking at the photo brings me blissful peace.  No worries.  No rush.  No fretting.  No fussing.  Just.  Peace.

Now, before I share the photo with you (yes, I know you have already scrolled down and taken a look, but I can PRETEND like I'm building anticipation here!) the plain ol' dirt you see all around the sweet little fence is going to be brick and cobble and pebble and sweetness within the coming weeks... SO YOU HAVE TO STICK AROUND!  Okay, here goes...

There is now a little basket hanging from the front gate.  We added a shepherd's hook to hang a hummingbird feeder from and another one is hanging nearby on a hook on the back fence.  The gladiolas on the left side of the yard are in bloom and BEE-UOO-TEE-FULLLL!  Yes, that IS a cute little birdhouse on the left back corner post.  And just over the arch of the gate if you look closely you will see a precious little lantern hanging from a mini shepherd hook.

Small changes here and there will be appearing daily.  Please, grab a cup o' something, come back, sit and stay a while with me in mon jardin belle petit, won't you?  I pray that your day, wherever you are, God breathes peace into your heart.

All God's children and The Homemaker, too, said Amen.

Today was NOT a day of REST!

What! A! Day!

We took the morning off from the garden... BUT WE WERE STILL WORKING!  We were invited by some really fantastic friends (thanks for the scrumptious breakfast burritos that warmed not only our tummies but our hands too!) to serve at a 1/2 marathon water stand... THAT WAS AWESOME!  All those amazing athletes running their hearts out!  Gotta say... It will never be me.  I will always be MORE THAN HAPPY to hand out water and gatorade, though!

After getting up at 5a, I was a bit wiped after lunch, so I took what felt like a three hour nap (Oh my, I hear Gilligan's Island in my head... do you?  You're welcome!) but it was just a thirty minute power nap and I felt FABULOUS all over again!  So I was up and at 'em out with the Cap'n instructing and supervising the install of the recycled fence sections...

SERIOUSLY... IT JUST CAN'T GET ANY BETTER THAN THIS!

The two front panels were installed at the point this photo was taken with the sun shining down on it like it was a little slice o' garden heaven!  I believe when dusk set in, there was one other section installed along the right side. 

Okay, I said it couldn't get any better.  I lied.

MY FIRST PLANTINGS!!!

Basil, meet Oregano!  These little darlings were the first planted!  I took a break to spend some quality time with a few fantastic young ladies at our church, but when I got back I had about an hour of planting left to do and my STAYcation is officially over.  I didn't want these beauties to sit in the sun and run the risk of losing all my sweet flowers and veggies and fruits (garden trivia: did you know eggplant is a fruit?!) to the blistering sun.  Let me just tell you, I WAS FLAT HAULING MY PLANTING BUTT ALL OVER THAT LITTLE GARDEN!  All but 2 seed packets got planted and a couple items that will have to find homes just outside le petit jardin since I didn't realize I bought a $.99 PONY PACK of tomato plants! 

The highlight of my gardening day was when I asked The Cap't his opinion on the fencing.  His reply melted my heart. 

"Whatever you like, honey.  I built this garden for you." 

♪♫...once was lost but now...♪♫ have found... THE BEST GARDEN STORE EVER!

TRACTOR SUPPLY CO.! (this is the link... You're Welcome!)

HolyMotherOfAllThatIsGardenGlorious!  That place is AWESOME!  Every single garden thingy you can think of at all for really affordable prices!  Oh. My. Galvanized Steele Heaven!  You should totally go out there and just browse...

AND WAIT 'TIL YOU SEE WHAT WE HAVE IN STORE FOR THE REST OF THE YARD NOW THAT WE HAVE DISCOVERED OUR GARDEN MECCA!  The honeysuckle pots have taken on a whole new-and-improved design!  There will be all kinds of wonders tucked in every inch of our havre petit jardin.

Of course, finding the place took us all over God's creation... at first Cap'n Jack was a little annoyed that I really didn't know where I was going.  So first we took city streets that ran out into the country then dead-ended then detoured us onto a freeway that then dead-ended in the middle of nowhere.  So we stopped and asked if there was a feed store nearby.  YES!  Nope.  Wrong one.  Then I looked much farther down the list on my handy dandy internet phone and found THE ONE I was thinking of.. A-1 Feed.  So we pulled up at 412p and guess what!?!  They CLOSED AT 4P.  Oh I thought Cap'n Jack was gonna need some rum, lots o' rum.  So we got out of the truck to peer in the windows to see what we could see and LUCK OF ALL the sweet little country boy worker person steps out and is oh so helpful with information!  They actually didn't even have what we were looking for but he gave us the name of two other stores, their locations and their hours!  WHODA THUNK IT that we'd hit pay dirt at the very next place (um, yeah, two hours later - insert therapy smile and an apology to Cap'n Jack here)!  But alas, they had only 1 of 4 items and so our other 3 are on raincheck... so the garden is in a pending status this evening.

Anyway, we found what we were looking for and so much more... but ran out of day.  So this is my closing for today.  Have a fantastic Saturday Night!

S.A.T-U-R.D.A.Y... HEY!

Yes, Saturdays are a wonderfully uncomplicated kind of day, aren't they?  We sat, talked, coffeed, newsed up, loved on our fur family and then... HIT THE GARDEN!

Such a glorious day out there!  I *helped* add some gravel and then before you know it, it was 11a and we hadn't eaten!  Without a stove/oven, options are slightly limited for breakfast... so I nucleared up some oatmeal complete with chopped dates, dried cranberries and a drizzle (fo shizzle) of honey... and sat out on the back patio with my Cap'n Jack.  God gave our morning a skwunch!  (that's "hug" in Peter Pan speak)

At one point, I looked over and here I find our middle child, Lola, in the ivy - all crashed out!

Oh what a splendid little diversion in my day... 

Que Sera Sera and Niecie Britt stopped by with some MOONSHINE!  

No seriously, that's what it's name is!  Moonshine Yarrow.

In all sincerity, my very first... un cadeau petit jardin réchauffement!  

 Such a blessing - thank you both so much for your love, friendship and garden guidance!!!

As I was waiting for Cap'n to freshen up, I found a VISITOR in my jasmin, just by the Brewer's Blackbird nest... BIG BAD BART THE HAIRY SPIDER!  And HIS TWIN BRUNO was hanging out last night over by the stack of fencing along the side yard... They have taken up residence!  In all my garden hours (so far, not that many) I have NEVER SEEN a spider as big as these TWO I encountered in the last 24 hours!  With giant GOOGLY GREEN EYEBALLS and everything!  Great, just when I thought it was safe to go out in the garden...


In order to soothe my skeeved out heart, we are off to do a bit of retail therapy!  The big giant HORSE TROUGH FLOWER BUCKETS for our backyard honeysuckle bushes!  In the meantime, here is the garden THUS FAR!

Simply put... Blessed.  Catch ya later!