Garden Stuffs

It's been so fun to work in the yard, without having a gigantic belly. Also, we have officially been living here for a year now, so I've now seen all four seasons of all our plants. I'm hoping to get a plan written down and calendared so that nothing goes un-pruned that needs it. Unfortunately, a lot of things were neglected this Spring, with the crazy weather we had.

We have a peony plant that was being attacked by another and several of the blossoms had broken stems by the time my mom and I rescued it. I decided to try to save them by bringing them inside. I don't know what it is, but I just LOVE having fresh flowers around- especially these! For some reason, they make me want to plan another wedding. :) Wouldn't this make a great center-piece?

I also finally got our garden planted- very late. I wish I had been more on the ball and started some of the cooler weather veggies, but I did manage to get corn, 3 kinds of pumpkin, butternut squash, basil, parsley, chard, beets, carrots, and interestingly enough, I've had some volunteer tomatoes pop up like crazy from last years harvest. I'm going to try to nurse them and see if they'll fruit before the frost this fall. We'll see...


The Frog has been very patient with me, just exploring the yard and tasting all the rocks while I get my work done.



I wish I looked that cute in hats :)

Lemon Fresh!

I was at JoAnn's the other day, looking for some fabric to make nursing shields (or in the words of Jay, "boob hiders") for friends/family (I've already made 4 and have one more in the works) when I came upon some fabric I just couldn't pass up! Luckily, I remembered that I had been wanting to make a liner for the bucket I put The Frog's used cloth diapers in, and this seemed just perfect! (Not to mention, very appropriate. Think lemon fresh!)


The Frog seems to like it too :) (Okay okay, he just likes buckets. Really, anything he can knock over. Or bang on... A girl can pretend though.)



For something with such a stinky job, isn't it cute?

Grandma Nedra's Famous Rolls

I don't care who you think you are, my grandma's rolls are better than yours (and your grandma's too). :p

Seriously...

I finally learned how to make them and I put Jay in charge of photographing all the steps so I could be sure to refer back to them later. Little did I know, I would get documentation of the entire kitchen happenings. :) Here is the abridged version:

This is why they are so good-


And the other most important ingredient-


LOVE :)

Other than that, I don't think there is anything particularly sneaky about them. I still haven't written up the recipe in any official way, but I plan to, complete with instructive pictures and all. Here's a sneak peak:




I forgot to take a picture of the finished product that night (probably because I was too scared I wouldn't get any if I didn't grab them immediately...) but I'm proud to say I was able to recreate them at home soon thereafter:



Don't be surprised if you hear back from me trying to "whole-wheat-ify them"

The Dunstable Way

A big reason for the blogging hiatus was me preparing for, going on, and recovering from a trip back East to visit Jay's family and for him to officially "walk" at Brown's graduation. That's right, I'm officially married to a Doctor (but not the kind that helps people), and we finally have the piece of paper to prove it. Here's a little summary of the goings on out there.

The McCarthy's have all the cool stuff- slide, swings, telescope...

good climbing trees...

I love this shot because it kinda looks like The Frog is waving (though in reality, he doesn't quite have this down yet. Come to think of it, he doesn't really do much, on command- he is very much his own person.)

The Frog was quite enamored with Mickey. He hasn't really had close contact with any dogs, and I have a feeling we will be met with much begging for one, once The Frog can talk.

The Frog got his first taste of pizza ever, which of course had to be from Jay's favorite place- Espresso's Pizza in Nashua, NH. Hopefully we didn't ruin The Frog's ability to choke down all other kinds now ;)

Jay and I took our official first date without The Frog while we were there. He stayed home to play with Nanny while we went mini-golfing. I don't think he really missed us, but we sure missed him!

No trip to the McCarthy's can be complete without a tour of Kennedy's extensive dress-ups :)

What the, JUNE already?!

Prepare yourself for a bit of update-overload. I will try to separate posts by relevancy, food, The Frog, our recent trip, etc. Due to the enormity of occurrences and plethora of pictures, I will mostly caption the shots. This first little ditty will be fairly self-explanatory. I title it:

The Frog meets Laundry Hamper.

"Wait a second, is this cashmere?!"

"Oh no! It was a trap to lure me into this monkey catcher!"

"I'll never join you! Never!!"

"Oh, this must be where I came in..."

"Is it just me, or is this handle insanely interesting?"

"I wonder if anyone saw that. How embarrassing..."

"Wanna see this awesome new hideout I just found?"