Tuesday, June 29, 2010

Baby, I was born to run…

Actually, I wasn’t. I spent the majority of my life up to this point professing my deep and abiding hatred of running and sweating. The numbers on the scale were proof (well, proof of that AND my love of baked goods and sugary treats).

When I began the Couch to 5K program in September, I thought it might lead me to lose weight, yes. I never expected it to lead me to a healthy habit. I didn’t realize what a habit it had become until last Thursday. I’ve been suffering from shin splints for the past couple of weeks. This isn’t entirely new for me, but it had been quite a while since I’ve had them. Finally, last Tuesday during my run, when I noticed that just putting on my running shoes hurt, I decided to take a break until I could get new shoes. I was heading to civilization for the weekend, so I would shop then. I just walked on Thursday. I wanted to run. Wow. I actually missed running.

Civilization (more like circumstances) didn’t yield new shoes – but it did lead to some knowledge about what I wanted. I found several pairs I liked, but they didn’t have in my size. So I’ve been scouring the web for new shoes. I finally chose a pair. These:

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I am as excited for the UPS man to bring my new shoes as I was for him to bring my new camera. Almost.

Monday, June 28, 2010

Christy’s Kit of the Week

The latest collab from one of my favorite design teams. It’s called Lazy Summer Days and I can’t wait to use it on my summer pics of my girls (maybe my boy too if I pick the right papers).

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It’s available at M Scraps, Two Little Pixels and Zig Zag Scrap.

Tuesday, June 22, 2010

Garden 2010: Week Six, The Photo Edition

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Hey, we picked something! Two cucumbers and a zucchini. It’s not much, but I’m thrilled. After losing a row of squash to an as yet unidentified problem, picking a few things that we can actually eat from our very own garden is a major thing for us.

Did you notice me saying us? It’s gone from my garden to our garden. Tom and I work in it together. He’s just as obsessed as I am. It’s really become a bonding thing for us. We talk about how various plants are doing, what we might do to help them, what we might plant next year, even some long term plans to grow enough to sell the extras. We weed together, we just walk around and check out the progress. We share our research – he shares his prior knowledge (farm boy to city girl). No one gets my excitement over  a female pumpkin flower like he does.

Pumpkin, just waiting to be pollinated:IMG_3647

Row of Giant Pumpkins:

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Tromboncino Squash:

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Sweet Corn:

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Black Beauty Eggplant:

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Red Bell Pepper, with baby pepper growing:

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Roma Tomatoes:

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Zucchini:

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The Big Picture:

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Wednesday, June 16, 2010

Two years of Trouble…

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Well, she hasn’t been Trouble that whole time. Just most of it.

I present Exhibit A:

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I didn’t take a picture, but ten minutes after this happened (about two minutes after her time-out was over), she also dumped the box of graham cracker crumbs you can see near her head all over the floor too. This was cornstarch.

Happy birthday, Trouble. It’s been a fun two years. I have a feeling we’re the ones in trouble in the future. I can’t wait to see what comes next.

Tuesday, June 15, 2010

Farm living is the life for me…

They cut my front lawn yesterday:

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Growing up I always was charmed by the idea of living in a small town, the kind where everyone really does know everyone. I married a man from such a town. We spent years in other towns, mostly suburbia, before circumstances brought us to his small town two years ago. It’s a small rural town. Farms are everywhere. We live on one (it belongs to my father-in-law).

After two years of living here, it’s official. I love living in a rural, farming small town. I don’t actually mind that I have to drive 15 minutes to the nearest grocery store and 45 minutes to anything better than Target (although, really, what is better than Target?). I love having a huge garden. I love not having a neighbor closer than 1/2 a mile away.

The only thing I would change right now is how long it takes to get to my family. My parents live 100 miles away. Which I know is relatively close for a lot of people. But for 7 years, we lived two miles away from them. My grandfather is not doing well at all and I wish I lived closer so I could, theoretically, at least, do something more for him and my grandmother. With four kids under 10, though, I know that that’s not realistic. And I also know that there’s not much I CAN do, even if circumstances were such that I could do something.

Friday, June 11, 2010

Garden 2010: Week Two (and a half)

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So far, so good in the massive undertaking. Our only major loss is the lima beans (which I don’t eat and Tom does, so he’s taking this one harder than me). Not sure why, although I suspect bugs – actually I saw bugs eating the seeds, but I don’t think Tom believes me. We’ve hit it with a round of insecticide, and some are coming along now. Not sure we’ll ever see any beans, but that’s okay by me.

We actually have a baby tomato. I checked my records last year and our first tomato was picked on August 14. That’s a little late. This one might be early, but that will be nice, actually.

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Last week I added a few new varieties to the garden: an heirloom squash called tromboncino that’s supposed to be resistant to whatever bitch ate my pumpkins last year and an early-bearing canteloupe, so that we might see canteloupe before September.

In a photography-related note to this gardening post. I shot all of these outdoors (on a very bright, sunny day, no less) at ISO 32-Freaking-00. And didn’t notice that my shutter speed couldn’t get below 8000 (actually, I did notice, but thought it was just so sunny out that my low aperture – I tend to shoot wide open – was the problem). I usually do snapshots on Aperture priority. Miss S graduated from nursery school on Friday night in a fairly dark church and I forgot my flash, so the ISO went way up. Since I never put it up that high, I totally forgot about having changed it. And I was too lazy to walk back to the garden and reshoot at the correct ISO, so these are probably noisy as hell. Oh, well.

Tuesday, June 8, 2010

Lightning crashes…

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On my front porch.

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I had a meeting in town last night and my kids were at my in-laws house (which is across a field of wheat from us). While we were all out, lightning seems to have struck our front porch. Our televisions and phone line took the worst of the blow. Thankfully our computers all appear fine. Hopefully repairing the damage to the phone line won’t be too difficult and/or costly.

Now we get to debate if we want to try to have our 6 year old tv repaired or put out money we don’t really want to put out to buy a new one. Or borrow my mom and dad’s old tv that’s sitting upstairs in their house unplugged.

The worst part of the whole experience is that we have no internet access. We have DSL, which comes in through the phone line. No phone line, so… Besides, the modem got fried just as bad. It actually blew apart. So once our phone gets up and running, we still won’t have Internet access. Luckily my in-laws live next door and have wireless Internet.

Thursday, June 3, 2010

For the love of shoes…

IMG_3429 This shoe is one half of the perfect pair of shoes. It’s a bold statement, I know. But they are. For starters, they are – and this is foremost in my decidely non-fashionista opinion – they are comfortable enough to wear all night. I know, right? That’s the most important thing. But it doesn’t stop there. No, these shoes continue in their perfection. They match EVERYTHING. Seriously. I’ve worn them with a royal blue dress, a hot pink dress, a red dress, a black dress, jeans and a tank top. They just work.  Plus? They’re totally cute. That little bow gets me every time.

The problem, though, is that, despite being involved in a long-term relationship with the perfect shoes (I mean, it’s been THREE years, here), I admit that my eyes have wandered recently. And I have a crush on what is the shoe equivalent of The Bad Boy. They’re impractical. They match nothing I own. The heel is too high and like most bad boys, will end up hurting me. But I. Want. Them. I’ve managed to convince myself that I can pull them off (I can’t) and that I’ll wear them all the time (I won’t). I’m so close to buying them and wearing them with a dress that Stacey and Clinton might say they go with, but my mom would not.

562030_Turquoise (Oh, dear God, they come in red, too. I need two pairs of shoes I’ll never wear, right?)

In the end, I’m practical. Or  a coward, depending on where you’re sitting. Could I pair these lovely turquoise shoes with the heel that I could probably handle with the gorgeous red dress I bought to wear to summer weddings? In my head, yes. In reality, my (boring) adorable little tan ones will make me more comfortable.

Wednesday, June 2, 2010

Garden 2010: Week One

Week one was actually two and a half weeks ago. We planted my seedlings and some store-bought larger plants in the ground on May 16. Since then we’ve planted a few seeds and some more flowers. Here’s what it looked like on planting day:

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It’s really not very impressive at this point. I’m going out in few minutes to take an updated photo. There’s been a lot of growth in the past two weeks – sadly a lot of that growth has also been in weeds, but we’re trying to stay on top of that. Tom is better about it than I am. I like to hand-pick between plants, which means my back can only take so much. He whacks at what’s not near many plants with a hoe. Probably his way makes more sense, but I don’t want to lose any of my plants. I’ll stick with the hard way. I usually do.