make happy

kale salad

2013-05-14T21:55:00.003-07:00

I tried a new kale recipe today.

I found it yesterday, and figured I'd have to get kale at the store because the kale I planted (from the seeds I harvested months ago) is still in its infancy. But as I was working in the garden this morning, I realized that lots of those baby kale plants needed to be thinned. And all those extra little plants made the perfect amount of salad for dinner.

I cut the leaves off with my kitchen shears and composted the muddy roots.

The garden is coming along nicely.

The herbs are in flower, little green strawberries are forming, and the chard is still going strong from last year.

Today I planted basil,

some tomatoes,

and weeded the hell out of my beet rows.

I also weeded the kale plot.

Peek a boo, baby kale!

I'm trying a row cover this year to keep the cabbage moths away.

I found the recipe on Catherine Newman's blog, Ben & Birdy. Catherine's my favorite because she's an improvisational cook like me. You could just wing it—kale, olive oil, vinegar, garlic, Parmesan, and bread crumbs—but go check out the actual kale salad recipe. I bet you'll like Catherine's writing as much as I do.

Definitely try this salad. It is seriously so good. And don't leave out the Parmesan or bread crumbs. They take the salad from plain old dressed kale to a salad my kids will eat without complaining.

we're going to the zoo, zoo, zoo. . . how about you?

2013-05-05T22:18:00.000-07:00

We took the kids to the Oregon Zoo on Friday, and my parents came along. I knew the lighting at the zoo would change from exhibit to exhibit, so I put my camera on Shutter Speed Priority to help ease the transitions. I wanted to enjoy the zoo, not spend all my time fiddling with camera settings.

I have to tell you, though, it was hard for me to take it off Manual. I really like having absolute control.

I should have stuck with Manual. The camera overexposed nearly every picture. I still ended up fiddling with settings, but it was to correct what the camera chose. Now that I think about it, I probably should have changed from spot metering to something more comprehensive. Next time.

For now, I'm just happy I shot in Raw. Because next time, baby elephant Lily won't be this small.

We're having a bit of a heat wave in the NW. It was 80° Friday, hotter today, and supposed to be in the 80s all week. Is spring over already? I bought a fan mister to keep us cool. The kids loved it.

in the weeds

2013-05-02T13:49:00.000-07:00

Remember me? I haven't posted in a very long time. April is a busy month around here! May is a close second, but I got some time to go out and take pictures just for me this morning, so I had to share. I really haven't been taking many pictures at all for the past few weeks—just obligatory tball/mom shots.

But I had some time this morning, and instead of pulling weeds (like I should have been doing), I took the opportunity to photograph those weeds. . . and flowers, and volunteer maples. I got lost in the world through my lens and before I knew it, thirty minutes had slipped away. Thirty beautiful, peaceful, relaxing minutes. Photography is my favorite therapy.

tulip lessons

2013-04-14T22:30:00.000-07:00

I liked the way the setting sun was lighting the tulips on the table at dinner. After we finished eating and cleared the table, I took a few shots. The light was fading quickly, and I didn't like how high I had to push my ISO, so I lugged out the tripod. I set my ISO back low (320) and lowered my shutter speed to 1/4 of a second.

I learned two things:

1) My macro shots are so much sharper when I use the tripod! I really need to use it every time I macro.

2) My tripod is magic. It turned near darkness into daylight. The following photo was taken with a slow shutter speed, thanks to the tripod. Immediately after, I raised my shutter speed and took the last photo to show how dark it actually was. See? Magic tripod.

Blue Star Donuts

2013-04-14T22:11:00.000-07:00

I have a soft spot for doughnuts. I have several soft spots from doughnuts. Since I started making my own doughnuts (here and here; the recipes are good even if the photos are awful), I've sworn off chain doughnut shops because the products are too sweet. But when I opened my Sunset magazine a few months ago to see this beautiful Blueberry Bourbon Basil doughnut, and read that the shop it came from was in Portland, I knew I had to get my hands on one.

Maybe two. It was hard to choose! Hubs and I walked into the packed Blue Star Donuts this morning to a gorgeous display of doughnuts. Valrhona Chocolate Crunch. Creme Brulee (with actual caramelized sugar crust). Lemon Poppyseed. Vanilla Bean Sugar. Meyer Lemon with Key Lime filling. Passion Fruit with Cocoa Nibs. The best Apple Fritter I've ever had, and it was made with hard cider.

Need to clean the drool from your keyboard yet?

I wish I had photos of the shop for you. It was perfectly clean and lovely. Maybe if I go back on a weekday it won't be quite as crowded and I'll have room to take a picture. For now you get all that I have left—the empty box.

twin tunnel trail

2013-04-05T21:37:00.000-07:00

We hiked the Mark O. Hatfield trail today, also known as the Twin Tunnel trail, between Hood River and Mosier, Oregon. We stuck to the Mosier side today. This trail runs along a portion of the historic Columbia River Highway—the only dry way to get up river before Interstate 84 was constructed. These tunnels were blasted to make room for automobiles in the early 1900s, covered up during interstate construction, and restored in the 1990s.

And these tunnels have amazing light. I'm so glad I brought my camera.

eagle creek trail

2013-04-04T15:45:00.003-07:00

Metlako Falls

We took a hike along Eagle Creek trail today. It's one of the most popular hikes in the Columbia River Gorge, with good reason. So beautiful! Perfect for a rainy weekday—we were almost the only ones there. Try to go on a sunny Saturday and you'll be lucky to find a parking spot within a mile of the trailhead. Plus you'll have to navigate some narrow, treacherous trail sections with oncoming traffic. Not for me, thank you.

Punchbowl Falls, from above

Since we're still in early spring, there was too much water for us to get to the Punchbowl vantage point I had hoped for. Next time I'll bring waterproof shoes. (And my tripod. I was nervous enough about the narrow cliff trails, I decided having a tripod hanging off my backpack was too much. I made the right decision, but I really missed my tripod. I wanted a much slower shutter for those waterfalls!)

The kids had fun making rock stacks during our snack breaks.

We're planning on hiking a lot between now and fall, so hopefully I'll have more of these to come.

With a tripod!

strawberry-to-be

2013-04-03T22:54:00.000-07:00

All this spring sun is making things grow in my yard. I'm really starting to be ok with that. Excited, even.

And this gorgeous thing, as far as I can tell, is a tomatillo husk from the neighbor's yard. Pretty dang cool.

april fool's day

2013-04-01T09:59:00.002-07:00

This morning I held a foil-covered baking dish and asked my kids if they wanted some “brown Es” with breakfast. They cheered and jumped up and said that, of course, they would love some brown Es with breakfast. I don't know why they were getting so excited. They must have thought I said “brownies”. Silly kids. Don't they know it's April Fool's Day?

Ha! They do, actually. Ever since I pulled the jello juice prank (like this), Sweetpea asks me to do something good for April Fool's Day. Oh, the pressure of topping the jello juice. That was a really good trick.

I came close this year. The brown Es were ok, but the disappointment of not having brownies to eat took it down a few notches. No, my real prank was sneaking into the kids' rooms after they were asleep and painting their toe nails green. (Green was the only quick-drying color we had.) They were awake for almost an hour before they noticed. It was awesome.

I also changed the language on Hub's phone to German. I'm confident he would have appreciated it more if he hadn't been late for work. I appreciated the hell out of it. It was hilarious! That is, of course, until he came home and made me change it back. Finding the appropriate language menus in German was not as easy as finding them in English.

The apple cinnamon pancakes I made for breakfast (partially to make up for the brownie trick) were no joke, though. They were delicious!

Are you pulling any pranks today? What's your favorite?

new robes

2013-03-28T12:22:00.002-07:00

The kids got new robes yesterday. They love having robes to wrap in after showers, and their old ones were getting close to cheek-peek short. Our color choices were blue, pink, and white, and since Sweetpea is no longer into pink, they both chose blue. I'm going to sew some ribbon on the hoods and sleeves so we can tell the robes apart.

They were having so much fun dancing and jumping in the robes as they tried them on, I took some pictures. Then my little photographers got their own cameras out and took pictures of each other. I captured them reviewing their work. I love how serious they are when deciding which images to keep.

succulents

2013-03-28T11:51:00.001-07:00

I'm a low maintenance gardner. I don't feed my plants, except when I spread compost on the beds once each spring. I barely remember to water them, hoping the rain will take care of it. (It doesn't.) Pots on my covered doorstep usually have no chance of survival, since the rain can't reach them. I do ok with houseplants, because they usually tell me they're thirsty by wilting a little.

I decided this year that succulents are the way to go, since they don't like to be watered often. I put some in one of my doorstep pots and they're already taking off.

My parents gave me a collection of fun succulents for my birthday, and I finally got them planted yesterday. I can't wait to see how the pot fills in. A few leaves broke off during the planting process, so I'm going to try rooting them. I can see myself slipping into Crazy Succulent Lady status very easily.

An update on my ranunculus: The last time I tried planting ranunculus, some creature ate each blossom as it opened. That creature must be gone now, because these plants are doing very well! I've only watered them a few times, too. Maybe the plants are being nice to me because I didn't get the snow I wanted this winter—they're helping me get excited about spring. :)

bunuelos

2013-03-28T11:11:00.000-07:00

Hubs and I spent four years at the beginning of our marriage in El Paso, Texas. Living my entire life in the green, wet northwest, El Paso was far from my comfort zone. But it was a good character-building, strong marriage-building time, and I have many fond memories of El Paso.

One of those fond memories is buñuelos. I received some homemade buñuelos from a client's mother one Christmas, and immediately fell in love. Light and crispy, cinnamon sugar in every bite. . . what's not to love?

I recently found a recipe for buñuelos on Muy Bueno, and decided to give it a whirl. They took some time and were a little messy, but not nearly as messy or labor-intensive as doughnuts. They soaked up a lot less oil, too.

I broke out a brand new stainless steel saucepan for the frying. It was hard to put anything into that perfect shiny steel.

I had to test the first few to make sure I was frying them long enough. It was rough, but I've accepted that these sacrifices are necessary for quality control.

The verdict? We loved them! Crispy, cinnamony sweet, perfect with vanilla ice cream and strawberries. Yum. A great finishing touch to a Mexican fiesta.

balloon shadow

2013-03-28T10:37:00.001-07:00

Two weeks feels like a long time for me to go without posting. It's probably not all that unusual for me, but it felt extra long this time because I wanted to post, but things kept getting in the way.

I had a birthday. Hubs got me a monitor calibration system for my birthday, and I wanted to run it before I edited pictures again. But school events and issues kept popping up, needing my time and energy. (Then there were a few days when I had no energy, as it had all been sucked away, and I needed to recuperate.)

I still have a lot on my plate for the next month, but I'm excited to test out my calibration efforts and go through this backlog of images on my hard drive. I'm also hoping to spend some more time with my camera. I've missed it and its stress-reducing qualities.

mystery macro, part 2

2013-03-14T12:31:00.002-07:00

Apparently, this was no challenge. My dear siblings got it right away!

Now I'm determined to find something harder to guess. :)

mystery macro

2013-03-14T11:44:00.000-07:00

I told you I had some dark photos for today. I love the texture of this object close up. Can you guess what it is?

ranunculus, stage two

2013-03-13T20:27:00.001-07:00

I have some darker photos that I've been meaning to post, but it's been so sunny here that it feels strange posting shadowy images. So I'll post these sunny flowers today, and maybe the dark ones tomorrow. There is rain in the forecast for tomorrow, after all.

Have you heard the news about Google Reader? I've been using it to browse my blogs in one convenient place for four years. I'm not happy about having to switch and get used to something new. What's your favorite RSS reader? I need some recommendations.

legos in morning light

2013-03-08T21:15:00.001-08:00

lessons

2013-03-07T12:23:00.001-08:00

A year ago, I saw a photograph by Blaine Franger of sun shining through a tree and fog. I had never seen anything like it. It was stunning. In the very next second, I knew that I had to capture something like that, only I didn't know how.

The great thing about Blaine is that he always posts his camera settings. That gave me a good start on how, but was it just regular fog? Perfect timing of sun? A certain angle? I filed it away and hoped that some day I would figure it out.

This morning, after I dropped the kids off at school, I took my usual walk. It was very foggy; so thick I could only see about a hundred yards in any direction. I knew I should have taken my camera, but didn't want the extra weight. I left with a nagging feeling I'd regret that decision.

Three miles in, I came around a corner into a forested stretch of the trail and boom. There it was. My rays. I was a mile from my car. Two miles from home, where my camera was. I took a blind shot with my super crappy, super old phone and ran to my car.

I ran. I hate running.

As I ran, every tree I passed looked like the one in the picture. It was agonizing. I berated myself the whole time for not bringing my camera. I got to my car, drove home, grabbed my camera, and headed back out.

The fog was gone.

I was devastated. I chased the fog in hopes I'd find some more trees, but there was nothing I could reach. I tried to console myself with some mountain shots, but they don't even compare to the shots I missed.

At least I know where to go on our next foggy morning. . . with my camera.

kale seeds

2013-03-06T12:32:00.001-08:00

Last year, I showed you my bolting kale and told you my plans to save seeds for replanting. I did so, very unscientifically. I cut all the kale plants last summer once the seed pods were starting to dry, bundled them up and wrapped them in an old sheet (to collect any falling seeds), then stuck them in the shed for the winter.

We prepped the gardens this past weekend, and for fun, I pulled out the kale bundle to see what would happen. I remembered seeing that wrapping and whacking was an efficient method of getting the seeds from their pods, so I tried it. It worked. I opened up the bundle and hand-crushed the remaining intact pods. I ended up with thousands of seeds. I planted plenty in the garden and brought the rest inside.

I could plant a whole farm full of kale.

Here's one of last year's plants, getting ready to bolt and produce more seeds this spring.

So generous, this kale. Who wants some seeds?

ranunculus

2013-03-01T21:01:00.000-08:00

. . . and some raindrops on a yucca leaf.

smoky rays

2013-02-28T13:23:00.000-08:00

I burned some oil the other day as I was preparing dinner. I turned on the pan to heat it, added the olive oil, but took too long chopping my vegetables and the oil started smoking. I turned off the heat, opened a window, and started cleaning the pan. The kids were making noise, so I turned around to check on them and saw the late afternoon sun streaming through the smoky air. (It wasn't really that smoky—unnoticeable except in the light.)

Of course, dinner was delayed further because I had to take pictures before the smoke (and rays) disappeared; a small price to pay for such a rare photographic occurrence.

grass widows

2013-02-27T22:25:00.001-08:00

Spring has officially sprung on the Catherine Creek trail.

This super easy, kid-friendly, accessible trail area hosts 90 types of wildflowers from late winter to early summer. Sweetpea had a wonderful time photographing the grass widows. I think she and I will make an effort to get back every few weeks
this spring to see how many of the 90 species we can capture.

construction play

2013-02-26T11:44:00.000-08:00

It's been three years since we first discovered the joy of using raisins, Goldfish crackers, cereal, cornmeal, salt, and other small edibles with construction vehicle toys. It started when he was a toddler, and we could combine play time and snack time (no, he doesn't snack on cornmeal and salt) for nearly an hour of ~~peace and quiet~~ fun.

But he still loves it! And now, he can even get the supplies himself. Score.

silver lining

2013-02-22T14:25:00.000-08:00

I have some friends that are plagued by dark clouds right now. Like Eeyore, the rain clouds seem to follow them wherever they go. I can provide an umbrella and a warm hug, but I can't make the clouds go away. Oh, how I wish I could make the clouds go away.

* * * *

I'm a good mom.

It's hard for me to say that, because I'm humble and polite and it's not nice to brag.

But my kids are happy, and people—even strangers—tell me all the time how great my kids are. It's the best kind of performance review a parent can get.

So many mothers are hard on themselves. They feel like they don't do enough or throw the right parties or cook the right dinners or read the right books. We hear constantly, “Enjoy them when they're young. It goes so fast!” We feel guilty because, yes, it does go fast, but it's also hard to enjoy kids when you're in the middle of raising them.

“Oh honey, I love when you puke on me and bounce your basketball on the windows.”

It's only when you step away and gain some perspective that you can enjoy them. It's the reason I feel overwhelming love for my children mostly when they're asleep or away. I realized yesterday that having babies was pretty easy compared to having school-age kids. Sure, I was sleep-deprived and stinky and pawed over all day long, but the day was mine and I could do whatever I wanted, as long as I lugged the baby along. Now we have schedules and activities and homework and hormones and bickering. I'm a drill sergeant in the mornings, barking the same orders every day so we get to school on time. (And I hate it.) But having school-aged kids is pretty easy compared to having babies, because you can say, “Go brush your teeth, please,” and they do. Remember this:

Kids don't have an easy stage. Parenting doesn't get easier. The challenges simply change over time.

Some day, my kids aren't going to want me around. At least not the same way they do now. So I'm ok with the house being a mess and the dishes sitting in the sink and my craft supplies sitting unused and quitting Pinterest (best decision ever for me). And I'm so incredibly thankful that my husband and I have built a lifestyle that does not require me to work. I am able to spend unlimited amounts of time with my kids, have an active role in shaping their education, and nurture myself so I have more mental and physical energy for them. The kids are both old enough now that there are several activities we all enjoy doing together (board games, word games, crafting, hiking, cooking), and we do them every day. I have enough perspective now that I know I want my kids to have good memories of me. I want us to build good memories together, because at the end, that's all we'll have. (That, and pictures. Lots of pictures.)

I want them to say, “Man. We had a good mom.”

classroom treats

2013-02-20T17:36:00.000-08:00

My little dude had a birthday celebration at school this week. It's not actually his birthday, but he's a summer baby and no one in his class has a February birthday, so we opted to celebrate now instead of in June with the rest of the summer babies.

He did not want the traditional cupcakes, though. His first request was caramel apples. I knew that would never fly in a kindergarten class, so we talked over a few options and finally came up with this—individual cups of caramel dip and apple slices on sticks. It worked really well! Everyone was finished quickly, almost everyone loved it, and aside from a few sticky fingers, cleanup was a breeze. His teacher was pleasantly surprised!

I dipped the apple slices in pineapple juice to keep them from browning. It worked well.

And since I didn't get any good closeups at school, Sweetpea generously volunteered to pose for me after school with an extra caramel cup. It helped that she got to eat her prop. :)