Pinterest Day: You are an obsession (chalkboard paint!)

Pinterest Day: You are an Obsession (Chalkboard Paint)

Recently, my dear friend Erin and I got together to do a Pinterest inspired craft and lunch with a Pinterest recipe.  It was a blast.  We decided to chalkboard board books.  Basically, you chalkboard paint old board book and then kids or adults can have their own chalkboard book.  Project below.  Our recipe was jalapeno popper grilled cheese sandwiches, recipe below.

The Project: Chalkboard Board Books

She's Crafty

She's Crafty!

I recently joined Pinterest, which is basically a virtual bulletin board for blogs and websites.  For the crafty, it's more addictive than anything illegal.  The first project I did was a Kindle cover for my husband which is from the blog Come Together Kids.  Click that link for their instructions, I won't duplicate, you should head over to that great blog anyway, but I will tell you the modifications I did.

1. I used fleece instead of quilted fabric.  This meant I didn't need to hem it, just glue it down.

2. I sewed.  I sewed the pocket and the elastics.  It was quick and I'm a sewing moron so don't sweat it.  I did all the sewing pre- hot glue.

3. I changed the direction of the pocket so the open side is facing the spine.  This is so you can put it in the book and close it and it won't fall out.

Check out my drawers

We live in an old house, it's a beautiful, wonderful old house that we love, but with each old house comes certain issues.  One issue common to all old houses is lead paint. Our old house is it was well loved for many years but hadn't been redecorated since the late 60's early 70's, which we loved because we made the choices.  The issue with that is ALL of the paint is lead.  Our kids are older, we've talked to our pediatrician about it and we're all good, but certain things come up.  In our pantry, we have drawers that are painted in the interior.  Now, I don't know about you, but painting the interior of drawers is so far down on my list it doesn't even make the list, so we've assumed that the paint in it is lead.  So, painting the interior of drawers has made my list.  It's not a very exciting thing to do, no one can see it and in the grand scheme of things it doesn't matter.  Until I thought about painting them different colors, then I got excited.

I love painting my toes funky colors, I've done it for years, and it's the one personal indulgence I held onto from my pre-child world.  Painting the interior of my drawers could be like that, only not as sparkly.  So, I went through my huge stash of paint samples and pulled out three greenish- bluey colors, and painted away.  It makes me really happy.  So the point of this post is not to trumpet the fact that I very shoddily painted the interior of my drawers, the point is sometimes something that is not so great (like having lead paint around) makes you do something small that makes your life better and makes you really happy.  That's pretty fantastic.  Please note the colors are a bit more vibrant than it looks, I may be many things, but I'm no photographer.

Good Life

Good Life

Last winter skiing and I got together and we fought.  Skiing won.  For a big chunk of time, the casualty of the quarrel was my knee, which complained a great deal with many different things.  I'm happy to report that all will be fine, but my relationship with downhill skiing can't be repaired.  So, here I am.  A non-skiier in a family of skiing fiends.  I feel like I'm getting to know myself again.  Although there will be plenty of things I should do, I've been hoarding projects for the ski time.  Today, it's all about the seeds.

I am a tomatoista.  This is the fancy made up word I've given for my tomato obsession.  This year I have 16 different varieties of seeds saved.  There are a few favorites I've saved for years that I didn't save this year because my garden tanked later in the season.

The tomatoes I'm most looking forward to?  Right below.

1. Absinthe*:  Green, large.
This one was a new one last year, and I loved it.  A good green tomato is so fun and although Green Zebra is delicious, you have a long wait for it.  Absinthe is bigger and although not early, is earlier, and is delicious.  Worth the space.

2. Amish Paste*: Red, medium, mid.
Over the years I have tried a wide variety of paste tomatoes.  Most disappoint.  They are usually meaty, which is good, but are also often small and susceptible to blossom end rot.  I dreamed of a big, meaty, delicious, prolific paste tomato that would keep me canning sauce throughout the season.  Amish Paste is just that.  It's huge and meaty and good enough to be a sandwich tomato.

3. Andrew's Big Bite*: Red, cherry, early.
This is a red cherry.  It's yummy, prolific, and one of my own varieties, so it's always welcome back and saved.

Day 12: Home, where my thoughts escaping

Homeward bound.

We drove through the night to Chimney Rock, getting there at 6:30 a.m. as the sun was coming up. We went a little out of our way to go by this famed Oregon Trail marker, but what's an All America trip without a taste of past trips west? After Yellowstone and the Grand Tetons, it wasn't as impressive as it might have been otherwise, but it was humbling to walk through the cemetery by Chimney Rock and remind ourselves of the bravery of our ancestors.

Next stop was Gothenburg, NE, pony express capital. We went to an original pony express station where the gentlemen who worked there gleefully took the opportunity of a full room to give us a little history of the pony express. It's hard to imagine that something so iconic for our culture only lasted a year and a half.

Linoma landlocked lighthouse.

We were hot and grimy and aimed for our next stop to be a place where we could jump in the water. We stopped at Linoma Beach, home of the landlocked lighthouse. Linoma Beach was directly downstream from a sand and gravel mine. Fortunately, we didn't have to go through the ethical dilemma of to swim or not to swim in clearly polluted water because the beach was closed for the weather. We couldn't figure out why hot, muggy weather would necessitate the closing of a beach, but we've never had a beach right by a sand and gravel mine either.

Swimming was on our brain and although there are no entries in swimming holes.org for Nebraska or Iowa, we found a little lake right off of 80 in Iowa called Lake Manawa. Although we nearly circumnavigated the lake, we didn't drive by the public beach which was closed due to extreme flooding of the lake. No respite from the heat or grime for us. We grabbed dinner and headed back on the road toward home, getting to see some fantastic roadside attractions without even leaving the road.

Sapp Brothers coffee pot water tower

Day 11: Goin' to Jackson

Goin' to Jackson

Got up, packed up and headed down the road to Jackson, and, more importantly, the Grand Tetons! Quiz: do you remember what the Continental Divide is? We drove over it several times and couldn't remember. Sadly, Owen, who is usually our fountain of knowledge for things like this was also in the dark.

Driving into the Grand Tetons is an astounding sight. They are the mountains that one would picture if you were coming up with the perfect mountain. They are tall, dramatic, snow covered, and stunning. We headed to Jenny Lake for the boat ride, which we took for the short trail to Hidden Falls and Inspiration Point. Like the rest of the Grand Tetons, they were more beautiful than one would imagine possible. We got to see a pika, a tiny alpine rabbit creature, on the way to the falls.

Although many of the guides said one day was fine for Grand Teton, it's really not, we found ourselves rushing around trying to get what we could in. We flew from Jenny Lake to the Moose Junction Visitor Center, a beautiful building with a wall of windows facing the Tetons and a giant stone fireplace, to try to get another Junior Ranger badge for the kids. Another success, we now have three Junior Rangers at three National Parks. These Junior Ranger programs were easily the kids favorite part of the trip. They loved the challenged of the activities, had fun at the programs, and the patch at the end was like icing on the cake.

Proudly badged up, we headed to Jackson to check out the town and say a quick hello to a dear college friend, which though brief, was wonderful. We then got subs from the New York City Sub Shop, which ironically is the sandwich place the locals frequent. We made our way to the town center to eat. At the town square in Jackson, there are four arches made of elk antlers. It's creepy, especially only a few miles away from the national elk refuge. It's like saying, elks, you stay there, you're safe, but you get into town and all bets are off.

Jackson Shoot Out.  

As we neared the town center, there were a bunch of people waiting as if for a parade. There was no parade, there was a "town shoot-out.". For the past 55 years during the summer every night at 6, except Sunday, the good citizens of Jackson put on a shoot out skit. If someone is performing a shoot out skit a few feet away from you, you have to watch so we did. I couldn't see too much of it, but there was drama and gun shots and the kids liked it, so why not? We settled down to business and chowed down on our sandwiches which were delicious. We then stopped at Moo's homemade ice cream and sorbet and strolled through the strange grouping of statues eating out treats. We couldn't figure out any rhyme or reason to the why of the statues, but you could sit on a bench with: Jack London, Einstein, Abe Lincoln, Mark Twain, or St. Francis. There was also a large statue of some guy on a horse with a boy on his lap. We asked an older gentleman who he thought he was and he said, "I don't know, but I have a real nice photo of him." With that, it was time to bid adieu to Wyoming and start our trip home.

Day 10: Ain't no Mountain High Enough

Ain't no Mountain High Enough.

Hike up Mt. Washburn

The biggest issue with travel for us is good coffee. We thought we got around this by getting a plug adaptor and bringing our thermal coffeemaker. No such luck. The coffeemaker takes more power than the adaptor has available, so bad to the dilemma. We have a camp percolator that we've never gotten decent coffee from it until today. It wasn't great, but it was good enough and a great way to start the day.

Coffee in hand, we went to Mt. Washburn to begin our hike. At one point, there was a road up Mt. Washburn, because of this it was a wide, cleared hike. There weren't many trees on the mountain, so almost every step was like the summit of most mountains we hike. The mountain was covered with wildflowers and volcanic rock. There was also snow on the mountain, which was fun for the kids. The top was beyond amazing but incredibly windy. There is a fire station on top of the mountain where there are bathrooms and a viewing area where you can get some respite from the wind. Hiking along with us was a family with three children about 5 years older than ours, a lovely retired woman working to make the hike (which she did!), and a large group of Japanese tourists. One of the most astonishing things to me is the number of foreign tourists at Yellowstone. I had always thought of Yellowstone as an American destination, but it's a destination for people worldwide, which is fantastic. People from around the world are getting the chance to see some of the best of our country.

After the hike we went into Canyon General Store, where they had a 50's style lunch counter. We stocked up on souvenirs and then headed over to the visitor's center to catch the junior ranger program. The visitor's center was fantastic, really wonderful exhibits and this fantastic fountain/ globe thing that you could manipulate. Kids added another National Park to their Junior Ranger status and we headed back to our campsite with a detour to the Virginia Cascades, which were beautiful.

Virginia Cascades

We had dinner and as became the kids ritual, they took a chilly dip in the water. While we were at the waters edge, a dad with his two girls told me about a place to swim that is safely fed by geysers (not scalding), and as my kids gleefully jumped into the frigid water, he noted that I might appreciate the warmer water more than the kids.


We went to another ranger talk, this time on bears and after the kids went to bed, Josh and I sat by the fire and enjoyed our last night in Yellowstone.