Tuesday, November 30, 2010

Sunroom Update

We spent a very productive long Thanksgiving weekend working on the trim in our sunroom. After a whole day of sanding, conditioning, staining and sealing the clear vertical-grain fir, we were able to install most of it. The remainder we will be finishing up here and there after work over the next few weeks. We are quite happy with the results. Below are our new baseboards (pardon the dust).
And the beautiful head lintel over the doors, with our newly installed light which was a gift from Aunt Barb & Uncle Jerry.



Gretel Update Pictorial















Tuesday, November 16, 2010

Oldies But Goodies

Our friend Andy recently gave us these photos he took sometime last spring. They are too good not to share.













Saturday, November 6, 2010

Harvest Time

Despite the cooler temperatures this summer, Gretel's 2010 garden was more fruitful than any garden we have yet grown. For the first time in our lives we had more tomatoes than we knew what to do with! After nearly filling our huge freezer with roasted tomatoes, frozen whole tomatoes and dried tomatoes, we started pickling and canning the green ones that were still on the vine. These are incredibly delicious!

Here are the plants nearing the end of the season.

And below, one of the many tomato harvests......

Gretel with a huge heirloom.

In addition to the fruits and veggies coming from the garden, our chickens are laying like crazy too. Most days we get 5 or 6 eggs!

Casey has begun a fruitful new hobby as well, fishing. Here are two big salmon from one fishing trip. We freeze a lot and smoke a lot of this meat as well. Having smoked salmon on hand whenever you want it is a treat indeed!

This is the first year we've done any canning, and it has turned out to be really fun. Here is our cellar with fig jam, pickled trombolina squash, jalepeno salsa, tomato salsa, and lots of pickled green tomatoes. Now that we understand how easy it can be, I imagine we'll be doing a lot more of it in the future!


Gretel does her part to help with the harvest. Here she is with a green tomato in hand, fending off the chickens!

Talking Up A Storm!

Gretel has become more and more vocal over the past several months, and we are beginning to understand what she's saying some of the time. She has a lot of simple words like "ball" and "book", "yes" and "please". She also does a fair amount of signing to communicate. She knows "more" and "please" and "eat", etc. Gretel loves to sing and has a repetoir of songs she sings to her babies. Twinkle Twinkle Little Star, and Row, Row, Row Your Boat are amongst the favorites, with Frere Jacques coming in at a close third. She's always surprising us with new songs. Mostly we just get a lot of babble though, which makes us realize she sure has a lot to say! One of these days it will all make sense to us, and we'll finally understand what's been going on in that little head all these months!