A New Garden In Town

Ryan and I got crazy last weekend, after much planning, and decided to get our acts together and start a small garden.  Unfortunately, we only have pots and hanging baskets to deal with, but we're making the best of it.  We picked out a few basic veggies to experiment with our sun exposure, soil and overall environment for our plants.  Here are a few pictures of what our small garden is turning into.

 Butterhead lettuce

 Our lone tomato plant

And look how well our lemon tree is doing, spring is here!  We hope to get another hanging planter so we can grow some peppers and berries.  Delicious.

Picks. Picks. Picks.

We put up our brackets for the NCAA tournament at work. I failed to fill one out last year (because of pure intimidation) so I made sure I got my picks in this year. The prize is a free Thai lunch at our Friday lunches together. I'm going for Kansas. Who knows? Maybe they'll win.

What are your picks?

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Dear Japan

"Dear Japan,
We'll miss you people.  The great wave won't bother you at all." 
-Braeden

This is a letter that my 6 year old nephew wrote to Japan recently.  He has the biggest and sweetest heart, and now hopes to go to Japan on his mission.

I am so saddened by the destruction that the tsunami has brought upon Japan.  I hope families can be reunited and comforted, and the country can recover quickly from this tragedy. 

Here's also a link to the New York Times website that shows some aerial before and after shots from different cities in Japan (I stole it from my friend's blog).  You'll be shocked by how much was destroyed.  You're in our hearts Japan. 

Chicken

This is our Lulu.  We've made up dozens of nicknames for her:

Lu

Doo

Dude

Dooder

Looder

Tooter

and currently she's known as "Chicken"

Here's our Chicken in one her favorite places.  

She can either be found on a pillow, on top of a chair, bundled up in blankets, or on a piece of our clothing on the bed. 

And here's our Lu as a baby, right after we bought her.  So tiny!

One Year Olds Just Wanna Have Fun

Ryan and I were fortunate to get an invite to our friend's one year old son's birthday this weekend.  We picked up Pat and Oscar's breadsticks for them and they had a pasta lunch for the guests.  We're trying to spend as much time with these awesome guys before they move for Arizona in June.  Here are a few shots of the party.

Luke was able to manage eating three breadsticks at once.  He's a champ.

The Southwicks, minus three other awesome kids. 

He was not barbaric enough to eat the cake with his hands.

So he used his birthday candle instead.

The HELP

This..........

is a MUST read.  My good friend recommended it to me so I bought for a trip last summer.  I started slowing reading it, but didn't get into it right away.  So I brought it with me for our ski trip and DEVOURED it.  I couldn't stop reading.  Such a great book.  Warning: There are a handful of swear words, but nothing suggestive or risque.  You should pick it up, and...if you live nearby and want to save some dough feel free to borrow it from me.  Happy reading!

G Free

These past two weeks I've been trying an elimination diet.  I've always had problems with food and my stomach's response to it.  So...I'm now currently on a gluten free diet.  It was hard to contemplate giving up some of my favorite foods, like fresh homemade bread, pasta, cookies, crackers, but thankfully there are lots of products out there that are made "Gluten free."  Unfortunately, not all "gluten free" items taste very good, but I'm glad there are a lot of substitutes.

My favorite substitute product I've found is gluten free frozen waffles.  So good!

Thank goodness for Bob's Red Mill, they have several pages of products, and they even have a bread mix that you can make in your bread maker.

I've gotten a hold of a few websites that have gluten free recipes, but I'm always looking for more and any tips on good gluten free food that anyone has tried.  Let me know if any of you have any recommendations!

Hollywood Glamour

Love this gown.  She's perfect.

Saturdays with the Crandalls

Homemade bread.  Fresh lentil soup.  Afternoon nap.  And a poor sick doggie.  Love Saturdays.

What are you doing this weekend? Nothing...just composting.

Ryan bought us a "Vermihut" composter for Valentine's day.  We're going to use of all of the compost for our plants and our soon to debut small patio garden.  We finally got our 2 lbs. of worms in the mail, all 2,000 of them and we got it all set up on Thursday night.  Here's some shots of Ryan mixing in the newspaper, egg shells, worms, and food scraps.

   They say by having a composter you can recude your household waste by 30%, we're hoping to do that with our new "Vermihut."

Debuting: the big pink dresser

We found this old dresser on Craigslist about a year ago and finally got around to fixing it up.  We got it painted and added a few knobs.  Unfortunately, we don't have a before picture so here's a picture of the dresser we were using.

My camera died before I could get a good shot of the knobs, so here's a close up from the anthro website.

Laguna College of Art and Design

Our friends, invited us to go see the MFA gallery opening for a friend of theirs attending Laguna College of Art and Design

 Em

 Their friend's piece

 Our favorite piece, worth a cool $36,000

I had to hold their friend's baby, little Abigail.  Fun fun night.