Another Yogurt Update

Yesterday I successfully cultured vanilla yogurt! I am so stoked. Before I stirred the milk into the starter, I added sugar and vanilla extract. It's quite sweet so I'll cut back on the sugar next time, but I added 1 cup of sugar and 1 tbsp vanilla extract to 1 quart of milk. Next attempt? Lemon.

Yogurt tutorial

I added pictures to my instructions on how to make yogurt.

Lately I've been making whole milk yogurt because it makes such delicious smoothies. They are almost like milkshake made with ice cream!

Finally growing up

It's about time. Maybe it's because I turned 30 this year. But I'm finally able to can and have all my jars seal, sew things that don't look homemade, and be satisfied with my handwriting.

I can't think of a good title for this one

But I know I've been a slacker blogger lately and it's because I have been too busy to upload photos and spend time writing clever blog entries for you to laugh over.

But, in a nutshell, I have been canning green beans, supervising construction, picking a bushel of peaches, playing referee to 4 kids, keeping up with the laundry, not keeping up with the dishes, trying to pawn off extra zucchini, and moving hoses around my parched yard.

Two and a half weeks until the three older ones are in school, and we still want to make it to all the touristy things we haven't done yet this summer.

Amateur photography

A couple days ago we discovered a pair of fawns waiting for their mother in one of our neighbor's yards. They stayed there all day! I saw them again tonight and went home and got the camera. They weren't as close to the road as they were when I first saw them, but I think I still got some decent shots.


playing with the sepia feature

New Flickr uploader

I just uploaded 19 pictures to flickr and it was SO much easier than it ever has been. I'm not excited about downloading free software that might corrupt the hard drive so I'd never used the uploading tools before. Wheee!

Filling The Hollow Tree

I'm adding the Hollow Tree back to the sidebar. I am teaching some of my friends to can this summer so I planted extra green beans to share. I'll add the teaching-to-can sessions to the Hollow Tree list but the jars will be going home with the "students."

Let's get to the short of it

In the midst of all the renovation going on, we made a quick trip over to eastern Idaho last weekend to see my sister's first baby be blessed in church. I made significant progress on these shorts for Frugalbaby and it took me over a week to knit the last inch and get them finished. The yarn is Kool-aid dyed by my friend Sarah and I received it in our recent Magic Yarn Ball swap. Heidi detailed the events over at her blog. If you scroll down to Tami's picture you'll see the yarn I did, which there are pictures of up on Flickr but I never got around to blogging it.