Spring Gardening

This page was inspired by another Scrapbook and Cards Today challenge. The assignment was to  create a layout where you create flowers, use floral paper, or scrap about your garden. 

Spring Garden 2018 (affiliate link)

This was a fun one. When I made the Deflecto make-and-take mini album about Trouble, I only used two of the Photo Play cardstock stickers from the 12x12 sheet. I challenged myself to use as many of the remaining stickers as I could on this layout (while still maintaining my style, of course). I used nine, plus the white border sticker. Mission accomplished!

Our Garden, 2017: NSD Crafter's Choice Challenge

We plant vegetables every year and I like to document what worked and what didn't. This layout shows our most successful crops of 2017, along with the fabulous new raised beds that Steve built (which contributed significantly to the success of the garden). 

Our Garden, 2017 (affiliate link)

The background is my last sheet of Crate Paper's Lemongrass collection. I layered three die-cuts together to make the embellishment that holds the title. Lemongrass is one of my all-time favorite collections, but considering it is about 10 years old, it's about time I used it up! 

I entered this layout in the National Scrapbook Day Crafter's Choice Challenge. 

Our 2014 Garden

Each year, I make a layout about our summer garden. It's a great way to record what we grew, what was successful, and what was not. This summer, our big success was soybeans. We've never grown them before and they did really well. Lots of delicious edamame! 

One of our failures was corn. The stalks grew about 3 feet high then stopped. They produced a total of 7 delicious, juicy ears... each about the size of a fun-sized candy bar! When I chose photos for this layout, I thought it would be fun to pair a picture of Trevor showing off a day's harvest with a photo of our plentiful soybeans and our puny corn.

Did you plant a garden this year? How did it do?

Scrapping the Garden

Each year, I create a layout that lists the things we grow in our summer garden. It's a fun way to remember the new things we tried, as well as the successes (and failures) we had. Our first real, good-sized garden was in 2008 when Trevor was 2. This is the layout I made to document what we grew:

Apparently I didn't scrap about the 2009 garden.  Weird.  Here's 2010:

Here's 2011: 

2012:

And here is the layout I just finished, about our 2013 garden:

I used this sketch by Tammi Bennett for My Scraps and More:

We've just finished planting our 2014 garden. I can't wait to start harvesting! What's in your garden this year?

Kidding Around: In Your Backyard

Day 9 of Kidding Around was called "In Your Backyard."  When Trevor and I started brainstorming what we liked to do together in the backyard, he mentioned picking fruits and vegetables. So we decided to make our pages about our backyard garden.

We went out to look at what was ripe, then started picking.  Here's Trevor with part of the day's harvest that would become our dinner:

I sliced, salted, and grilled the eggplant, then added the different types of tomatoes and some basil (also from the garden).  A sprinkling of cheese, a drizzle of oil and vinegar, and a dash of salt and pepper and it was perfect.  We ate it with a side of zucchini sauteed in butter.

After dinner, we worked on our pages.  Here's Trevor's.  He chose to draw a variety of things we grow, including ones that have finished producing, like the blueberries and artichoke.

 

Here's mine.  I just included the things that we've harvested in the past week, with a comment about each.

 

Do you have a summer garden?  What's in your garden this year? 

Zucchini Two Ways... and Google Reader

Tis the season... for a bumper crop of zucchini!  I can't tell you how many times I've gone out back to check on our zucchini, decided none were *quite* large enough to harvest, then returned a day later and found a zucchini the size of a loaf of bread.  Check out the zucchini that Trevor harvested the other day.

 

We love zucchini, but there's only so much you can eat sliced and sauteed.  I have a number of favorite zucchini recipes, but I'm always on the lookout for more.  I've gotten in the habit of tagging awesome-sounding recipes in Google Reader.  With the tragic demise of Google Reader coming up on July 1, I decided to go through all my tags and move the ones that still sounded awesome to Pinterest before they were lost forever.  In the process, I found two zucchini recipes that I decided to try.

First up, Zucchini Enchiladas.  I followed the spirit of the recipe, though I reduced the garlic, replaced the scallions with minced onions, and used salsa verde instead of a red enchilada sauce with Greek yogurt.  So basically, I sauteed a small amount of onion and garlic with a lot of shredded zucchini, added salt and pepper, mixed in cheese, and rolled it up in tortillas.  I poured salsa verde over the top, sprinkled with cheese, and baked.  Here's what they looked like going into the oven. 

 

They were delicious!  All three of us enjoyed them.  Not only do I love having another great healthy (and meatless) option for dinner, but these were the perfect make-ahead food.  I prepared them in the morning, popped them in the fridge, and left baking instructions for Steve. When Trevor and I got home from baseball, the enchilada were bubbly hot and the whole house smelled fantastic.

The second recipe was for Crustless Zucchini Quiche.  I prepped this on the some morning as the enchiladas (might as well prep two dinners when everything is already out) and put them in the fridge for the following evening.  I followed this recipe almost exactly.  It smelled so good in the oven.  And it came out looking beautiful. 

The enchiladas were really good, but this quiche was to die for!  It was so good!  Steve missed the crust, but I didn't.  This was creamy and rich and full of flavor... not at all what you might expect for a dish that's at least 75% shredded zucchini.  I could eat this all summer.  It was so good, I might actually need to buy zucchini during the winter to make it then.  

Back to the topic of Google Reader.  I still haven't fully accepted that it's going away.  I would GLADLY pay a subscription to keep it, but unfortunately that is not an option.  For the past few months, I've been trying out a few of the (lame) replacements that are out there, then ranting to Steve about how such-and-such is so much worse than Reader.  Being the awesome husband that he is, he started researching options for me in the open source community and found CommaFeed.  It's not Google Reader, but it's the closest thing I've seen.  I'm still going to use Reader until the second they pull the plug, but after that it's going to be CommaFeed for me.  

What about you?  What's your Google Reader alternative of choice?  

A Title as Journaling

The story behind today's layout starts about 14 months ago.  For years, we've been planting a garden with human consumers (us) in mind.  After we adopted Trouble, we adapted our gardening to meet needs of a very hungry bunny as well.  I stopped harvesting young carrots so that the greens would grow and continue to feed Trouble.  

In the fall, we harvested our full-grown carrots, then planted a second round of carrots in hopes that we could grow greens during the winter.  The carrots didn't grow very well through the winter, but they didn't die either.  Once the spring hit, they grew like gangbusters.  They kept growing and growing, giving us a steady supply of greens.  Soon, they were taller than Trevor!  At that point, I decided to let the carrots go to seed.  I was really curious how tall they would get.  

One afternoon in June, Trevor asked for a carrot as a snack.  I sent him outside to harvest one.  I'm kicking myself that I didn't measure how tall it had grown (just over 5 feet, if I had to guess - the plant was in a raised bed and had grown above my head).  But I did take some awesome pictures of him eating it with the gigantic greens still attached.  

The photos were so silly that I decided to be equally whimsical with the title/journaling.  I decided to emphasize the theme by using orange and green for my title.  As I started to play, I decided that my title would be my journaling.  I used orange letter stickers for the word 'carrot' then stamped the rest of the title and glued it in place.  It's definitely a different look for me.  But I have to say, it was a lot of fun!

I looked back through my old layouts and found only one other time that I've used a complete sentence, with punctuation, as a title.  It was back in June 2010.  That page has a very different feel to it, though the basic arrangement of elements is similar.

Anyone else done a punctuated sentence as a title, with no further journaling?  Leave me a link if you have!

Our 2011 Garden

This has been a weird weather year so far.  In the past few weeks, we've had hail and thunderstorms more than once, both of which are unusual around here.  Our summer garden still isn't in yet, a full month later than usual.  And with a fourth mouth to feed (the three of us, plus our very hungry bunny), it's more important than ever that we grow our own delicious, organic veggies. 

Here is a layout about our 2011 garden.  Each year I like to record what we plant.  I split the journaling into two sections.  The top right lists the foods we planted for the first time (eggplant, artichoke, blueberries, swiss chard, cucumbers and watermelon), while the bottom left lists our old favorites we'd planted before (strawberries, peaches, tomatoes, carrots, potatoes, basil, chives, parsley, beets, beans and peas).

The layout is based on a sketch by Shannon White.

I kept the major elements of the sketch the same, but replaced the two horizontal 4x6 photos with 5 vertical pics.  I love the way yellows and greens of the Crate Paper make the pictures of the veggies pop.

Have you planted your garden yet?  What's in your garden this year?

Garden Markers

For the past five years, we've planted a vegetable garden in our backyard.  We've expanded each year (three new raised beds this year!), plus we're constantly experimenting with different locations for each vegetable.  To help us remember at a glance what is where, I decided that Trevor and I should make some cute garden markers.

We started with red, blue, yellow and white Crayola Model Magic.  It is great- easy to blend, fun to work with, air dries overnight, and makes no mess.

We mixed colors to get green and orange.

Then we started sculpting.  We put the finished veggies onto ordinary wooden skewers.

Here are some of the finished garden markers: strawberries, yellow pear tomatoes, cucumbers, tomatoes, and carrots.  Trevor's are on the left, mine on the right.  

I love the way they turned out!  We let them air dry overnight, then I sprayed them with two coats of Krylon Crystal Clear sealant.  When those were dry, Trevor put the garden markers in place.

 What a fun and cute addition to our garden!