Garden! And CRAFTS!!!

There's a complete view of the garden! I'll get some closeup pepper and tomato pics soon!



This is the failed Ernie sweater. It was huge.....I shrank it.....it's now the right width but 6 in too short for Luke....



On the right are the shoes I painted to match my Bridesmaid dress for Rachel's wedding! They match perfectly!



The TETRIS soda can collage! Much work to be done...



And there's the dress I sewed last Sunday...




I'll post pics of my finished crafts soon!

Garden Update - Part dos

Here's our jungle of tomato plants



and the Tomatillo plant (green tomatoes - great for salsa verde)



Corn! Apparently you want it to be "knee high by the 4th of July" according to Samantha but I don't think this phrase is well thought out. Since "high" and "July" are what rhyme....you can say "waist high by the 18th of July" and it still works!



Peas! This is round one. Round two can be seen to the left of the corn. Delicious!



I woke up this morning to find the pumpkin vines in full bloom! Now when are we going to get a gourd...

Garden Update

Pumpkin vines are crawling....



Squashes (or cucumbers?) are growing.... I think it's a cuc, Luke votes squash. What do you think? (Samantha and I don't really label things while planting our indoor seedlings...which really stresses Luke out but... we figure we'll figure it out sooner or later!)



The raspberry bush is taking over!



Squirrels are snacking on the compost pile!



And pumpkin's are blossoming! The need to start making a gourd soon!




More to come.....

4th of July + New Camera = ehhhh..

So, it was the fourth of July and we decided, since we had the night off, to go and see the fireworks! MSUM has some pretty decent fireworks I guess. I decided to try and photograph them with my new camera using Charlene's tripod. They turned out ok. I still need to figure out how to do it the right way - however Luke only knows the amateur way. So check 'em out!


I liked this picture because of the little guy blooming inside of the old fading explosion.










This is your classic single firework - I think this was the best one of those kind.










And this one is the finale picture that I liked the best - it looks like there's a white star firework amidst a red and blue blooming explosion. Pretty neat I'd say. Well, I need to go watch some Heroes with my babe. Ciau!

Weekend in Cambridge/Isanti

Last weekend, Luke and I went to Isanti for the marriage of Pat and Laura Lillemo. Pat was Luke's BFF in middle school, and they made it up to our wedding, so we made it to theirs. We gave them the best gift EVER (in our humble opinon): weber's WAY TO GRILL. We highly recomend it. We weren't sure how THEY grilled, but we figured that they SHOULD grill, so we got them the book. After the wedding, Laura facebook messaged me that they LOVE our gift and usually grill 4x a week! Good work Luke and Char!

The best pictures we have of them is when they were smearing cake on their faces and then kissing.





Pat was the only person we really knew at the wedding (and by we I mean Luke -- that's what we means in this family). However, when there we saw someone Luke knew from confirmation class. I don't remember her name, but she's the lady in the picture below. Luke rudely invited us to their wedding in September claiming that if you offer to bring a gift it's ok to invite yourself to weddings. I'm not so sure about this....though I would have been ok w/ random ppl at our wedding as long as they brought gifts.

(we took two pictures like this - in the first one my eyes are open but everyone else wasn't ready....)



Luke was constantly taking pictures of me. Here's one.



And here's me being artistic. See the shiny silverware? It's NOT metal but plastic! So we couldn't tap on the glass (which also was plastic) to get them to kiss!!! Our table started the first of two "tappings" to get them to kiss and I was banging my fork on my soda can, Luke and the lady were smacking the wine bottle, and her fiance was clanging his keys. Only two other tables joined us. They did end up kissing so it was worth the work (and looking stupid).

Pentecost Weekend

Driving in Winnipeg is STRESSFUL!

I don't think that I've ever been as 'on edge' as I was while driving around Winnipeg! The roads and intersections are strange and small, the roads were of poor quality, the street signs were tiny, and worst of all - the drivers... some of them drive like they're maniacs. I guess that last part applies to any major city, but seriously, not a fan of the Canadian road systems.

Yes! We were in Canada! - This weekend Charlene and I took a jaunt up to Winnipeg, Manitoba to celebrate Pentecost with our brethren in the area. We met together for the Sabbath service on Saturday and then got the chance to have some fellowship time at a restaurant called Montana's. BTW Montana's has fantastic steak - I would say the second best steak I've ever had. We got to meet some newer members and some others from quite a distance away--Calgary to be exact. We stayed on the floor on an air mattress of one the couple's from Winnipeg (which was surprisingly comfortable) and met again for brunch with the other members. After brunch we had our Pentecost service. We learned so much over this weekend!

Char and I got to load up on ketchup chips and Canadian Coca-Cola, which tastes better from Canada btw. We bust that stuff out at parties like it's some sort of exotic treat - which it is!

~~~transition to Char writing~~~

Before we headed home, we went to "The Forks/Le Fourche" (French in Canada!!!) to stretch our legs before a long drive and take some pictures. The Forks is where the Red River of the North joins with the Assiniboine River which flows in from the West. It was a big trading area back in the day of people transporting stuff by river. Probably a lot of beaver pelts involved. They used to be quite the hot commodity!

Here is Luke being all monkey-like and climbing a tree (I actually told him to in order to create a photo op! I was in heels! I couldn't climb anything!). He obviously was having a good time! This tree was probably surrounded by water a few weeks ago when the river crested in Winnipeg. If they hadn't been expanding their spillway since 1997 downtown Winnipeg would have been destroyed! Fortunately it all survived!

Here Luke is doing a controlled slide down the side of the tree. I feel like the words "controlled" and "slide" don't belong together... Luke was complaining about how I was the only person in the blogs at first... and now he's here in all his glory! Cessez de regarder son bout!!!

Here you can see Luke's artistic side. Over by the Manitoba Children's Museum there's a constellation guide and these big metal arch things point in the direction of certain constellations on certain dates. They had the explanations written in three languages: English and French of course and then something that looked like squares and triangles to me which must be some sort of "first nation" language. (In Canada they call Native Americans "First Nations").

Here's a better look at the constellation guide area. This is me in my modeling pose... tres chic I know. Kids were mostly climbing all over the pillars and not reading about constellations...

Another artistic shot by Luke. Very nice! I'm not sure what type of stone it is (some type of sandstone) but it was everywhere! Must be a quarry nearby.

la tercera post

Sunday was another day of gardening...



Luke planted the plants that Sam brought from her spree at the greenhouses in Pekin, ND (not anywhere near Fargo...). They look a lot healthier than our home grown ones!



You can see how they are already big and bushy! Luke has already claimed himself king over next years seedlings...since I apparently am not as good at growing seedlings as a professional greenhouse! Sorry! My tomatoes and peppers might not look that great.....but my cucumbers, pumpkins, and squash look amazing!



We finished part 1 of the patio project (and by we I mean Luke). Part 2 is finishing a path to the shed.



Here are the seedlings from round 2 of pea plants. A few from round one can be seen to the left. These seedlings grew up the side of a bucket of dirt I collected from getting pots cleaned out from last year. They may not have survived transplanting, since I thought there roots only went a few inches deep, not the entire height of the bucket (2 feet) so many were sliced! Round 3 is along the South fence of the garden and round 4 is along the North. Round 5 will be by the compost bin. Round 6 is yet to be determined. We shall have a lengthened pea harvest!



Here is my amazing cucumber seedling! It already bloomed and was pollinated and you can see the gourd beginning to form! Already!



These are my tomato plants. They're tall but wussy with small stems. Luke did some YouTube research on tomato plants and lectured me on how the stem is all that matters and tomato farmers pick seedlings based on nothing else but the stem and blah blah blah blah...........



These are the herbs and exotic flowers that Sam also bought in Pekin. One of them is an Asian Poppy which is apparently illegal in Europe (but legal here....we aren't breaking any laws that we know of...). They didn't enjoy being outside today so I didn't plant them...hopefully the survive!