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15 minute posts, BIG news, domesticity, Family Matters, gardening, house stuff!, movies, Niece-com-poops, party party, Shop Talk, the sticks
So. Much. Going. On.
So here’s a quick flick through my camera stream lately. First a photo taken by Rapunzel of her own hand. She’s not afraid to grab the camera and get in there with the interesting shots. I love that.
Another one of my old saguaro. She can’t believe that I never took this shot myself. Nope, I didn’t. Too prickly!
We had a little tiff at dinner so I’m feeling a bit sentimental as I post these photos. Teenagers are so complicated!
I spray-painted an old wooden chair my mom had laying around. I wanted to give the chair its own post but it’s not like I’m really a DIY home-decorator blog or anything so I’m just going to smash it in here instead.
Spray, spray, spray. Don’t you love it when you forget to change the ISO setting on your camera and the last thing you shot was a product shot inside at 3200 and then you go outside and over-expose everything so bad that your backyard looks like heaven from the 70’s?
Maybe that’s just my version of heaven from the 70’s.
Anyway, the chair looks fantastic! It went from country bumpkin to eclectic mess which is sort of good except I hate eclectic mess. I love the chair though. I just need to de-clutter my house a little so it can shine on its own.
It’s already a favorite for family meetings.
And vain self-portraits.
Speaking of, I need some better self-portraits because I’m A PUBLISHED AUTHOR NOW!!!! And I had to put some dumb hand-held frumpy mom shot in the back of my book. I know I could pay someone to take a real portrait but I like to keep it real (or cheap). I am self-published after all, it’s not like I have a big book-contract deal. But I do have an awesome agent/publisher friend who is hooking it all up. I’m so excited. This is really a dream come true for me.
It dropped on Amazon yesterday for my birthday! This is just a soft launch. I have two more books to illustrate and then we’re going to launch a blog tour with giveaways and prints and a book party (squee!) and I’ll probably talk about it so much you will all get sick of me. But until then check it out! $2.99 yo! It’s only on the Kindle right now I think but you can get a free kindle ap for your mac or ipad. I’ll share more when I get the hang of it. I’m new at this still. (Also available in the UK and Germany)
In the meantime I have two books still to illustrate! (And many more after that I hope) I’m so behind. If you see me goofing off, feel free to kick me in the butt. I’ve got work to do!!! It’s always feast or famine around here.
Yes, my birthday was fantabulous. Thank you for asking. We kept it low-key with a night out with my best beach gal pal DMA and a new friend on Friday and then a family dinner with the niece-com-poops and my Aunt Keren and Grandma on the day itself. My grandma made me my favorite birthday dinner (peanut encrusted Thai chicken—soooooooooo yummy you could die) and Rapunzel made my cake. How can I be mad at her when she’s so sweet like that. Teenagers! She kills me.
Anyway, it was super sweet and fun and the kids had a blastola swimming in Grandma’s community pool.
I love summer.
Why yes, I did make a peach pie. I know! All this fun going on when I have work to do!!! This is what I’m talking about. I should be shackled to my laptop but no, I’m in the kitchen pretending to be Martha Stewart or something. It’s just that it’s summer and the fruit is going bananas (or more correctly, peaches) and it’s such a wonderful new thing to me that I just can’t bear to let it rot! It’s me and the fruit flies and I’m not about to let them win.
Peaches, zucchinis, apricots, plums, sugar snap peas and soon tomatoes. I can’t even keep up with my camera. Life does not stop for the weary!
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Mary, Mary, Quite Contrary
How does your garden grow? It grows very well, thank you. In fact it’s growing too well. My tomatoes grew faster than I could keep up with and now the branches are huge and heavy and not off the ground like they are supposed to be because I didn’t tie them up in time. I’ve been doing my best, climbing through the jungle of leaves and vines and green tomatoes and tying them up as tightly as I can before the branches themselves break from the weight but it’s not going so well. I may lose a lot of them.
Which won’t be the end of the world because I think I have about a thousand green tomatoes. If I lose 50 of them, I think I’ll still have more than I could ever eat, can and make salsa with.
An unfortunate thing happened this last weekend. I decided to leave my dog, Holly, out for the day and let the neighbor feed her that night instead of taking her to my mom’s like I usually do. I didn’t want to do this because the weather has been oppressively hot and my dog, who used to be an outdoor dog and stayed outside for five years of her life, is spoiled rotten now and likes to spend most of her time indoors, sleeping under the air vent. It was so sad. As I locked her out she looked at me with giant puppy dog eyes and her tongue hanging out.
But sometimes dogs have to stay outside. The patio was cool and shaded and she had some nice cement to lie on, I thought. So I put it out of my mind and went onto our normal weekend activities in Orange County.
Well, Holly got hot. Do you know what dogs do when they’re hot and bored? They dig into the nice cool dirt in the tomato patch. She dug to China and made all kinds of tunnels through the tomato branches on her way there. Broken branches, busted leaves, green tomatoes everywhere. It was not a happy sight to come home to. But I couldn’t be too mad at her. I probably would have done the same thing if I’d been left outside all day in one-hundred degree weather when I’m used to the five star resort that is the indoors.
So I’ve forgiven her and promised I’ll never leave her out again.
Anybody have any good fried green tomato recipes?
