Squash, Anyone?

We tried an experiment this year. After some reading on the internet, I figured we could make a try at growing part of our garden over our septic field. I know, I know, don't think about it too much. Most of the research I read said that if you have clay soil (which we do), then all the "yucky stuff" gets filtered out in the first couple of inches up from the drainage pipes, leaving all the "good stuff" (i.e. things that made us have the greenest, thickest patch of tumbleweeds this side of the Mississippi. Wait, do tumbleweeds grow East of the Mississippi? Never mind...) to feed the plants.

Point is, we've been eating off of the garden for weeks now, and no one has gotten sick. Sam growing a third ear doesn't count. No really, he's not, I'm just fooling with you.


Is this a jungle, you may ask? No, it's just the squash patch. You're looking at the butternut squash, spaghetti squash, and pumpkins. And it IS a jungle. I haven't been able to get in there for 6 weeks. I think I'll just wait for the first frost before I try to venture into that jumble of growth. The fuzzy patch at the bottom of the photo is our watermelon section. We have 6 lovely watermelon growing.



And these, my friends, are the cause of all my problems. These are the 5 bushes of summer squash. We have 1 zucchini, 2 yellow squash, and 2 patty pan squash. Pictures really don't do this justice. The patty pan squash, in front, is the largest I've ever seen. It's almost 6 feet in diameter (and was only supposed to be 3).


Here are my lovely butternut squash. I have no idea how many we have, since I can't get in there, but it's a lot!

And the yellow squash. They look tranquil and lovely, but don't be fooled!

Zucchini. Only one plant, so we're doing better, here.


This is the spaghetti squash. We've got a lot of these, too.

And bugs! Whoa! I think that there are thousands and thousands living in our patch. I'm not exaggerating. In the morning, there are so many bees buzzing around in the patch that I think we should get a cut from the beekeeper!

And here, my friends, is the problem. This is the squash that I have harvested in the last 24 hours. No joke. 45. Forty-five squash. We could be a math lesson for Bethany's kindergarten class. Wait, they don't count that high in kindergarten.




We have eaten in the past two weeks: summer squash gratin, 2 types of zucchini bread, sauteed summer veggies with herbs, ratatouille (so, so yummy!), stuffed squash, and just plain steamed with butter. I have grated and frozen 10 sandwich bags full of squash. I have 3 gallon sized bags full of cubed frozen squash. Please, send help.

Come to my house. And take some of our squash home with you. Please, please, please...
Or at least send your favorite summer squash recipe.

And, I think, that our garden adventure was a bit more success than I can handle.

First Day of School

Here are my three little munchkins. I can't believe I have three children in school. I'm starting to get looks at back to school night.

Sam is starting second grade. He's recently lost some teeth, which gives him that cute jack-o-lantern look.

Our big kindergartener, Bethany.

Bekah, who is too, too cool for fourth grade. Okay, so she really does like school. She'll be 10 in a couple of months. YIKES! When did that happen?

Waiting for the bus. Bethany told me after school that riding the bus was her favorite part of school! Whatever happened to recess?

Here it comes!

And, off they go. Now what do I do with myself?

Oh, yeah - I have this little gal to play with!

May you all enjoy your first day of school, too! And I wish I could send you all a fresh bouquet of sharpened pencils (name that movie).

Remember that Project for Imaginisce?

Just to mix things up a little, and give you something else to look at besides the endless pictures of the Family Photo Shoot, I thought that I'd show you all the projects I made for Imaginisce a couple of months ago. One of the best things about my work is getting to see the new product lines months before the come on the market. The downside is, I can't post any projects I've done with them until they're released. These lines have officially been released now, so I can finally put them here on my blog!

These projects were for "Fairest of Them All" - a darling Princess line. This is a gift bag, princess wand, and purse. I also made a cute "princess ball" invitation, but I finished literally seconds before I had to ship everything off, so I didn't get a chance to photograph it.

Here's one layout, also using the "Fairest" line. Click on any pictures to see a larger version with more detail.

The next few projects are from "Snowy Jo," the upcoming Christmas line. They asked me to work on neighbor gift ideas with this line as well as scrapbook pages. It was a little funny to be working on Christmas neighbor gifts in May!

This is a little neighbor gift idea. The jar has hot cocoa in it. (I have to admit, that I probably wouldn't ever put this much work into neighbor gifts. I'm lucky if we give out any neighbor gifts at all! I guess I should do better this year and get it all done in August - ha ha ha! Like that's going to happen!) The little snowman is made up of a series of stickers. I think he's pretty adorable.
Sorry, this picture is a bit overexposed, so Bekah is kind of washed out. The paper is really cute, though!

I wish that I'd had time to photograph all of the pages from this little recipe album. They turned out SO cute! The album has 8 Christmas recipes inside, and each recipe has a cute little rubon on it. The gingerbread man is a stamp.
I thought this Christmas Journal/Wishbook turned out well, too. The Christmas tree is a build-a-sticker page, so it was very easy and quick to make.

These last projects are cards using Snowy Jo, Fairest, and Hallowhimsy, another new Imaginisce line. The cards were supposed to be simple - I'm always good at being simple.