WAR

I am currently at war. I have been doing battle for over a week now. And while I have won small battles (I think) I have yet to win the war completely. Who am I so desperately fighting? Squash bugs. Yes, sad I know. I am desperately trying to save my zucchini plant from the bugs that decided to make it their home. My life has reached a pathetic level in the gardening department. So pathetic, that I have had multiple dreams about my zucchini plant. I think my obsession has reached extremes because the war has gone on for too long. When I first saw the bugs and the little rows of eggs a few of the leaves, I immediately saturated the plant with poison(seriously I dumped a ton of on, and I dumped it right on the bugs that dared to show themselves). I also took the leaves from the plant that had eggs on them and threw them away. I would have thought that that would have done the trick.

But every day I am devastated when I go outside and find another leaf or two with eggs on it! I have since sprayed the plant with bug and egg killer, and yet every day...more eggs! ( I seriously think that there would be hundreds of bugs in my zucchini plant if I wasn't killing off their young.) My poor zucchini plant will be out of leaves soon at this rate. Today I applied another round of powder poison. I don't know how any bug could survive the torture that I've given it. I'm determined to win. We're still getting zucchini, and I've heard that these bugs can destroy a plant in a few days...so I'm hoping I'm close to winning my war.

Owen can put himself to bed now.

Cute Picture

I wish I had the skills to photo shop this face...
onto this shot of awesome hair!

Memories

I've seen this on a few people's blog now and thought it sounded kind of interresting. I'ts always funny to hear what other people remember about you, so I thought I'd give it a try.

1. As a comment on my blog, leave a memory that you and I had together. It doesn't matter if you knew me a little or a lot, anything you remember!

2. Next, re-post these instructions on your blog and see what people remember about you!

Please be sure to only leave comments that make me look good! Just kidding, I don't care what you write...I just want to hear it!

Jam

Yesterday I finally got my freezer jam made. I've had a ton of strawberries in the freezer just waiting for me to do something with them. Ains has been really sick and slept or watched movies ALL DAY yesterday, which allowed me time to make jam (and fiddle around with my blog settings). So today we have been eating our fair share of bread and jam. I was outside and Owen came up to me looking so proud holding up a piece of bread that he had spread jam on all by himself.
He looked so cute, but I was a little worried about the condition of my kitchen. I went in and my little helper had "jammed" several slices of bread. (I've been finding jam on random pieces of bread in the bag all day too.) He was very responsible with his work and even pushed the chair that he had been using to reach the counter back over to the table. I knew which chiar he had used based on the incredible amounts of jam that were on one particular chair.
Poor Ains though has missed all of the fun again today. Her stomach is really bothering her. She's had some nasty symptoms that I won't go into detail about here. She insists on carrying around a throw-up bowl even though she isn't throwing up. She woke up for a while this morning and then was out until 1:00. Every time she wakes up she tries to tell me that she wants to go swimming or to the park. Not likely. She was supposed to get to play with her friend yesterday and her play date just continues to get postponed, she's so sad about it. I just hope she's better soon. I think we're all getting a little stir crazy.

Zucchini

We have a plethora of zucchini at this house. Seriously, we are being over run (this might be partly due to the fact that I pick my zucchini when they are about the size of Kansas). We have given a few away and yesterday I shredded what we haven't been able to eat and ended up with about a gallon and a half of frozen zucchini. I still have a massive zucchini in my fridge. And it's not like we haven't been eating the stuff. I put it in everything. Here are some of the things we have had since our zucchini plant went haywire...

Zucchini bread (several loaves)

Shish-ka-bobs

Zucchini fajitas (surprisingly good)

Pasta with roasted veggies (Shelly's recipe, this was so good we've had it twice and I cooked some for dinner for another family as well)

Regular old fried Zucchini

Grilled zucchini

And last but not least...Zucchini brownies. These were amazing! I made them last night when we had some friends over for dinner and no one could even tell there was zucchini in them. I also took out most of the oil in the recipe so they were nearly fat free brownies. And they were yummy! They do need frosting though...anyone have a good recipe for fat free chocolate frosting. If so, I'm sure we could combine our efforts and make millions with our fat free brownie concoction. So here's the recipe for the best 'healthy' brownies you will ever eat.

1/2 cup vegetable oil (I took out most of the oil and substituted applesauce, next time I think I will take out all the oil)
1 1/2 cups white sugar
2 teaspoons vanilla extract
2 cups all-purpose flour
1/2 cup unsweetened cocoa powder
1 1/2 teaspoons baking soda
1 teaspoon salt
1 - 1 1/4 cups pureed zucchini (be sure to shred the zucchini and then puree it for better disguising...this way there will be no zucchini chunks in your brownies)


6 tablespoons unsweetened cocoa powder
1/4 cup margarine
2 cups confectioners' sugar
1/4 cup milk
1/2 teaspoon vanilla extract

DIRECTIONS
Preheat oven to 350 degrees F . Grease and flour a 9x13 inch baking pan (flour pan with cocoa).
In a large bowl, mix together the oil, sugar and 2 teaspoons vanilla until well blended. Combine the flour, 1/2 cup cocoa, baking soda and salt; stir into the sugar mixture. Fold in the zucchini and walnuts. Spread evenly into the prepared pan.
Bake for 25 to 30 minutes in the preheated oven, until brownies spring back when gently touched. To make the frosting, melt together the 6 tablespoons of cocoa and margarine; set aside to cool. In a medium bowl, blend together the confectioners' sugar, milk and 1/2 teaspoon vanilla. Stir in the cocoa mixture. Spread over cooled brownies before cutting into squares.

I wish you all lived nearby so that I could supply the zucchini for you to try these out. If you live by me....come on over, if not, go get a zucchini and give these a try!

BTW: I happened upon this recipe today and I'm pretty sure we will be trying it out for dinner tonight. Anyone have any other recipes we should try?

Before and After's

Well, the "remodel" is now complete. John surprised me and installed our new sink this week while I was at Enrichment. Isn't he full of surprises lately? So now I can finally post before and after pictures. Unfortunately my before pictures don't capture the true grossness of my old things. So I'll try to explain.
The sink had several chips in it...although only the big one I gave it is visible. It also had permanent black streaks all over it, and the bottom was stained yellow from our hard water because the finish was completely gone.

I love my new faucet. I've wanted a pullout faucet for a long time, and although I wasn't able to get one of the cool $500 faucets, I am still loving mine!

Here is the kids old bathroom shot. Their linoleum was actually in the best condition. The only problem with theirs was that there was a bubble in the flooring next to the tub. Oh, and there was ton's of little tiny flecks of red paint on it due to sloppy painters in the past.

This is the old shot of the laundry room. I wish you could see all the scuffs and dings in the floor, there were lots. But, apparently my camera needs higher mega pixels in order to get a shot of that.

And here is the before of the master bath. It might just look ugly because of the green diamonds, but if you could look at it up close you would see that is was truly disgusting. By far the grossest in the house. There was black grime in the little creases that grossed me out. I'm just grateful that it is gone and I never have to look at that layer of grime again. It's kind of weird that I have lived in some crummy places and I've never had linoleum as gross as this.

So now I have nice clean, and updated floors and a new sink. (Thanks for doing it all John!) I wish that I had some 'during' shots. But I just didn't think to take out my camera while we were busy taking out toilets!

My list of things to do in this house is slowly disappearing. I love the way that everything turned out, and I have decided that based on the small amount of choosing I had to do for these repairs, I think I might not ever be able to build a house. I get way to stressed out over little things.