White Cucumbers

Last fall, my friends and I visited the beautiful Landis Valley Museum, just outside of Lancaster, Pennsylvania. It is a really neat restored and recreated small village and farm, with tons of interesting stuff to see. I understand they are always doing demonstrations and things. The Union Army was there the day we visited. We could have spent several more hours exploring, but we were tired. As with all good museums, we ended the day by perusing their gift shop. Where they sell heirloom seeds. Yeah. You know that was trouble. Those little paper packets hold so much promise! It is easy to go overboard. In fact, the white cucumbers were the only seeds I managed to get started at all this year.

Maybe I got them in too late. Maybe they didn't get the right sun/temperature/soil conditions. Maybe I left them on the vine too long and they got too big. Or maybe white cucumbers just aren't as good as they sound. We were not impressed with the flavor. They looked pretty, though.

Yellow Pear Tomatoes

I guess I wasn't sure what to expect from these, having compulsively picked up so many varieties of tomato at the plant nursery. As it turned out, they are a sort of cherry tomato. Sweet, yes, but the can't even begin to compare to my Sweet Millions.The plant is a heavy producer, we had way more of these little guys than we could eat. The were very pretty in salads and salsa, but you could easily get that color from a more flavorful tomato. I won't plant this variety again, but I'm glad I tried something new.

Sweet Millions Cherry Tomatoes

A bowl full of cherries!

Cherry tomatoes, that is. Our all-time favourite sweet summer snacker, the Sweet Millions variety of cherry tomato is one we didn't even plant this year. But enough volunteers came up to keep us well supplied for tomato-basil-mozzarella salad. And we still had enough to share with our neighbor.

But I can tell you, I will definitely plant this variety- on purpose- next year. Picking through the tangle of volunteers sprawled all over the ground was no fun. I have half a mind to try them in the hanging baskets on my porch...

How Oliver Spent His Summer

Sorry we've been gone for so long. But we are going to get back into the swing of things. I have lots of pictures to post; tomatoes, embroidery, clean living room, and of course, Oliver.

Oli spent as much time as possible on the porch this summer. He does so enjoy sunning himself. Even when it is too hot for the rest of us, he wants to be out.

He particularly loves lying in wait on the front porch to jump out and startle passers-by. I'm always surprised how many people know him by name.

We'll have more posts very soon, I promise. And we'll try to keep up with our blogging a bit better.

Mosaic Tile Pattern Designer

I found it!
http://americanolean.com/mosaic_design.cfm

Turns out it was American Olean, I just overlooked it somehow.

This mosaic pattern design tool is my favorite.

Hex and Square and Pennyround Tiles!

My dear friend Josh is hard at work on his old house. His upcoming project is the downstairs bath. Tucked in under the staircase to the second floor, it is a tiny space. Currently, it has a sink and toilet, but Josh plans to steal enough space from the adjoining kitchen to add a shower stall.

Josh also plans to revamp his upstairs bath in the future, so just like us, he is making sure he has all the necessities covered before he tears things out upstairs.

For his tiny downstairs bath, Josh has his mind set on 8" square tiles. Normally, everything Josh does to his antique house is perfect, so I was surprised at this. I think he should use small mosaic tiles, be it hex, square or penny round.


To this, I have compiled a short list of links to help sway him to my way of thinking. I thought I would share them with you, too.

Loads of gorgeous pictures at American Restoration Tile:
http://www.restorationtile.com/index.html

For the love of marble tile:
http://www.besttile.com/index.php?mact=Products,cntnt01,details,0&cntnt01category=Marble%20Collection&cntnt01pagelimit=12&cntnt01summarytemplate=Category-Line-List&cntnt01productid=285&cntnt01returnid=99

Envision your room with American Olean:
http://ao.swatchbox.com/EnvisionYourRoom/main.asp
http://americanolean.com/catalog.cfm?c=51

If you feel like playing with patterns, check out Freestyle from marbledesigner.com:
http://www.marbledesigner.com/index.html
Or mosaic maximizer:
http://www.mosaicmaximizer.com/max/MaxP.html

I haven't sent him my list yet. I remember playing with a mosaic tile pattern creator that was even better than the two above. I thought it might have been DalTile or American Olean, but no. Can anybody help me out?


Any other links I can send to Josh to help him fall in love with mosaic tiles?

The Best Ever Birthday Present

Yesterday morning Oliver hopped up in bed with me, giving me kisses, nuzzling and cuddling with me. So sweet. He listened attentively while I told him this story:

"Oliver, did you know that five years ago today, you came to live with mommy and daddy? Do you even remember that? Mommy remembers that day very well."

It was my birthday, middle of the week, a Thursday, and we had nothing special going on, so I worked as normal. Lewis had the day off, so I set some chicken aside in the fridge and all the dry ingredients and tools out on the counter for him to make no-peek-chicken casserole. It takes about two hours in the oven, and I wanted him to have it ready to eat as soon as I got home because grandma Gloria was expecting us for birthday cake dessert that evening.

I hadn't been feeling well all day, and I just wanted to get home, eat and rest. I called Lewis on our drive home, sitting in traffic. He was cagey, wouldn't give me a straight answer about where he was or what he was doing. I got annoyed. I could tell he was in the car, which meant there was no way dinner was ready.

Hot, tired, sick and very grouchy, I stormed into the house to tell him something like, it's my birthday, the least you could do is have dinner ready for me when I got home!

Halfway to the kitchen I stopped in my tracks. I had spotted this: A little puffball of golden fluff dashing across the kitchen floor.

"Is that a puppy?!?!"

Lewis tells me I skidded across the kitchen on my knees to greet Oli. I don't even remember. By then I was cuddling, kissing and crying into his downy fur.

My 27th birthday present:We eventually made it to dessert at grandma Gloria's. Everyone forgave us for being late when we walked in with this little guy.That night he slept in a laundry basket. Can you imagine? He was so tiny, only 7 weeks old when he came home to us. What an angel.

Violets Embroidered Pillowcases

This is the Violets pattern from Tobin.I did a pretty good job of using the thread I had on hand, and this time I matched my colors pretty closely to those recommended by Tobin. I think there could have been a higher contrast between the two shades of purple, though. And the green isn't a shade I normally use, but it worked nicely here. Overall, I am very happy with how this turned out.

I used DMC cotton perle #8 in these colors:

Very Dark Lavender #208

Dark Lavender #209

Dark Lemon #444

Ultra Dark Pistachio Green #890

The Tomatoes are Rolling In!

This is a little basket I sent over to my neighbor. She always loves my cherry tomatoes, but I don't think I'll have many this year. We had lots of volunteer plants, but I didn't purposely plant any of my favourite variety, sweet millions. That was probably a mistake.

So, we have a selection here. One each of black heirloom and white beauty, a handful of tigerellas, yellow pears and sweet millions.I guess I expected them to be bigger, but I'm kind of glad to have some snack size tomatoes. The yellow pears are nice and sweet. It is easy to see how they got their name.The white beauty is kind of a creamy yellow when ripe. You can see four more behind this one, they will probably turn over the next couple of days. It is funny, this big one was sitting on the windowsill all week and I watched it turn in just one day. It seemed every time I went to the kitchen sink on Sunday it was a little less green, a little more yellow.Ah, my black heirloom. Not really black, but not purple either. They smell amazing. Great with bacon in a blt sandwich.

Tigerella Tomatoes

So, here we have a colander of tigerellas (and maybe green zebras), in various stages of ripeness.

The one at the far bottom, the red and yellow stripey one, is the most ripe and ready to eat.
The red and green stripey one will be ready to eat in a few days.
The ones at the bottom, the white and green stripey ones, won't be ripe till some time next week.
And the three that are yellow and green stripey might be green zebra, in which case they are probably ripe. I cut one up for my salad this evening. Such pretty color.

Hmm. All those green seeds. Maybe it could have waited another day?

I diced it up and threw it on top of my salad for dinner. The verdict is still out. I thought it was a bit tangy, but I've been craving sweet stuff the last few days, so maybe my taste buds are off. On the other hand, maybe it wasn't quite ripe yet.