Oh Happy Friday!

Dear rainy Friday, I love waking up to rain, especially since we haven't had much this summer!

Dear Carrots from my garden, you are so awesome, carrots may be my favorite thing I've grown this year!

Dear Church Rummage Sale, wow, so much fantastic junk! I bought a new $15 microwave for the Airstream and a $3 sewing machine because it was $3.

Dear fat night, this week I fried catfish, hushpuppies, and french fries. It tasted great but I felt nasty after eating all of that!

Dear Weekend, great to see you again and hopefully you'll be a great one!

Have a happy Friday and a great weekend everybody! 

What I'm Learning From My Backyard Garden

Tuesday Night's Harvest

I'm learning that squash and peas are easy to grow in our garden and have been super successful. I think this is our 5th squash from one plant this summer.

Bell Pepper Turning Red

 Bell peppers are great but they are tough to get all the way from green to red without something happening to them. As you can see this one is turning red, I hope it makes it and we get to eat it!

Carrots!

The seed packet said to thin out my carrots meaning, I needed to pick the carrot plants when they were young to space them out so they wouldn't get too crowded as they grew, but, I couldn't bring myself to pull up any of my little living plants but, now I see what happens when you don't thin out your plants, some get big and crowd out the little guys so they can't get very big.

The tomato plants have little green tomatoes growing! I started these plants from seed and they are just now producing, I hope I get lots of tomatoes for the rest of the summer, we'll see.

I've learned that not everything you plant will be a success! I planted a whole bunch of these Caladiums to fill this whole bed, but only one came up, and it came up just last week!

I've also learned that gardening is fun and rewarding, I love it!

Matt and I went to Sonic for 1/2 price shakes last night, mmmm good. I only got the mini because I already had ice cream earlier in the day, it's ok to eat ice cream twice on a summer day.

Happy Wednesday, I hope you have a great day!

Steamed Green Beans and Cheesy Squash

Thanks to our garden, I haven't had to go to the grocery store yet this week! I usually go 1-2 times a week for things but, this week, we've eaten off of the veggies and a rotisserie chicken ( I always make sure to have a whole roasted chicken in the fridge to add to salads, quesadillas, and many other things easily, quickly and cheaply!).

Cheesy Squash, Green Beans, Ravioli

Last night I made steamed green beans by boiling about an inch of water in a pan, adding the beans for 2-3 minutes, drain then let the beans cook in the same pan on low with about a tbls of olive oils, a clove of garlic chopped, some chopped onion, salt and pepper until everything else is done, about 8 minutes!

I also made roasted cheesy squash, this stuff is really really good! Set the oven to 425, slice your squash (I prefer long ways) and rub with olive oil. Lay out on a baking pan with some onion pieces (for flavor) add salt and pepper to taste. Roast in the oven for 10 minutes. I only cook it this long so that the squash is still a little firm and isn't cooked into oblivion so, if you want softer squash, cook it for 15-20 minutes, but you will need to flip it half way through cooking if you cook it longer.

When you take it out of the oven sprinkle a little cheese on top!

We also had chicken and mozzarella ravioli (I buy this at Costco!).

Good dinner with some of it coming from our garden!

Next, exercise. I've been running and lately I've tried to throw some strength training back into my routine. Side Note: After walking around Chicago for several days last week, I felt really healthy and firm, I wish I did more walking in my everyday life! I sit at my desk way too much!

Anyway, I love the Nike Training Club app and worked out to it one day this week (you should try it if you haven't already!) They have great strength training workouts.

But, yesterday I discovered the two cutest girls that run a business called, Tone it Up! They have workout videos on YouTube that they do on the beach! Yesterday I did the Malibooty workout, it was tough! Check out some of their fun videos if you're looking for new workout moves.

I struggled this week to get motivated to work out I think because it's been 90 plus degrees everyday! But, as long as I just start working out, after about 20-30 minutes I feel good and like I can keep going, it's getting started that's the hard part. So, if you're feeling drained from the heat right now too, just make yourself workout and then you'll get your groove and will be able to get through a workout!

Tonight I'm going to my first blogger event! I'm so excited! Of course I'll tell you all about it and have photos tomorrow!

Summer is the Best

Our strawberry plant produced us a beautiful little strawberry! We should have tomatoes and bell peppers soon too.

We also had a delicious summery salad for dinner tonight! I somewhat copied the recipe from here (I didn't make succotash, I just put corn in with the salad)-

The reason this salad is so good is because it is made of BBQ chicken, sweet potatoes, and lime (all things I love!)