gardening love and rug washing

We washed the rugs one last time outside this morning and after, did some serious weeding at the garden! 

I forgot to show pictures last time of what the rug washing places are like here... 

These concrete bins have water, you wash with a brush and soap, you rinse, you wring them out in a little spinner thing (no picture sorry) and then you hang them to dry in the sun. 

Gardening photos:

The garden I've shown in a previous post, the most gorgeous one in the whole area. Her eye for planting pretty is amazing, as well as her weeding and green thumb! :)

Here are some flowers I passed in other folks gardens.

Someone has a serious plantation going on! Lol!

These are from our own...

You can see the seeds coming along!

A little inchworm!

The first of my asters...

Not too proud we have these here and there, but they make great photos!

Ah, I wish I could tattoo this color combo into my brain.

Another emerald beetle! Pretty and disgusting at the same time, isn't nature great? LOL!

 My nutella and chocolate cake didn't work out so well... I have lost some vital pieces to my frosting collection and ended up just smearing the nutella and chocolate frosting on the cake. Real bummer.

The cake is super rich and moist (has been for a few days now) and so filling and over the top good that we can't seem to even get through it. All you can handle is a few bites at a time so it's been slow to eat this. I've tried pawning it off on friends. Lol!

The recipe I used can be found HERE. I didn't make my frosting according to this recipe, because I didn't have enough nutella left. So I melted dark chocolate to make up for the other 1/2 cup we were lacking.

We're running low on days in this apartment... Thursday we move!!!

Thanks for reading!!

Sunflower garden

Our garden is gearing up towards fall... The berries are all about picked and have stopped production and the peas are just on their last leg as well. The fall hydrangea is blooming (see my last garden post for pictures of that) and my asters are looking as though they're going to be opening in the next week or two! I love this time of the year, even though it is quite sad in a way to see the summer ending. 

But I love fall. A lot. And as I grow older/live in Finland longer, that love grows each year. 

There is still some summer love left to be had though, the roses are blooming on their second round and the sunflowers have mostly opened! 

No matter how many rose pictures (ahem, flower pictures in general) I take, I still fall in love with them. This camera rocks my socks. These roses even more so!

Double-headed!

Here is a rather good example of the difference in raspberry species. The smaller one was on the garden when we took over, we added some of the jumbo brand when we started  here all those years ago.

We ate this salad after our gardening trip: tuna, chickpeas, tomato, cucumber, bell pepper, nectarine, lettuce, feta and caesar dressing. Mmmhmm. 

I made another batch of nutella meringues, but I failed miserably to actually take them to school like I had planned. They are just too good to share! Lol! 

I baked a nutella cake, but I am frosting it today, I want to play around with those decorating tips and such. Hopefully it turns out nice enough that I can post pictures and not be embarrassed, haha. 

Our puppy is not so much a puppy anymore... He's just a couple days shy of 11 months. :( He still acts like a puppy though, even though he weighs well over 40kg/80lbs and is 72cm/28in tall (when last measured at the shoulders). My baby is a big guy!

That's all today. I have packing, repairing Koda damage (from puppy days) and cake decorating on my agenda today. I could probably take a look at school stuff too. Oh gee. 

Thanks for reading!

foodz.

Since not much crafting or gardening, or anything really, has been going on here, I figured I'd share some awesome recipes we've tried out! 

We made this General  Tso's chicken a few nights ago. It was so easy and I can't praise it enough. The only downside is that when my husband ate it (cold) for lunch the next day, he said the chicken wasn't crispy anymore. He said it was still good though. :) 

Link here: my name is snickerdoodle.com

Then we made chicken pot pie last night. I loosely followed all 4 of the first results when I googled "chicken pot pie" recipe. In other words, I fried chicken, added some chicken bouillon cubes, pepper and then dumped in two small bags of mixed veggies, a couple spoons of cornstarch. Poured in cream and milk and then put it into two oven dishes. Rolled out frozen store-bought pie crust and put it on top. Poked holes in it. And then baked it till it looked right. :) This is something Mr.Husband always wants to make and something I am not so crazy about, but this was actually really good!

For dessert we ate these nutella meringues. All I will say, is you're crazy not to. Best way to put eggs and sugar to use. I'm in love! 

Link: http://creampuffsinvenice.ca/2011/02/05/nutella-the-world-needs-you/

Off to school I go!

Thanks for reading!

New honeymoon blog link

Hello!

Thanks for popping in... Nothing much in the our world going on, just school and packing... Dog washing and the like.

I realized the honeymoon blog had some bug in it or something, the older posts pictures wouldn't show. It was a real bummer because I love going back and reading it and I wondered if those who may have checked out the blog when I posted the link hadn't been able to see the pictures either. I reloaded the problem and fixed it, so please feel free to check it out again, it works now! (at least for me!) 

 http://anneliandkevinhoneymoon.blogspot.com/

Lily love.

I'll let the pictures speak for themselves. Although I will say, my husband asked me yesterday "what smells like dirty diapers around here?" while sitting next to the vase of lilies... Lol!

Even the shadows are pretty.

That's it for me, thanks for checking in!

ginger and currants

Good morning! 

Bright and early at 8 a.m. I am up and at 'em. I'm tired, but the dogs can't walk themselves and now that I am up, I get to share my pictures from yesterday evening. In one afternoon/evening I managed to take about 170 pictures! 

So here we go!

We made candied ginger and ginger ale syrup again, the recipe is found here.

 See that syrupy goodness down there? Well ok, more like juice really. You could boil it down to more of a thick syrup if you wanted to though.

 They dry for a while, overnight is good...

 

End result was about 1,5 liters from a double batch.This was just the pretty bottle, lol!

While that was brewing, I had some more photo fun...

And then my parents came to pick us up for a garden trip. Photo fun continued...

I took so many lily pictures that I think I have to create a post for them. It's just too much for one, ya know. 

I looked up from my currant bush to see where the rest of the folks were... they were in bushes too!

 That is my dad in the raspberries...

That was my hubby in the currants...

Here is my mom picking currants...

This pansy above has ALL the colors of a pansy. I think if you click on it, you can get a bigger picture of it. Sit there and marvel at the colors!!! :)

Our currant bounty, to be made into juice.

The cucumber patch is INCREDIBLE! In all of our years gardening here, we have never had such a successful cucumber year. 

I think my dad is tickled. 

They even had to prop it up a bit to be able to walk through to the zucchinis!

The zucchinis are way to big this year... I don't eat them (I ate so much in 2009 that I still think of them and gag) and the hubby doesn't cook them on his own...and my parents only eat so much... but they are fun to grow. They never disappoint and they turn into missiles like this... Anyone want some zucchini?

After gardening, the hubby made BLT's and I made a big salad with homemade ranch dressing from Joy the Baker. The ranch was a bit hard to make, since (the mayo here tastes weird to me) we had to make our own mayonnaise first and it was a bit on the vinegary side. I think maybe if I add a little sugar it'll balance out? 

It was still tasty though, looking forward to eating a bowl of ranchy salad here and there this weekend! :)

Now I think we are going to have to tackle packing some more (ugh)...

Thanks for reading!