Friday, August 12, 2011

stuff I made {baby version}

It seems we have had a lot of friends having babies recently, and its more fun and personal
(and better on the budget) to make them gifts.
I am a green girl, so you will see a theme with the fabrics I had on hand.

An embellished newborn onsie for Baby Pearl Jackson.
Is there anything cuter than a baby ruffle bum? I think not.
This one is supposed to be gender neutral for our dear friend Carita Holloway.
I realize that bows aren't very gender neutral, I do.
But I told her I would trim the ends to be cute knots instead of bows. :)
We can't wait to meet the new babies!

Thursday, August 11, 2011

Heaven from the Oven

Luke wanted to make a cake together for my birthday. I love cooking in the kitchen with my husband. Recently, my friends and I peeled, sliced and canned several hundred pounds of peaches and I was anxious to use some of them up.

Aren't they beautiful? I certainly think so.

We didn't follow a recipe but just kind of made things up as we went.

We started with butter, brown sugar and crushed pecans in the bottom of a spring form pan. This made it so easy to turn over at the end.
Then we lined it with the sliced peaches. We did it so carefully and made a pretty pattern, but with the pecans on top, you could hardly see the pattern when we finally turned it over.
Oh well.

This was all that was left of the jar of peaches. So I used my fancy new immersion blender that I got for my birthday to pure the rest of the peaches that were left from the jar of peaches.
I used a yellow cake mix to keep things easy and added the pureed peaches to that. Instead of the water the recipe like it called for, I used the syrup from the peaches.
We added some apple pie filling, minus the apples, that we had left over,
along with more crushed pecans.
The inverted cake. YUM!
I found a recipe for Caramel Sauce on Pioneer Woman, and it was seriously the best caramel sauce I have ever made. Luke is obsessed with this sauce.
It is life changing. You need to try this.

Served up with Bluebell, cause that makes everything better.

Monday, August 8, 2011

Some old, some new. Nothing blue.


These are a few pictures I have been loving this week. I don't see how you can not love them. And in no particular order:


Chester Evan is from Heaven and was possibly the sweetest toddler ever.
He's still pretty sweet, if you ask me.

Can someone explain why there is an egg crate on my face? How handsome is my daddy in this picture. I wish you could see my face instead of the silliness that is going on instead.
P.S. I loved this dress from Mexico. Embroidered peacocks? Yes please!

There was a carnival going on in a church parking lot that we drove past. Obviously we had to stop and document these creatures. Mini-ponies painted neon rainbow colors. I am sure they made some children very happy that day. It sure made us giggle for a while.

Grandma & Grandpa Greathouse on their wedding day. I am obsessed with the way he is looking at her. Grandma always talks about how in love they were that they had seven children. I love hearing her talk about how much she loved him. I can't wait to tell my grandchildren about how much I love my sweet husband.
It's a whole lot.

Grandpa Greathouse and Lukie Duke when he was so little.
Apparently he loved his Troll doll.
Good to know.
This picture is pretty much everyone's favorite picture of Grandpa and is prominently placed at Grandma's house. She always points to it to show me what a cute little boy Luke was.
And then she tells me he is still so cute. I, of course, already know this.

This looks like my third birthday? I love the pink tutu and leotard. I love the hanging balloons and crepe paper. The toy in my hands, however, always confused me.
I never really knew what to do with it.

FaceTime with LL for our birthdays makes me happy. He called me the next morning on my birthday and was telling me how he was at breakfast with friends and had been up all night.
I had been up all night too, working on a project I'll post soon.
He sounded very chipper and full of energy.
I was feeling totally wasted, exhausted, woozy, and completely ridiculous.
So I asked him the difference between turning 19 and turning 30.
I was going to point out how he was fine and I was afraid that I was going to die.
Instead, he said: Nineteen is a still a teenager and thirty is OLD.

Gee, thanks.

My husband is 22 days older than me, but we got to blow out candles together this weekend at Grandma's house with Aunt Maria & Abbey in town from California, Sweet Robin who made delish spaghetti, Rebecca, and Luke's parents. It was fun to have a family dinner on Sundays.
I love that my family always does that and I miss it.