Why buy the ___ when the ___ is free?

No, not milk & cows....I'm talking about green onions! I'm sure you read my post from yesterday and know by now that I grow my own green onions (aka chives), but did you know that you can do it for super cheap and SUPER easy? Here's what you do:

Buy a bunch of green onions from your local grocery store (stay with me here), use what you want of the tops for potatoes or salads or whatever and then when all that is left is about an inch of green above the bulb, bury it somewhere so that the greens are all that stick up from the ground. Water regularly. As anyone who knows me already knows, I HATE to water things and in fact, am worthless without my sprinkler system (with the few exceptions of plants on my deck that stare at me every morning). So I just put my chive bulbs in a small planter and plopped it down in the middle of my vinca (which is already on sprinkler timers) and VOILA! I bought ONE bunch of chives last spring and have not had to buy another since. They grow back super fast so you always have a plentiful supply and we should know because we use them on everything. I just go out and harvest some with scizzors any time a recipe calls for them and it regrows itself for the next recipe. Why buy chives when the ones in your garden are free?

What to Make

I'm always looking for a new way to make chicken and this time I found it in the most unexpected place: My husband.

We were gone for a week to Oregon and he was forced to fend for himself for dinner and to my surprise, he went online and searched for chicken marinade recipes and made the following one from things we usually already have around the house(so easy a daddy could do it - haha):

Mix together sliced ginger (he used powdered), minced garlic (we have it jarred), the juice of one lemon (we keep it in a bottle), brown sugar (he used the last of the bag and didn't tell me), olive oil (he used the last of my bottle & didn't tell me), soy sauce (he used the last of the bottle and didn't tell me) and sliced green onion (from my garden - YAY!). Just mix all of that together and let it sit on the chicken for about 4 hours or overnight then grill.

So when I made it the week we got back, because he claimed it was the "best chicken I ever had", I had to go out and buy all of the ingredients because we were out of brown sugar, soy sauce, olive oil, fresh garlic, and fresh lemons, but I have to say, it really was spectacular. I chopped up some vegis and skewered it with the chicken for some shish-ka-bobs that were uber-yum.

Cabo Wabo

WOOO HOOO!

I can't wait! Looking forward to having my "TOES" in the sand!

Spooktacular Dancing

The kids got a singing witch a couple of years ago for Halloween and it has become an annual event that when we take her out of storage to decorate for the season, the rest of the day (read: week) is spent listening to "Ghouls Just Want to Have Fun". Although my little man wasn't quite sure about this witch, he decided that she was nice and offered her his pumpkin (however fleetingly). This year my little ballerina was in rare form:

Falling all around us

Just before we left last month, the kids, hubby and I went for a walk in the neighboring national forest. Unfortunately, we wound up leaving shortly thereafter and I never got a chance to post the pictures. So here goes:

Just around the Bend

We spent several days while we were up North, visiting with friends and tromping around in our old stomping ground. While we were there, we stayed in a Yurt the first night, then in a cabin the other nights. Both were new experiences for all of us.

The highlight for me was the hike we took out the the spot where my sweetheart proposed to me. To mark the spot by the river, he took a huge rock and shoved it down into a split tree. Over the last seven years, the tree has grown around the rock and has, in fact, crushed it in half. The rock is so stuck now that there is no way that it will ever come out without chopping all or part of the tree down. What an amazing reminder.

The highlight for our little guy was the first time he peed, standing up, in the forest. I am sure it was a much more exciting experience than using the training toilet that mommy has for him at home.

Here's photos of some of our highlights:

So much for staying home!

Well, I thought we'd try to stay home until Halloween, but as usual, fate had other plans for us. Great-Grandma & Grandpa Tanyon have been planning on going out to Oceanside to camp in their RV for a while now and finally got time this weekend to go out. Well, we had promised to go out and visit them when they went, so Saturday morning bright and early we headed to the train station and spent the weekend with them, playing in the sand. The kids had a great time and it was a nice relaxing break for hubby and I as well.
Our little darling girl said that her favorite part of the weekend was playing with Great-Grandma in the waves (which apparently, she is no longer afraid of) but both our little guy's and my favorite part of the weekend was building sandcastles and getting dirty. I have to say though, if I had gotten as dirty as he did, it probably wouldn't have been my favorite part anymore.