OK. So this blogging thing is harder than I thought. Not the blog part, but the commitment to regular posts. Let me just say kudos to all of those bloggers who stay consistent even when it's summer, and/or they have kids and their kid's friends running through all the time, or sitting on the deck with a fresh cocktail with mint and basil from your garden sound fabulous.

So to just get my toes wet a bit again here on my blog I will just let you know that I have been really enjoying summer. Well the summer part. The part with having a senior who's about to be 18 around, not so much. Funny how that is. Oh how I love that boy! I'm proud of him and to be honest, he is a LOT like me. He works real hard on his passion of making a junior hockey team to go on to possibly a division one team some day. We had a great time taking his senior pictures! Here is a glimpse of some of them! So handsome I think!

© Eye Candy Creative.

Well has you can imagine. This type of commitment takes a LOT of time! So much time that chores seem impossible! Of course as any good mother who wants her kids to grow up appreciative, responsible and independent adults, I stay on him daily to get these minimum requirement chores done. So of course.... I'm his favorite person!

I keep holding on to the thought that when he makes it BIG one day, that when they interview him on TV, the first person after God that he gives glory to, is thanks to me, his mom! (crossing my fingers.)

Well this seems more like venting than a creative blog entry, so let me switch gears.  Here are some photos of my garden treasures. Enjoy and I promise I will be back to keep you up to date on my yarn adventures as well as some of the other photography I've been doing!!

Good morning! I'm waiting for a bit of troubleshooting assistance on my software for a project I'm working on, so thought it a good time to pop in on my blog and make myself an iced coffee!  Last Friday I made up a batch of coffee concentrate from a recipe I found on a terrific blog, thepioneerwoman.com.

I found the recipe and tweeted it and actually stop, dropped and whipped up a batch of the mix to try. Actually, the recipe calls for a whole pound of grounds, but since I thought I would test it out, I quartered the recipe and got quite a large amount anyway! When I got to the straining and filtering the grounds part that night, I didn't have cheese cloth as the recipe suggested, but I did pull off my french press off of my shelf and filtered it through that in a few batches and it worked great.

I also don't have a pretty little decanter yet so I have my glorious pampered chef large mixing bowl holding the concentrate now which works, but I couldn't find the cover so it has plastic wrap on it now. I'm surprised a hot dog hasn't ended up in it by now. I must look for a decanter as I believe this is something I will be doing from now on. Yum! I sweetened it with Truvia sweetener and since I'm "low-carbing" it right now, treated myself to real cream in it! Highly recommend!

Since, pictures are so popular on blogs, thought I would keep it real and take a couple of the coffee concentrate experiment in process. Please don't hold these pictures as a standard for my professional photography. What I actually did to take them was pull up my picture booth camera on my Macbook Pro laptop and snapped them that way. Quick, efficient!

  <<<< oh, remind me to leave the recipe for the bars on the counter in the background tomorrow! I had to whip them up for hockey banquet pot-luck! 4 ingredients!!!!!



What I thought was fun (okay it was strategic) is that my dishwasher quote made the picture! A friend of mine Amy is a rep of custom wall sayings, I can't think of the name of the company right now or I would mention it. ha! Also, my wonderful little TileSmile tile by the sink that reminds us all to "warsh" our hands. Warsh is how my mom always says, "wash", and I give her a hard time about it. Plus it lets me plug one of my favorite etsy.com sites. Tilesmile.etsy.com who made this tile for me!

Anyway, Ree Drummond over at thepioneerwoman.com has much better pics of her perfect iced coffee. Pretend my photos look like hers when you see it and when your there, spend some time on her site. My friend Meg recommended the site to me and it is really wonderful. Doubt if there is much "random" planning that goes into that site. It is lovely! In fact, I will make a shortcut on my links list to the right of my blog for you to make it even easier! I have never met Ree, but looking at her blog I think we would get together and both talk at the same time for hours and not miss a word either one said!