One More Tea Party (Leah's B-Day 09)

I got through it. Marathon decorating of Leah's room for her birthday and planning the birthday Tea Party. Actually, there wasn't that much planning for the party because I'm becoming an expert at quick Tea Party's. The most involved process for me now is the invitations.

I just threw together stuff to eat the day of. Which included peanut butter and jelly sandwiches, turkey pesto sandwiches (of course with crusts removed), snack foods, pigs in a blanket, fruit and Chinese chicken salad. We bought decorations as we shopped and picked up some balloons at the store. While at Costco we saw these flowers that we had to have because they matched everything so well. Leah fell in love with them and has been requesting flowers ever since!

 

Leah's cousins Kyra, Alivia and Sam were able to come which made Leah's day. They spent most of the party running around outside in the wind playing Peter Pan and other imaginary games.

Give Sam a balloon and he will be happy for a while! He's so cute...

 

I should note that the day of her party I was thoroughly worn out (regardless of pregnancy) and not feeling well. Which explains why I never got around to getting Leah dressed...and why she ended up dressing herself in this scandalous belly shirt dress-up ensemble with no shoes and scraggly hair. Oh well!

I did have a surprise when Kellen showed up to the party with my birthday present. He bought me a Flip video camera! I was SO excited and surprised...when I opened the box I almost started crying (again I was exhausted) with the pure thoughtfulness of it! I'll have to post video clips later.

I have a very thoughtful mother-in-law. She made a bunch of tea party hats for the party and had everyone wear them...we did request tea party attire!

Isn't Harmony beautiful in her hat?

Anything for Leah...

Leah's favorite cake is vanilla with strawberries. What a coincidence ...so is mine :) I just made a white cake, poured whip cream on top and added the strawberries...MMMM. So pretty too.

We were supposed to have the tea party outside because it was a "Garden Tea Party" but it was too windy. It turned out to be a casual event because of the change of plans. At the end of her party Leah decided wanted to sacrifice her balloons to the wind...which I'm sure the neighbors appreciated :)

In The Garden

 The Beginning

Mid-Summer

When Mother's Day rolls around I want to grow something! To me it signifies the end of stifling winter and sunshine and green is what I crave. A couple years ago I bought a honeysuckle plant for Mother's Day to grow outside our door. I wanted to smell it as I came in and out of our home. This year for Mother's Day I got a load of supplies for our garden plot. Gardening is therapeutic... and man did I need some therapy as I became more and more pregnant....growing right along with my little garden. Due to inability to sleep you could often find me outside working in my small garden as the sun was coming up and soaking up the quiet.

During my childhood my father often had a garden. We didn't contribute very much to it's maintenance but I must have caught on somewhat because some gardening abilities come naturally to me while the rest comes through research. This year I'm documenting what I have learned so I continue to grow as a gardener.

TOMATOES:
I planted multiple different kinds of tomatoes this year, Roma's, Grape, Jet Setters and Beef. I wish I would have taken pictures of the garden at the end of the season because the grape tomatoes were very impressive. I had one plant and they spread throughout the garden. I would definitely plant them again because of their output. Once they started producing I would bring back a sandwich bag full of them whenever I went out. It was nice having a variety of tomatoes on hand but I would not plant as many if I had a small plot again...it became a lot of maintenance to avoid them becoming a tomato plant jungle.

One thing I feel like I mastered this year was watering. I realized two things...when leaves start turning a yellowish color they are getting too much water (this goes for all plants) and when they start to wilt they are not getting enough. It's all about balance. This year I observed more and noticed that some plants only needed water once a week while others needed water almost every day. I would water individual plants accordingly. Paying attention to temperatures and weather forecasts was also important for water control. If it is going to be very hot I would water more in the morning or late evenings before the heat hit. If it is supposed to rain I would not water at all. Tomatoes like hot and humid conditions. A general rule is they like the soil to be kept moist but not waterlogged making sure you water around the roots.

Something that was new to me this year was pruning and it made a HUGE difference in my tomatoes. I constantly had other gardeners coming up to me and asking me advise on their tomatoes. There should be one distinct stem up the middle and I staked the one stem up straight. The trick is that you only allow 4 to 5 fruit bearing tresses to grow from the main stem.  Pinch out any additional side shoots leaving the top shoot intact. Be aware of suckers which grow in the V space of the main stem and branches...pinch these out ASAP.  Pruning directs energy to the fruit.

Additional Tips: Roma tomatoes do not need pruning or staking because they are bred to grow compact. Also, remove all the yellow leaves on tomato plants to prevent disease.

 SUMMER SQUASH (Zucchini): 
Luckily I had enough experience with Zucchini growing up to know that I could only fit one Zucchini plant in our garden and it would provide us more than enough squash!

Again, pruning was the new thing this year. This really helped with the excessive growth of squash. After 4-6 fruit have set you can start pruning. Use a knife to cut bigger leaves that are closer to the base of the pant leaving all others. DO NOT trim any stems. A good rule of thumb is trimming 1 out of 3 leaves on the plant. Again, this directs energy to the fruit.

Additional Tip: The leaves on squash can develop powdery mildew if they get to much water on the leave whether it's due to watering or rain. Try to trim these leaves or you can spray weekly with a mix of 1 part milk to 9 parts water.

Red Pepper

I'm pretty proud of this red pepper. It slowly turned fully red after what seemed like weeks. I made a red pepper sauce with it right away. It's really the only pepper I used. We use a lot of red pepper in our cooking so it is too bad that I was only able to yield one red pepper...I would like to grow more plants next time and figure out what I was doing wrong!

PEPPERS: 
I didn't learn a whole lot about peppers this year but honestly I wasn't that invested. Kellen really wanted a lot of peppers (which he never used) and tomatillos...neither are very expensive in the store and didn't seem very smart to grow but we were experimenting. Maybe my lack of interest led to the failure of the peppers and tomatillos... or maybe it really was the weather. At least we yielded some peppers unlike the tomatillos which grew bushy and looked promising but the husks never filled out...they may be a do-over crop.

There were a couple of things I did learn. Peppers (like most plants) need the soil around the base tilled regularly to avoid bugs making homes. A couple of times I did not get to this fast enough and I noticed bugs making their residence. Be careful when you do till because their roots are really shallow. Also, peppers like to have the soil moist but not drenched. It seemed counter-intuitive to me but peppers don't seem to like heat. Mine flourished when the days dropped into the 80's...which did not leave very much time for high volumes of production.

BASIL:

The basil was my pride and joy. One of my main motivations for gardening is to have a huge basil crop in order to have fresh pesto year-round. I got closer to my goal this year!

I learned that there is two huge tricks to growing healthy basil plants...one, they don't need much water. I would let the soil almost completely dry out before I would water it again. I would say every 3 days or even up to a week without water. Second, pinching out any flowers that appear. This is where I can use some improvement as I did not have the time to invest in the proper amount of pinching! Next time I would just pull of the entire top to prevent them from flowering and cultivate larger leaves. I started a few from seed and they did not do well do to bugs. Next time around I'll just work with plants at the beginning of the season.

Also, make sure you pick a few leaves off a number of plants rather than all off one. Making sure you harvest the top most leaves first. This year I would harvest enough to make a batch of pesto and then next harvest I would freeze it for winter. I also had a bug problem with the basil that I will have to learn how to manage better next time around.

I also tried Oregeno, Thyme, Cilantro and Bush Beans. The Oregano I would plant again because we actually used it, it was low maintenance and I think it would do well as a undergrowth in a flower garden. Thyme seemed kind of worthless because I don't like Thyme very much and it did not do well.  Cilantro was fun because it grew so fast from seed. The problem with cilantro is that it does not last very long before it goes to seed and is pretty cheap in stores. But it would be cool to have fresh cilantro always on hand in the backyard. Kellen and my sister thought it tasted much better fresh. If I grew cliantro again I would plant it every couple of weeks for a couple of months in order to always have a bunch. The Bush Beans grew a bit from seed and then slowly died off due to bugs and general lack of knowledge. They are a do-over crop because I love me some green beans!

KID TIP:

Leah wanted to water the plants every day. So in order to avoid over-watering everything I planted a few flowers (marigolds....which actually ward off lots of different bugs) on the outside of the garden so she could water to her hearts desire!

PROCLAMATION!!! It's a Medieval Party.

        To celebrate all the Holgate birthdays in August/Early September we threw a Medieval birthday celebration. Clint and Riley really like to dress up and I kinda wanted to be over-the-top this year with this and Leah's tea party. It was so much fun!

 Introducing....Princess Leah!

King Kellen and Squire Clint

Friar Kalob and Lady Harmony...and other commoners.

Allison the Gypsy

 

Adam the Wizard

What medieval party would be any good without a feast? Our feast included goblets of juice and silver platters piled with food...and a speech from the king.

Doesn't this look like fun? We really only had enough sunlight for one of the tournament games. We jousted. This included pinning a balloon to our sides and trying to pop our opponents balloon with our Styrofoam lances with pins in the ends. It was so funny...as well as painful because we kept sticking each other! There was also a rule that we had to gallop which made it all the more ridiculous.

We also played slay the dragon with a dragon pinata. After all this I can only imagine what our new neighbors think of us. They probably think we are really into larping :)

A big thank you to everyone who celebrated with us! How cool is it that our family and friends would go out of their way to play along? And by the way...my parents were there as well....they managed to stay out of all my pictures.

P.S. I must mention this cake I made for the party....Doesn't it look incredible? Good news...it tastes as good as it looks!

Peanut Butter Chocolate Tiered Cake with a Peanut Butter Cream Cheese Frosting and a Peanut Butter Chocolate Glaze... For REAL.

I had been day dreaming about this cake for weeks. It was a big hit and I need to share one of my favorite food blogs that brought it to my attention, Smitten Kitchen. Follow the link for this yummy recipe.

August 2008

Moab 09

FINALLY we can camp again. Still questionable with late snow and rain storms but we went and it was good. I told Kellen then I only want to camp once a year at a rocky place and so now we are done for the year :) It was gorgeous and really cool but dirty. Moab is a really cool place because you have access to so much recreational opportunities (rafting, 4 wheeling, biking, etc.) and also access to 2 national parks. So we visited both Arches National Park and Canyonlands. Here is the evidence of a great time...



First off...our campsite was covered in these caterpillars. Leah loved it and was often covered in them. At the very end of the trip she found some friends in the campground but found out that they were stepping on the caterpillars. She gathered as many as she could from their campsite and ran to ours. She didn't play with them again :)



Leah loved this hike...sandstone arch. It was all sand and their were kids everywhere rolling down the hill. This is also a good pic of my pregnant belly at 14 weeks! (Disclaimer...I look nasty because I had been hiking in the heat pregnant, please keep in mind.)




I like to call this "Kellen ruling the sky." Canyonlands National Park



Mesa Arch at Canyonlands. This was so cool in person because there is a huge drop off on the other side. It's pretty freaky but so cool to look through. This is the most daring I got all trip letting Leah go up with Kellen.




Leah has been messing around with this cheesy smile for a while now. It's really funny. She also got this leather hiking purse the night before which is great because it limits the amount of rocks she carries with her. She gave sacrifices (rocks) to many of the hike gods along our hikes. She literally says she is going to feed things so we can pass.




Kellen is such a great photographer. This is my favorite of the trip. As Kellen would say...Epic.


It rained off and on the last two days which was actually wonderful because the temperature dropped, kept the dust down and the people away. We got a lot of things to ourselves which was so nice. Here is a picture of balancing rock with the storm in the background.


Family picture in front of one of the window's arches. We got there right before sunset and it was beautiful. We got so many good pictures of the trip and I downloaded a bunch to flickr and facebook if you want to have a look! Link to flickr album is :

http://www.flickr.com/photos/theholgates/sets/721

Mt. Timpanogas

A few weeks ago we went camping with Kellen's family to Mt. Timpanogas. The main purpose of t his trip was for a few of us to hike Timp. Kellen and I have been dreaming about hiking it for years now. For those of you who don't know Mt. Timpanogas is the mountain that kinda looms over the Provo/Orem valley. It is 11,749 ft tall and is apart of the Unita National Forest (thank you wikipedia). Timp is the 2nd highest mountain in Utah. This surprised me because I always thought that it was the highest but its 2nd to Mt. Nebo.

It was a pretty gnarly hike. All uphill (obviously)and very very long. The scenery is pretty awesome though. Along the hike you go through forest, subalpine and alpine zones. There are tons of waterfalls, rocky slopes and ridges and amazing views. We started WAY too late. Usually you start before the sun comes up but we didn't get started until 11 am. BAD IDEA. It was SO hot. I just got used to the idea that I would be very gross by the end of the hike and I was okay. We stopped every once a while and cooled off near a water fall or took a breather. It was me, Kellen, Kalob, Clint and Riley. Ohh and the dogs, Bella and Harry.

It was really exhausting. The dogs weren't doing well about half way through. So everyone turned around to go back about half way except Kellen and I. We were determined to get to the top. At some point we realized that we were going to run out of sunlight so we decided to keep going to the glacier lake near the top and then turn around. I'm really glad we kept pushing because it was so beautiful up there. We got to see a huge group of mountain goats. Also, the lake was really cool...although small. It had a greenish blue tint to it. It was really disappointing to not make it to the top. Maybe someday. The lake was at 10,380 ft. It took us about 11 hrs round trip. We got back to camp right as it got dark around 9:45. I had trouble narrowing the pictures down...so enjoy! Kellen and I look pretty nasty and dirty by the end...

It was so hard to pick between all the waterfall pictures. I was so appreciative of their beauty but also for the much appreciated break from the heat!

Notice the snow...in the middle of the summer. At some point I was able to walk under some snow to the river underneath. It was sweet :) And cold.

I like this picture. Kellen calls it the hippie picture. I like the view of the rocky mountain face in the background.

These goats were so cool. I've never seen anything like it. I've only seen a couple at a time. I counted like 75 of them.

Kellen at the lake. None of the picture of the lake came out.

Us dirty and tired. We ate our dinner really quickly and then headed down in a hurry. We only had a few hours of sunlight left. That is the peak behind us! Sad.
This is what we should have seen :)