Power's Out Pizza

We're on day 3 of no power on our road.  While I had planned on using up things in the fridge this week, it's a bit more imperative now that the perishables are living in a cooler on my kitchen floor.  I racked my brain trying to figure out what I could make for dinner with the stove top or grill that would use up the most of what was heading towards moldy in the cooler.  Cheese, pesto and tomatoes were all rescued and piled one pizza crust on the grill.  It was a great dinner!  The tomatoes and basil in the pesto all came from the garden and are some of my favorite flavors of summer!  

Anyone else getting creative trying to selvage their food in the face of a power outage?

This post is linked up at An Oregon Cottage's Tuesday Garden Party.

Sunday Sunshine: Daily Thankfulness

* I had this ready to go once I added final notes on Sunday - then Irene came to visit and we've not had power since!


Practicing contentment by remembering the graces of the week and practicing gratitude by giving.


Gratitude and thankfulness have been a recurring theme this week for me this week.  It seemed whenever I hooked up a podcast, turned on the christian radio station or sat down to hear a sermon, gratitude and thankfulness were the theme.  So I dug out a notebook I had started a while back and restarted my dormant habit of listing things I am grateful for in a given moment or day.  Here are a few of the highlights this week.


:: Quiet, cool mornings and warm tea and coffee.
:: Fresh veggies from the garden
:: Impromptu dinner parties
:: Playdates for GTot
:: Sunny days
:: Bills are paid
:: Homemade Jam
:: Sound sleep
Life is full.  I am thankful.

Every desirable and beneficial gift comes out of heaven. The gifts are rivers of light cascading down from the Father of Light.” (James 1:16 -The Message) May the light of the Father brighten your week!

Kitchen Sensory Activity

I follow a couple of blogs that have all kinds of great ideas for sensory development activities for pre-schoolers.  I always look at them and think that sometime I'll get around to doing that for GTot.

Today, as I tried to decide whether to find a busy activity for GTot while I got tomatoes ready to can, or to include her in the process.  I took a look at my project gathered G up to help me in the kitchen.  I realized that the process of peeling tomatoes for canning is an amazing sensory experience for her.

First, she practiced sorting, as she pulled the stems off the tomatoes and put the stems in the compost bin and the tomatoes in the colander.  After I dipped the tomatoes into boiling water and they had cooled in ice water, the fun with textures began.  The textures of the smooth skin of the tomato, the squishy flesh of the fruit, the warm tomatoes and cold water and the colors of the tomatoes engaged her while she "hepped".  An extra squeeze of the tomatoes didn't hurt them in my process.  She continued sorting: skins to compost, tomatoes to my cutting board.


She had fun and I got at "thanks for helping me mommy" when we were done.

Pretty, Pretty Jars

This year is the first year that I've done any measurable amount of canning.  I think it's in my blood.  Both of my grandmothers canned extensively.  Grandma Jean's jams and jelly were family legends and favorites around the holidays.  Grandma Foy made sweet pickles that were amazing - sadly the recipe has gone MIA in the family archives.  My mom did some canning when I was a kid and we had a garden.  I've done a couple batches of jam in the past, and applesauce.  Handyman handled the dill pickled green beans.  It all added up to about a dozen jars in the pantry for the winter.

This year, my freezer is a smaller and I'm feeling the impact as I've had a pretty successful garden year so far and the pumpkins and winter squash are promising to need their space in the freezer.  I've rearranged some storage in my house and made room for home-canned goods.

I think I may unleashed a monster.   On Wednesday, it was a 2 pints of garlic pickled green beans, strawberry jam, blueberry jam and lemon blueberry jam.  The jam was to shift the berries from the freezer to the pantry - and turned out oh-so-yummy!  Thursday it was this week's stash of tomatoes.   I keep finding more fun recipes of fun things to make and can.

Is it work? Yes.  Will it be worth it in February when my family is eating produce that I know came from my yard, or locally in season?  Absolutely!

Tuesday Garden Party:

While the mornings have begun to feel like fall with cooler temperatures, my garden is still speaking summer: tomatoes and zucchini!  Carrots, basil and asparagus are also making regular appearances in my picking bucket.

This is the first year in about four years that we planted the tomatoes in beds instead of upside down pots.  I've forgotten what a treasure hunt it is to pick tomatoes in beds.  Our beds are raised and usually I have to walk around them twice to make sure I've gotten everything.  Then as I walk away, another flash of ruby will peek out from under the foliage and I dash back to pick again! 

I'm shifting some of my preservation to canning this year as I realized how quickly my smaller freezer is filling up!  (The winter's worth of chicken purchased on sale is part of the overload!)  So I dug down deep and found blueberries left over from last summer and some strawberries this summer that I had thrown in thinking HandyMan was going to use them for pies.  He didn't.  So now, those berries are headed for jam.  This week's tomatoes are headed for Canned Tomato Bruschetta Topping.  I think there will also be a couple more jars of dill green beans and some apple sauce heading into the canner.

What are you using your garden produce for this week?

This post is linked up at An Oregon Cottage's Tuesday Garden Party.

Monday Sunshine: Self Directed Activity

Practicing contentment by remembering the graces of the week and practicing gratitude by giving.


Sunday slipped past me.  Again.  It was filled with worship, alone time and a resounding theme of gratitude.   


Last week we were blessed with a date night and great friends who kept GTot for us.  G's favorite "big sister" was also able to come and hang out last week giving me some time to work on some projects.  


The end of the week brought the completion of some projects around our house, a successful fundraiser to go towards holiday food baskets in our community and some down time.  


This morning a new week has begun.  I am thrilled to be working my way towards our fall routine.  I got up a little earlier and had a little bit of time to wake up and collect myself before GTot woke up and that always seems to set a better tenor for my day.   Independent play is a new stage for GTot which I am LOVING!  While I worked on my morning chores, she colored and organized her crayons.  While I blog, she glues (occasionally asking for help or for me to "take a turn").  While I hang laundry, she blows bubbles.  It is a wonderful rhythm.  


Life is full.  I am thankful.


Every desirable and beneficial gift comes out of heaven. The gifts are rivers of light cascading down from the Father of Light.” (James 1:16 -The Message) May the light of the Father brighten your week!

From the Garden to the Pantry/Freezer

My garden is doing well, in spite of the cooling temperatures as fall begins to peek around the corner.  I'm regularly harvesting zucchini basil, tomatoes, green beans and asparagus.

HandyMan has picked up a recipe for dill pickled green beans that we have been using on the tougher beans, the tender guys get a place in the freezer.  The asparagus is getting eaten as it comes in, but depending on the crop, it may see some freezer space too.  I'm at the point of giving zucchini away (any takers?).  Basil is being stored as pesto in the freezer and dehydrated in the spice rack.  Tomatoes are heading for this great roasted vegetable marinara recipe.

What are the destinations of your garden produce this fall?  Feel free to link up your favorite fresh veggie recipes in the comments below.

Indelible - By Kirsten Heitzmann

Kirsten Heitzmann brings another great addition to her collection of novels with Indelible and certainly does not disappoint her long time fans or new readers.  While listed on her website as a stand alone novel, it carries over the same small town of Redwood, Colorado and cast of characters as Indivisible which I reviewed a few months back.

Indelible brings a gifted sculptor, Natalie, to Redwood who can capture an a  persons' flash of emotion in clay.  We are also introduced to Trevor, a gold-medal skier turned wilderness outfitter who's past drives him to rescue and protect all those around him.  Their paths cross when Trevor rescues Natalie's nephew from the jaws of a cougar on a trail outside of Redwood.  As their paths intertwine, complicated relationships with family and friends brings additional stress to their forming relationship.

The plot is deepened even further as Heitzmann weaves the works of a disturbed individual who also feels the need to rescue and protect the weak and innocent, but his actions are less than noble and puts the innocent in even more danger than they may have been and he has his sights on the children, visually impaired and the weak of Redwood.

Two plots of light and darkness are interwoven into a wonderfully suspenseful page-turning read.  Short of the "guy-gets-the-girl" ending, there is nothing predictable about this romantic mystery.



Disclaimers: I received a complementary copy of this book from WaterBrook Multnomah Publishing Group for this review as part of the Blogging for Books program. The opinions and thoughts of this are my own and are not influenced in any way. This post contains affiliate links.

Asparagus Round 2!

Last summer, another gardener friend mentioned to us that they were eating fresh asparagus in September.  We had a cool summer so I thought it was possible.  When I commented my surprise that his asparagus was still going, he told us that he lets it bolt in late June or early July and then cuts it all back in the beginning of August for a second crop.  This year we decided to give it a try, and what do you know, it worked!  I picked this handful of  fresh spears this afternoon:

I'm also picking the second crop of green beans and I have a bucket of ripe tomatoes collecting in my fridge.  I think I see tomato soup in my near future!

How does your garden grow?

This post is linked up at An Oregon Cottage's Tuesday Garden Party.

Monday Sunshine

Practicing contentment by remembering the graces of the week and practicing gratitude by giving.


Sunday slipped past me.  Now it is Monday.  Handyman returned safely from a 183 mile bike trip through the Catskills last week. He made the trek along with 120 youth and leaders and seemed to have a great time.  This Monday is the first Monday of soccer coaching of the season for HandyMan.  He's a volunteer assistant and thoroughly enjoys getting out on the field with the high schoolers.


While HandyMan was away, GTot was awesome!  Sure she missed Daddy but she was an absolute pleasure of a kid.  One morning last week, I'm not sure which one, she woke up speaking in full and complete sentences.  Her verbal communication is growing exponentially on a daily basis and it makes life so much easier!  I received wonderful bits of respite throughout the week (thanks GM and KW!).  

Last week was also Vacation Bible School at our church.  We had about 30 kids every night coming to play and sing and eat.   The week was topped off with a carnival night that seemed to be enjoyed by all.

Life is full.  My priorities are still being adjusted.  We are blessed.


Every desirable and beneficial gift comes out of heaven. The gifts are rivers of light cascading down from the Father of Light.” (James 1:16 -The Message) May the light of the Father brighten your week!

New Webspace...

Welcome to my new corner of the web!  I enjoy blogging and it is a medium that I enjoy using to connecting with friends and others who share some of the same aspects of the day with me:  be it gardening, chasing toddlers, cooking or crafting.

My posts have been on the decline lately because the summer has been busy and the software I was using was obnoxious.  To keep all the geek-speak out of this, lets just say that the way I was doing my blog was rapidly becoming confusing and "un-fun".

So it was time to change.  I hope you enjoy the new web-space as much as I am!  I've transferred most of my stuff over to this new site, but some of the links may still send you back to the old site.  If that happens there's a link at the top to bring you back to the Active ThrivingMama site.   Thanks for reading and I hope you'll take a look around!

P.S.  So sorry about the inundation of posts if you subscribe in a blog reader - something glitched when I switched a program over.  Another switch too out all my photos, so I'll be working on that in the next couple of days!

Book Review: Restless In Carolina

Restless in Carolina takes the basic long-stemmed rose of a boy-meets girl romance and adds in some crinkly-petaled carnations of family dynamics, some grenery of environmental awareness and some baby's breath of faith and grace delicately placed among the conflict and characters to create a Christian romance that is as unusual as it's characters.

Bridget Pickwick Buchanen is forced to face her long held grief over the loss of her husband when confronted with her sister's words through the mouths of her five-year-old niece and nephew. Clinging to grief, this barefoot, jeans wearing, landscaper finds herself in designer-business professional attire to come up with an environmentally friendly option for the sale of the family estate. As the faux fascade fades back to her Levis, so does the acuity of her grief as ahe finds that just maybe there could be another 'happily ever after' in her future.

Tamara Leigh does a wonderful job of incliding subtle details to fully portray her characters: each of whom holds their own conflicts and secrets. Having not read the first two books in this series (Leaving Carolina and Nowhere, Carolina), I feel Leigh has done a great job creating a stand-alone story. While reading the books in order would provide depth to the other family members, Bridget's story stands alone nicely.

Restless in Carolina was a very quick vacation-week read for me and I look forward to looking up the other books in this series.



Disclaimers: I received a complementary copy of this book from WaterBrook Multnomah Publishing Group for this review as part of the Blogging for Books program. The opinions and thoughts of this are my own and are not influenced in any way. This post contains affiliate links.

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Sunday Sunshine

Practicing contentment by remembering the graces of the week(s) and practicing gratitude by giving.

My heart is full, like the clouds that are pouring rain right now.  I was blessed with a week away with my family last week.  I've picked my first tomatoes and my garden runneth over! We were blessed to be able to invest in our home and add a little bit more space that will provide a much needed eating area (for he who designed our house, didn't put one in and we were running out of elbow room at the breakfast counter!)

Our time away included great time with friends and family, way too many late nights talking and playing games.  Thought provoking messages from the camp speaker and great play time for GTot and "other kids".  We arrived on Sunday and by Tuesday GTot would wake up calling "Other ki-ids, where are you?!"

Life is full.  My priorities are again taking on a new appearance.  We are blessed.

Every desirable and beneficial gift comes out of heaven. The gifts are rivers of light cascading down from the Father of Light.” (James 1:16 -The Message) May the light of the Father brighten your week!

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