Our Seaside Vacation

Last week we enjoyed our summer tradition of a vacation to Seaside, Oregon. The beach has been one of my favorite places to visit since I was a young child. The Oregon coast is amazing, and I never tire of visiting. My parent's in law have a wonderful beach house in Seaside, so it is great to visit Seaside, and know that there is a comfortable home to stay at while we are there, and a place were we can bring our two wacky labs along with us. Seaside is fun because the beaches are so close and downtown Seaside is full of shopping and fun activities, and wonderful places to eat.

Here we are for a day at the beach, we love the beach on 12th street because there is a nice amount of beach to dig in, and lay around on, there are grassy hills to explore, and the ocean is shallow for a very long distance, so it is pretty safe to play in. In the picture below I am reading, one of my favorite things to do on a warm day at the beach. Sarah is weaving grass together, and Joe is enjoying the holes that Gary and the kids dug.

Here Gary, Sarah & Joe are digging - they dug four deep holes that had interconnected tunnels under the sand- it was pretty cool.

The kids took some nice pictures of Gary and me.

Every year since the children where toddlers, Daddy is buried in the sand!





We chose to set up our beach blankets near this really funky shaped driftwood- the kids thought that it looked a lot like a ROUS (Rodent of unusual size from the Princess Bride).





From this angle it looked a bit like a dolphin also.





All of us enjoy taking pictures of each other and all of the beautiful scenery around us.





After we were nice and warm from a morning lounging and playing in the sand we headed down to the ocean- here Joe leaves his mark in the sand.




It is so fun to jump over the waves, I could spend hours doing this!






Here Sarah explores a little inlet, we had fun walking all through this.


The grassy hills are very fun to explore.




After a long day playing at the beach we have a favorite place that where we always eat dinner - Bigfoot's. They have some of the best prime rib ever, as well as very tasty fries and onion rings. The menu is in the form of a newspaper, filled with tales of Bigfoot from around the Pacific Northwest.




I had to get our picture with the Bigfoot carving at the entrance to Bigfoot's!








One of the days of our trip we spend mostly in downtown Seaside- we start out with breakfast at Pig'N Pancake. I always have their Buckwheat pancakes, the boys got blueberry pancakes, and Sarah got some very yummy blueberry crepes. All of their food is super good!!





After breakfast we shop for souvenirs at some of our favorite shops, I always buy a few new woven beach blankets, I also found some great carved sailors for my bookcase, the kids found some fun treasures as well. We had a lot fun looking in our favorite toy shop. A few years ago a wonderful candy shop opened up called The Buzz- filled with old fashioned candy, novelty candy, old fashioned soda, fudge and salt water taffy. The buzz is one of our favorite places to visit.





Here are the kids picking out some of their favorites to bring home, we all have fun at this store, so many fun choices.








After shopping, we head to the arcade and spend a couple of hours playing video games, skee ball & air hockey. I myself love the old games from the 80's and an old fashioned pinball machine.








We finish up our trip to downtown Seaside with Elephant Ears, Gary's favorite!!




After dinner we head back out to watch the sunset, while we were waiting we explored some little tide pools.










The sunset is always so beautiful!!





After the sun set Gary set the camera timer and got a picture of all of us.




On the last day before we left, we visited the Aquarium and fed the seals, they were so cute!









Sarah and Joe loved all the tricks that the seals could do, we all thought they reminded us of our dogs. The baby seals were also very darling.








Inside the aquarium we saw a lot of beautiful sea life, this Octopus was very interesting, he kept changing color from this red to a grayish color, very interesting creature!!





The gift shop at the aquarium was fun to visit, it has looked just like this ever since I was a child, I have loved visiting this shop over the years. Sarah found some very cute socks for her sock collection.







We also decided to bring our Lab Zoey out for her first trip to the beach, we can't bring our older dog because she doesn't like being around other dogs and has a very bad hip, she was content to lounge around the beach house. Zoey is still learning to behave on a leash, but she did pretty well, she loved the sand, the kids taught her how to dig, which was very funny to watch. We then took her down to the water, which she absolutely loved, she ran in circles around Gary and bounded through the waves. She had so much fun, and we had fun watching her!





We had one last look at the ocean, and then headed back to the beach house to pack up and return home.



Our trip was wonderful, and very relaxing. We feel very blessed to have had the opportunity to visit this beautiful place.


O Lord God Almighty, who is like you? You are mighty, O Lord, and your faithfulness surrounds you. You rule over the surging sea; when its waves mount up, you still them. Psalm 89:8-9

Early August Garden & Stuffed Zucchini

Green Beans, Zucchini, and Wishes- that is what we have been harvesting in our garden this last week. The veggie garden is in full swing- which we love. Everyday before dinner we go out to the garden and pick a large bunch of vegetables for dinner.

The green beans are wonderful, we pick a big bowl and between the four of us eat all of them at dinner. Steamed and served with a drizzle of melted butter.







The zucchini is also doing very well, we pick the small ones for eating, steamed with a drizzle of butter as a side dish. We also let some get nice and big. I like to shred these for zucchini breads and cakes, as well as zucchini fritters. Here's a link to my Zucchini Fritter Post. http://aprilshomemaking.blogspot.com/2010_09_01_archive.html

Here are the zucchini I picked today.

<

Another of my favorite recipes for extra large zucchini is stuffed zucchini. This was our dinner tonight.

Here is the recipe:

Stuffed Zucchini

1 Large Zucchini
1 lbs ground meat (hamburger, turkey or sausage, vegetarian meat substitute)
2 1/2 cups of cooked rice
1 1/2 cups shredded cheese
1 large can 28 oz. crushed tomatoes
1 can 14.5 oz. stewed chopped tomatoes with Italian seasoning
1-2 cups chopped mushrooms
1 medium chopped onion

Cut zucchini in half lengthwise, scoop out seeds with a spoon. Set both halves in a large roasting pan.









Brown meat along with chopped onions, drain. Then stir in mushrooms and cook with sausage and onion for 5 minutes, stir in cooked rice, and can of stewed tomatoes and half the cheese. Fill zucchini with mixture, top with the rest of the cheese, pour can of crushed tomatoes around base of zucchini along with 1 cup of water.



Cover with foil and bake at 400 F. For 1 hour or until zucchini is tender and cooked. Slice and serve with some fresh sourdough bread. This can be made without meat or meat substitute - just use a little more rice and mushrooms. Great way to use those zucchinis.



The rest of the garden is doing well, the jalapenos are just about ready to pick as well as a few of my other pepper plants.



Here is a picture of our little sugar pumpkins growing. One has climbed up the garden fence and is happily growing there.




The cherry tomatoes are starting to ripen, here is a picture of my Sun Gold Cherry tomatoes, this is our favorite cherry tomato.


Our early girl tomatoes are a little behind this year due to the cool summer we have been having, the temperatures have been up though, so I am hoping they will still do okay.

Our rose bush suffered from puppy damage earlier this year, but we finally got a very pretty rose to bloom!


Our Nasturtiums are beautiful growing up a blueberry branch.



Here is our small little corn patch- I normally plant a full raised bed of corn, but this year I wanted more room for squash and pumpkins, but I still like to see a little corn growing in the yard come fall- so I planted some in a tub, and considering the small space it is doing as well as I thought it would. We might get a couple ears of corn, but even if we don't we will still have our little fall patch of corn stalks.



And lastly the Big Weed update- The beautiful thistle that we have been following all summer long has gone to seed. Here's a link to a previous post about our "Big Weed" if you want to see what it looked like when it was fully grown.
http://aprilshomemaking.blogspot.com/2011/07/blueberries-thistle.html .

"Wishes" are all over the ground.



Here is a "wish" in the sky.



The bees love it!




One last look before it is time to dig it out. :(



Thinking our neighbors may not appreciate this beautiful weed as much as we have, we have decided that it is time to take it out. So tonight after the bees mostly went to sleep, Gary tackled removing this beautiful giant plant.





Goodbye Big Weed- we really enjoyed watching you grow all summer long!



Gary got this giant thistle all chopped down and into the can.

Before we removed our thistle, every time the wind blew, it picked up a wish or two- I used to love wishes as a child, I would run around our yard to catch one and make my wish and release it back out into the sky. I love watching them float through the air. We each made one wish before Gary dug out our thistle weed. We saved a whole bag full of "wishes" for later.

All the wishes flying around here have got an old Mother Goose nursery rhyme stuck in my head, I grew up learning lots of nursery rhymes, I will leave you with this fun little rhyme.

If wishes were horses, beggars would ride.
If turnips were watches, I would wear one by my side.
And if "ifs" and "ands" were pots and pans,
There'd be no work for tinkers!

Bible Verse Sensory Bin Activity

A couple of weeks ago, while searching for fun activity ideas for my Sunday school class, I came across a few different blog posts about sensory bins. Sensory bins are small storage totes or other similar containers filled with all variety of fun stuff for kids to play in- like rice, or beans, or sand, or water, along with other fun goodies like toys, rocks, animals etc. When my kids were little I had a bin of rice with sand toys for inside play, and sometimes I would fill a container with water and a few drops of food color and some plastic sea creatures to play with. This is a wonderful activity for little ones, of course remember to never leave young children alone with these activities, many of the small items are very bad choking hazards and things like beans can end up in noses and ears.

Well, I kept running into different posts about sensory bins, with lots of wonderful new ideas. One idea I saw, was to use Moon Sand in the sensory bin- it looked really interesting, and different from classic sand. Moon Sand is sold near the play dough section of the toy store, and it has a wonderful quality of being able to be molded into shape like a sand castle, without water.

So when I happened upon a small set of Moon Sand at the craft store on clearance, I decided to buy it. Then I found some other fun goodies, and before I knew it, my trip to the craft store to buy a sketch book for my son and some cake decorating tips for me and my daughter had turned into a purchase of sensory bin ingredients.

I came up with a fun Bible verse activity for my Sunday school class using the sensory bins I made. I decided to print out a bible verse in a large font, and cut it apart into groups of words on strips of paper. I then hid the pieces of paper in the sensory bins, so the children can hunt & dig them out. They will then re-assemble the verse. You can match the sensory bin to the lesson- I have thought of wonderful ideas for the creation story, and look forward to making other bins for verse hunts.

The first one I made was a dessert archaeological dig type theme. I mixed together two tubs of red Moon Sand, two tubs of yellow Moon Sand, and one tub of orange Moon Sand to get a dessert looking sand.

Here is the moon sand before it is mixed.


Here is the sand mixed.


I added some red and greenish colored decorative rocks.


Here is our verse Trust in the Lord with all your heart and lean not on your own understanding; in all your ways acknowledge him, and he will make your paths straight. Proverbs 3:5-6 This is one of my favorite verses and happens to be the main verse for the curriculum we are working with right now.



I cut it into strips with my paper cutter.


Here are all of the verse strips.


Then I folded them up and hid them under the sand.


For fun, I added some Dinosaur fossils from a Dino Toob set (Toob sets are wonderful little well made figures with lots of different themes, my children loved them when they were younger.)



Here it is all ready to go- I am very excited to try this with my class. I teach a multi-age class and this will be perfect, they will all have fun searching for the verses and the older children who are readers can help put the verse back together.



Here is an outer space themed sensory box I also made (I mixed blue and green moon sand) - this will make a fun "Lost in Space" themed hunt.



This sensory bin bible verse hunt would be a wonderful VBS or backyard bible club activity, as well as a wonderful homeschool tool for just about any subject. Sensory bins are very fun to make, can't wait to make a few more!!

Beef Stock & Beef Barley Soup

So this week I have finally begun reading the Cookbook - Nourishing Traditions: The Cookbook That Challenges Politically Correct Nutrition and the Diet Dictocrats by Sally Fallon. (Below is a link to this book over at Amazon.com)



I have made my way through the beginning few chapters, and have skimmed through some of the recipes, very interesting cookbook, with a lot of great information about real foods and real nutrition. I love learning about ways to get my weight under control and recently have been having troubles with anemia that I am still trying to resolve. I had read so many other bloggers talking about this book I had to give it a read, and I am glad I did, it is very interesting, and I can't wait to read more.

One thing the book talks about is the benefit of a good broth, earlier this summer I began making my own beef stock straight from the bones rather than prepared broth. My whole family loves soup, even in this hot weather. Now, I haven't quite reached the level of quality of broth that can be made by following the process In Nourishing Traditions which requires quite a bit of time, and is something I will probably tackle in the winter, here is how I made some wonderful Beef Broth this week and then how I used it to make a wonderful Beef Barley Vegetable Soup. Here's how I made the beef stock.

Beef Stock-

4 good size Beef Soup Bones
a drizzle of olive oil
4 carrots
6 ribs of celery
an onion
herbs & pepper

First I drizzled a little olive oil in the bottom of my sturdy baking pan, and put in the soup bones, next I added the carrots which had been cleaned, peeled and cut in half, and the celery which had been cleaned and cut in half. Chop onion into 6 to 8 wedges and add to pan as well (you can see from the pictures that I forgot to add the onions, but it worked out fine, because I added them to the soup pot when I transferred the rest of the ingredients.) I then sprinkled it with some herbs, I used some parsley and Italian herbs, fresh thyme would be good as well. Then roast at 400 F. for about an hour.

Before Roasting


After Roasting


Transfer the contents of the pan to a Soup Pot, scrape the bottom of the pan to remove any meat bits. Cover bones and veggies with water at least an inch over bones, and an inch from the top of the pan so it doesn't bubble over. Bring to a boil, then turn down to a nice low simmer, I like to keep my temp between low and simmer, because all the way on simmer the water stops moving and I want a little tiny boil. The longer you leave the broth cooking the better the broth- it is better to get an early start so you can get plenty of cooking time before night time. I didn't get mine started until One in the afternoon, so I stayed up late and let it simmer until 10:00 pm.

Here is the broth with the onions finally added.



I removed the bones and some of the veggies with tongs ( I saved the carrots for the dogs, they loved them! ) The other bits I couldn't get out with tongs were removed when I poured out the broth through a mesh strainer into the container I was storing it in. Here is what it looked like.



After it cooled down a bit I put it in the fridge overnight. The next day, when i was ready to make my Beef Barley Soup, I took out the broth, and removed all but 1/6th of the fat (the fat I removed is reserved in the fridge for making bird seed suet cakes)Here is a picture of the broth right from the fridge with its separate layers.




The broth was nice and gelatinous just like I was hoping for. Here's how I used it in my soup:

Beef Barley Soup

Homemade Beef Broth
1 large onion
6-8 ribs of celery chopped
20 white mushrooms quartered
3/4 cup barley
1 bag frozen "California Blend" Veggies (Carrots, Broccoli, Cauliflower)
a couple fresh chopped zucchini
Sea Salt, Fresh Ground Pepper, Italian Herbs and Parsley to taste
1-2 cups of thinly chopped beef (any inexpensive cut will do, I always just pick the cheapest little piece of beef I can find, like a couple little round steaks or something)

Put broth in Large Soup Pan, along with Celery and Onions, I usually add chopped carrots at this point too, but since there were carrots in the frozen veggie mix I omitted extra carrots. Let the soup get up to a nice simmer, add a little water if needed. Next I added the mushrooms and barley and herbs and salt and pepper to taste.

Here is a picture of the soup after the addition of the mushrooms.



Then chop the meat and add it. Let simmer at medium for about an hour, then add frozen veggies and fresh chopped zucchini.



This soup is wonderful with just about any frozen veggie blend, it is fun to experiment with lots of different veggies, certainly any yummy veggie growing out in the garden.

Cook on low for a couple more hours until beef and barley are nice and cooked. I also like to add another bit of salt pepper and herbs to taste at this point as well. I love this soup served with sliced and buttered sour dough bread. The whole family really enjoyed this soup. Hope everyone can give this a try, making your own broth is well worth the effort!!