End of vacation purge

I'm sure all of you know when you're at the end of your vacation and you have all this food left in the refrigerator! We were pretty good at getting things eaten up but you always end up with a half of bottle of something. We sent home what we could with my family and ate leftovers for the last few days. 

While I was here in Carmel I found dried gluten free ramen style noodles at Costco. At first I wasn't a fan because it doesn't come with any type of sauce. 

I had to gather up all the ingredients to make a soup base.  Miso broth from Trader Joe's and then added whatever Japanese spices I have handy. I think it turned out pretty good. During the refrigerator clean out there was some smoked turkey and green onion left. That made a very nice topping to my mid day meal. 

My daughter was really into making  fancy specialty salads since here getting the greens here are so easy. She made what my niece called "extra fancy" restaurant salads that even die hard non salad eaters liked. :) 

Lost count of how many onions I found cut up, almost empty fancy olives, goat cheese and beets. During the last few days we had some epic salads for dinner!

Reuse Repurpose Fabric

Several months ago I found a pair of brand new pants at the Goodwill it this awesome cow print . My mom's lucky charm was a brown spotted cow so when I saw them I had to pick them up! I would never wear them but I had to think what could I do with them. 

My good friend Patty (amazing quilter) made me a bag several years ago of fabric I picked out. Using it everyday as my go to purse, it's showing its age and needs to be retired. I thought how fun it would it be to have her make me a new bag with this fun print. I only use a cross over type of bag (safety reasons) if I carry one at all. I only have my phone and car keys with me unless I have to carry my wallet which is rare. 

I asked that the bag be small enough to just hold my phone, keys and sunglasses. That if she could, use the pant pockets on the outside that would be an added bonus. 

Bags turned out great! THANK YOU Patty!

Gnomes Relocation

Our family vacation is winding down and now I'm slowing rehoming as much as I can. It took me three trips to get everything down to the Carmel house and I so don't want to have to make that many trips back home. 

The little gnome houses will be going to this cute little fairy garden that's just around the corner from us. The boys love to go exploring in the garden and they've been really good about not wanting to bring any of the toy trucks home. It is a challenge to get them to leave!

I did have fun making the gnome houses so I think I'll make a few more theme houses for the Village of Fae. Now just have to decide what the themes will be. 

Farmer's Market - Carmel

There's a farmer's market in downtown Carmel every Thursday. Not having a car here when my daughter drives into San Francisco, I decided to walk into in town. At this farmer's market there is a fish monger who has this great shrimp with salsa sauce. One of my favorites! Just enough spiciness to make it tasty but doesn't make you sweat! This was my breakfast this morning. :) 

I also picked up some fresh salmon, which cost a fortune but having my family here, it's a splurged for the holidays. I also picked up some dried apricots and dried fruit. I learned the difference between slab and regular apricots. 

Slab = are apricots that have fallen off the tree because they were very ripe. Take a little longer to pick up, cut and get on the trays. Hopefully washed. 

Regular = hand cut and dried on trays. 

Taste wise there isn't a big difference but I do think slab apricots are sweeter but I'm a dried apricot fan.  Having grown up on a farm, fruit that hits the ground isn't always very clean so I went with the regular, just saying.  This purchase also cost a fortune but it was a local farmer (Hollister) and part of the sale was going to a scholarship for a high school student who will be the first in his family to go to college.  So yes I did buy a little more than I would have normally.  :) 

California Weather

This weekend the weather was different as night and day. Saturday is was sunny and warm, shorts and tee shirt weather.  Sunday was cold and rainy so only indoor activities. 

On Saturday we went down to the beach and it was a super high tide. It was so high that it created pools of water way up on the beach. Made a nice wading pool of the boys. They could splash around without worry of a wave knocking them down. 

I rarely go down to the beach during a high tide because it does making walking on the beach a little harder. 

Yes, another cookbook

I've been looking for children's cookbook thinking someday getting the boys to learn to follow a recipe. Right now they like to "help" but it's more keeping them from cutting off their fingers. 

I saw this book at the Yellow Brick Road book store and it was price at $12. A little high for my thrifty self so I waited until Monday when all books are 50% off. I still think $6 is a but much but I got it anyways.  The recipes are very basics but more for elementary school age kids so it will have to wait for my boys to get a little older.  It's also a good cookbook for someone who has never cooked before. 

What I really liked about it was the vintage graphics and layout. I looked up the author Tina Davis and found out she's was graphic designer back in the day not much of a cook but I think she did a super job

Flatfish Art

I've been hanging out at the Monterey Bay Aquarium a lot this month since the grandkids are in town. They have a membership and it's nice to just pop in for a few hours, which is all the boys can handle. We visit just a few areas and give the boys time to just explore. 

This week we had front row seats to the feeding at the kelp forest and then we went over to the flatfish fish exhibits. Of  course I just loved this bronze flatfish that was next to one of the interactive exhibit for kids. 

Years ago when I thought I would be moving down here to open a store (flatfish paper arts) I envisioned a large (California size) metal flatfish set into the floor.  

Another Weird Gluten Free Cookbook

I'm one of those weird people who likes to read cookbooks. I'm not a fancy cook but because of my gluten sensitivity I cook all my meals. 

Most gluten free cookbooks require way too many specialty ingredients or just don't taste good. 

I was given the cookbook and the first thing I noticed on the cover was the burnt waffles. I flipped through the book to find several more photos of burnt food. I can appreciate that the author didn't doctor her food by using any of the food stylist trick (and hopefully she didn't pay a stylist) but seriously this doesn't make me confident in her cooking skills or her recipes. I think the book should have been title "Charred Gluten Free". 

Learning something new - photo editing.

I finally learned how to edit out the background of photos. I don't do any editing as far as using filters or adding things in. I'm hoping to figure out how to blur the background instead of getting rid of it completely but I still thrilled I can at least do this! 

When Henkie really likes something, he wants to hold it in both hands. You can imagine what a hot mess that makes of he decides to go for a walk with his food. His breakfast of choice is a toasted English muffin with peanut butter and scrambled eggs. He's not of fan of bacon which I find surprising, he's such a meat eater. 

Power Thrifting Christmas Tree

I wasn't planning a doing a Christmas tree because the boys are just to wild and I know things will get broken. 

My daughter really wanted one, so we picked up a tiny one at Whole Foods. Yes, I know a weird place to get a tree but it was a noble fir and had came with a stand. It would have been fun if we could have taken the boys to cut one down but that was more than my bandwidth could handle. 

So being down here in Carmel I didn't have my Christmas ornaments or lights. 

I made a quick stop at all the the private thrift stores, because I wasn't going to pay full retail know I had tons back home. The only store that had anything was "Branches" in Monterey. I scored a vintage tree topper(blinks on and off), multi color mini lights and vintage ornaments. I looked really hard for ornaments that wouldn't break and only found one bag. I did pick up some small glass balls hoping the boys wouldn't try and play with them, but that was wishful thinking. A few have already been broken and the tree was almost pulled over this morning. I think it's worse than having a cat!

Everything for the tree was less than $20, which I think is a good deal for something I wasn't planning on!

Square peg in round hole

Mees decided to try and shove a square toy fire truck into a round knot hole in the deck. He was successful but then wanted the firetruck back. It was a crack up as everyone tried with no success to get it back out.  They even drove to the hardware store to get a magnet on a stick. My daughter finally said "where's your father, he likes sh*t like this". The next morning dad did go out there and got the truck out. 

The hole is now covered with duck tape. :) 

Monterey Bay Aquarium

While the grandkids are here my daughter got a membership to the Monterey Bay aquarium. It's a very impressive aquarium and a great place to take the kids when the weather is bad. 

There have been a lot of guests stopping by so it's also a nice place to hang out for a few hours.