I started running again this week! Well, I haven’t ran that much, but a 3.3 and 2.0 mile run counts in my book! I haven’t consistently run since I ran Dam to Dam back on June 2nd and I know I’m out of shape considering how sore I’ve been from my short runs over the past few days! Kind of sad (and pathetic!). Now that the weather is starting to cool down, I’m going to try and get back in the swing of things. With the way that these thighs are growing, I NEED to start working out again J.
I’m going to my friend Jacque’s this weekend to have some girl time, hopefully complete a few Pinterest projects, and learn some more about harvesting corn by riding in the combine with her husband and in-laws! I know NOTHING about farming, so I’m really excited! I’m sure I’ll have some pictures to post about it next week. Anyway, enjoy the update pesto and my “fence post pumpkins”!
Pinterest Idea #29
“The Best Pesto”
My attempt:
Last year, I grew a bunch of basil and I had every intention of making pesto with it at the end of the year, but got lazy and never did anything with it. This year, especially since I have this blog to update, I MADE myself make pesto. What amazed me after making it was that 6 full cups of fresh basil turned into about a cup and a half of pesto…such a bunch of crap, especially considering I added a ton of other ingredients to it! The biggest problem I had while making this was that I don’t have a large food processor. I have a small Oscar, which is usually great for chopping most of the things I do, but the bowl of it doesn’t hold much. I had to gradually chop everything, which was taking forever, so I just put all of the ingredients in my Magic Bullet blender instead. It was definitely better than using the Oscar, but was still kind of a pain. Even though it wasn’t a very easy process to make the pesto, it still ended up tasting good and I’m going to try and make some kind of recipe with pesto soon!
My basil plant:
After cutting almost all of my basil, I ended up with about 6 cups of basil, loosely packed:
I juiced 1 lemon:
And added some Pecorino Romano cheese:
Toasted 1 cup of almonds:
Chopped everything in my Oscar to start:
Sean hasn’t tried it yet, so I can’t tell you whether or not he approves, but I’ll make sure to make him try it on a day when he’s REALLY hungry so that way he’ll say it’s good regardless. J
Pinterest Idea #30
“Fall Pumpkins”
My attempt:
I’m officially ready for fall. I had been depressed about summer ending up until a week ago. Not only does fall mean that football season is here, but it means it’s time for mums, pumpkins, gourds, and fall desserts (aka pumpkin anything, apple pie/crisp, spiked apple cider, and caramel apples). I wanted to do some kind of craft project that was fall-related and when I came across these wooden pumpkins, I HAD to try it. First of all, in order to do this project, I needed a big piece of wood from Menards, which totally intimidates me to buy, so I convinced Sean to come with me. I said I needed to get a few “things” from Menards, and he said he wanted to come. Menards=manly store. After showing Sean what I was up to, he helped me decide that I needed a 4x4x6 fence post. I bought that, some burnt orange paint, some brown paint ($2.49 paint samples), and a small wooden dowel. When I got home, Sean was awesome and volunteered to cut the fence post for me into the pieces that I needed. If I was smart, I would have known my sizes prior to going to Menards and the guy could have cut them with the electric saw. Well, I wasn’t smart, so Sean did it J. Once the wood was cut, I painted the pieces orange and then put a brown paint/water mix over it. I also painted the wooden dowel pieces brown. I had to buy some crafty things at Hobby Lobby to decorate the pumpkins, but I think they turned out pretty cute! I ended up with 2 sets of 3 pumpkins and 1 small pumpkin from the 6’ fence post. I plan on taking one of the sets to Jacque this weekend…hopefully she likes it!
These are the fence post pieces after Sean cut them:
I then painted them orange:
And put a brown water glaze over the orange:
I hot glued on the brown stems:
I bought some cute fabric and cut it into strips to make the bows. You could use ribbon, but I wanted the fabric to fray at the ends:
I bought some straw-like ribbon and also made a bow with it:
I hot glued the straw bow to the fabric bow:
I coiled some wire around a pen:
Hot glued the bows to the stem base:
And we have pumpkins!
