Seeds to Herbs Part 1

A few weeks ago, I received a special gift in the mail from my Mom.

This sweet little herb garden kit! I was so excited! I hope to have a large garden when we buy a stick built home and I possibly may get to have a small garden at the home we are living in now. This herb kit will get me started in the right direction.

The kit comes with 8 different herbs. Basil, parsley, chives, cilantro, oregano, dill, thyme, and sage. It also comes with a wooden labeling stick for each herb, a chart that shows what food each herb goes well with and another charting stating some facts about gardening with the herbs - sunlight, etc.

Here are the seeds up close.

I went and bought a rectangular pot, six smaller pots, and potting soil. I planted the seeds and watered them! Now, it's just time to wait. I hope I did everything right. If you have any tips, I'd be willing to hear!!
I love cooking with fresh herbs. So I'm anxious to see how these seeds will do. I'm planning on doing a "part 2" of this to show you when the herbs have grown or are growing! :)

Have a blessed day!

Memorial Day Memories

I hope you all had a relaxing Memorial Day weekend! Ours was fairly busy but we had some time to relax when we joined Mackenzie's parents and brothers for camping Sunday night to Monday.

We left after we did worship at church...here we are excited to get to the campsite. One of the most amazing things about Oregon is that camping is a short drive away and you have many options to choose from. We drove about an hour or so to our campground.

When we arrived, Mackenzie's grandparents Jim and Alice were at the campsite for the day. Alice and Sharon were in the camper, Jim and Eric were out fishing and the other guys were just having a good time relaxing or carving things out of wood.

It was so nice to just take time to sit by the campfire and catch up.

Even Bailey (Eric and Sharon's dog) came along for the fun. Grayson set up this really neat dog run from one tree to another, so she wasn't just stuck in one spot. I think she really enjoyed being able to move around more.

Sharon and Eric...they looked so sweet holding hands that I wanted to capture the moment...however when asked to hold hands again, Eric felt like having a bit of fun! hmm I wonder where my husband gets his comedian-style from?

Eric later took Alice, Sharon, and I around the lake for a short ride.

Here's Jim and Mackenzie watching us off. My husband cracks me up! He makes me laugh just about every day. It's so fun!

The weather was so ideal for camping. It was so beautiful. Sunny, warm, and not very much wind. We went to this same location about 2 years ago and the weather was much colder.

Here's Sharon enjoying the boat ride.

I love this man!

Grayson and Grandma Alice.

Hayden caring some wet pine. He carved a neat totem pole. I wish I got a picture of it!

Sharon and I...I was having a little too much fun. I wish the trip went longer!

Grayson working with the fire and Hayden carving his totem pole.

Grayson and Mackenzie having a great time together.

Here is our cozy little sleeping arrangement. Since we were only spending one night at the campsite, we decided to put the seats down in the back of Mackenzie's 4Runner, lay down a cozy mattress pad and spend the night in there! It actually wasn't too bad! Mackenzie was a little cramped due to his height but we both felt that it was pretty comfortable all in all.

Well, there you have it! A short but fun camping trip! I can't wait to go on more this summer. We plan to go on a 3 day long river float with Mackenzie's family this summer as well. I just love all this time we get to be outside and enjoy God's beautiful pictures that He paints for us!

Have a blessed day!

A New Life!

My best friend is being induced this afternoon! I'll be going to the hospital at noon today to wait for the precious life to come into this world! I'm so excited!

Alisha called me yesterday evening to tell me that she was being induced today due to minor preeclampsia. The doctor's didn't want to risk anything, and since her original due date is May 19th, everything should be just fine. Please keep Alisha and her little one in your prayers today! She decided to wait to find out the sex of the baby until he/she was born so I'll let you know that tomorrow! The names they have decided on are Jovi if it's a girl and Silas if it's a boy!

Have a blessed day!

Voice to Spirit

Hi all! Can I just say that the weather has been beautiful here? I absolutely love the sun, being from Southern California. However, where I live in Oregon now, we don't get too much of it. So, I like to take advantage of it when it is here!

Yesterday afternoon I went for a nice walk and decided to bring my camera along with me. Here are some of the pictures I took. Unfortunately, I didn't plan right and my camera battery died right in the middle of my walk.

I loved how the sun was shining through this tree.

In other news, the reason for the title of this post...many of you have asked about the cd that my husband and I put together. It's been almost a year now since we released it. Our group is called Voice to Spirit and the title of the cd is "Songs for a Broken City". It is a Christian Electronic-Style Worship CD. We covered/remixed 6 contemporary worship songs and wrote 9 of our own. 2 of the ones we wrote are co-written by both Mackenzie and myself. The rest are Mackenzie's own work, a few of them are instrumental.

We held a release party with about 30 of our friends and family members last June. Our intentions have been to do more events but due to our recent marriage and wedding last October keeping us really busy, we weren't able to schedule any concerts. Our hope is to travel to churches and youth groups to share our music. We'd also like to create a new cd in the future. Music has always been a passion of both Mackenzie and mine. We're fortunate enough to play in the worship team at our church.

Anyway, my loving husband gave me the code to paste the link to preview our music on Itunes. You may have to download itunes if you don't already have it on your computer. Once you get to our page, you can double-click on the song title and listen to a sample of our music. I'm sorry it's not the whole songs, but at least you can get a preview! I hope you are blessed! Here's the link:

Songs for a Broken City Voice To Spirit Genre: Electronic Worship (P) 2008 S.I. Productions

I'm sorry the link and spacing are so big! My husband is working on making it smaller but for now, this will do! Once it is smaller, I will place a link in my sidebar.

Have a blessed day!

Spring Break

Hey there!
I hope spring has sprung in your area. I'm still waiting for the sun to shine consistently here! I'm tired of the rain!

I guess I just need to be patient. :)

Anyway, it's spring break in our area, which, because I work in a school-based program, I have a week off! Woo hoo!

I've decided that I'm going to take a week off of blogging as well. I've been slacking in spending time in the Word with the Lord so that will be my focus this week. Also, I would like to do some outdoorsy (sp?) things with my husband as the weather permits, and today I'll be helping my best friend set up her baby room! I'm so excited!

So, I'm sorry to leave all you ladies for the week but I will do my best to stop by your blogs as much as I can. I will be back on Sunday (Saturday Evening) for Worship and Praise Sunday! Thank you so much to those of you have participated in this. It is such a blessing hearing all the music for the Lord and learning new songs as well!

I pray you'll be blessed this week and please pray that I can get focused and set up a plan that works for me to spend time with God, each day.

Chicken Pesto

I know what you're thinking, "She's done a lot of food posts lately!" I know! I'm sorry! It's just all I can think about posting on lately. We've been pretty busy with different things going on and I haven't been very creative about my posts.
I do hope you enjoy these scrumptious recipes anyhow!

Today I wanted to share one of my hubby's favorite meals.

Chicken Pesto Pasta

Pesto is probably one of his, if not the favorite sauce to put on pasta. I love it too.

Plus, it's so easy to make!

Here's what I use for the meal. Pasta of your choice (I used fettuccine this time but I use all different types.), cooked chicken, homemade pesto, and freshly grated Parmesan or Romano cheese.

I use the recipe in my Betty Crocker cookbook to make the pesto.
Here's how simple it is:

2 cups firmly packed fresh basil leaves
3/4 cup grated Parmesan cheese
3/4 cup olive or vegetable oil
3 cloves garlic
1/4 cup pine nuts


1. Place all ingredients in blender or food processor.
2. Cover and blend on medium speed about 3 minutes, stopping occasionally to scrape sides, until smooth.

One important tip to remember: Do NOT heat up the pesto. Serve it at room temperature. If you heat it up, the oil will separate from the rest of the ingredients and it won't be the best. So, when your pasta is finished cooking just mix the pesto (room temperature) into the pasta.

Another thing I do (because we like pesto so much), is make a double or triple batch and freeze the pesto. It should keep for a couple months. Then, just place it in the fridge a few days before you want to use it.

We also enjoy pesto as a spread for sandwiches, substituted for mayo or mustard. Oh and I used the leftover chicken from the Roasted Chicken that I made. It was so nice to have it already cooked. It made this easy to prepare dinner, even easier!

I hope you've had a wonderful week and that you enjoy your weekend! Mackenzie and I have started going on walks after dinner. It has been so nice to get out of the house and have that quiet time together...and to help burn off some of those calories we just ate!

Mackenzie's Fishing Trip with Dad and Hayden!

The weekend is 2 days away! I'm so excited and ready for it! We're having my best friend and her husband over for dinner on Saturday evening, but other than that, I'm just excited to relax!

Anyway...
On the day of the Valentine's tea that I hosted with my sweet Mother-in-love Sharon, Mackenzie, his dad Eric, and brother Hayden went fishing up north for Sturgeon.

Mackenzie and I are not huge fish eaters. He only likes white meat and me well, let's just say I'm going to need to be optimistic about eating fish for awhile! FYI, sturgeon is a white meat fish.

However, his dad is an expert fisherman and hunter! This is one of his dad's favorite hobbies and it was a wonderful way for Mackenzie and Eric to spend some time together. From what I heard, Eric was so excited to be able to spend some quality time with his son. Mackenzie was excited as well!

They caught 2 sturgeon! This was a pretty good day for them!

There they are, each about 3 feet long. There are laws on catching Sturgeon. One, you must have a fishing license. Two, each person can only catch a total of 5 sturgeon per year. And three, you may only catch one sturgeon per person for each fishing trip. There's also a limit on the size of the fish but I'm not quite sure what that is. If you are familiar with sturgeon, you know that they can grow to be huge fish! After taking 3 or so pictures, Mackenzie was really anxious for me to be done...he said the fish were both really heavy!

Ok, this picture grosses me out! But I wanted to show you some of the features of the sturgeon. They are such an interesting looking fish!

I'm so proud of my husband! This will really help us save money on buying meat, if I can learn to like it! :) Fish also has so many health benefits as you may know. We're going to research different ways to cook the fish, to find a way that we like it. Any ideas for a non-fish liking person? haha

Have a wonderful Thursday!