Moving

Here is my new blog: greyelephant.wordpress.com

Right now it's mostly art stuff, but I promise I will throw in some random comments on life as well. Maybe they will even be illustrated comments...

Tomatoes & zucchini?

I meant to post this a month ago, but hopefully you gardeners still have lots of zucchini & tomatoes left to try this recipe. I was very skeptical, especially because I like meat for dinner. However, I was pleasantly surprised and even craving this recipe when zucchini season started. Calvin even eats it! (ok, he kind of pushes the zucchini out and then eats it... oh well)

zucchini enchiladas

4 T butter
4 T flour
2tsp chili powder
2 c. milk
2 cups cheese
salt & pepper

6 cups diced summer squash (aka zucchini)
2 T vegetable oil
1 diced onion (about 1 1/2 cups)
3+ cloves garlic, minced
1 1/2 tsp minced fresh hot peppers or to taste (I replace these with 1 can green chiles)

16 tortillas (the kind you cook yourself make these extra good)
3 cups diced tomatoes

melt butter, flour & chili powder to make a paste. Add milk gradually. Add cheese. s&p

preheat oven to 400

steam squash (I wasn't sure how to do this, so I just fry it a little in water?) until just tender, 5min. Put oil, onion, garlic & peppers in frying pan to saute until limp (3-5 min). Add squash & 2/3 of the cheese sauce.

Fill tortillas. cover with extra sauce. Bake for 30 min. Top with fresh tomatoes (or before you bake, we like them post baking)

Baby name

Here is a conversation in the car with Calvin:

Calvin "What are we going to call Shelby when she gets bigger?"
Me "Won't we just call her Shelby?"
Calvin: "No, that's a baby name. She won't like it, she needs a different one when she gets big"
Me: "oh, ok. What should we call her?"
We went through lots of ideas, some from him, some from me... at first all the ones I suggested were normal names like Suzy or Mary and he approved all of them. Then I suggested random ones like "Zipper"
Calvin "hmmm. How about if you call me Zipper? Zipper, and sometimes Calvin too. Or Rocky." (no idea where he came up with that)

I agreed and he finally settled on Apple-Ralphy  for Shelby's future name. This was a couple weeks ago and I called him Zipper a few times that day but, go figure, I forgot about it. Yesterday he told me, "Mom, sometimes you can call me Zipper. And Rocky. And Calvin" I guess he realized I forgot. If you see him, maybe throw a "Hey Zipper" out there, because I think he'll like it.

50 miles

Brandon and I had a nice long bike ride in Park City last week. We are training to ride from Seattle to Portland, I guess you could say that is our big summer adventure this year. And all the training that comes with it. We knew this ride would be more difficult than the 20/30 mile rides we had done previously, but once we started flying downhill, crazy fast, for 10 minutes straight, we knew we were in trouble. The joy of flying downhill was a little marred by the image of having to go back up on the way home. Somehow we survived. It took us about 45 minutes of steep incline, but we made it. Brandon tried to hitchhike a few times and is finally considering getting a road bike instead of a mountain bike.

Crab nuggets

You know how they say if you make a big deal out of a swear word your kid will say it more? Calvin keeps saying crab nugget (he said he heard it on Megamind?) Maybe I'll make a big deal out of random words like that that he picks up instead so he'll say those when he wants to be really upset or rebellious. It should work until kindergarten at least, right?

For the youth

Some BYU students have a club called USGA (Understanding Same Gender Attraction) and they have created some videos to help the youth of the church who feel depressed about their life because they are gay. I know how important it is to find these youth and help them know that they are loved and they can have a great life. I hope all the youth of the church will see this because even if they are not gay themselves, odds are they have friends who are that they can help. The first video is a compilation of interviews and here is a link to my sister's interview. (which I couldn't get to load for some reason)

Mudroom

Check it out, my husband has skiiiills.

Before - notice the hallway with the plain wire coat rack. We would just throw our shoes in a pile and I hated having coats on hangers out in the open, it seemed so tacky.

 

And here's the After - much more useful, Calvin can even hang up his own coat now...  he just needs to remember that

Last chance...

It's been about a month, so this is your last chance reminder if you want me to illustrate your book, send it in! Thank you to those who have submitted, they've been fun to read. The official deadline is March 11th at midnight.

Backseat driver

The other day I was at a stoplight and the driver in front of me wasn't paying attention so I gave a quick honk to let him know the light was green. It must have really thrown off Calvin, this was our conversation:
Cal: What was that?!
me: I was just honking at the car in front of us so they knew the light was green
Cal: Why??
me: The other driver wasn't paying attention
Cal: Well, you could've rolled down your window to tell him.
I could tell he was concerned I was being mean by honking and I tried to let him know that it was a polite honk. Honking can be polite, right? Calvin doesn't think so.

High Fashion

Calvin is pretty known for his strong opinions on how he dresses. There are so many examples. He loves shorts sooo much. Last year when it got cold he would wear his shorts on top of his pants. This winter he caved when I told him he had to start wearing pants but will only wear one pair of jeans and he wears them over and over until I have to confiscate them for washing. He refuses to wear long sleeve shirts. Only short sleeves or sleeveless shirts are acceptable. And they have to be "cool", only he knows which ones are cool or not.

His boots. It's the first thing he puts on as soon as he wakes up from his nap. He would LOVE to wear them with shorts. They are getting too small, but still wants to wear them at all times. He insists that his jeans don't cover his boots. He is always stopping to tuck the front cuff of his jeans back into his boots. We've been trying to mandate more normal-shoe wearing and I guess it is a lot more difficult to tuck jeans into the front of shoes than it is in boots. Solution:

Fortunately, they don't stay tucked in very long and he hasn't put forth too much effort into tucking them back in.

Knicks fan?

This was a first: Calvin was eating breakfast in the kitchen and espn was on the TV. I noticed 4 clips on Jeremy Lin coming up so I left it there while I ate breakfast. Calvin asked, "Mom, why are you watching basketball??" I guess you could say I caught Lin-gitis

Story by you

I'm always trying to spend more time doing illustrations. I have a goal of illustrating a children's book every year, even if it is just something I have written, or a friend has written. If anyone has something they want to submit, I'd love to see what ideas my friends/family have. I'll pick one to illustrate and try sending it to some publishers. In case you want to send me something but don't have anything written right now, I'll wait for a month or so before choosing. Email me at: theillustrator at gmail dot com. You don't need to separate it into pages, just send the text all together.

Here are some hints of what type of books I typically prefer: short, rhyming is always fun, silly
ie: sandra boynton, mo willems

Also, my website is currently being updated but you are welcome to visit my facebook page. It wouldn't hurt if I had more fans :)

kitchen project

We've been painting our kitchen & cabinets the past couple of weeks and here are the results:
(we didn't really take "before" pictures, but these are from when we moved in, so... it's "before")

We have a mudroom in progress. This coat rack area was covered with piles of shoes & it looked like a tacky closet without a door on it. stay tuned....

 Also, while we're doing before & after, here is Calvin: