Fairy Gardens

Well the super wet rainy season for this La Nina year has finally ended, and the sun is out!  Many Washingtonians wander outside, start squinting at that giant golden orb in the sky, and their thoughts immediately turn to planting flowers and gathering veggie starts for the gardens!  I have always had in the back of my mind that when the girls were old enough, we would do fairy gardens.

I'm in love with all things tiny!!

Fairy gardens are surprisingly not cheap!  You can buy cute adorable houses and tiny fairy accessories, but they add up quick, especially when you multiply them by three. We actually gathered some of our supplies over a year before we started, hit clearance sales, used coupons, and stashed away a nice little assembly of all things little fairies might need to make their spaces adorably cute. You can also make your own houses out of sticks, natural materials, buttons, thimbles, anything your imagination can come up with.

First you have to decide what what kind of theme you want for your garden.  You could do the seaside, camping, tea party... the options are endless.  We opted for three little enchanted gardens with houses, rivers, bridges, flowers, and even had enough items left over to do a little camping garden. So stinking cute!

The other thing you have to decide is what kind of container your fairies are going to live in.  Pinterest has a great assortment of fabulous ideas you can use as a spring board for your own imagination. Big flower pots, bird baths, wheelbarrows, even broken flower pots.  The other thing you have to decide is space.  Where are your fairies going to live?  Front porch?  Front yard?  Our little neighborhood is pretty tame crime wise, but I still didn't want any of our little fairies or homes or miniature items to wander off (mostly because our house is next to the school bus stop), so we choose to place them in the back yard. 

We started with three containers, large, medium, and small.  To make it less heavy we filled the bottom half of the container with Styrofoam and then covered the rest in dirt.

Styrofoam makes the containers light and easy to move if needed.

I had this idea to place a similar, smaller container on top of the biggest container.  That way two fairy gardens could take up a small amount of space and at the same time be more visually appealing.  I had a third medium sized container in front, giving it a stair step look, where you could see all the fairy lands at the same time. 

I got these "aged" bronze looking pots (though they are plastic) at home depot.  They looked expensive though!

Once we got the dirt in place, and we had purchased the flowers (we tried to buy small flowers that would make it look "to scale"), it's a good idea to place the items around your pot (plants still in their original pots) to make sure all the plants and fairy accessories will fit.

This was so fun! We did quite a bit of rearranging to see which flowers should go with each fairyland.

So my oldest wanted the top floor (penthouse, it's the best).  She opted for a cute little flower house, swing set, a mini white picket fence, and a wheelbarrow full of tiny flowers.  She also wanted to do a rock path from the house to the edge of the fence (which we add later).

This turned out so charming.  The picket fence was flexible and bent around the edge nicely.

My middle two wanted to "share" the bottom pot.  We found a little house that said "Believe" on the door and planted flowers all around.  We used little decorative marbles to make a "river" through the property and placed a flowery bridge over the "water". 

We happened to find these super cute sister fairies holding a little kitty and a flowering bench to sit on.

They thought these two fairies were them with our cat Henry.  Perfect!

The middle level was deemed the picnic, play ground, tea and cookies area for the fairy neighborhood.  We found a little metal table that was black, and decided to spray paint it sparkly purple. Better!

The little gazebo, birdbath, flower lamp post and tiny hedgehog make things extra sweet

Later we got really creative and placed the tiniest tea services you've ever seen (we coated that with some sealer clear spray paint to help with weathering), complete with goodies. We also thought the seesaw and stepping stones were too bland, so we added some color and more sealant.

Yay... color is good!

We also found some super tiny, mini terracotta pots and superglued tiny flowers (found at Hobby Lobby) into bouquets and then glued the bouquets into the pots. 

We did a few pots, and even a wheel barrow of tiny plastic mini flowers

Now will all the little fairy gardens in a row up against our steps, you can see all the pops of color and the stacked pots let you see more of the fairy action all at once.

Fairy Gardens are the best thing ever!

Vivian also went back and added the stone path from the front door of her flower house.

We bought the small stones at a craft store in the vase section

We were having so much fun with these gardens (and we had a few items left over, like a 2nd bridge, that we decided we wanted to do a camping themed fairy garden.

I'm so in love with this little fairy campsite!

A few more tiny plants, a blue marble "river" with canoe, a camp fire, and in case you didn't notice, three enchanted river mermaids that happen look like each of my daughters.

Just so sweet!

Not to be out done, they found two fairies to represent my husband and I.  Of course I'm reading a book, and we were thrilled to find there was a boy fairy to be daddy.  Since I knew my hubby would never just lay in the dirt on his stomach, I used my crochet skills to whip up a tiny picnic blanket for us to hang out on. 

It was night time when I finally had a chance to make the blanket, but I couldn't wait to see it.

Speaking of the fireplace.  My youngest and I made it together.  We gathered sticks, twigs, and small rocks from our own yard.  We hot glued them to a mason jar lid one at a time.  We also cut or broke tiny twigs in the "logs" for the fire.

This was a fun project with my youngest.  Every campsite needs a fire!

Here's the full campsite with fire pit, picnic blanket (doesn't the hubby fairy look more content?), leaf tent, and tiny apples for snacking!

I really want to shrink down and go camping here.

I know you must be thinking to yourself... How could one make this little camp site any better?  Well, I'll tell you.  How about a tea light "flame" candle that makes it look like a real camp fire at night?!

That's right!  We went all out!

Here's the whole charming little scene by campfire light...

Cant you just hear the crickets?

The little flicker of the battery operated teat light made it look like a real flickering camp fire.

As the summer went on the flowers started to fill out

I love how they started draping over the sides of the pots

The pink flowers on the 2nd tier started covering the gazebo and made it look like the roof was made of flowers.

How can you not love your own flower-roofed gazebo?

We even found some tiny white beads lying around and decided to make little marshmallow roasting sticks for the campfire area. 

All in all we had so much fun making fairy gardens. I am not ashamed to admit that I had just as much, if not MORE fun than my girls working on this project.

So grab the closest kid (or willing participant) near you and go make one of these this spring. They are fun to plan, fun to implement, and exciting to see the changes through the season as the flowers bloom!

Happy Planting!

Growing Zucchini in Small Spaces

Alright.  It's happened again.  I've found mind-blowing gardening tips and tricks over at Pinterest.  A few years back for my birthday, my hubby made me a small raised rock garden in our little back yard.  The next year, he added a second one along our fence line.  We have loved experimenting and trying to grow things in our "small but mighty" garden.  We love pretending we are farmers, or better yet, the Ingalls.  One thing that grows for us really well... I'm talking maybe a bit too well, is zucchini.

Some of the bounty from our mini garden - we grow our zucchini BIG around here.

The only trouble with a thriving zucchini plant in a small garden -  is space!  The giant leaves spread out and take up a very large area of our tiny garden, making it a little harder to grow other kinds of veggies. Here's a shot of our garden last August.  You can see the zucchini plants in the middle right behind the girls in the pool (between the corn and strawberries).  It really takes OVER.

The girls love tending our little garden.

So the other night I was perusing Pinterest when I stopped dead in my tracks.  Here was a revolutionary way to grow zucchini (and other summer squashes) in a smaller space.  In a 2x2 space!  What?  I was so excited.  Check it out.

Picture by Jeff from the blog "Our Engineered Garden"

By simply using an inverted (aka upside-down) tomato cage, you can train your zucchini leaves to grow straight up!  This leaves the bottom of the plant (where the zucchini's grow) open and makes it easy to see the fruit growing.  I can't tell you how many times we've pulled back a giant Jurassic sized zucchini leaf and found a gargantuan baseball bat sized tuber!

This was our first giant surprise zucchini the first year of our garden.  We were SHOCKED.

This idea of growing vertical zucchini comes from Jeff over at the blog "Our Engineered Garden" (I had a link here, but the blog is no longer available).  He has amazing gardening techniques I have not even finished reading all of his tips.  The two pictures of the zucchinis in tomato cages posted are from his blog because we are trying this asap and don't have our own pictured results yet. But if it works, it will revolutionize our little garden space!

Picture by Jeff at "Our Engineered Garden"

This is going to be a great experiment.  Apparently, you have to "train" the leaves daily to get them to grow the way you want them.  We put our zucchini start in the ground yesterday and the upside-down tomato cage is in place.  Have any of you done this before? Are any of you going to jump on the experimental band wagon and try this with me? By the way I forgot to mention it also works with a few other varieties of summer squash.  I will dutifully report back to you on our progress throughout the summer.  Oh and if you need a recipe to use all of this bountiful zucchini in, try our delectable baked zucchini fries recipe.  Happy Gardening! 

UPDATE 2014!:  We tried this little technique last year and it worked perfectly.  The leaves grew up and it was so much easier to see the zucchini along the bottom, before they became giant bat-sized monstrosities.  We have already set up our upside-down tomato cages for this years' plants.   Hooray for an experiment that really worked great!

Garden Salsa

Well it's that time of year when our little raised rock garden is cranking out quite a bit of produce.  I was looking at our bowl of red tomatoes on the counter and thought, we should make salsa!  Fortunately we had also planted a few different pepper plants, such as jalapeno, and the pale yellow Santa Fe peppers.  One quick Google led us to an endless array of salsa recipes, but luckily the only three basic ingredients you need are: Tomatoes, peppers, and onions.  We ended up trying a hybrid of a few recipes while also using the ingredients on the label of our favorite store bought salsa (Costco Kirkland Signature Organic Salsa) as a base for our inspiration. Here's what we came up with:

Homemade salsa, right from the garden!!

Okay, so first gather your ingredients.  Tomatoes, jalapeno peppers, onion...

that pale yellow pepper is called a Santa Fe.  The id tag on it claimed "great for salsa" when we planted it last spring, testing it now!

also key players can be minced garlic, tomato paste, salt, water, vinegar, sugar.

Salsa ingredients - waiting to be salsa-fied

There is also the obvious choice of fresh cilantro here, but I abhor that herb with a passion.  Seriously.  To me cilantro tastes like dust, like death, like mummies!  So if you love that death herb as much as my sister-in-law (and/or half the known world) does, then by all means, chop it and throw it in!  Other people have been known to add green or red peppers finely chopped in their salsa as well.  It's up to YOU!

First you want 4-5 medium tomatoes.  We were not making a ton, just for us to enjoy tonight.  Maybe 2 cups worth total. We had four medium tomatoes plus a bunch of tiny cherry tomatoes, which our girls deemed "CUTE".  We de-stemmed and chopped the cherry tomatoes with a pampered chef chopper.  That brought out a lot of seeds, so we decided for the big tomatoes to slice and removed the seeds (just ran my thumb through the seed sections under water in the sink and they popped right out).  Then finely diced them into preferred bite size pieces.

We finely chopped up 1/2 an onion (about 1/2 cup).  I also threw in a spoonful of minced garlic for kicks.

Next we chopped up some peppers.  Salsa is sort of a blank canvas.  You can start with a base of basic ingredients, then use them as a spring board for your family's tastes.  If you like it hot, then leave the jalapeno seeds in, or just chop up a bunch.  If you like it milder then take the seeds and the center white membrane out.  You'll get a back ground hint of heat without blowing your head off.

It's still so excited to see vegetables you grew yourself go into your food!

If you like to chow down on big chunks in your salsa, then coarsely chop your veggies.  If you like them a little smaller, then do a finer dice on them.  Some people will put this into a food processor, we went the old fashioned route.  I told hubby these were too big, so we did a much finer dice after that.

I'm a pepper, you're a pepper, she's a pepper, he's a pepper, wouldn't you want  to be a pepper too?

Also do NOT rub your eyes, your face, or pick your nose before washing your hands.  Oh the burning!!  (Also be it noted: if you are picking your nose while you are cooking, you should really stay out of the kitchen).  Hubby washed his hands 3x and two hours later rubbed his eye and it started to burn so be CAREFUL with your peppers.

Here's our little peppers.  We just did one jalapeno, one Santa Fe, and one little red jalapeno.

Next dump everything in the mixing bowl!

Love all the colors of red, green and white

Mix everything together.  This is where you become part mad scientist.  Add salt, add a few spoonfuls of vinegar.  We added 2 spoonfuls of tomato paste to help thicken it up, if it becomes too tart, add a bit of sugar to balance it out.  You can also squeeze lemon or lime juice.  We added just a dash of water and stirred.  Keep tasting and adjusting.  

You are just a few stirs away from dipping your chips in salsa!!

Continue to adjust the seasoning, add more salt, etc., until you are satisfied with the taste.  Ours had a very fresh flavor with a background of heat, probably under the "medium" category.  The longer the salsa sits, the more the flavors will meld.  We were not that patient and got out our big ol' bag of chips right away.

Now all you have to do is go out to the backyard and enjoy your salsa while gazing at your garden.  Ooo, you know what would be good with this?  Mojitos.  I'll have to post about that very soon.  Until then... adios!

Baked Zucchini Fries

We have this little raised rock garden in the back yard.  It's what I'd like to call small, but mighty.  This year has probably been the best for produce so far, and if there is one vegetable out there that loves growing for us more than any other, it has got to be zucchini, hands down.

I'm not the only one zucchini grows well for.  There are rumors and legends about people in rural areas locking their cars at the store and in church parking lots throughout the month of August, not to deter crime, but to avoid coming back to find sacks of giant zucchinis in their back seat!!  We've tried many a zucchini muffin and fritter recipe last year, but the best thing I've found to do with them, is make a big golden crispy plate of baked zucchini fries!  That's right people I said baked!  No deep fryer needed, you can make this in your oven later tonight!  It might even be... wait for it... Healthy! 

Don't pay $11.00 at a restaurant for this tasty crowd-pleasing appetizer, whip a batch up at home!

First, assemble your ingredients:  (Printable recipe found here)

The original recipe for these zucchini fries is found by the gals over at our best bites, here

1 lb of zucchini
Italian style Panko bread crumbs
Grated Parmesean cheese (not the shredded kind)
2 eggs
1/4 cup flour
cooking spray & a cookie sheet lined with foil
salt and pepper to taste or seasoning salt
*Preheat your oven to 425º before prepping the zucchini

Take the zucchini and cut off the ends.  Peel with a vegetable peeler.  Note: there are those of you that like to leave the skin on, which is fine. If that is the case wash the outside well and continue on.  I however, knew that a striking dark "green" color on the outside might make the kids not want to eat it, so I'm making these look as pale and "french fry-ee" as possible.

Amazing action shot of a zucchini being peeled.

Now that you have your zucchini all good and (optionally) naked, chop it in half

Hiiiii-YAAA

Now if your zucchini is small, you can cut the whole things into planks (to be shown in a second). But if you have a giant baseball bat sized zucchini that hid under the leaves until the very last minute and then jumped out and surprised the bajezus out of you when spotted it, well then you might want to do what I did.  The center of the big'uns (as I like to call them) have a soft, spongy texture and are full of seeds. I decided to cut planks around the center, leaving a square core (much like I cut apples matter of fact)

Once you get your planks in order you can cut them in half again (as I did here) to make finger length fries.  

Does the term, finger-length fries creep you out a little  like it does me? Okay.  Good.

Next start slicing the planks into even fry shapes.  You can go at your own discretion here but it should be noted that the thinner the fry shape, the less like zucchini it will taste.  The thicker the fry, the more zucchini flavor will come through.  We decided to make ours a little on the thin side.

Turn all of your planks into a nice pile of fries, and try to get them all the same relative thickness if you can

Next you want to get a zip top 1 gallon sized plastic bag and put the 1/4 cup of flour in it and drop all the zucchini fries in there.  Seal the top and shake everything around until they are all coated with flour

shake shake shake... shake shake shake... shake your zucchini... shake your zucchini....

Now comes the exciting part... the dipping assembly line!  One one plate put a mixture of the Italian seasoned Panko bread crumbs and the Parmesan cheese.

The original recipe calls for exact amounts of these, but it's more casual then that, just pour a pile of each and mix

Get a shallow pie pan and crack/mix two eggs for the "wash" part of the dip process.  Set it all up in a line so you have your bag of fries, then your egg wash, then your breadcrumb/Parmesan mixture, and at the end the pan lined with foil and doused with cooking spray.

Henry Ford would be so proud of your assembly line...

Now.. we DIP!  Drop a fry in the egg wash and flip around until all sides are covered.  Right after that, put it into the crumb/cheese mixture and roll around until the coating sticks to the egg wash.  Be sure to only pull out SOME of your crumb mixture at a time. The egg covered fry is sticky and will make your crumbs lumpy after a while.  Just pull a small pile of crumbs over to work with and add more as needed.

During this process your dippin' hand will start to get all goopy (I do all the messy work with one hand, leaving the other one dry to answer the phone, pat children on the head, etc).  Soon you your fingers will look very monster-esque with coating dripping off of them like zombie hands.  I keep a paper towel near by to wipe off the excess and keep on dipping.  Place all finished fries on the foil-lined pan.  

These look good enough to eat right now... but I promise baking will make them SO worth the wait

Now you are ready to throw them in your oven that has been preheating at 425º. Bake the fries for 12 minutes on one side, pull them out, sprinkle a bit of seasoning salt or salt and pepper then turn them all over.  Cook another 12 minutes on the other side and they are done!  Test one when they come out to see if they need any more seasoning, then pile them on a plate near you!

Serve with a side of ranch dip or heat up some spaghetti sauce or marinara for dipping

These turned out really really good. The insides were creamy and tender, the outsides were crispy and crunchy. They were so good that two thirds of my children ate them, nay devoured them... and even declared them delicious!  Half of us enjoyed dipping them in ranch dressing, the other half dipped in some warmed up marinara sauce.

So if you don't have a garden, you might want to start leaving your car doors unlocked in hopes that the overabundant zucchini fairy will visit you soon!