A couple of after photos

an array of herbs and flowers

My tomatoes are a little bit bigger now, and my sunflowers finally sprouted! I'm hoping to have sunflowers by August 29th...
I don't know if you noticed the green hose running under the fence, but the only water spigot for the apartment complex is in my neighbor's backyard. So we threw a y connector on it, and now there's a little doggy door between our backyards. Thanks Tim! and Dremel!

We get paid in sunsets.

I think these look like paintings

the haze made these super soft.

I was the one giving the sunset, so far I've gotten the nicest sunset of the summer. I might be biased, but it's been my favorite.

Strawberry Lemonade cupcakes

Well, these were an experiment. The cupcakes were vegan but the recipe for the frosting was not, and I wanted to make them vegan. I don't think I would again. The frosting has strawberry puree in it, and is delicious. The lemony cupcake isn't too lemony or overwhelming. It has coconut milk in it, but you can't really taste that.

This frosting didn't get stiff at all, didn't keep any sort of shape, and would not work with a piping bag. Bummer. Some other sort of frosting will have to be used. I think a lemon curd center would have been delicious, but there wasn't any lemon curd to be had in the park's grocery stores.

I definitely gravitate towards the citrus and fruit in these. I think they'd be a good counterpart to the double coconut cupcakes.

Grand Canyon- yesterday

This is a perspective from where Tim and I are going to get married

I like it in color, but I think the B&W is a smidgen neater looking.

It was rather hazy yesterday. Which is the way it gets in the summer, especially during our fire season. It really makes the stair steps of the different side canyons stick out though. It's what I think of when I think of the canyon.

Historic photo from the Grand Canyon

Tried the smores again

One of my awesome sisters got me this for my B-day!

I did these the day before- so they're not as pretty as they were yesterday.

So I winged this recipe. I did graham crackers and butter on the bottom- I think it needs to be a little sweeter, and a bit moister. The chocolate cake was a triple chocolate chunk cake- I think it needs more chocolate chunks (I really don't think it'd be overkill, yes it was chocolate, but could use more chocolate!), and I did use the recipe for marshmallow frosting from the Betty Crocker book- it made a lot of frosting.
When I started torching the frosting it did a lot of oozing over the edge, which is awesome, but I think less might be more in this case. The Hersheys bars melted like crazy on top of the cupcake, but the Chocolove (because the store ran out of Hershey's bars, as well as eggs and bread!) chocolates held up fairly well. And were dang tasty.
I think if graham cracker crumbs were sprinkled on the top and then toasted, those would burn, but if the frosting wasn't torched, then it would be quite pretty.
What do y'all think?

Party time!

The Wadsworths!



Cheryl and Shawn chit chatting



L-R: Marna, Tim, Mike, Maci, Dean

Grant with the spread

Jordan with cupcake

cheers!

Brain and Maddie threw us a kickass party! It was a potluck at their house and we had a lot of fun, stayed up way too late, and got dive bombed by hummingbirds before the sun went down.