One of my favorite meals

For dinner I often make this... It is delicious! The green salad is fresh and flavorful and the pasta is extremely pleasing to the taste buds! Since switching to a completely vegan diet last year this pasta is one of my favorite new recipes. Every single time I've made this and one of my non vegan family members tries it, it quickly becomes one of their favs as well. The recipe is from the Vegan Yum Yum cookbook which has a great selection of vegan recipes- in fact the most likeable recipes I've found in one vegan cookbook. 

This recipe is called Hurry up Alfredo. You just cook your shell pasta (it must be shell pasta so it holds more of this dreamy sauce)  and steam whatever veggies you want to add. This time I added cauliflower but it is good with any kind of veggies because the sauce is just so yum yum! 

Blend the following ingredients in your blender until smooth and poor over hot cooked pasta and/ or veggies:

1 cup soy milk

1/3 heaping cup raw unsalted cashews

1/4 cup nutritional yeast

3 T tamari sauce or soy sauce 

2 T Earth Balance margarine

1 T tahini (it looks like peanut butter)

1 T fesh lemon juice

2 tsp Dijon mustard

1/2 tsp paprika

A pinch of nutmeg

Salt an pepper to taste

I also add some crushed red pepper - to give it a little kick 
Enjoy!

Natural Abundance

The local blackberries are in full bounty here and literally everywhere! I picked these tonight in my yard. I've discovered that if I wait to pick them until they are big, dark and just a little tender they are the most sweet. I have never tasted anything this sweet that I've picked from my own yard, they are so delicious! I wish I could share them with you!
Today it was only 80 degrees and it felt so nice - I checked the forecast and it is supposed to stay in the low 80's or high 70's for the next five days. I love this time of year when it starts to cool off a bit but it is still very pleasant.

The hard drive in my laptop died this week and so I am typing this on my new iPad ! In just a few days I can already see why people love these tablets. The only thing that is a little different is not being able to connect my camera to download photos directly to the iPad but other than that I really like it.  (However the camera on this is awesome so maybe I'll just start using that instead.)

It has been a fairly quiet week for me and I have been thinking about how simple my life is right now. In fact it is probably the most simple as it has ever been. I've been a mother since I was seventeen and so I have been worried about taking care of children since I was a child. I feel that I have been a damn good mother. Now, I am enjoying having some time to get to know myself without children or family closeby. It isn't that I don't miss them, because I do. I just realize that for me, this distance allows me to really get to know me without anyone telling me who I should be or expecting things from me because that is the way it has been done in the past. If I had gone away to college at age seventeen instead, perhaps I would've already figured this stuff out. But truly, I think a lot of women go through this stage when their family is grown and start to wonder, "Who am I? What do I want? What do I want to accomplish with the rest of my life?" I find myself looking very candidly at myself which seems easier to do because I spend so much time by myself.  I feel that this time is a gift and I am very thankful to be in the present moment discovering new things about myself. It isn't all pleasant - sometimes it is very painful and messy but once I get through that stuff there is always something good on the other side of it. I'll keep you posted on my discoveries, but right now I am going to go eat some delicious blackberries.

Making Memories

My daughter Liz and me walking along the beach together

It really is important to make time to spend with those you love :) I appreciate those I love taking time to be with me!

My sister Lezli and I having fun in the Redwoods - (sister Paula took this picture)

Feeling the blues

My sweet children Liz and Ben. This was Friday at Crescent City, CA beach where  it was only 60 degrees!

We had such a great time together - it went by way too fast! They have come and gone already and I'm feeling the blues with them gone today! We squeezed in every bit of fun and sightseeing we possibly could in the few days they were here. On Thursday we went down the Rogue River with a rafting company and as we were enjoying our day a fire appeared on the mountainside down river near our take out point in Gold Hill, OR. I wish we had some pictures of our day on the river but because of the fire the photographer couldn't access the road to take photos like they normally do. It was quite an adventure - we rode the river with helicopters dipping their buckets in the river right in front of us to use for fighting the fire. Wish we could've gotten photos of that!



Here is a photo from the rafting company website - it is not our raft however...

After a day on the river we cleaned up and went out for Thai food in Jacksonville

Crescent City, CA

Beautiful photo of Liz overlooking the beach in Brookings, OR

Ben and me walking along path in Stout Grove

Liz and Ben enjoying the Redwoods

Special Guests



Deer are everywhere here in Jacksonville. It was fun to capture this beautiful site of a mamma and her baby sitting in the shade one morning while my sisters were here visiting. (My sister Paula took these pictures.)



I am very excited for my 2 youngest children to arrive later today! I have planned a day of river rafting for us tomorrow and it will be such fun to hang out with them for the next few days! That has been the toughest part of moving here - being so far from my family. I wish they would all move here too but that is probably not realistic at the present time. So I want to make the most of every moment while we are together. I will post some pictures of our time together later on this week. As I've been preparing for guests this summer I decided to paint the furniture in the guest room. Once I did that project and realized how easy it was and how much I liked it, I decided to paint my kitchen table. My next project will be a dresser I have in my laundry room. Here are some photos of the painting projects:

I didn't take before and after photos of the bedroom furniture but this is a big improvement - I love the color! I used Annie Sloan chalk paint and it was so easy - no sanding necessary. I heard about it from someone's 'pin' on pinterest. There are so many great ideas - I painted mine with a basic look but check out what you can do with this paint! Such creative people out there.

Here is the link:

 http://pinterest.com/nypaintedlady/annie-sloan-chalk-paint-passion/

You can kind of see the 'before' oak color in this photo

Heat and Smoke

Well the hot temperatures finally arrived here. I've loved the summer here because we've had very few days above 90 degrees. Currently we are experiencing a heat wave of high 90's with smoky skies from the northern California and southern Oregon fires. Yuck! Fortunately there are options to escape the heat and smoke. You can drive to a higher elevation to get out of the smoke or drive to the coast to get out of the heat. Yesterday I decided to drive to a higher elevation and visit a lake I'd heard about called Lake of the Woods. It was certainly worth the 50 mile drive to see clear blue skies and enjoy a day at the lake. Montana enjoyed cooling off in the water as much as I did ...

Peace and the Britt Orchestra

I don't know if there are any blog readers out there tonight checking out my blog, but if you're out there, I just have to share what this evening is like here in Jacksonville. As I sit here on my couch reading a good book, enjoying the nice cool breeze blowing through the screens and the sound of the Britt Orchestra playing in the background, I am thinking this almost feels like a dream. I can hear the crickets chirping outside my window with the heavenly orchestra playing at the Britt pavilion a couple of streets over. The beautiful sounds are easy to enjoy from where I sit. I’m so thankful that I don’t have cable television right now – even though I am missing the Olympics, this is the life I envisioned for myself at this time. Ahhh, and what a life it is. I feel very grateful to be here, now.

Things girls like

I'm not a big shopper really compared to my other female friends. But there are certain things I enjoy shopping for. There is something that feels good about finding a delicious smelling lotion, an artsy colorful pillow, original greeting cards, or comfy new pajamas. I enjoyed browsing through the boutiques here in Jacksonville with my sisters last week. They had secretly talked about buying me a house warming gift and I was thrilled when they chose the lamp below. I had been thinking about getting something colorful and glowing for my kitchen area. This is perfect on my kitchen table, at night it looks like a candle.

A peek into one of my favorite boutique's here in Jacksonville

The yummy Candy Shoppe

My sister Paula loved seeing the beautiful hydrangea flowers around town

This is Picos boutique where we found the lamp for my kitchen table

A glimpse of Jacksonville's California street where shopping can be an all day experience

Another view of California street

Sisters

Since my last post I enjoyed some very special guests at my house - my 2 sisters came to visit! We had such a great time together. There was so much to show them in the few days they were here I suspected we wouldn't get to see and do everything on the list. But we did manage to eat at some fabulous and superbly delicious restaurants and shop at the charming boutiques in Jacksonville and Ashland. Of course we spent hours talking, laughing and even a bit of crying. Here are some pictures of our day trip to Crater Lake – it was a Beautiful day!

This is at 'Natural Bridge' on our way to Crater Lake