#Gratefulness November 10-20

November 10. Grateful for a wonderful afternoon of baking with @noeboe80. Good times and a bounty of pie!! #gratefulness #pie #bakingfiend

November 11. Today I, like all Americans, am feeling grateful for our veterans. In my world John is the number 1 vet! Proud to have him as a brother in law (for as long as I can remember!!) He's retired from the Air Force now, but he is continuing to make us proud working with other vets.


November 12. Today I am grateful for novocain and pain pills to make wisdom tooth removal better. #OnlySlightlySwollen #gratefulness

November 13. Today I am grateful for my love of reading. Now to decide; finish One Second After, start Coreyography, or re-read Catching Fire. I'm in the mood to devour a book. #gratefulness

November 14. I am grateful for familiar, cozy, comfort. Long day, lots of traffic, happy to be home. #gratefulness #lhs

 
November 15. Grateful for an industrious husband. What, y'all aren't running irrigation to your chickens and rabbits at 10pm on a Friday night? #gratefulness #urbanhomesteading

November 16. Grateful for a morning run/hike with friends. #gratefulness 

November 17. Today I am grateful for a belated birthday dinner for Jacob with Dad & Nell. Always great to have family dinner. #gratefulness  

November 18 & 19. Yesterday I was grateful for my siblings and for the technology that keeps us connected. Four Bowden 'kids' in four different states but through blogs, texts, Instagram, and the simple phone we are able to be connected and see the niece and nephews grow. Today I am grateful for the rain that we are getting - just enough to emphasize the cozy.

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Favorite new thing to share: Just in case you havent seen the cuteness that is #TheoandBeau  

Homestead Update

J has been working on a PVC watering system for our chickens and bunnies. I call it irrigation. The goal is that there won't be daily refilling of watering containers, they can't contaminate the water, and for these two full time workers the homestead workload will be lighter every day. The system isn't up and flowing yet - waiting for the PVC cement to cure so we can avoid leaks. 

Last night we were working late to get all the parts in place and attached. 

I spent some of my evening hanging with the bunnies. They were confused by the lights being on so late. 

We call this one Q-Tip. She's tiny and her short curly fur looks just like a soft cottony tip. 

Today I got a group shot of a bunch of the bunnies. 

Also on today's todo list was one of my last harvests before winter. The broccoli and cauliflower were late plants for our garden but I'm excited to have the veggies in our fridge. 

This is one of our young roosters. I think he's so cool with his coloring. 

#BakingFiend

I have a good friend who uses the #bakingfiend tag on many of her instagram pics. She's a super foodie who really loves to bake. I love to bake too and every now and then we manage to get together and share in our baking fun. This time we planned our baking day months in advance. Here's the net of our baking afternoon.

I started my morning by making a triple batch of pie crust, we were a little loose on our exact plan for how many pies or each type we were making. So once I got to Noelle's first thing was to roll out, freeze, pre-bake, etc.

Then it was time for the favorite lemon meringue recipe.  And filling 5 mini crusts and 2 full size pies.

 

The mini pie was the way to go!

 Next up was Chocolate Coconut Cream, real pudding, toasted coconut, and a meringue topping.

 

 These are individual pumpkin cheesecakes from Can You Stay For Dinner. Really easy and yummy! Only problem is that they can go down as easily as a cookie.

 The final piece was a dark chocolate pecan pie. Unfortunately I had to head home before it came out of the oven. I'm sure it was delicious though!

 Noelle was taking action shots the whole time, so these pics are all from her.

November Gratefulness: 1st - 9th

There has been a trend on Facebook for a couple of years to share daily bits of thankfulness of gratitude during the month of November, leading up to Thanksgiving. For the first time this year I decided to share in the practice of being grateful.

November 1 ~ Today I am grateful for one of my oldest and bestest friends who celebrates a special day today. Happy Birthday to the one and only Sarah!!! Love you!!!

November 2 ~ Today I am grateful for a backyard full of beautiful and productive chores to take care of. Especially since someone locked me out when he went to get a haircut.

November 3 ~ Today I am grateful for the love of my life! Happy Birthday Jacob!

November 4 ~ Today I am grateful for a day that allowed me to leave work early enough to miss traffic and get some things done around the house without feeling rushed. Grateful for what is going to be a wonderful end to this Monday.

November 5 ~ I am grateful for the partnership that is in our marriage... divide, conquer, work hard... relax together.

November 6 ~ Today I am grateful for the the simple and calming humor that is Sheldon Cooper. 

November 7 ~ As I watched the CMAs I was feeling grateful for my natural love of country music. Thank you to my daddy for sharing the music you loved. Folk, country, gospel. Unlike my sister I was not gifted with vocal abilities, but I was definitely given the love of music. Thank you Daddy!

November 8 ~ I am grateful for the comfort and cozy that is my bed. Even if it gets crowded with the dogs. 

November 9 ~ Today I am grateful for a beautiful fall morning that started with a 9 mile bike ride with the hubs. And I remastered the art if hands free bike riding.

 

Five on Friday - A New Trend

I said I was going to try and stick with blogging regularly; what better way than themed posts throughout the week...

1. Thanks to my sister for an invitation to a DietBet I have been introduced to POP Pilates (over at Blogilates). I may have found my new workout love!! Upbeat Pilates with Pop music!! I'm all over it, and it'll be nice to my knee. I'll keep you posted with how it goes.

2. My nephew got married today! I am so excited for him and his new bride and their family! Wishing them lots of years of love!

3. One of my new favorite albums is by Lorde, a young woman from New Zealand. She was born when I was in High School, which really just makes me feel old. Something I'm still processing I guess.

4. The baby chicks are just so cute. They pile up on each other to sleep each night, in the egg box portion of the coop. I think its cute that they sleep where they originally arrived; this concept is lost on them. They definitely know how to stick together. Interestingly there are 6 babies from each mama hen and though they have all 12 been together since day 1, they will divide themselves off into sibling groups. I don't know how they know, but they gravitate to each other.

5. Its a 3-Day weekend!! It has been so busy for us lately, full of long days and not enough sleep. I am looking forward to plenty of relaxation and downtime. Hoping to finish my current book, kayaking is planned for Saturday in Moss Landing - Elkhorn Slough, I would love to bike ride a little bit, do my new found love of Pilates, hardcore clean my pantry, and sand/paint the shelves and walls - they don't match the kitchen. We started off with a food truck dinner at Moveable Feast for a friends birthday, which was a great, relaxing, but all to brief way to kick the weekend off.

Off to kick off the weekend with that book I was talking about, enjoy your Friday night and  find some relaxation!

Summer 2013 Recap

 Well HELLO THERE blog!!! It's been awhile. I have big goals to actually actively blog going forward (heard that one before?). I make no real promises, just putting my intentions out there.

So since I was last here, summer has come and (almost) gone... at least in the everyone is heading back to school sense. We have a growing chicken coop, 16 birds now. J is working hard as always, I changed jobs and am all settled in at the new place now. My knee is still bummed out; can't run longer than 1.5 miles or so - trying to find new training ideas that will help me lose weight (always the goal) and work on the continued rehab of my knee. I would love it if I could accomplish that half marathon goal before 2013 is over, I've eyed the local races through the rest of the year and have a target picked, if I can really start seeing improvement in time to actually train back up to that distance. We've spent time with family, kayaked, seen a couple of great concerts, had some beach days, just generally lived and enjoyed life.

Check back... hopefully I'll follow through and be regular with the blog again. 

Here's the summer in pictures...

 July

A dozen chicks hatched on July 1st.

4th of July on the roof, waiting for the shows to start.

Picked up a new sunshade at the flea market.

We enjoyed some evening bike rides at the lake.

Waiting for Counting Crows at the America's Cup Pavilion

The Bay Lights in San Francisco

Zeus checking on the chicks.

Ms. Molly celebrated her 12th birthday!

A great beach day @ Twin Lakes in Santa Cruz.

Waiting for Justin Timberlake & Jay-Z at Candlestick

The show! First time I had been to CandleStick in about 20 years. I'm glad I went before it's final season.

August

Kayaking on the SF Bay from Redwood City

Power tower on the Bay.

Awesome shorebirds on the Bay.

Catching up with the rooster!

The 'baby' birds moved to the coop.

One of the many ways that I used our zucchini.

The babies like to snuggle on each other.

Working on my running... took the dogs with me. Let's just call it interesting.

And finally we celebrated our 5th anniversary yesterday!!

Things other than running

Aren't these pictures cool? We got them a flea market in town; the artist is Octavio Ocampo known for his tricks of the eye.

The one below is a crazy balletic version of the Don Quixote story, which was the February performance for Ballet San Jose. It makes it a nice token of this season.

Have a look at our garden. It is doing so much better than we did last year (aka nothing). I overplanted actually, see the size and closeness of the tomatoes and squash. I'm just going to let it all do its thing and see what we get at this point.

Had to share this funny tidbit... the other night I checked my body bugg numbers on my phone and was a little surprised by what it showed me!

9984 Calories!?!?!?!? Totally not possible! I don't know what it was thinking, but it was accurate when I plugged it into my computer.

Taking it easy these days with my bum knee. Very disappointed to decide that I have to pass on my half marathon in two weeks. After four months of training, I'm going to have to put it off and wait until I have an official prognosis, at which point I will find the next awesome run to set my sights on.