My 30 Before 30 List - The Wrap-Up

Well, technically since my 30th birthday was a little over a week ago, I'm calling this the wrap up, but I'm not calling it finished. For obvious reasons. They're still things I want to accomplish, soon, so maybe I'll stretch it out, and hopefully I can actually get 30 things on it!

1. Get my Mandarin fish tattoo - would love to get this, but still sort of undecided on the location of the tattoo, and it's expensive (and I'm a cheapskate).
2. Sew myself a wearable skirt - only laziness to blame for this if I'm being honest with myself, well, that and my irrational phobia of cutting into fabric.
3. Sell at least 1 of my photographs - I think I'm going to work through RedBubble for this, I'll have a link up soon to my portfolio.
4. Paint again (canvas, not walls) - just haven't felt inspired to pick up a paintbrush, the camera has been my biggest source of artistic expression lately.
5. Embroider a pillowcase - ooh, just got a fantastic book - Embroidery Companion: Classic Designs for Modern Living by Alicia Paulson of Posie Gets Cozy, I intend to work on this as the weather gets colder.
6. Preserve vegetables that I’ve grown in my garden - I actually did really well with this.  I froze several bags of green beans, at least 7 two-cup bags of shredded zucchini, some cherry tomatoes, red peppers and jalepenos.  I also ventured into pickling and pickled 3 jars of green cherry tomatoes. Which, by the way are excellent, here's the recipe I used.
7. Go to a stitch and bitch or knitting group - was too shy to do this yet.
8. Volunteer - I have recently talked to a person at the Ohio Wildlife Center to start volunteering with the wild animal rescue center there, and hopefully mentor with her and learn to handle the animals and teach.
9. Run a 5K - still want to do this, but nowhere near the fitness level I need to be.
10. Read at least 5 books on my bookshelves (preferably that I haven’t read before) - Getting there, but still have a little ways to go.  The intention was originally to read five books so that I can get rid of them, however, two of the books below are Kindle books. I'm still counting them as I'm glad to have actually been completing books. I still would like to get several more books out of my house though.

• Completed books: 


• 1.Poisonwood Bible - Barbara Kinsgsolver
• 2. Pride and Prejudice - Jane Austen
• 3.The Princess Bride -William Goldman (in progress)
• 4. Winter's Bone-Daniel Woodrell

11. Invest some money for retirement (auto 401K with work does not count) - opened a Roth IRA on ShareBuilder, but haven't moved any money there yet.
12. Yarn Diet-knit down my stash - success! sort of, I haven't brought any new yarn into the house, but, I didn't do a whole lot of knitting this summer. For some reason, during the summer, I don't knit as much, I think there's just too much else going on outside. But, I did finish a couple of projects, and only started one, and it was with stash yarn.
13. Bake and frost a layer cake from scratch - talked about this and have pictures here.

14. Sell or give away 50 things that I currently own - success with this as well! Got rid of quite a few articles of clothing, shoes, makeup, books. Just as importantly, I didn't add much to replace them.
15. Paint the hutch in the dining room - no, but I got it cleaned out fairly well. I'm still up in the air as to what I want to do with it. I kind of want to get rid of it/sell it, because it takes up quite a bit of space, but, it also has a lot of storage, so, I'm torn.
16. Get into an exercise routine - I feel pretty good about this one, and am proud of the fact that I have been working out 3-4 times a week for the last three months. I really enjoy it now too!


All in all, I'm not completely satisfied with my progress, but I want to keep at it. Wish me luck! Anybody else have a list? Leave me a link in the comments, I'd love to see it!

**Disclaimer-the Amazon links are affiliate links, just FYI.**

Chocolate Zucchini Bread

This is the Zucchini Bread recipe that Jeff started asking for as soon as I told him I was planting zucchini this year!   After my giant zucchini (pic below) was shredded, along with a couple other smaller ones, I now have enough to make 14 loaves of it!

Chocolate Zucchini Bread
3 eggs
1 cup oil
2 cups sugar
2 cups grated zucchini
1 Tbsp. vanilla
3 cups flour
1 tsp. salt
1 tsp. baking soda
1/4 tsp. baking powder
1 tsp. cinnamon
1 tsp. ginger
1 tsp. cloves
3 Tbsp. cocoa powder
1/2 cup nuts (optional) (I never use them)
1 cup semisweet chocolate chips

Preheat oven to 350 degrees.  Grease and flour 2 large (4 x 9) loaf pans.  Beat eggs, oil and sugar together.  Add zucchini and vanilla.  In separate bowl mix flour, salt, baking soda, baking powder, spices and cocoa powder.  Add dry ingredients to wet ingredients, mix only until combined.  Add chocolate chips and nuts (if using).  Bake for one hour.

That's it!  It's easy and so good.  It has the spices of standard zucchini bread, with the little bit of cocoa powder and the chocolate chips, but not too chocolaty.  I understand that you can freeze the bread, but it goes pretty fast in my house, and the second loaf never makes it to the freezer.

Sorry, no pictures of the bread, but check out the size of this zucchini! (sorry for the blurriness)

Garden Post

We've been so fortunate again this year with our garden.  I admit that I don't have much to do with its success.  I have very little technical knowledge when it comes to gardening, yet we still manage to get a surplus of produce and enjoy ourselves.  The only real work we put into it is using the compost I build up over the year, pulling weeds (not often enough!) and harvesting.

This year, we expanded our garden by doubling its size and adding zucchini and cucumber to the mix.  We also have green beans, onions, red bell peppers, jalapenos, cherry tomatoes and Early Girl tomatoes, and sugar snap peas.  Earlier, we had leaf lettuce, spinach and broccoli, but that's passed now. 

Here is one of our first big harvests from July 5th:

We've since pulled off dozens of cherry tomatoes, a couple of regular sized tomatoes, another couple handfuls of green beans, several jalapenos, a few onions and a zucchini that probably weighs 5-6 pounds!

I've got another batch of Chocolate Zucchini Bread in the oven now, and several batches of shredded zucchini in the freezer with more still coming.  Green beans are our favorites and we've eaten a few and I've frozen four bags, moving right along with my 30 Before 30 #6!

We both just really enjoy digging in the garden, and getting to eat the stuff that comes out of it makes it even more worthwhile.

The Fruits our Our Labor

I love having a garden.  This is our second year and we decided to double the size because we enjoyed it so much last year.  About a month ago I put in lettuce and spinach, and a whole bunch of onions.  There was also an "incident" involving 3 broccoli plants and a small rodent.  One plant disappeared, one was eaten all the way to the ground, and one was completely stripped of all of its leaves.  Thankfully, the one that got stripped, actually survived, so we're going to get a little broccoli this year.  Then this past weekend, we got 2 tomato plants, 1 bell pepper, 1 jalepeno, zucchini, cucumbers, green beans and sugar snap peas.  We also put some parsley, basil and "lime" thyme in a container.  The lime thyme smells fantastic, I can't wait to use it!  I've also thrown some fancy mint in one of my flower beds, since they're perennials, candy mint and chocolate mint, these will be great for teas!  We're also trying out a watermelon plant and some strawberries.  My husband picked out the watermelon, we'll see how that goes, it's supposed to grow 20 pound melons!  Knowing our luck, which, usually tends to be good when it comes to the garden, we'll have a dozen watermelons and not know what to do with them!!

We're already starting to get lettuce and spinach for salads.  There is just nothing better in a salad than fresh baby lettuces and spinach.  Look how pretty that is!

Just a simple salad with grape tomatoes and blue cheese, I could eat this every day!

I'm also about a week into trying to be more active and eating less.  I'm doing pretty well.  I've walked 3 times and we went diving this weekend, which counts for swimming.  I'm also trying to eat smaller portions.  I've tried eating better and eating less, but I don't have the willpower to do both, apparently.  I just don't do well with being hungry!