I’m still going through and editing the beach and vacation photos but when I swung by Beth’s place at I Should Be Folding Laundry I KNEW I had the perfect shot for this week’s assignment. Technically I took it a few days ago but since the goal of You Capture is getting us out taking photos and I DEFINITELY did my share of photo taking this week I hope she’ll forgive me.
Macro lens + sand + tiny toe creases = totally adorable
Amazing. Beautiful. Super fun. The usual. It would have been better if E had been able to take off of work and come with me, but I managed the trip down to South Carolina and back on my own pretty well despite TWO car puke incidents and some really hectic bathroom stops.
This year all THREE of my BFF’s – Erin and Sara from high school and Erin from college – came to the beach so it was extra special. College Erin, the one with the toddler who takes amazing photos, brought her camera and took amazing photos so I’ll have those to share later (and probably add to my header and my headshot and my Facebook profile and my Twitter avatar…) but for now, here’s what four days in the low country looks like.
Enjoying some of the 17 throw pillows (no exaggeration) from my bed
Making a run for the beach
Digging for treasure
Helping Aunt Sara squeeze oranges for sangria
Sunset on the beach
The last known picture of Original Ugly Dolly before Caroline left her in Charleston the next day (I bought her an exact replacement on Ebay and she hasn’t even noticed!)
Moon, sunset, beach
Me taking a picture of Elliot taking a picture
What, isn’t your town full of Civil War cannons for kids to sit on?
Rainbow Row
Tristan – Where E and I got engaged
Best wings ever
Playing in the fountain at Waterfront Park
Maybe eating the fan ISN’T such a good idea Caroline
The Angel Oak tree – one of the oldest living things East of the Mississippi
Someone doesn’t WANT to post for pictures by the Angel Oak
As usually, someone else LOVES having her picture taken
Alligator story: Erin and I decided we needed to make up for eating all the things by going for a run/jog/walk/trudge around 8 am. We had just started running when a guy jogging towards us started shouting “STOP! STOP! STOP!!” and pointing frantically at the path in front of us. It took us a full 20 seconds to see the GIANT ALLIGATOR lying right across the sidewalk we were running towards. We would have almost hit him with our strollers. We hopped off the path and crossed the road and THEN took pictures from a nice, safe distance with zoom lenses. After posing for a minute the alligator stood up and lumbered off into the marsh on the other side. Despite the signs everywhere that say “DANGER ALLIGATORS” and actually seeing an alligator last year I was totally unprepared to actively avoid them while walking on a sidewalk. We watched MUCH more carefully on the way home.
And now, a brief interlude of nature/macro photography:
The house has two Nikon lenses I can borrow – both take photos like this.
And I took this with the Sigma lens I bought last year after seeing Elliot’s at the beach
Tiny (dead) crab Reid insisted I hold in my lap
Sand
Fancy clothes for a beach photo shoot
Sara and Evan explore the beach
And then I dressed my children up. Evan in a sailor suit…
WHAT THE HECK, MOM???
And Caroline in a tutu…
NO.
GIANT TREE small sara and evan
Caroline, Evan, Mommy footprints with the date – it was WAY cuter on Pinterest
Getting the kids to look at me after writing on the sand is an impossible task
Working together to pop the bubbles
future Gap model
Look at all these sticks on the beach! Unacceptable!!
On Monday there was a tropical storm heading in so the waves were huge and the birds were going crazy. Monday night it POURED all night.
Am I ridiculously cute or am I ridiculously cute?
Ok Mom, YOU can pack up and go home. We’re staying here.
And a few more (I KNOW) from my Panasonic water-proof camera:
Pool/beach facing side of the house at night, from the hot tub (obviously)
Drinking Malibu and Diet Coke in the pool
Toes in the water
He was pretty good at boogie boarding! He’ll be doing it on his own next year.
Practically a private beach
It took some convincing but he decided the beach was OK
LOVES the pool
Too cool for school
Waterfront Park Fountain
Splashy splash!
Whoa, this water is AMAZING!
Chubby tutu legs
Imagine the Jaws theme song
Sharing a yogurt. Awwwwwww…
Attempting to part the sea?
This is his “What do you mean we have to leave?” face
I totally can’t believe my luck that we got to go on this vacation AGAIN – and that we’re currently looking at dates for next year’s trip too. Hopefully we can find a time when E and Erin’s husband can both come too, but also when no one is so pregnant they’re in danger of having an unintentional home birth. Plus if the husband’s come we can abandon them with the children for dessert night in town. I’m already counting the days!!
Helpful links! So servicey!
Surprisingly inexpensive Sigma lens: Sigma 70-300mm f/4-5.6 SLD DG Macro Lens We obviously bought the that fits our Nikon but they make them to fit other cameras too.
Adorable beach coverups: I bought them on MamaBargains but they’re from iPlay (also have matching towels!)
Water-proof camera: Mine is a Panasonic Lumix DMC-TS1 but the newest model is the TS4, and the price on the new one is better. (Despite a bunch of people on Amazon complaining their cameras leaked, mine it still in awesome shape after 4 years, lots of pools, lakes, rivers and the cruise.)
Caroline’s tutus: Handmade by Chelsea’s Pretty Things (Facebook) and Etsy shop. She lives in my town!
One and a half! Tomorrow she’ll be closer to 2 than to 1 which is obviously blowing my mind, just like every other monthday. But this one feels even more surprising: No matter how happy I am about her grown-up, independent spirit, I’m not ready for her to be 2.
I had planned to celebrate Caroline’s half-birthdays, since her near-Christmas birthday means she’ll never have the party turnout Evan gets but this one snuck up on me so we’re not having the adorable little strawberry-themed party I had imagined. But I’m pretty sure the freeze pop she had after nap and the homemade strawberry ice cream she had after dinner are MORE than enough celebration for one tiny child. What can I say, she’s hard to say no to. One day she’s going to ask for a car and I’m going to last barely 24 hours before I cave and get her one. Full of ice cream and cheese.
Last weekend I bought a toddler bed at a church yard sale. I figured it wouldn’t hurt to have it around for when we eventually wanted to move Caroline (because, y’know, we might need the crib again for someone else)(NO THAT WASN’T A HINT HOLD YOUR HORSES)(ask me again in October). It’s just a teeny tiny thing, but that’s perfect for my teeny tiny girl. I dragged it upstairs and put a sheet on it and I figured we’d sloooowly work towards a gradual transition. Nope. That night E tucked her into the bed and left. She went to sleep. And she’s slept in it for every nap and bedtime since. It’s working out great, especially since she’s still way too short to reach the doorknob and get out of the room when she wakes up. The only terrible, horrible, no good, very bad moment so far involved walking in to find a diaperless baby…and that’s as much as I’m going to say about that.
We’ve also started potty training. It’s ridiculous. She wants to be like her brother SO MUCH she’s started peeing on the potty just so she can hang out in the bathroom when he does. I’m sort of hoping she loses interest again, since I’m tired of sitting on the bathroom floor doing the potty cheer every hour, but it’s not like I WANT to change diapers longer than I have to.
Her vocabulary is amazing and she understands pretty much every word I say, including stuff like “Go get that orange thing, the one in the other room”. She says Mommy, Daddy, dog, kitty, hi, bye, hug, cheese, downstairs, yes, Brutus, up, dolly, Bee (what she calls her blankie), swing, pool, beach, brother, snack, bed, baby, book, llama, and at least 20 other words.
Likes include cheese, eating, ice cream, hot dogs, strawberries, hugs, books, running, the water, hockey, cuddles, drinking from a straw, dancing, sleeping, swinging, being upside down, animals, friends, climbing, somersaults, elevators, purses, necklaces, accessorizing, stairs and giving me heart attacks.
Dislikes include milk, being buckled in, not having enough cheese and strangers who get too close to her face.
Apologies in advance for the ridiculous number of photos:
Future fashion blogger
All her favorite things: blankie, dolly, purse, necklace
peek a boo!
Outfit change courtesy of Wittlebee – I’ll have a review soon but holy cow is this dress CUTE
Cheeeeeeese!
Girl knows how to relax
I bought her a pony. It was only a buck.
And she LOOOOVES it
EYEBALLS
18 Month Milestones (from BabyCenter, as usual)
Mastered Skills (most kids can do)
Will “read” board books on his own – Yep! She read actual books too. Her favorites are the Llama Llama books and the How Do Dinosaurs books.
Scribbles well – Yes, although she still wants to EAT the crayons and markers more than she cares about coloring.
Emerging Skills (half of kids can do)
Strings two words together in phrases – She’s starting to. She says “Hi Daddy! Hi Mommy! Hi Dog! Hi kitty!” every day. She can add “please” to almost anything she wants because she knows I can’t resist.
Brushes teeth with help – Refuses help. Brushes own teeth.
Stacks four blocks – Next time I find some blocks, I’ll ask her.
Advanced Skills (a few kids can do)
Throws a ball overhand – She has frighteningly good aim, since most of the time she’s chucking empty yogurt containers at my head.
Takes toys apart and puts them back together – Yes. She also knows how to turn on ALL the toys that make sound.
Shows signs of toilet training readiness – Yes, as discussed previously.
For Christmas, my uncle always sends me a really generous Williams-Sonoma gift card. It takes me WEEKS to decide what to buy with it, since Williams-Sonoma is pretty much my favorite store on the planet. Sometimes I blow the whole thing on something huge, like my KitchenAid mixer and sometimes I break it up into a bunch of small but useful things, like the year I got a strawberry huller and some treats and some spatulas and the best kitchen tool ever. This past year I split it between a grill tray and an ice cream maker – the Cuisinart Stainless-Steel 2 Quart Ice Cream Maker to be exact (Five stars! Highly recommend!)
And then I let it sit in my basement for 5 months, waiting for ice cream weather. Once the warm weather arrived, I spent hours online looking for the best, most delicious, most complicated ice cream and gelato and frozen yogurt and sorbet recipes. But in the end, it turns out EASY and ON-HAND beats fanciest every time so I’ve perfected a recipe for turning whatever-the-heck you have in your fridge into delicious, refreshing sorbet.
When I say juice, I literally mean any kind of juice. Grape, pineapple, cherry, whatever. You could make carrot sorbet if you wanted to, although that’s not really my cup of tea. TEA is more like my cup of tea, since the Sweet Tea Sorbet I made barely got photographed before I shoved it all into my face.
Here are a few of the kinds I made in the past week:
Newman's Own Orange Mango Tango Juice
Stop & Shop Ruby Red Grapefruit 100% Juice
V8 Fusion Pomegranate Blueberry Juice (hidden veggies!)
Market Pantry (Target) Sweet Tea
Welch's White Grape Peach Mango Juice
Are you ready for the recipe yet? Gentlemen, start your ice cream makers!
Sorbet:
1 cup sugar
1 cup water
1 1/2 cup juice
2 tablespoons lemon juice
2 tablespoons lemon zest
Put the water and the sugar in a small sauce pan over medium heat. Stir until the sugar is all dissolved, then simmer for 5 minutes. Transfer syrup to a container and refrigerate until cold*. Zest a lemon – use a vegetable peeler if you don’t have a zester and chop up the zest a little. Then cut the lemon in half and squeeze out all the juice. Add the lemon juice and zest to your syrup. Once everything is cold, pour the syrup/lemon mix and the 1 1/2 cups juice into your ice cream maker**. Following your machine’s instructions, let it churn until it’s frozen (mine takes about 25 minutes). Eat as is – it will be a little soft – or transfer to an airtight container and freeze for a couple hours until it’s more like store-bought sorbet. SO GOOD. Don’t forget to put your ice cream maker bowl back in the freezer to make more tomorrow.
*Look, you just made simple syrup! You can make it in larger batches using the same 1/1 sugar/water ratio and keep it on hand for more sorbet or other delicious things like a blueberry gin gimlet or sparkling lemonade.
**This is SO SUPER EASY with an ice cream maker, but if you don’t have one you can just pour everything into a large flat baking dish. Put it in the freezer and let it freeze, scraping the top occasionally to make it fluffier. The end result will be a little icier than with the ice cream maker but it’s still delicious! If you want a softer finished product (like a Rita’s Water Ice) pulse it in a blender or food processor for a few seconds after it’s frozen. Eat immediately and enjoy!
I’ve practically broken my arm patting myself on the back for this recipe. I love the fact that I can make any possible flavor of sorbet with minimal effort. I love the little bits of lemon zest to even out the sweetness. I love that it’s fat free. And I love that I can bribe my kids to do pretty much anything for a spoonful – and they have no idea it’s practically the same juice they can get any old time.
Suggestions and variations:
If you don’t like lemon, use some other citrus. If you don’t like citrus, leave it out.
If you want a less-sweet sorbet, use 1/2 cup simple syrup and 1/2 cup water.
If you don’t have juice, use pureed fruit and/or squeeze your own.
Top with fresh or frozen berries (duh).
Blend it with tequila or rum for a delicious frozen drink.
p.s. After my super home-made food photography shoot on Saturday, I had three adorable little dishes of sorbet just sitting on my counter melting. Obviously I had to fix that problem immediately.
Get in my belly! The blueberry-white grape was especially delicious together.
