An update on the GARDEN!

I have been so excited to post some new garden pictures that I couldn't wait any longer! My plan was to take pictures once a month so I could track how well things were growing but I jumped the gun a little here! It's only been about 2 1/2 weeks since the garden was planted but here's how well it's doing!

The watermelon's have grown lots of leaves! 

The peas are struggling...we bought some more today to add to this bunch.

The cucumbers have gotten twice the original size!

The onions have grown about an inch.

The most impressive, in my opinion, the corn growing a foot and then some! (one of them, at least)

Jalapeno peppers...growing some.

Honeydew is growing more leaves...

The planted strawberries, as opposed to the hanging ones!

Bell peppers growing big!

The blueberries finally got planted!

The new raspberry plant...VERY thorny!

A mostly dead pineapple plant we are trying to revive!

We found a catnip plant...and had to get it! Shaun has already shown the cats and they LOVE it!

Three of the 4 new plants...snow peas, stevia, and chocolate mint!

Two quick side notes here...
1. Because of the wind last night the garden is covered in leaves...no, we don't leave it that way! I was just so excited to take pictures I waited to pick up the leaves until after I had all the pictures taken.
2. I tried to add a picture of our first strawberry, but for some reason it won't load! Possibly the best picture yet! We finally have something growing AND producing! So excited for it to grow a little bigger so I can see if it actually tastes good too!

I'll post again in about a month and hopefully there will be more to our garden! David (my wonderful brother) was able to get me some pallets to use for planting, so we are hoping to plant our new plants in them very soon!

-Kristy

Paula Deen's Banana Pudding

A week or so ago I had some of the girls from youth over for a sleepover. I have been trying to try out new recipes as often as possible and with their help we picked out a few from pinterest that we wanted to try. One of them was our dessert recipe, Paula Deen's very own banana pudding recipe! Boy, was it wonderful! So wonderful in fact, that I had to share it with all of you!

Here are the ingredients you need:

4 banana, sliced

3 cups milk

1 box vanilla wafers

2 small boxes instant french vanilla pudding mix

1 8oz pkg cream cheese

1 14 oz can sweetened condensed milk

1 12 oz container cool whip

**In attempt to make it slightly healthier I used fat free cream cheese and light cool whip and the recipe still turned out great!

Here's the directions:

Step One: Line the bottom of a casserole dish with vanilla wafers.

Step Two: Slice bananas and spread on top of wafers.

Step Three: Combine milk and pudding mix with a blender. 

Step Four: In a separate bowl mix together cream cheese and condensed milk until smooth. Gradually fold in whip cream.

Step Five: Add the cream cheese mixture to the pudding mixture and stir until well blended.

Step Six: Spread over wafers and bananas in dish.

Step Seven: Add a layer of wafers to the top.

Sadly, my phone has this new "trick" where it randomly deletes pictures. My final product was one of those lucky pictures :( but believe me, this pudding looked and tasted AMAZING! It was so good that it was gone before I could take another picture!

Enjoy!

Rookie Teacher of the Year Celebration

This school year I was chosen as Rookie Teacher of the Year for the 2012-2013 school year for Eustis Elementary School. I was so honored to attend the Rookie Teacher of the Year Ceremony on March 27th and be honored among all the other Rookie Teachers from around the county. It was a fun evening out! I was so blessed to be surrounded by my co-workers, friends and family! 

Youth Car Wash

On March 31st our youth and their fearless leaders gathered at Long John Silver's for a car wash to raise money for our upcoming Acquire the Fire trip! Here are some of the pictures we took while having so much fun that day!