July 2024 Happenings

We had a great July 2024. Here’s a bit of what we did:

We had a Fourth of July Party!
We hosted a 4th of July barbecue for my family in our shady little backyard, featuring the culinary artistry of the amazing Jac Chandler.  It was very fun and very delicious!

 

Here’s Jac explaining about Wined Up in Smoke.  Such a great idea! 🙂

Our home got more upgrades
Jac tackled several house projects in July, including putting in a dishwasher!!!!  So exciting.  I’ve wanted one every since I moved in here in 2008.  Only took 16 short years to happen. 🙂  It looks amazing, and required Jac to rebuild some of the cabinetry.  (This shot was taken before the rebuilt cabinets were painted, so you can see where the had to rebuild. The finished result looks flawless!)

He also put up the lattice work in the siting area, and it really creates such a sweet, cozy atmosphere.  We love eating dinner out here when the weather is nice, and this just adds to the ambiance. Go Jac!

 
It was unbearably hot for days, so we broke down and bought a second window AC unit…and what a “game changer” (Jac’s words). Jac can actually cook in the kitchen, and we both love being at home even more!

 

Jac also installed these cool pull-out drawers in the kitchen.  They are such a space saver that more cabinets will be given the same treatment pretty soon! Tiny homes require big creativity, and Jac’s got that in spades. 🙂

 

I own a bookstore….Deja Vu!
I spent weeks on this lovely project — relaunching the bookstore!  Step one: the books needed to be grouped and moved from mom’s house over here (exhausting!!!):

 

Step two: they needed a neat and tidy short term home. I was NOT interested in living in a book warehouse again! 

  

Step three was to photograph every single set. Jac made this cool rack to display them on, and helped set up my cell phone (camera) on the tripod.  (Occasionally he’s a little bit handy.)  I spent DAYS photographing all the sets.

And step four will be to upload it all onto the Shopify website….once they agree to give it back to me.  (Brent was the rightful owner until his death.) It’s a lot of work, but the money it will bring in will help tide us over until Our Humble Little Kitchen and Wined Up in Smoke are going full steam, so it’s worth it! 🙂

Also in July…the garden grew and grew!
With all the sunny, warm days we got in July, the garden is taking off! By the beginning of the month, we were able to harvest a little bit each day. 😊 Here is one of our first harvests (picked by Jac while I was in New York).  Yum!

And here are some typical daily harvests by the end of the month:

Here are some shots of the garden as a whole. We are proud of our pretty little garden. It’s just one more reason why we love it here!!!!

My hope is that each year we get better at preserving what we grow (beyond what we can eat fresh).  And we are off to a good start.  Jac pickled some vegetables early in the month, and we (mostly Jac 😊 ) canned near the end of the month:

Overall, we’re very happy with what we see so far. Although….not everything’s growing as planned, lol. 😂 

And of course…the cats were adorable!
They continued to be their adorable little selves.  Here’s me cuddling with Oliver…

 

They were both little stinkers at times, like cozying up ON TOP of our plants (argh!):

 

  

And this!!!  This happened!!!  And now I get to live in fear of it happening again without us catching it in time!

  

I get that he is doing a kind thing — bringing home his
hunt for us big, bad-at-hunting hairless cats that he lives with — but yikes….this was
pretty freaky!  Please don’t do this again Oliver. Pleeeeease!

They may be stinkers, but we love those little guys and love making them happy with the full spa treatment.

 

(Wow, that’s a lot of cat pictures for one month. I just missed my little guys while on vacation!)

As always, we ate very well.
No surprises there. July was FULL of delicious food!  Here’s some samples:

 

One Tuesday we escaped the heat (we’ve had weeks in the 90s and 100s!) and headed up into the canyon for dinner. 

It worked!  It was just kinda hot, not scorchingly hot, so we enjoyed our delicious sandwich dinner while checking out this great view:

World Folkfest
On the last day of the month, we headed to Springville to see their annual World Folkfest, and we brought mom along. 🙂

 

The night started off kinda bad — with a very unimpressive dinner from the Filipino food booth (which took FORTY-FIVE very hot minutes and 28 buckeroos to get!)  I could’ve cooked these dishes better than this…and that’s no compliment! Frustrating!

But, the folk dance performances made up for it. The performers came from all over the world to share their cultures’ folk dancing and music, so that made each performance a lot more meaningful. Here are some shots I took:

In the end, I’m glad we went but I don’t think we got a true taste of the World Folkfest.  While talking to other people in line for the awful Filipino food, I learned that the whole experience is MUCH, MUCH better when held at the Art Park, the normal venue (that was closed this year due to nearby construction.)  There’s a dozen food trucks, tons of booths, and you can eat your food while watching the performances, etc…  I think we’ll need to return in a few years to get the full experience. 🙂

And that was it for July.  Another great month for Team JB.