Coffee Smoothie and Mozzarella

Do you like coffee? I like it sometimes, if it's made just right. I like to make it iced, and I decided I show you how I make it here.

                                  But before I show you how, isn't this pretty? It's a Mozzarella Cheese I made, and it has LOTS of tasty herbs and oils on in. I'll have to show you how to make it sometime.=)

Anyways, coffee. Here is the cast of Characters:

         

                                                                       
                                               Water, Chocolate syrup, Whipped Cream, Kalua, Coffee (Ground and whole) Chocolate Chips And (Not pictured) Ice and Milk. I don't know why I put the coffee maker and blender in there.....

                 1. Heat up your water. 

2.  While it's heating, pour your ground coffee into whatever you make coffee in. ( I didn't make much, so I used our French press.)

                                                     3. Pour the water over the coffee.Let it sit for awhile.

                                                      4. Now measure out the Kahlua, a little under 1/4 cup

5. Put it in the blender with the same amount of Chocolate syrup.

 6. Here is the ice, throw that into the blender too.

                                               7. Add milk.

                                                  8. Add the coffee, and enjoy the ombre effect. =]

                                                     9. Add your sweetener (I used stevia) and blend it all up.

                                     10. Chop up your chocolate and coffee beans, coarsely though, we want chunks!

                                               11. Pour coffee mix into glass, and put whipped cream on.

                                       12. Top with chocolate sauce, Chocolate chunks and choped coffee beans.

                                   I hope you enjoy it!

                                          ~Gracie

Mount Pilchuck hike!!!!

Hello My Dear Readers!

Ok, so we have a mountain near us that's REALLY fun to hike, Mount Pilchuck. We try to hike it annually, but we missed a couple of years, so last Wednesday we got some friends and hiked it! It was really fun, as a few of our friends have never hiked it before.

                                                 A pika

                                                                     Isn't it Beautiful??

                                                           This is probably my favorite pic of all.

                                      That arrow is where we're headed.

                                                       We haven't even started hiking yet!

                                                         The ride up.

It was sooo incredibly beautiful. I love the woods. When ever I go through one I can just see that God loves beauty.

Love,

~Gracie

Burns and Camping

Whew! This week has been busy! We decided to go camping at Kayak Point to celebrate my younger brother's birthday. (Joshy) It's right at Puget sound, and we went swimming, and bumped the volleyball around, and pulled drift wood into the water and played on that, and some friends came over and we played and swam with them, and looked for crabs, and I got sunburned. Like always. Ya' see, every time we go camping/swimming, I always think, "Oh I burned last time, I probably won't this time. Besides, now I've got a tan, (HAH! if you can call it that...) and tans don't burn" and lo and behold, I burn. Because of my English heritage, I have very fair skin, and fair skin burns easily. So, yeah, I fried the back of my arms and shoulders. Loads of fun. It wasn't that bad compared to a burn I once got though, that burn was so bad I still have scars from it. I found out though, that if you put a infusion of Yarrow, Comfrey, Marshmallow root and Plantain on it it helps it heal WAY faster than it would normally. Which is good to know. =D


 Our Raspberries are ripe, this morning I went and got some.

                                                   A Golden Raspberry, now you see it....

                                                         ..And now you don't! Huh, wonder where it could've gone.Of course I didn't have anything to do with it's disappearance....=)

                                                              Here's some of our family eating breakfast.

I don't remember what they were doing here...

Isn't she CUTE?!?!?

Here's a pic of our Yurt.

 

This pic I took through the lens of my mom's sunglasses.

                                                      Here's the inside of our yurt.

Can you see the crab? That one's pretty small, maybe 1 inch.

Here's a little green cricket Chasen found on his leg.

 

 The Dock.

 Outside of our yurt.

So it was really fun overall, except for the burns. And I had made some marshmallows for the trip but we ended up forgetting them. So today I decided I would toast one. With a fork. On the stove. It went very well, I grabbed the gooey white lump of deliciousness with my fingers, right after it came off the stove. But I forgot the tines of the fork were still hot, and I saw marshmallow sticking to it, so being a genius, I popped it in my mouth and discovered a new meaning for the term 'hot lips'. So I've been carrying an ice cube around in my mouth and trying to play frisbee with my brothers, and it's been, um, interesting=). I should probably go and get another ice cube now, 

Blessings,

~Gracie