Five Things

It's been a while since I did a Five Things post, huh? I guess I was just saving up my "things" until I had five good ones! So here we go... 
1. I Love Free Flowers! Spring is so great. Everything in our yard is blooming, so I have plenty of fresh flowers, and they're all free! 
Irises from our backyard!
Knock-out roses from the front yard!
Lantana from the front yard!
I'll be so sad when it gets hotter and everything stops making beautiful flowers! 
2. Summer Recipe Features Some of my recipes have been featured recently by a couple wonderful bloggers, and I just wanted to give them a shout-out here! Sober Julie just did a feature on frozen desserts (sorbet, gelato, ice cream) and included my lemon ice cream!

And The Saturday Evening Pot just did a feature all about lemons, including my lemon pound cake, lemon berry trifle, lemon tarts, and lemon cake with lemon buttercream (along with lots of other lemony recipes I can't wait to try!).

That lemon & eggplant risotto is calling my name. I love risotto!
3. Simple Produce Wash I'm horrible. I usually just rinse my fruits and veggies with water and call it a day. And I don't like to pay extra for the organic stuff, so my fruits and veggies are probably covered in pesticide and scary stuff. We haven't died yet, so I guess it's not that big of a deal, but I decided I ought to be doing a better job with the produce cleaning.
So now this is my method (based on this website): Plug the drain in the sink. Put a cup of vinegar in the sink. Fill the sink halfway with lukewarm water. Mix it up. Put the fruits & veggies in the sink. Let it sit for 10 minutes. Rinse and dry everything.


I do it whenever I go to the grocery store and everything gets washed all at once and it's super easy. For stuff like green beans and berries it's helpful to stick a big colander in the sink so you have something to scoop 'em up with. :) 
4. A Visit from Blog/Real-life Friends! We got to see our friends Caitlin and Adam when they visited Humble a couple weeks ago! 

Caitlin is an example for me of how blogging can be so wonderful. I actually met her on our Engaged Encounter retreat (they got married on the same day as us), and we talked a bit but I never would've ever seen her again if we hadn't found each other through blogging a few weeks later and realized we had so much in common! And here we are, three years later, about to celebrate our third anniversaries. :) 
5. Moving my Sister's Stuff  I love my family for lots of reasons. One reason is that we're always there for each other and willing to help make each other's lives easier. That's why my parents moved my sister's stuff home from college and we unpacked it (heavy furniture and all) entirely without my sister because she was still in Fort Worth finishing up a summer semester (but not in her unfurnished apartment anymore).
This is the outfit I wear when I come over on a Sunday after church and don't know we're about to move a bunch of furniture.
I also love my family because they're just so funny and they make me laugh. And that's why we took a picture of just how exhausted we were after hauling all of my sisters stuff out of the U-Haul to send to her while she was in Fort Worth not helping.

Haha! Love you, Kristen! 
And that's it! Is anyone else guilty of just rinsing the produce with water and calling it done? What about painting an entire room with two coats before realizing you bought the wrong paint? Here's hoping I'm not the only one... :)