My first garden (small, but it's alive & that's what counts lol )

My garden on my porch!

Just a few planters with the first plants I've managed to grow & keep alive :)

These are just a couple of the things I have on my porch:

 My two avocado trees I started from pits in April

My celery plant. In May, I saved the base of a celery cluster & just planted it into the ground and started watering it :)

My one bean plant. I planted four beans in April, all four sprouted. Two of them didn't survive me trying to transplant them into a separate planter. I had the last 2 in one planter for a bit, then I moved them each into bigger planters & the other one died. This one has been string from the beginning & it was the first to sprout.
Today I realized there are little bugs on them, I believe they're aphids, I am going to get some ladybugs to fix that problem! But when I was looking at it closely, I realized I've had beans growing that were hiding under the leaves =D

Juice #17-yummmmm!!!!!

Sunday afternoon yummy fruit juice!!

~Juicing with my Jack LaLanne Power Juicer Express Deluxe ~

Pineapple, pears, kiwis, strawberries, blackberries & oranges!

 Usually, I just grab whatever I see in the fridge and end up with a whole variety of fruits and vegetables. Today I was actually just craving fruit juice and actually thought about what to put together instead of just randomly grabbing stuff ;-D

This made about 40oz delicious fruit juice!!! Mostly I could taste the pineapple and the blackberries followed by the orange, strawberries & kiwis. The pear taste is pretty mild so it's not very noticeable but adds a bit of frothiness to the juice, makes for a very tasty fruit drink!

Strawberries: Folate, potassium, fiber, Vitamin C, manganese

Blackberries: Vitamin E, C, K, folate, magnesium, potassium, copper, fiber & manganese

Pineapple: Bromelain, manganese, Vitamin C

Kiwis: Fiber, Vitamin C, E, K, potassium & copper

Oranges: Natural aspirin & boron

Pear: Vitamin C, Fiber & potassium

The photo after I stirred it does not do it justice! This was such a pretty, frothy purple, was very yummy!! If you go to YouTube you can watch me make this juice and you can see what pretty layers developed in the pitcher before I stirred it up! 

I absolutely LOVE juicing lol!!! It really is so fun and so rewarding and just the variety and amount of minerals & nutrients I am receiving through this beverage is just awesome!!!

Saturday spent working on the car with dad =)

Replacing brake pads (mostly)

~ 9/29/2012~

Saturday, I spent the day with my dad replacing the brake pads on my car and fiddling with a finicky hose ;-)

 Hi everyone!! Sorry I don't have a juice recipe or anything I've cooked to share with you today! I spent the day working on my car with my dad :) Our plan had been to replace the brake pads on both the front and back of the car, the rotors on the back & hopefully to finish installing a hose we had started on a few weeks ago.

 Once we had my lovely 'niece', Annabelle supervising, we were ready to go! She makes sure that the driveway is free of the annoying kitty from around the block and also any dogs walking by ;-)

Well, tire came off well enough! That's a promising start ;-D (kidding, folks, lol ;-) )

 Got the new rotor on!! So shiny!! I couldn't have done any of this without my dad's help and know how around a car :)

 One back corner done =D New pads, new rotor!! Soooooo shiny ;-D

 We had tried starting the brake pads a week prior, but realized it would be much more complicated than it needed to be without the proper tools. Luckily, Autozone has an AWESOME program where you can actually borrow their tools! You place a deposit on the tools while you have it, when you return the tool(s), you receive your entire deposit back so you don't actually have to pay anything for borrowing the tools! This is a tool used to push the piston back into the caliper. Without this, the job would have taken hours longer than it did, it was so very convenient being able to borrow this!!

Once we completed the brake pads on the back, we began to do the ones on the front only to discover that those pads had barely worn down! They had been replaced not long ago and therefore didn't need changing yet =D I can get a few bucks back by taking back the pads I didn't use! So now we tried to finish the power steering hose:

 We had partially installed a hose a few weeks ago that we hadn't been able to complete. Once we were done, a washer was found that we thought needed to go onto the bolt at the end of the hose that attaches to the engine somewhere here.. which meant we needed to unscrew that bolt, put the washer where it belongs, and try to get that bolt in again--It was already a horrendous effort just getting the bolt in the first time *ugh*!

So dad had an idea so we could see what we were doing!! He brought a webcam and I brought my laptop! You can see above, the web cam clipped onto part of the car (the LED lights are on on the camera, makes it easy to spot lol ;-D)

This way we were able to see inside a small tight space and try to get that bolt in. It still took quite some time because the hose has to be maneuvered just right, etc. But after trying for quite some time, dad learned that the washer we had didn't go on there, it was from the old hose so we hadn't needed to unscrew that bolt to begin with X(

But we got it back together =) Still having some issues at the top end of this hose, though. 

But it was very nice to spend the day with dad! Learned a thing or two about working on my car ;-D Got to see one of my sisters a bit and also two of my nephews, and two of my nieces <3 <3