Styled by Jess

Summer of Us – Pick Your Own Fruit

We are really big into picking our own fruit at local farms (peach picking) (strawberry picking), so you bet we added pick your own fruit for every fruit grown locally to our Summer of Us list! I thought I’d share our most recent trip to go blueberry and raspberry picking. Blueberries are pretty much the favorite food of most toddlers, including ours, so we had a blast picking and eating blueberries all morning long! Oh, and we picked raspberries too, which my husband and I really love but Z was more into holding the container than snacking on the raspberries. And don’t worry – baby M was there too and slept in my Ergo the entire time, very newborn of him. I think he’ll appreciate picking his own fruit next year, for sure.

Her motto: pick one, eat a handful!

These may have been the sweetest most perfect raspberries I’ve ever had.

Family pick your own fruit #selfie complete with squinty faces, crooked sunglasses, and an overflowing pint of blueberries!

You really ought to go fruit picking this summer, it’s a blast!

A few notes if you go this summer:
– If you live in MA – you still have chance to strawberry pick if you go now! Blueberries and raspberries have just started now. Peaches will be the end of this month or early August. Blackberries are late August.
– I find pickyourown.org to be very helpful to know what fruit is ready for picking and when – click on your state on their homepage for more info.
– We love to pick at Sweet Berry Farm in Middletown, RI (which is where all of these photos are from) – but farmfresh.org is great to find farms close to your house (or whatever zip code your search from). This site also lists farm stands if you don’t feel like doing the picking yourself and just want buy fresh fruit someone else picked!..

Deviled Eggs

One night last week we were headed to a local farm that hosts a weekly concert in the summer for families where you can bring a picnic and sit outside as you eat and listen. We had pasta salad and cheese on hand but we needed one other thing to complete our picnic dinner. We had a few eggs in the fridge so we decided to make deviled eggs – nothing says picnic like deviled eggs! Martha Stewart has a whole bunch of awesome deviled egg recipes but based on ingredients we had on hand we made these Old Bay Deviled Eggs. SO GOOD.

deviled-eggs-1

Mix…

…spoon mixture…

…enjoy! Btw, we topped ours with green onions.

Couple Things…

We went to Boston’s Children’s Museum this week as part of our Summer of Us fun. The best part? The Arthur green screen room when Z was IN an episode!

Hydrangeas in bloom.

Summer = ice cream dripping down your fave shirt and not caring one bit…

Speaking of… obviously we have a lot of laundry with the addition of a newborn to our family, but this is a photo of where I per-treat stains. Kids. are. messy.

We let Z stay up to watch belated fourth of July fireworks one night, she loved them and now asks to watch fireworks almost every day.

The most amazing tuna tartar appetizer.

Have a great weekend all!

Summer of Us – Go Fly a Kite

Last summer when we took Z to our favorite park to fly a kite, she had a blast. We knew this year would be even better now that she’s older and could (potentially) fly a kite on her own so we added to our Summer of Us list. Over the long holiday weekend we paid a visit to Brenton State Park to fly a kite!

Getting the kite ready…

…Daddy helping to get it in the air…

…and flying the kite all on her own – success!

A few notes if you go this summer:
– Brenton Point State Park is on Ocean Drive in Newport, RI where Narragansett Bay meets the Atlantic Ocean. It’s easily a day trip drive from Boston, about an hour and 30/45 minutes.
– It’s a great kite park because of the winds because of its location right on the ocean. Be prepared with a sweatshirt or sweater, it can be chilly there even on the hottest summer days.
– There are public restrooms available during park hours (sunrise to sunset) from Memorial Day through Halloween.
– Bring a picnic along with your kite and make a day of it. There are quite a few places to get great take-out lunch in Newport, a few of our faves are:
– Rosemary & Thyme, a great French bakery that serves sandwiches starting at 11:30am.
– Peaceable Market, right on Thames St serving sandwiches and salads.
– Flo’s Clam Shack, if you’re looking for traditional fried fish, this is the place but go early, this place gets packed!
– Blue Rocks Market, really great sandwiches and pre-made salads and food. It’s also a little market with all sorts of yummy treats!
– Ash Mart, looks like just a convenience store from the outside, but they make great, traditional sub sandwiches. Go here if the line is too long at Blue Rocks, it’s just across the street.

Z Style – Summer Dresses

My Z is a girly girl, that comes as no surprise. So, once she realized how much she loved wearing dresses, she has requested them non-stop! Since most of our days include playground and backyard playing (sand! dirt! mud!) they aren’t always the best choice, but she does have a small collection of cute, wear-anywhere dresses. Here is one of her faves:

Hair bows – Forever 21 (there are 2 because we’ve been doing a lot of pigtails lately) / Blue Dress – Tucker & Tate (similar) / Bike shorts (that don’t usually show, but are worn to cover up her diaper, she’s a lady!) – Target / Silver Sandals – Saltwater (these are the best! They’re cute enough to be dressy but durable and waterproof enough to wear anywhere – including puddles and splash pads)

Happy Fourth of July!

We have a hurricane blowing through today, so our Independence Day is looking a lot like this…

Hope your long weekend is great!!

Veggie Cream Cheese

Other than my cute husband, my favorite export out of New York is the bagels. They are just…better than anywhere else – it’s the water, they say. So whenever my in-laws visit they always bring a few up for us to freeze and enjoy later. And since we don’t eat them very often, when we do, I prefer to go all out with plenty of cream cheese. My fave is a whole wheat bagel with veggie cream cheese. But it has to be real veggie cream cheese, like from an actual bagel shop – the kind you get a the grocery store barely qualifies as having veggies in it, they look more like shavings of freeze dried unidentifiable vegetables. So what do I do? I make my own! It’s simple and I highly recommend it the next time you treat yourself to a New York (or local!) bagel.

It’s easy to make yourself, just grab your favorite veggies and softened cream cheese. For this batch I used a green onion, carrot, and celery. I also recommend a little lightly cooked broccoli and finely diced green or red pepper as options, too.

I chopped the onion and celery and shaved the carrot. Mix with your softened cream cheese, spread on your bagel…

…and enjoy!

Summer of Us – Walden Pond

Walden Pond was made famous as the home to Ralph Waldo Emerson and even more famous by the words of Henry David Thoreau. I’ve visited the area before but I’ve always wanted to go to Walden Pond in the summer to swim and beach. Walden Pond Reservation has a capacity of 1,000 visitors at a time which includes all areas (hiking, beaching, picnicing, etc…) so it’s tough to go on weekends because as soon as the parking lot fills up (around 10 or 11am in the summer) they close it – ugh! So this made the top of our list of things to do this summer while we could go mid-week when it’s less crowded.

We packed a lunch and some beach toys and went for the entire morning – it’s beautiful there!

The water is so calm and perfect for little kids (as I had heard from friends that go regularly). And there was a good amount of shade for this little guy and me. Ps. I’m wearing a J. Crew rash guard, the perfect postpartum bathing suit top!

A few notes if you go this summer:
– Parking us just $5.
– There is a little ice cream truck that sells hot dogs, soda, and ice cream but that’s it. I suggest bringing food.
– It gets crowded even on weekdays during the summer check their twitter feed for up-to-date capacity closings. They will post when they’ve closed parking as well as when they’ll re-open (usually 3 or 4 hours later).

Couple Things…

Our first summertime family adventure was to go strawberry picking at Verrill Farm.

Is this really the perfect place to rest?

Another reason it’s great to have your husband on paternity leave? He has time to make ribs on a Wednesday – yum!

Holding hands, melts my heart…

Last – my Charred Corn and Zucchini with Basil recipe was featured on today’s Friday Five on the Northeast Bloggers Network – check out all the other summer recipes featured today!

The Summer of Us

When I was working full-time, I did fundraising events for a very family-centered non-profit (JDRF) where I met tons of wonderful children, amazing parents, and strong families. I’ll never forget hearing a member of the Board of Directors mentioning his wedding anniversary was coming up and they were taking a trip as a family to celebrate. They didn’t just celebrate the anniversary as a celebration of their marriage, but as a celebration of the start of their family. How sweet is that? In honor of our 5 year family anniversary last week, I thought I would start a new series here on the blog for the summer. Not only do we have an adorable new member of our family, but we are in a lucky position where my husband gets a lengthy paternity leave from his job and in essence has most of the summer off! In celebration of this we’ve made a short list of local things to do as a family.

For the most part we’re keeping to our normal routine with lots of low-key family time – see photo above, most afternoons at our house are spent outside in the yard with toys, bathing suits, and sprinklers. But now that our little guy is getting bigger we’re going to start tackling that list and I’ll share our adventures with you as we go! We are so lucky to have this time together as a family of four, I am sure we’ll look back at this time fondly for years to come.*

*We do have a newborn and a toddler, so I hate to sugar coat things and make it sound sweet and perfect all the time. There are plenty of blow-out diapers, sleepless nights, and temper tantrums. In fact, our days sometimes feel very long but the time is speeding by so we’re making the most of it.