30 Before 30 June '12 Update

It's that time again, a 30 before 30 Update and I must say I didn't think I had made much progress this month.  Then I looked back at June and realized I have done a good chunk of things.  Lets start with completed items.

Complete:

18. Grow Veggies in the apartment.  I can successfully say that this has been completed although we will be reaping the benefits for a few more months.  We ate our first tomato and I picked some of the Chard that was ready to put into a pasta dish earlier this month.  We also have a ton of Cucumbers coming in and our green bean plants are going crazy. 

How yummy does that look?  Whole wheat pasta with roasted radishes and turnips with sausage and chard from our window boxes.  

21.  Go fruit picking.  We have done this twice now and just like our little garden giving us yummy produce through the summer we will be doing this through to the fall.  So far we have picked strawberries, blueberries and peaches.  I still want to pick raspberries, blackberries and apples in the fall. 

19. Learn to can.  After strawberry picking I made some strawberry jam and I even tried my hand at water bath canning.  

Here's my jam jars getting a nice boiling bath.  It's so exciting to here the lid pop and know that the can is sealed.  It was so easy to can using a water bath.  I know I won't be able to can low acid items this way, but I'm perfectly fine with that.  

On a somewhat related note I also made my first batch of pickles.  It's a small batch, but I am going to make a few more larger batches of dill pickles and a small batch of bread and butter pickles.  

In Progress:

2. Learn to duck dive.  The last two times we have gone surfing I have been trying my hardest to learn this skill.  I eventually want to be able to surf some slightly bigger waves, but that can't really happen until I learn to duck dive.

5. Turn my Etsy shop into a source of income.  I have officially opened and updated my new shop Alchemy Hour and my pattern sales are the highest they've been since the holiday season. 

26. Learn more about photography/my camera.  I've been having fun learning a bit more about photo editing and while I'm still a beginner it is so much fun to play around.  This is a photo I took when we went to the beach in May.  It was so hazy that you could barely see the top of the Ferris Wheel, I've been playing around with exposure and contrast and different filters.