Summertime Day In The Life // Lemon Salmon Pasta

Well, hello friends, and welcome back to my channel. Welcome if you're new. Today, we're gonna do a day in the life. I have some cleaning to do. I have a really delicious recipe. We're gonna check the garden, go for a walk, do all the things, but before we do all that, let's get the kids fed. If you're new here, my name is Laura Nicholson. I love to share all things homemaking. I'd love it if you would subscribe, and if you're returning, it is so great to see you. Okay, let's jump into this beautiful day. So we are in the middle of summer. It is June, and we just actually have summer solstice, which was so funny to wake up this morning. It was so bright at like 5.50. It was bizarre, but anyway, and it was light, obviously, very late last night, but it is a new beautiful day. I wanna get the kids fed before I head into my day, so I do have a really fun project. I'm actually hosting a tea party. Well, kind of like a tea party. It's a birthday party for a girlfriend of mine, but it's gonna be kind of like a classic tea style with some dried flowers and some things like that, so I need to actually clean up the tablescape I just did. We were gonna host it outside, but the weather's been a little bit funky, and I just don't wanna risk it. I also love that kiwi, the center with the seeds, made the shape of a heart, and I don't know. I love little simple things like that. Just brought absolute love and joy into my day, but anyway, so I need to clean that up, and then I'll be taking you along with some little DIY projects I have coming up that I'm really looking forward to, but today we're just going to kinda get the house tidied up. I wanna make sure I have time to take that tablescape down. Let's get these kids fed. I'm gonna head out for my walk, and then we will get going on all the little tasks I have to get done today. Tell us in the comments down below how is the weather where you are? How have things been? 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Every single one of their formulas contain five to six premium trademark clinical ingredients specifically curated to support women in their primary essential stage, which is 18 to 45, their midlife essential, which is 40 to 55, and the postmenopause essentials, which is 50 plus. Now, since I have been doing a lot of research on my body through many different forums, I have found that I have sleep quality issues, mood and mental clarity issues, and energy and stamina issues. So I went with the midlife essential, which targets sleep disruption and helps me stay asleep where that 2 a.m. let's wake up and stress about things that don't really exist happen, and then that mental clarity, which supports that I'm halfway in the middle of doing something and forget what I'm doing and then go do something completely different to only remember I had something else to do, and then also that energy and stamina, which I need to keep this house clean this spring. If you're not quite sure which one would benefit you best, you can definitely take their quiz. That's what I did, and I've noticed so many incredible benefits. I would love to invite you to join me. You can save up to 32% per month when you subscribe, and if you're not sure which formula is right for you, you can take their quiz, which will tell you exactly what is best for you. Try it for a month, and you'll thank me later. After I got myself ready for the day, the first thing I wanted to do was to get the dishes flipped. I do this every single day, just get the dishes all unpacked, and then I restart the dishwasher, same thing with laundry. I always find that doing those first thing in the beginning of the day, I see now it's like midday. Kids have already had lunch, which is really nice because then I can just unload the dishwasher and then load it back up. That just keeps everything kind of in motion. I do the same with the laundry, midday. I get everything. I try to get at least two loads done a day, and then at night when I finally get to sit down and maybe watch a little show or something, I'll just fold those two little loads, or the kids will do them. It kind of just depends on the day, but I kind of wanted to get this done. I really wanted to spend some time in my garden because we did turn the water off, and it feels like everything is exploding out there. I would love to know in the comments if you do have a garden, where are you in your gardening process? Are you starting to see tomatoes? Are you starting to see lots of zucchinis? What are you seeing coming out? What's doing well? What are you struggling with? Share it all down below. I will say, all of my tomatoes are still very hard and green. I'm not sure what the tomato season's gonna look like. None of my heirlooms have done anything, but my tomatillas are doing really well, so I guess we're gonna have lots of green salsa. I might even pickle some of those. We were talking last night at dinner about all the different things we could do with the green tomatoes, but I really love to cook with those, and then the other thing I was gonna do was maybe go get a couple more cucumber, pickling cucumber plants. I only have two. Well, I have three, but one isn't doing as well, so I might be doing all that. Maybe tomorrow I'll take you guys with me over to Van Winden's, which is our local nursery, and we'll poke around and see what they still have. Typically this time of the year, everything is sold out, so I will probably have to go somewhere like Osh or Home Depot to find something like that, but fingers crossed we find something delicious. I'm surprised how well the house has stayed clean and organized this summer, especially with having so many kids in and out of the house. I was just like, today I went down to clean everything up, and it was just, it was less than a 20-minute tidy. I was very, very pleased with how well. I think it's because the kids have been outside so much, but I just wanna get things tidied up in here, and then I wanna go into the front room and get that table reset. So one of the things I had as one of my major projects this year in 2026 was to slowly start going through all of my decor bins as they come home seasonally. So I had a bunch of fruit that I used for this tablescape. Now I have to change out for an upcoming event, but when I was trying to look at all of this stuff in these boxes, it was all just thrown in there. So one of the things I wanna do is slowly start to put everything into its own bags or boxes to keep things really organized. So no matter what time of the year, I can always find fun and different ways to be creative. It's one of the things I loved about starting my YouTube channel was just being able to be creative and share it with other creative people, whether it's tablescapes or just holiday decor. I do have a lot coming up. I'm already starting to plan back to school decor as well as fall. So please do hit the subscribe button if you're interested in that. We will be starting back to school mid-July and then fall will be August 1st. So I always do it that way. I just always have. I feel like fall isn't long enough as I always decorate for Halloween as well. My kids love all of the whimsical holidays. So I don't always get to have fall decor up very long. So I always do August through September. And then towards the end of September, we'll take all that down and start Halloween, do the Halloween decor only in the month of October. And then we will transition in to Christmas, which I'm very excited about. I do have a Christmas in July special coming up. So hit the subscribe button if you wanna check that out. This week, we do have some recipes I'm gonna be sharing with you guys. I do have a deep clean in the refrigerator because it is very messy. That's one of the projects I had this week. And then I should have at least one of my Christmas special videos up and then the garden party tablescape that I'm really excited to share with you. So if you like that type of stuff, I will try to get those up before Friday. Well, I'll definitely have to have it done by the weekend. So I'm very, very, very much looking forward to fall and Halloween and Christmas though. Those are some of my favorite months to decorate and I have some really fun and unique plans for this house. So stick around for that. But today I wanna get all of this clean and organized. Again, this was one of the big projects I had for this year is when I am using these types of things, instead of throwing them back into boxes, I'm going to take much better care of all of my decor and separate it out but also put it in its own bins and bags. This project took me so much longer than I had anticipated. By the time I finished in here, it took me about an hour and a half to clean and organize all of that stuff. It was so hot in the backyard. I ended up not going out there, but I did go later that evening when I was putting the chicken booms to bed. So we'll head out there in tomorrow's video. Tomorrow or the next day, I'm not sure which day I'm gonna film, but for dinner tonight, I'm making my mom's recipe. She used to make pancetta-wrapped prawns. When I was little, she would barbecue them. I couldn't for the life of me find skewers anywhere. So I decided to just wrap those up and we're gonna bake them. They turn out just as good. All right, no, I lied. They are actually way better on the barbecue. I highly don't recommend baking them if you do have a barbecue, but baking is just as good. Anyway, to make these, I just add a little cilantro, garlic, sometimes jalapenos. I don't do that anymore because I have kids now. And into a little dish with some olive oil and then throw your prawns or your shrimp in there. And then let that marinate for a little bit. Then we're gonna wrap it up in some very thinly sliced pancetta. And then I'm just gonna bake those. They are so good. I thought those would be a nice little appetizer for our family tonight. I'm gonna be making the most amazing quick dinner. This is one of my favorite things to make when I have a lot going on. I'm in a pinch today. I particularly had a lot of things going on. So I was excited to have everything I needed to pull this recipe off. I'll share with you towards the end of this video. But last night when we were at dinner, my husband was saying he had this childhood memory of having pickled eggs, which I've never had a pickled egg before. But I thought it'd be kind of nice to surprise him and make those. So I'm going to be seeing how those turn out. I will let you know. I'm just adding my regular pickling brine in here with I think six or seven eggs, some garlic, some dill, and my pickling spices. And we'll see what turns out. But I'm very excited. If you've got a good pickled egg recipe, tell us in the comments down below because I know he likes them and I'm happy to make them anytime for him. And I'm very excited to see how they turn out though. I absolutely love all things pickled and I absolutely love eggs. So I have a feeling I'm going to love this. Okay, so for this recipe for dinner, I had some smoked salmon. I love this. This is like a hot smoked salmon. It's very, very good. Great flavor. Get it from Trader Joe's. And I had some gnocchi. And then at Trader Joe's, they had this lemon, I don't know, it was like a lemon Alfredo sauce. So I thought it'd be fun to do like a lemon gnocchi pasta with a nice cream sauce and add in some peas and just see how it all comes together. It was amazing. This literally took me about 10 minutes to make. I have the gnocchi going, which really takes about two minutes. Once the gnocchi kind of floats to the top, it's done. It takes literally about two minutes. And then for that sauce, they ended up adding just a little bit of extra heavy whipping cream to thicken it up. I added in the salmon, the peas, and some fresh dill. The flavor of this was so bright and beautiful to serve. I ended up adding a little bit of Parmesan cheese and some fresh lemon zest, which I think was super good. My kids didn't care for it, so I didn't add it to theirs. But this is a very quick, easy recipe. If you need something that's somewhat gourmet, but very quick, highly recommend making this. I got everything to pull this off at Trader Joe's. And again, it only took me about 10 minutes. Thank you so much for joining me in today's video. Don't forget to subscribe because we have lots of decorating coming up in the next video real soon. Okay, guys, I'll see you in tomorrow's video. Bye.