Early Garden

With the warmer weather comes the beginning of the gardening season. This is the third year we've planted a vegetable garden, but the first year to plant some cool weather crops. The past couple of years have been pretty good with harvests including tomatoes, bell peppers, eggplant, beans, sunflower seeds, cucumbers, and basil.

I'm a huge fan of Jon Jeavons' How to Grow More Vegetables (and Fruits, Nuts, Berries, Grains, and Other Crops) Than You Ever Thought Possible on Less Land Than You Can Imagine. Lengthy title...yes. Jam packed with insightful information...for sure. While the book is pretty extensive, I practice what I can and try to add a little bit more each year. This year is the first that we used our own compost from the previous year's waste. I was a little nervous it was still going to look like a pile of vegetable and fruit waste, but when I popped the top it was perfect. The compost bin was a little investment, but hopefully we'll be using it for years to come.

Here is the garden bed from last year in need of some sprucing up.

Rather than tilling the soil, which destroys much of the microorganisms that benefit plants, I used a modified version of Jeavons' double dig method. You basically start by digging a trench and removing the first row of soil for composting purposes. Another layer underneath that trench is then loosened. After that, the next trench is dug out and placed in the previous trench and so on and so forth until the whole bed has been dug.

After the trench digging, a thin layer of compost is spread over the top and then raked until even. Here is Little Girl helping with the raking. She was really getting into the whole process and was even talking about how the extra air in the dirt would help the plants grow. Pretty funny to hear her say that.

We lightly watered it all when we were done to keep everything evenly moist and to give the microbial life a drink. This was definitely Little Girl's favorite part of the whole day.

The following day was planting time. We planted two types of carrots, two types of head lettuce, spinach, radishes, two types of potatoes, and some broccoli. Little Girl was pretty pumped about this part as well, although after about 30 seeds she decided it was time to go hit the swing set.

I was able to draw her back in when it was time for the potatoes. She enjoyed digging the holes and dropping them in.

Overall, it was a great day! It's fun hanging with the kid and doing something I enjoy while teaching her a little at the same time. Little Girl loves the outdoors, so I think I've got a gardening buddy for at least a few years.

Of course, the risk in posting about our garden is the fact that it might be a complete fail. I'm really hoping that most of our effort pays off, and we'll have something to show for it. I'll keep you updated on our success.

Backyard Camping

Last week Little Girl and I went camping in the backyard. I thought it would be a good way to break her into the idea of future camping/backpacking trips. She loved every minute of it. Since we were just venturing into the backyard, we decided to do things right. We started out with an awesome meal cooked over the fire pit my brother-in-law lent us.

Little Girl thought it was pretty cool to wear the head lamp and keep an extra eye on the cooking process.
 

 Nice blazin' fire and some dogs!

 

Havin' a little fun by the fire.

Emma kept guard of us while we slept in the tent. She actually got spooked at something and growled for about an hour.

Little girl lasted for about ten minutes. I kept trying to talk to her and she just ignored me!

Funniest part of the whole thing was that Erin texted me around 11:30 with "Did you hear that?" just trying to spook me. Unfortuntly, I didn't get it until 4:30 in the morning. I immediately texted her back and got nothing. Called her...nothing. I'm thinking, "What's going on?! I gotta get in there and check." So I picked Little Girl up and all three of us trudged back in the house and woke Erin up to find out that she had sent the text much earlier. I turned to Little Girl and said, "Let's just get in our beds since we only have a couple more hours of sleep and we're in the house now." No Way!!! She would have nothing to do with it and insisted we go back to the tent, where she promptly fell back asleep.

Overall, it was a very good time. She hasn't stopped talking about it and keeps asking when we're going again. She is definitely an outdoors girl.

Scones

I made scones over the weekend and since they always turn out so well I thought I would share the recipe with you. I just follow the recipe and then I half the batter and add chocolate chips to one half of the batter and cranberries, orange juice, and orange zest to the other half.


Here is a chocolate chip scone looking lovely with a cup of coffee. The chocolate chip ones are good...

...but the cranberry orange scones are definitely my favorite.

This time I tried my hand at some whipped butter flavored with brown sugar and vanilla to go along with the scones. At first I thought the butter was a total fail but then I realized you just have to whip the butter for a very long time on as high a speed as your Kitchen Aid will go. It gets pretty messy but the end result is totally worth it!


I like to serve them warm with a cup of coffee...let me know if you give them a try!

Enjoying the Outdoors

We have had some lovely weather this past week. This is unusual since it is the middle of February and I know the cold is not gone for good. So we are spending as much time as possible outside soaking up the sunshine.


A friend gave us some huge rolls of paper for Little Girl to color on and I have been waiting for the perfect time to use it. Well, once I saw that it was a nice day to play outside and I needed to get some cleaning done I realized that time had come! So I spread the paper on the back deck and let Little Girl go to town coloring...she loved it!
 

Oh, and during the middle of drawing outside Grandma showed up and taught Little Girl how to do some abstract art.

Here they are coloring together.

Little Girl loves her Raggedy Ann doll. Cool Story: Raggedy Ann was actually a  shower gift that was given to Gerald before they knew weather he was going to be a boy or a girl. So it is super cool that Gerald's mom (Gigi) saved Raggedy all these years and now a little girl can enjoy playing with her. And just in case you are wondering...Yes, I have to push Raggedy Ann too =)

Raggedy Ann going on an adventure. We have already had to rescue poor Raggedy Ann from being left outside several times (Once she was in a tree)

We took a trip to the park and tried to fly some Dollar Store kites. I bought four kites and it is a good thing I did because it was such a windy day that the first two kites broke after just five minutes of trying to fly them. It was so windy that it really was impossible to get a kite to stay up in the air. Little girl didn't mind though. She had a blast just running around and dragging the kite behind her.


Here I am running around like a crazy woman trying to get the kite up. I tell Gerald all the time that this is the best part about being a parent...you get to be a kid again!

One of the few seconds the kite was actually in the air.  She was so proud of herself.

 Love this picture of Little Girl. She had so much fun and you can see the joy all over her face.

Me and Gerald enjoying being together with our kids at the park.

 

Me and Little Girl. It was so windy it was actually hard to keep our eyes open.

We went to the store today and bought some cheap acrylic paints and paint brushes and then brought Little Girl's easel outside to have some more fun. Check out her "R"

This was definitely her favorite. Who doesn't like splashing paint on paper and making a huge mess? Yeah...I'm a cool mom =)

And no I didn't forget to include Little Man. Here he is smiling away. As you can tell, he loves being outside too!

 

And to continue this outdoors theme, Gerald and Little Girl went camping in the backyard over the weekend. Hopefully soon he can get on here to tell the story!

Valentine

We celebrated Valentine's Day today. I am filled with love today as I consider the fact that I have two wonderful little kids and an amazing husband. What awesome gifts from God! Oh, and I don't say my husband is amazing lightly. He really is. For instance, right now he is cooking me a lovely Italian dinner and he even decorated the downstairs for a romantic dinner for just the two of us. I left for Yoga class tonight with a messy house and hungry kids. I came back from my yoga class to a clean house, kids in bed, and dinner cooking. How lucky am I?

So here is the breakdown of how we celebrated today:

We started the day with some Valentine shaped apple cinnamon pancakes, strawberries, orange slices, and scrambled eggs.

Lunch was peanut butter, banana, honey, and cinnamon heart shaped sandwiches, cheese cut into heart shapes, and yogurt with berries in the shape of a heart on top. I even added the berry juice to the Ginger Ale to make it pink!

Then we took it outside to eat because it was a beautiful day!

 Little girl loved the fancy plate and cup and all the heart shaped food.

Little man wore his super cute Valentine's outfit from Gigi. Isn't he adorable?

Then Gerald came home from work with roses for his girls. Here is little girl with her rose from daddy!
Happy Valentine's Day! Hope you had a wonderful day as well!

Happenings

Lots of things going on over here. We definitely have not been slacking because we lack things to post about. It is more about a lack of time to post. But we are working on that...and as I have always been told "you make time for things you care about." So bear with us as we figure out how to make time for this blog.(I know our one follower is thrilled...ha ha)!

Made from scratch this three tiered chocolate cake with this delicious chocolate cream cheese frosting...can I get a "yummmm?" Yeah, it was good! Best frosting I have ever tasted. The cake on the other hand could use a little tweaking. It was "good" but it wasn't "great." And if I am going to make a cake from scratch I want it to be great. Little girl was very excited to try a piece with a glass of cold milk. Pretty sure she told me I was "the best mommy in the whole best world" when she found out I was making this for dessert.

 

We are finally getting around to putting together a puzzle that was given to me by my Grandma shortly before she passed away. The puzzle is actually a working clock and it is a whopping 4.5 feet long! Call me a geek, but I love putting puzzles together and I was glad that Gerald got into it with me. It was by far the hardest puzzle I have ever put together, and I am proud to say it is finished now. We just need to figure out how to glue it together and put the clock mechanism in the puzzle. Hopefully soon...because I want my dining room table back! Oh, and there is still a tiny issue concerning what we are going to do with the puzzle once we do have it all glued and working....I am voting for hanging it up but Gerald is not too keen on the idea. Stay tuned to see who wins =)

Made this lovely Valentine's Day garland with my little girl's help. All we did was cut out several large hearts from some patterned paper I had left over from some previous projects. Then I just punched two small holes through each heart, strung some ribbon through the hearts, and then hung the finished garland up on the mantel. Super easy...probably didn't even need to explain that...lol! =)

Made these football cake pops for a Super bowl party. I could care less about football. But ask me to make some cake pops into the shape of footballs...now that is something I can get excited about =)

Found little girl sleeping like this a couple days ago. She woke up to the sound of me taking her photo and was quite offended. It isn't often that she actually falls asleep during her "quiet time" and it looked like she had literally fallen asleep in the middle of reading books and playing with her dolls. It was way too cute not to document.

Little man is sitting up...with the help of a Bumbo. He is talking away (in his own cute little baby talk) and he has even been starting to laugh. I LOVE the sound of a baby's laugh. It is hands down the best sound in the world.

Looked over the other day to see that little girl had built this awesome fort for Polly Pocket and Strawberry Shortcake, or "STARberry Shortcake" as she likes to say. 

Did a fun craft with little girl that involved a glove, some felt, scissors, and fabric glue.  All you do is cut out some facial features and hair out of felt and then use fabric glue to adhere the cutout pieces of felt to your glove. Then just let it all dry for about an hour and you have your own little finger puppet family for your kiddo to play with!