What a Week!

This week was a little different for us.

Paige was home every day with the boys as her play was over, which made our afternoons so much less stressful as we weren't travelling back and forth multiple times a day.

I also babysat three days this week: Tuesday was my friend's two kiddos while she had a doctors appointment, Wednesday was my honorary nieces, and Saturday was our friend's little boy while they had a conference all day. It was sooo nice getting my little kid fix in!

Building houses on Tuesday with some littles!

There were a lot of random and fun things thrown into our week as well:

We had a beautiful sunset one night...

My shipment of The Adventures of Boathouse Mouse Book 3 The Wrong Direction came in...

I started photographing newly made jewelry with a new set up for my Etsy store...

Ryan and I played Rummy....

...lots and lots of Rummy (he was home sick on Thursday)...

The boys got their summer hair cuts, leaving a small hair creature on the floor....

I got to see Nate's art work on display at school...

Each letter of his name is made up of a different animal!

I got bit by the one toothed vampire (routine blood work, nothing to worry about!)...

we started working on prepping our garden beds for the year...

and Mason looooved having little kids in the house all week! Yes, he chose to lay in the pile of toys rather than the clear spot on the rug!!!! Such a silly pupper.

This next week should be a little different as well. I have a doctor's appointment, the kids have their spring concert, I'm volunteering in Ry's class, I'm helping at the library in preparation for our open house Saturday, and then other normal activities/house projects fit in as well.

What have you been up to this past week? What are you looking forward to this upcoming week?

Day One of House Beautification

Today was the start of our Spring Break, and to celebrate we're having fun doing house projects! Woo hoo!

Okay, maybe the projects aren't that much fun, but they've gotta get done.

We divided and attempted to conquer some outdoor chores today as it was going to be a warm, beautiful day. My husband worked on burning some brush and leftover wood from our shed project last year, and the kids either helped me work on weeding some gardens or they worked on picking up sticks. And with all the wind storms we've had lately, there are a lot of sticks.

Teamwork!

It is soooo nice having older kids. They really can help out a lot, and we don't feel like we have to have both eyes on them at all times when we're working outside. They all worked really hard!

Ry's big enough to work the wheelbarrow!

However, they are young enough still that they get easily bored or distracted ;)

Caterpillar hunting...

...and a flower for Mommy!

The kids had their first picnic lunch of the year!

This afternoon we also went to Home Depot and got some supplies. We stocked up on paint brushes (gotta put the kids to work painting the porch, deck, and fence!), paint (six gallons, eek!), concrete for fixing the sidewalk, and a bunch of other little miscellaneous things like new outlets and tub cleaner.

We also went to look at not one but TWO houses! And we loved them both. However, trying to figure out all the details is....well, you'll just have to find out tomorrow on the blog ;)

And yes, we celebrated all of our hard work with a movie night! We enjoyed freshly grilled hot dogs while watching Sing. It was the perfect way to end such a busy day!

Momma and Ry snuggles

How did you spend your day? Have you started any outdoor projects this year?

Vegetable Garden Update

It never ceases to amaze me how you can plant some seeds and turn this:

In the spring. Bed #1 is on the left,
 bed #2 is front right, bed #3 is back right.

Into THIS:

Bed #2

Crazy, isn't it?

As you can see in the first picture, we have three beds surrounded by U-shaped wood frames. For the past two years we've been meaning to fill them in and have raised beds, but finances haven't allowed that. 

Well, this year turned out to be that year!

We did a mixture of half top soil and half compost in each bed. One weekend, a Monday, lots of back breaking work and about $300 later, we had beautiful raised beds. I remember telling Pete while mixing the compost and soil in the beds that this had better be the best garden ever, or else I was going to be mad. It seemed like such a lot of work for a garden, and as we've had mixed results the past few years with crops (disease, plants not growing, etc), I wasn't sure all the work was worth it.

Boy was I wrong!

I LOVE my raised beds. These are my top reasons why raised beds are the best thing ever:

1. It's easier on your back. I have a lot of lower back issues, so bending over to ground level to garden hurt a lot. Having the gardens be almost a foot off the ground doesn't seem like it would make a huge difference, but it really has!
2. Weeds? What are those? I'm the QUEEN of weed growing. I don't have pictures of the past few years' gardens because, well...you couldn't see the garden, only a big patch of weeds. If I wasn't out weeding every day, they'd take over. Heck, they still took over! This year, I can go for a week if not more, and then get not one, but all THREE of my beds weeded in 20 minutes. That's 336 square feet of garden in that amount of time!
3. Square foot gardening. Enough said. This was a new concept for me, but we tried it. We've been able to put more in each garden bed (our original plan had less plants but in the space of all three beds; we put more plants into two beds, so we turned the third bed into a new berry patch), and everything is thriving.
4. Pests have a harder time getting in. Remember how I hate snakes? I would always find some in my plants, meaning that part would never get weeded, watered, or harvested. There have been two snake sightings this year, one outside of a garden bed, and one inside of a bed. That's a huge drop from the previous years, and it makes this gardener very very happy.
5. There's less disease happening in my tomatoes. Every single year that we've had a garden at the house, I've had one disease or another in my tomatoes. A couple years it was blight, the others it was blossom end rot. Not this year! My tomato plants are big, bushy, and covered in tomatoes. I haven't changed my watering habits (I'm usually either too much or not enough; there is no middle ground!), so the soil is draining better (prevents blight), but still retaining water to keep the plants hydrated (prevents blossom end rot).

Here are the beds; some pictures are from mid-July, the others are this week:

Bed #1 - contains lettuce, spinach, corn, paste tomatoes, beets, swiss chard, bell peppers, carrots, and red and white onions.

Onions, carrots, and bell peppers (July)

Corn, spinach and lettuce (July)

Perky onions! Swiss chard and beets are in the back (July)

This week! Beets and carrots have been harvested,
and the onions are just about ready to be picked.

An overflowing laundry basket of swiss chard!
Look at the size of those leaves!!!

Bed #2 - contains various varieties of pumpkins, zucchini, excess red onions, hot peppers, and regular tomatoes.

Pumpkins and zucchini (July)

Baby pumpkins and zucchini (July)

The pumpkins are invading the onions,
hot peppers, and tomatoes!

Happy tomato plants

This week! Things have exploded in growth!

We're growing ghost pumpkins...

...Cinderella's coach pumpkins (which
you may notice is growing OUTSIDE
of the garden bed)...

...and a huge 18" pumpkin that we
named Linus! We're hoping for an
appearance from the Great Pumpkin :)

Bed #3 - contains newly transplanted golden raspberries, strawberries, and blackberries.

Little berry plants! (July)

Getting bigger! We have some blackberries that are
ripening, and the strawberry plant sent out runners :)

Our first strawberry! I ate it all myself.

We've harvested a lot already this year; we've decided we're going to need another upright freezer if this is what our garden bounty is going to be like every year! 

Did you plant a garden this year? How's it doing?

Recap of Vacation

Last week was Spring Break for Pete and the kids.

We had some projects to accomplish, places to go, and things to do.

But Mommy got sick. And slept. A lot.

It was just a nasty head cold; I think I caught it because Ryan had a cold on top of his spring allergies, so he was up a lot over a few nights (anywhere from 2 - 12 times a night!).

Sleep deprivation + a sick kid = Sick Mommy.

I was sleeping 10 or so hours a night, then getting a 2-3 hour nap in for a few days. I don't remember the last time I had been so tired!

I felt bad that I put a damper on some of our plans, but then the weather didn't cooperate too well either.

Here's what we did do over our week together:

- Took inventory of what needed to be done this spring/summer in our side yard, and got started on the projects:

Berry patch, three garden beds, and our apple trees
before we started to work

- We redid our veggie garden plan for this year. We're now able to fit what was in our three beds into two of our beds, freeing up the third bed for transplanting our raspberries into part and then planting our blackberry bushes that we ordered in the other part of the bed.

- Ryan fell asleep on Daddy:

Love this :)

- We celebrated Easter:

So much for a pretty picture!

- I had a PLUS (it's our school's PTA/PTO) meeting at Tim Horton's on Tuesday. Luckily I was feeling well enough to go. It was nice to get out of pajamas and hang out with some other adults over coffee and put finishing details on some of the awesome things we'll be doing for Teacher Appreciation week in May :)

- I had some much needed Mommy and Ryan time; he was thrown off having everyone home, so he asked if I could play with him in his room, just the two of us. How could I refuse?

We built a train track together

- I worked at the library for a four hour shift on Wednesday. I LOVE libraries. I feel like I've grown up in one; my mom used to volunteer and then work in the elementary school's library when I was in school, then when I was in high school I began volunteering there as well. In college I worked at their library, and I think it's one of the best jobs I've ever had. Working at a library again, even just for an afternoon, recharged my batteries and I can't wait to fill in again next time I'm needed :)

- We celebrated a birthday!!!! We now have a three year old in the house :)

- We went to the aquarium for Ry's birthday:
 

The penguins are one of their favorites

- We went to our church's annual chicken barbecue and auction. The barbecue raises money for our youth group; they support a child through Compassion, and this helps them provide for their child's needs throughout the year. The auction raises money for short term missions that some of our church's members go on throughout the year. The auction raised about $5400, and was a blast, as always! The theme for the auction is always "bid high, bid often". It is rare to get a good deal on something; food items (cheese cakes, pies, cream puffs) usually go for $50+; cheesecakes tend to go upwards of $100! The only things we walked away with this year were an Almond Joy cheesecake (Pete always makes sure I win that!), an all in one seed started for basil and parsley (my basil didn't survive the winter, and my herb garden doesn't have parsley), and a raccoon hat and mitten set for Ryan.

- We had Ryan's birthday party:

Ryan and his Grandpa opening gifts

Things that didn't get done:

- Our playroom didn't get painted. However, Pete and I did plan out what's getting painted what color, where we need trim still, and I did rip up the carpeting from the stairs. The stairs are actually in better condition than we thought, so we get to save money there. Yay!

Before...

....and after!

- We wanted to go over to Pete's parent's house to shoot pistols; we've submitted our pistol permits and are waiting to receive them. We're in the market for a pistol, but as I've never shot anything but a BB gun, we want to see what we like and would be interested in purchasing. We can do this at another time, but we were hoping to shoot then go shopping over break.

- I didn't get any organizing done in the basement. Not even 5 minutes worth. Oh well!

All in all, we got a lot done. I always make these huge long lists of things do do over vacations, and get disappointed when not everything gets done. But the important things were taken care of: we spent time as a family :)


What have you been up to lately?

The Kid's New Flower Garden...

I've mentioned in a couple posts that the kids are getting a new flower garden. They've been asking for their own garden for the past couple years, but we either haven't gotten around to it or we haven't all agreed on where to put a garden for them.

I have a nice big flower garden in one part of our yard that I can never seem to keep up with. It has a lot of flowers in it already, but there are a lot of weeds and grass that grow up through the flowers, and I just can't get them out. It drives me nuts that the garden always looks rough; across the street from the garden is an intersection, and when you sit at the stop sign, you see the garden. No matter how nice the rest of our yard looks, that messy garden just makes the rest look unkempt.

The view from the porch; it's right behind the swing set

Closer view; hi Mason!

View from the road. Not pretty. Oh, bathtub will be coming
out of the yard this year, too.

So I made a decision. We are going to dig out all the flowers from the garden, replant a few of them in different spots in the garden, and the rest will either go next to our shed (as that little garden patch is fairly empty) or be given away. The kids will now take over the garden, and boy, are they excited!

With some inspiration from Pinterest, we decided on what kind of flower garden to have for the kids.

The original inspiration came from this picture:

via Summer Camp Program Director

I knew I wanted to put it somewhere in our yard, but where?

Then I saw this picture:

via Gardening Ideas with The Green Thumb

And my wheels started turning. What if we made a kid's garden with the sign to different places in literature, and had a brick for each book that place is from? And then we could even have a plant from each book in the garden, too!

And so the Storybook Garden was born.

After lots of hours of research, from reading actual literary books we'll be using for the garden, pouring over garden websites and catalogs, and discussing with the kids what they'd like to see, we finally had our game plan.

But how to do it on a $50 plant budget was going to be difficult!

Here's our plan:

Narnia, from The Chronicles of Narnia: Lucy has a special magical cordial that has healing powers, and is made from a fire flower.

Delosperma Fire Spinner, via Park Seed

The flower I actually wanted was this one:

Fire Wings Tulip Bulb, via Park Seed

However, it's one that needs to be planted in the fall. We may splurge and get it in the fall and find a space for it because it's just so awesome.

Wonderland, from Alice's Adventures in Wonderland and Through the Looking Glass: This one was so much fun to plan! I had just read the books, and there are so many fun flowers in the books that it was hard to narrow down what we would use. We narrowed it down to two (I think my orignial list was eight or nine flowers). I had to have these roses; they looked like Alice had been painting them red, just like in the book for the Red Queen!

Scentimental Floribunda Rose, via Henry Field's

And we all loved these! It's just like the White Rabbit that Alice chases down the rabbit hole. We planted the seeds, and they're already starting to sprout.

Bunny Tails Ornamental Grass, via Park Seed

The Hundred Acre Wood, from The House at Pooh Corner: Did you know that there is a real woods that this is based on? I ended up with a long list of plants that we could have put in, but due to budget and space limitations, we chose this plant...

Firefly Calluna Heather shrub, via Park Seed

It'll give some all year round interest to the garden, plus attract hummingbirds and butterflies!

MacGregor's Garden, from Peter Rabbit: This is one of the kid's favorite stories, so it had to be included. We'll be using some of the Bunny Tails from the Wonderland section in this part, as well as this plant:

Color Up Mix Hybrid Ornamental Cabbage, via Park Seed

Oz, from The Wizard of Oz: Okay, so I don't think this plant is actually in Oz, but whenever I think about the book, I think of poppies!

Pizzicato Oriental Poppy, via Park Seed

I'll also be figuring out how to make this super cute guy:

via Tailored Sweets Blog

Whoville, from Horton Hears a Who and The Lorax: Okay, again, Whoville isn't in The Lorax, and technically Whoville is actually on (or is it in?) a speck of dust that is placed on a clover, but we thought this plant could double as either a Truffula tree or a clover. They're sprouting from seeds already, too!

Seastar Mix Aster, via Park Seed

The Shire, from The Lord of the Rings and The Hobbit: This one was tricky. A lot of the plants that Tolkien used/mentioned were fictional. I always loved the white flower on the burial mounds of the kings, but trying to reproduce something that was fictional into something real was hard. We ended up settling on this one, it's not the same, but it's close enough for us!

Pacifica White Hybrid Vinca, via Park Seed

We're also planting this; Hobbits loved their pipe weed!

Perfume Deep Purple Hybrid Flowering Tobacco, via Park Seed

Hogwarts, from the Harry Potter series: This one we're struggling with. The plants that we like are really hard to find (did you know there's a real Mandrake plant? The root really does look like a baby! It doesn't scream though, thankfully!). I'm thinking we'll find something like snapdragons and use some liberties with it. Any suggestions?

And last but not least, this will be going around the edges by the rocks. Pete really liked the way it looks, and we're hoping it grows. The seeds are ridiculously tiny, and it has to be watered specially.

Pearlwort Sagina, via Park Seed

Any of you math whizzes may notice that if you add up all the prices for all the plants, it's waaaay over our $50 budget, even without thinking about shipping. I ordered my veggie seeds and all the flower garden seeds and plants from Park Seed together, as well as some sweet potatoes for my mother-in-law. I was able to use a super awesome code that I had (20% seeds off any order $50 or more) and any order over $50 was free shipping, I saved a ton of money. I have about $10+ left in my budget for the rose bush. I'm waiting for them to go on sale or hoping to find them or something similar cheaper when the gardening sections of local stores open up.


Are you doing any garden projects this year?