Sunday, March 16, 2014

Gardening Exploits

After my post I'll have a bunch of pictures for you to browse!  We made a lot of progress on the garden the last few weeks.  We bought all the wood and put it together, picked out a place and got it all set up. It took 16 bags of soil to fill that sucker!  We put some of the black cloth across the bottom to stop weeds, and we put chicken wire across the bottom too to hopefully stop moles and gophers.

I also got my half a Jack Daniels Whiskey barrel for my potatoes!  I got those planted too, waiting for them to grow.  I also got a plastic container to grow my carrots in, Aislinn helped me plant some carrot seeds too.  Those are both outside by the garden.

I did a bunch of research on square foot gardening, and then I sat down and planned out my garden using what I planned to plant, and I also looked up companion gardening to make up my list too. It took me a bit to figure out how I wanted to do it all, but I am pretty happy with what I came up with.

I bought some broccoli, cauliflower, romaine lettuce and red sail lettuce to put in the garden.  I was able to plant the Cauliflower and Broccoli today, but didn't get any pictures because it started to rain.  of course because it started to rain I was unable to plant the lettuce's or the onion bulbs that I also bought.  Hopefully I will be able to get all those in tomorrow.  Then in about a week I'll transplant my spinach and kale that I started as seeds a few weeks ago.

 Building the Frame

 Frame is done!
 Weed protector.
 Chicken Wire!
 Starting to fill it with soil.
16 bags later!

 After I put up my grid!
Close up of the grid.

 My potatoes ready to be covered with dirt!
Ready to grow!

 My sweet Aislinn, watering the carrot container.
Aislinn planting carrot seeds!


My garden plan!


I'm excited for the coming weeks.  I have a list that tells me when to plant different things for my area.  April is going to be a huge planting month for me!  I can't wait!  Anyone else starting a garden, or maybe trying out a container garden?  Are you excited to get it all started?


Wednesday, March 12, 2014

Oil Pulling

I am sure a lot of you have heard about oil pulling…especially recently, it seems to be popping up everywhere in the last month or so.

I read this article (that several friends posted) http://www.fashionlush.com/wtf-is-oil-pulling-why-im-hooked/  and it sounded like something I might be interested in trying.  Then I saw a few friends say they were going to do it.  Then I saw some people in some of my Facebook groups talking about doing it.

Finally after some people started to post their results, I bit the bullet and decided to try oil pulling myself.



Let me start off by saying that I did NOT like the texture of the coconut oil in my mouth, before it liquified.  Totally eew LOL, but I was fine once it liquified.  I did however create a LOT of saliva.  I had to spit some out several times.  I only did 10 mins my first time, instead of 20, because I had already spit 3 times.  I think a small part of my huge saliva problem was my initial gage reflex, so hopefully that will be better next time and i won't produce so much as quickly.

BUT, even after only 10 minutes my teeth were visibly whiter.  I am also pretty sure that it cleaned out my sinus's because afterwards my nose started to run like crazy and I had to blow it a lot, but after about 10-15 minutes it was fine.

I will definitely be doing it again.  What about you?  Do you oil pull?  Have you thought about trying it?


Tuesday, March 11, 2014

Homemade invites!

For my daughter's upcoming Paris themed birthday party I decided to make the invitations myself.  With the help of Hobby Lobby I got some stamps, ink and some pretty cool paper.



I just cut the paper into quarters with fancy scissors and then used the stamps.  I made all of them different, so they each had a unique touch to them.


After talking to some friends, I decided to add a bit of bling to them too.  I wanted to add little bows, but none of my ribbon was small enough…plus I'm not very good at making bows!  I also didn't have any rhinestones, but I did have some raised foam glitter stickers that I was able to use.



I must say, I think they came out pretty good!  Jaidan really liked them, and that's the important thing!


Monday, March 10, 2014

Garden Transplants

I already had to transplant a lot of stuff out of my greenhouse!  It's kind of crazy.

My wax beans are growing SUPER fast and at this point in time I am pretty sure that I planted them WAY to early.  It's still too cold to put them outside, we're a few weeks away from our last frost day but they are big enough to be outside LOL.  I may just have to plant new ones from seed closer to time.

I also transplanted my spinach and my kale.  I know the kale is considered a cold weather plant, I think spinach is too, but I need to double check.  If they both are they can both go outside this week along with the broccoli and cauliflower that I bought already grown some (they are both cool weather plants).

I also had to transplant my cilantro and my sage too!  The cilantro will stay in the container that it is in and will also stay indoors.  The sage will eventually be transplanted to the garden outside.  I may have planted too much sage too...oops!  On the bright side I can always see if a friend wants some for their own gardens.

Here are some pictures from a few days ago when I did the transplanting.

My wax beans the day I transplanted them.

Kale.

Spinach.

Some of my wax Beans 3 or 4 days after I transplanted them!  They are even bigger now.


I guess I forgot to take pictures of the Cilantro and the Sage, but I will be sure to get some pictures next time!

If you have started seeds, how are they doing?


Monday, March 3, 2014

Crepe Success!!

For Jaidan's upcoming 12th birthday party I wanted to make crepe's for breakfast the next morning, since it will be a sleep over (she is inviting 7 friends…so we may wind up with 8 preteen/tween girls, someone please save us!).  Crepe's go perfect with her Paris theme.

I was talking to my brother about it and about how I wish I knew how to make them.  Well, his fiancĂ© is Romanian, and she makes them all the time.  You can make Romanian pancakes and they are almost the exact same as crepes (it seems American's are actually the only ones..or one of the only ones... who make big fat fluffy pancakes..I looked around some LOL).  She found a recipe for me, that was already converted to American measurements for me (how cool was that?)

So for breakfast yesterday I whipped up a double batch for us for breakfast.  Riley wanted Peanut Butter on his, but everyone else wanted Nutella.  Josh and the kids also had either Strawberries or Blackberries on the side too.  The crepes were a HUGE hit, everyone loved them, so they are a go for the birthday party too!  We'll offer jelly, peanut butter, and nutella for them and I'll get some more fresh fruit to offer on the side for anyone who wants any.

My yummy Nutella crepe…before I demolished it.


Have you ever made crepe's before?


Sunday, March 2, 2014

Germination!!

We have germination in my greenhouse!!  Yay!  Some of the stuff popped up so quickly, like the kale, spinach, and wax beans!  Some of the herbs have too, but they are still itty bitty, but I have to transplant the veggies already.

The kale and spinach are almost touching the top of the greenhouse already, it's crazy how quickly they jumped up once they germinated.  The wax beans are doing great too, but my initial concern about how well they would do in the greenhouse was right.  the space is way too small for them.

We went to Lowe's tonight to get the wood for my raised garden bed, so I also bought some windowsill  planters to transplant them into.  I got 1 for each the wax beans, spinach and kale.  With the beans I only planted 6, 1 in each space, so they will take up 1 planter with some decent spacing for each plant.  The Kale I planted 12, and all 12 have already sprouted, so that was why I got it it's own.  Not all 12 of the spinach have sprouted yet, but they may down the road.

Tomorrow I will work on transplanting the veggies.  I'll post pictures once I am done.  I also checked out the prices on some cinder blocks, I think I am going to use them to do the raised bed for my herbs, because I want a separate herb garden and veggie garden.  I'll buy those next weekend or the weekend after and set that all up.

You can see lots of little sprouts, this picture was from yesterday.

The kale, spinach, and wax beans

Some of the herbs.


So excited to watch it all grow!