7 Quick Takes Friday #48

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The weather last week was warm and sunny for a few days, so of course I started planting things. Because I have such a great record of success with gardens. Of course, this week it's been in the 30's at night. So I've probably already killed everything.

--- 2 ---

I almost did an "All the Drama on the Internets" about Marissa Meyer eliminating working from home at Yahoo, but there wasn't much drama in that there weren't many differences of opinion, that I could tell. Everyone was pretty united in thinking that what she did was a bad idea and sets us all back as women in the workplace.

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You might have noticed that I frequently run advertising for ThredUp, which is a way to buy used children's clothing online that is similar to a consignment sale or shop, only online so you don't have to leave your house. You can also sell your used children's clothing the same way, they send a bag to your house and you fill it up and get credit for clothing in the future. It is a very green thing to do, and you know I love consignment sales. I've heard really good feedback from others, but I'd actually never tried it myself. Last night I placed my first order. I'll be letting you know how it goes, I am excited to receive my first box!

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Speaking of advertising, now is the time to purchase advertising on this blog! If you purchase an ad now, you can get 10% off the cost by purchasing 3 months at a time using the promo code 3MonthsOfFun. If you are a fellow blogger, consider purchasing a 125x125 spot to run during Blissdom! Here's the size of a 125x125:

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Are you on Vine yet? I am, but let me tell you: I am terrible at it. Terrible. I like the people who do stop-animation with Vine. Super cool!

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Blissdom is next month but I'm probably not going to conference because it costs money. However, I do live 45 minutes away so if you're a blogger who is attending and would like to get together at a local restaurant, I bet we could get a group together! Email me!

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I have noticed that Facebook click through rates for this blog are pretty terrible. I'm not going to close down the FB page, but if you're looking for me, I'm mostly on Twitter. Or you can subscribe to receive my blog posts via email or RSS.

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Well that's all for this week, be sure to visit Conversion Diary for links to more 7 Quick Takes Fridays.

To Do List 2013

Happy New Year! As you might remember from previous years, I don't do "resolutions" but I stole the idea of a yearly To Do list from Jennie. Much more satisfactory. Here are mine for 2013.

1. Finally make those reusable snack bags.
   I bought some nylon fabric and coordinating cotton probably almost a year ago and still haven't attempted to sew snack bags out of it. I had some awesome Snack Taxi snack bags for years and this year they both went MIA. I am ashamed to say that I am using plastic baggies more now, and I hate it. I need to just sit down at a few naptimes and sew some seams to solve this problem.


2. Print family blog books.
   I have a woefully neglected family blog that I go and back-date-post so that my children will have some semblance of a scrapbook type thing for our family. In 2009 and 2010 I used Blog2Print to print books for the year and they turned out very nicely. All this year I have had "2011 blog book" on my To Do list. And lookee here, now I have "2011 AND 2012 blog books" on my To Do list. I really need to do this, it's ridiculous. I think the amount of editing it takes is a little intimidating.


3. Meal planning.
   I hate that this shows up every year. I hate meal planning for picky toddlers that can't have soy or dairy and won't eat meat or beans. I hate planning and planning and still going over budget and me being the only one that eats anything I cook. That is all.


4. Patch some giant holes in our walls.
   When we moved into this house over a year ago, the baby gate at the top of the stairs was installed backwards, so we had to rip it off and re-install it correctly. Then the screws fell out of the wall and we had to re-drill. What is left is a horrible, horrible mess. I need to get some fine sandpaper, some spackle, and the original paint from the walls and repaint it. What has been stopping me is 1) the idea of going to Home Depot and tracking down some moron who doesn't understand what I am looking for, and 2) digging through our 800 cans of paint in the garage to figure out which one matches the stairway.


5. Repaint other messed up paint...or do something about it.
   When we moved in last year, the painters put latex paint on top of oil-based paint in our living room, which is a big no-no. As a result, pieces have been flaking off or been rubbed off. I have no idea how to fix this, but someone should. SOMEONE.


6. Do something about the front yard.
   We have giant bushes covering up our porch and half of the bushes are dead, it looks terrible. My first impulse was to rent a chainsaw and go at that stuff but I don't think Christian was super excited about that idea. Also, whatever it is needs to be pretty much FREE.


7. Go to the dentist.
   Without dental insurance since I quit my full time job in 2011, and having moved to the suburbs away from our former dentist practice (it was just a dentist-in-a-box anyway), I actually have not had my teeth cleaned or looked at since I was pregnant with Little Lady. I really need a teeth cleaning.


8. Take Little Sir to the dentist.
   Oh geez. I am dreading this way more than going to the dentist myself. Mostly because it is bound to be super expensive to go to a pediatric dentist without insurance. I freaking hate going to doctors that I feel are unnecessary so that they can tell me or my children that "everything looks fine". And that will be $1,000, thank you very much. uuuuuggh.


9. Try again with the garden.
   I have to keep trying, I guess.

There you go, I'll do posts about any of these things that I accomplish and update you again at the end of the year! What's on your to do list for 2013?

To Do List 2012: How did I do?

Oh look, it's almost 2013! Time to look back at my To Do List from 2012 and see if I accomplished any of it.

1. Eat better.
To make this a little more measurable, I'll just say that I want to get back to eating at least 5-7 whole fruits and veggies per day.
Sort of done. I have been doing a lot better as far as cutting out the extra sugar and carbs but I'm probably still not up to 5-7 veggies a day. Mostly because I give all the fruits and veggies in the house to my kids, and there are rarely any left for me. Those things are expensive! But I am still drinking my NingXia Red, which is packed with antioxidants, so I think that helps.

2. Resume meal planning.
I did pretty good with this probably 6 months out of the year, off and on.  At one point, I got depressed about how much money we spend on groceries and stopped even trying. Then we found out that Little Sir is dairy and soy intolerant and that threw another wrench in the planning because I can't use Food On The Table or eMeals since they all contain dairy ingredients that I can't always substitute. I am currently off the wagon. This is going to show up on the 2013 list again, dang it.

3. Regular exercise.
I want to aim for 3 days a week.
Oh thank God, one that I can actually cross off the list. Thanks to becoming a Lagree Fitness instructor at Ultimate Pilates Plano, I am now in better shape than I was before the kids. I actually do have six-pack abs, not lying. I would love to take pictures but that seems really indecent for a family-friendly blog. OK, I did take pictures in the mirror once but I haven't shown anyone. However, this is not bragging because it is very hard work and continues to be very challenging. It's not like I am saying "oh look, I have magically great abs! Whee! Be jealous!". Nooooo, I write routines that are specifically heavy on moves targeting my transverse abdominal muscles and my obliques, and I do those routines for 50 minutes, at least 3 times a week. And I must mention, I teach these routines in my classes so if you want to work on your post-baby body like I did...you know where I am!

4. Attempt monetization of this blog
"Attempt monetization" is not a very measurable goal, but let's just say I'll research and apply for some ad networks and work on ways that I could increase my readership. Such as participating in blogger link-ups.
First of all, I would like to give yet another shout-out to my wonderful sponsor Tanya of Happy Feet, Healthy Body who has an Etsy shop selling handmade bath and health products that are completely free of toxins but also provide the natural healing powers of essential oils. Please consider supporting this blog by purchasing her products! She has an excellent headache remedy and an amazing lavender lip balm that I use every night. And if you are in the Dallas area, she can even arrange for local delivery rather than paying for shipping.

I feel like I have done some positive work in this direction. I have also joined up with a number of other green bloggers via The Green Sisterhood and some closed Facebook groups. I actually don't participate in a ton of link-ups, but that is because I am very picky about my topics and I don't do a lot of giveaways. I feel like I am heading in the right direction and I'm looking forward to 2013!

5. Start potty learning with my son
This is pretty much done! Now that we've addressed the stomach issues of dairy and soy intolerance and provided both negative and positive incentives (positive alone did not inspire him), he has very few pee or poop accidents. Well, thank goodness that only took about 7 months.

6. Decorate the kids' rooms
I think they look a lot less bare now. I put the animal and letter decals up in my son's room and hung his name picture and handprints, and he accumulated a number of additional toys and books to fill up some of the extra space. I put up a lovely tree decal in my daughter's room and bought some curtains. She also got a bookcase with bins like brother's and a bureau for her clothes. I am sure I could do more but there's not a ton of space. I like what we have right now!

7. Plant a garden
Hahaha, that was pretty much a failure except for the bell peppers, but there is a good reason that I didn't specify that it had to be a successful garden. I ended up getting enough bell peppers that, when chopped, fill up a plastic baggie (I know, PLASTIC, I lose my green cred yet again) in the freezer. That is a significant crop considering how small they were. But they died in the snow on Christmas Day, so that's done. Since we have such a nice raised bed setup now, I'll try again next year.

Need feedback: Future posts?

If you haven't been following this blog long (and a lot of you are new, thanks to Green Sisterhood, CottonBabies, and Dallas Moms Blog - hi! welcome!), you might not have noticed that since my last BlogHer, I've really been trying to focus the intention of this blog to be less random stream-of-consciousness, Jenny's-personal-thoughts-about-today and more eco-friendly and green. More Pin-able and less philosophical. Which is a smart and noble endeavor, I believe, especially since I really want to grow my blog to something more than 50 people that I've met IRL at some point in my life and who think I am weird enough to be amusing.

But then, things like last week happen. Where I have a lot of random thoughts in my head but none of them are relevant to my green living endeavors or long enough to be an entire blog post. In fact, a lot of them are probably bemoaning the ways I'm failing and can't seem to gain traction. So I just don't post at all. How is THAT helping my blog? To not post? Probably not much.

Yet, I have a lot of random things to share, which I often do on my blog's Facebook page (make sure you've "Like"ed me!).

• The defeat of Proposition 37 in California and what does that mean for our ability to be conscientious consumers? I think I am too unhappy that this failed to see a way out right now. The truth is, Prop 37 failed because a lot of big corporations have a lot of money and they had the advertising and lobby power to convince people in a tight economy that their overall health and ability to be informed is going to cost them too much. When the opposite is true. It's another case of Big Corp and Big Money winning and I am just so dang sick of being optimistic about that battle when it seems unrealistic.
• What is going on with my garden: it is actually currently producing a fairly good crop of tiny but healthy bell peppers! I think I will collect the entire crop, chop them up and freeze them, and make a stir fry. For one person. I already made these cute bell pepper eggs once. Only the pepper was so small that I made a little flower with all the rings instead...it's hard to describe and I didn't take a picture. Sorry.
• Free shipping with Shaklee. I buy some of my green cleaning products from my friend Jessica's Shaklee business, as you will find out if I ever finish my "Green My Routine: Cleaning" post. That's going to be a long one.
• Going dairy and soy free, in addition to already being vegetarian. OK, it's not me that's dairy and soy free, it's my son. Since we've taken him off dairy and soy his potty training poop issues have suddenly improved. It's been almost 5 days since he's had a poop accident. But, since he already refuses to eat meat of any kind or beans of any kind, removing dairy and soy presents seemingly insurmountable obstacles when it comes to his nutrition. He's already in the 40th percentile for weight. Shoot me now. I have no idea.
• Giving my children salmonella by mistake. It wasn't actually me, but our stupid backyard chickens. I swear, sometimes I consider cooking those chickens for dinner and I don't even eat meat. I believe what happened is that my children's sippy cups came into contact with the chicken poop that is EVERYWHERE in our backyard because those stupid birds are aggressive poopers. As in, you leave something out there for 5 minutes and when you come back there will most definitely be poop on it. Aggressive pooping. So we have confined them to an area of the yard. Pictures to come. And maybe I should blog about the salmonella you can get from backyard as a cautionary measure for other potential chicken owners? It's just all so embarassing.
• Operation Christmas Child. It's a worthy cause, we are excited about it. I took an emergency trip to Target and Whole Foods to get a ton of suitable and conscientious items and then we left our stupid box at home so we might have missed the deadline. Nice.

So maybe some of those bullet points deserve their own post but I'm feeling overwhelmed. Help me out. Which would you like to hear more about? And thanks for hanging in there with me!

My Garden: A tragic update

Well, it's been around 3 months since I did an official garden update. What happened during those, supposedly the most productive months? Nothing. Nothing at all. Which is why I didn't update: there was nothing to say.

The tomato plants got huge, around 7 feet tall/long, but never produced anything. NOT ANYTHING AT ALL.


Finally, the vines started dying out and I got sick of looking at the brown leaves and cut them all down.

There was one bright spot, one hope in my heart that I would have a single product for all my labor. Behold, one bell pepper as it began to grow:



It ripened and started turning red...





(Sorry for the blurriness, my iPhone didn't know how to focus on the pepper instead of the leaves and no, I still don't know how to use our DSLR.)

In this picture, you can even see it almost at it's full-red glory:



(That's also a good shot of after I cut down most of the tomato plants. I left one, thinking it had a bud. I was wrong, it didn't. I cut it down this week.)

What became of the Red Bell Pepper 2012? See, that's the thing. I couldn't tell when I should pick it. Was it going to get bigger? I didn't want to pick it if it was going to get bigger. I left it on a long time, while we were in California. When we got back, it had a horrible black spot. This is what had happened:



As you can see, it apparently rotted on the vine. The only thing I successfully grew, and it was inedible, it died before it had a chance to live. It's a metaphor for life. Or something.

I also had one other thing die on the vine: a squash. Here it is before it died - it had grown on the outside of our chicken barrier, it's vines pushing through to make it possible. It was planning to grow into adulthood.



But, no. The vine itself actually shriveled and died from inside the garden, leaving the poor undeveloped squash with no nourishment outside the barrier. Weird. Also probably a metaphor for life.

As you can see, I have a truly terrible black thumb. I thought I could overcome this tendency with information from the internets, but that was a mistake.

Having lost all faith in SproutRobot.com, I have no idea where to turn now if I want to try to kill other varieties of plants over the fall months. What other things can I plant in the ground and then watch falter and die? Should I just plant dollar bills because that is a more direct way to accomplish what is truly happening here?

However, my unreasonable hope springs eternal. My bell pepper plants are still alive & kicking, although I have no idea why since I have mentally given up on them. Some of them have buds. Will they ever grow into actual peppers? Will they all suffer the terrible fate of Red Bell Pepper 2012? I will let you know. I'm sure it's a metaphor for life.

My garden: more things dying and some things getting huge

I promised a garden update on Saturday, but I lied. I should stop promising to update on Saturdays, that is insanity.

Well, the kale is dead. It looked good for about a week but then just gave up, plant by plant.

The tomatoes and bell pepper plants are HUGE but producing nothing. Wha? Is that supposed to happen?

In case you cannot tell, these tomatoes come up to my nose when I'm standing next to them.

The mint and chocolate mint, and parsley and basil are GOING CRAZY. I don't even know what to do with them, they are so huge. Anybody need some mint??



The fennel...what the heck is fennel for, anyway?

There is a beet plant that is pretty darn huge-looking but I am not sure how big it actually is underneath the leaves so I am afraid to harvest it. How do I know when to harvest it?



Here is the one tiny strawberry that grew from my strawberry plants.



This post has far more questions than answers.

7 Quick Takes Friday #41

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I have tried like heck to ignore the whole TIME magazine cover story issue, but the dang thing keeps coming up. I still refused to get involved in it, but I do want to point you to this awesome interview with the Attachment Parenting (AP) moms from the TIME story on KellyMom. In this post, they go really in-depth about how they feel about the whole thing and the reality of AP for them and their families.

--- 2 ---

In case you are wondering, no, my husband and I do not necessarily identify ourselves with AP and all it entails. We do agree with the spirit of the Eight Principles, but not always the exact tenets. That's why I like to identify us as "natural parenting". Just like the FDA has no regulation on the term "natural" when it comes to food, there isn't any specific outline for "natural parenting". To us, it means that we are making decisions about parenting in the way that comes most naturally to us and how it works with the God-given nature of our children's personalities. The approach is based on respect for our children, truth and love based on God's love for us, and what is realistic in our current life stage and physical environment. Also, if I have said it once, I have said it 100 times: every child is different. Including my two children.

--- 3---

Now that we're talking about kids, how is potty training going? Pretty well! So far, he has about 1 accident per day, but that is usually because I didn't take him to the potty frequently enough or because he was scared of the potty that was available. He has an aversion to any potty except his green Ikea potty here at home. But! He was able to go to the potty at school this week (his last week of Mother's Day Out!), and didn't have a single accident while he was there! Yay!

--- 4 ---

I shared this yesterday on Twitter, but I highly recommend that everyone see this excellent video about antibiotics in meat production and why it should be avoided.

--- 5 ---

We will be traveling with both the kids in the near future, in the car, for more than 4 hours. I think I have a good handle on what I can bring to keep Little Sir occupied, but I'm really struggling with what I can do for Little Lady. She is 15 months and puts EVERYTHING in her mouth. I can't let her color or use markers. She is not so great at watching TV, plus she is still facing backwards in her car seat so she can't see the iPad that Little Sir would be watching (dang you, stupid AAP guidelines, you have totally hosed us with Kid #2). Any ideas from readers who have done this recently?

--- 6 ---

I am way overdue for a garden update. But I am really tired right now and it is already getting really hot here in Dallas. Here is a hastily taken picture:



Not pictured: a new soaker hose I have bought because the one that came with the raised beds is terribly ineffective.

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If you are wondering about the chickens, they are doing well. They produce better eggs when I give them green scraps. I spend a lot of time chasing them and cleaning their poop. Chicken poop is a huge pain in the butt. Think about that before you go getting backyard chickens!

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Well that's all for this week, be sure to visit Conversion Diary for links to more 7 Quick Takes Fridays.

7 Quick Takes Friday #40

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We are on the verge of potty training with Little Sir. We are going to try to start this weekend, hopefully with help from Daddy. If you are a praying person, PRAY FOR US. And/or send wine. Thank you.

--- 2 ---

I am sure everyone and their mother, literally, has heard about the Time Magazine cover story. I don't mind the breastfeeding mother on the cover, although does remind me of my breastfeeding failures. I am not super enthusiastic about how the story appears to promote the mommy wars. I didn't read the story but some bloggers have said it doesn't actually claim anyone is right or anyone is wrong. I will have to take their word for that.

Mostly, I realize that Time did this whole thing to create controversy and sell magazines. I kind of refuse to care about the whole thing just on the basis that I don't want that tactic to work on me.

--- 3---

Another news story that is getting far less play in the feminist arena than it should is the instance of big companies targeting "brogrammers", or male-only programmers, in the industry. Being a lightweight programmer myself, and female, I am really annoyed to hear about how Klout ran recruiting campaigns with the slogan "Want to bro down and crush some code? Klout is hiring." I am seriously offended by the insinuation that there are no viable female programmers. Why aren't we more upset about this?! Because there aren't that many female programmers. Kind of makes me wish I was still programming. It also reinforces my dislike of Klout and how much, er...clout they have in the blogging and social media world, of which I am forced to be a part.

--- 4 ---

You guys should all watch Sherlock on PBS. It's totally awesome.

--- 5 ---

My friend Stephanie from Good Girl Gone Green has the most amazing raw lemon pie recipe, I made it this week. Apparently the secret to raw vegan stuff made with nuts instead of flour is to soak the nuts first. I had no idea!

--- 6 ---

I have pulled up the peas in my garden and planted kale. Which is also dying. I am the most awesome gardener. To be fair, they traveled all the way from East Texas in a bag and then sat in a bucket of water for 24 hours before they were planted. STILL.

--- 7 ---

It is currently raining here and our chickens got caught in the rain. Can chickens catch a cold? They were too dumb to go back into their coop. Poor chickens, brains the size of peas.

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Well that's all for this week, be sure to visit Conversion Diary for links to more 7 Quick Takes Fridays.

My Garden: RIP peas

I have been really bad about not doing garden updates! Some of the things are growing really well, it's exciting! Other things have died. Some things have been eaten by something mysterious.

First, the sad news: the peas are dead. Definitely dead.



Something was eating their leaves, so we bought ladybugs. That seemed to stop whatever was eating them. Then the peas just dried the heck up and died. My mother told me that peas cannot grow in the heat in Texas, she has tried for years. What the heck, SproutRobot.com? Why you lie to me?!!

This morning I pulled up the peas and my mom brought me some full-grown kale plants to plant later tonight. Here is a shot from today of the garden with the peas gone, but I have not planted the kale yet:



You can click on the photo to see the notes in Flickr about what is what.
I am particularly excited about how well the tomatoes and bell peppers are doing! You can't tell from the angle, but the tomatoes are getting really tall.



They have almost outgrown the wooden chopsticks I jammed into the ground and tied them to with twine to keep them upright. OH YES. Redneck tomato cages, those. I haven't had a chance to go get real tomato cages yet.

I am also impressed at how well the basil and parsley are growing in the garden. I have tried growing herbs in pots before, and they always die. I think growing them in beds in the garden might actually be the solution because they can glean more water from the soil. Pots have such good drainage that I think they lose critical moisture.

I have a few sproutlings of bell peppers growing in yogurt containers that I'll be transplanting into the garden soon as well:

This picture is also a good example of how poorly the basil and parsley do in containers.
They are the same plants I planted in the garden, but they are almost dead in the container, thriving in the garden.

My goal is to grow as many bell peppers as possible, because they are on the Dirty Dozen and therefore should only be bought organic. Those things are EXPENSIVE! But they freeze really well. So if I can grow a bunch in my garden and freeze them, it will save a lot of money.

That's how it's going so far...I don't have a green thumb for sure, but at least some things are growing. I'll have to take more pictures of the kale once I plant it, if I don't kill it!

7 Quick Takes Friday #39

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We have had our chickens for one week now. It has been going really well, except for the day that I spent 30 minutes one morning chasing a chicken around the back yard, wearing a dress, while my children wailed inside the house because we were supposed to leave for a blogging-related shopping event. Since then I have been advised to squirt them with the garden hose to get them back into the coup. Duly noted.

--- 2 ---

This weekend is Earth Day! If you're looking for activities to celebrate with your children, Dallas is hosting an Earth Day event and here's another handy list of Earth Day activities for kids, even if your city isn't hosting an event.

--- 3---

Ironically, I have a ton of cloth diaper related posts coming up even though this week was Real Diaper Week. Better late than never, I guess. You can also find me blogging this week on CottonBabies blog about using cloth diapers at daycare.

--- 4 ---

I continue to do poorly at saving money. Here is another reason our family sucks at this: no one in our family will touch leftovers. At all. Ever. Well, except me. But I get pretty sick of whatever it is after eating it 3 times in a row and it inevitably gets thrown away. And yes, I have tried freezing things. The kids and the husband will not eat anything leftover, whether it is thawed or refrigerated. The fact that it is not fresh makes no one interested in eating it. Therefore, I have to constantly cook brand new things and the portion sizes have to be exactly what we will eat in one sitting or else it's wasted. Anybody have any solutions for me there?

--- 5 ---

I hope to do a garden update this weekend, but our peas were getting eaten by some sort of pest so I bought a container of ladybugs to take care if it. We released them last night at dusk.



OUR CHICKENS WERE WAITING


Many ladybugs perished in the chickens' stomachs, but hopefully some of them survived.

--- 6 ---

In case you were wondering whether the $3.99 bottles of wine that Whole Foods has come out with are as good as Trader Joe's "Two Buck Chuck", the answer is NO. WF $3.99 wine is TERRIBLE. I do not recommend it. What ingredients do I need to make this into sangria or something?

--- 7 ---

Have a Happy Earth Day on Saturday!

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Well that's all for this week, be sure to visit Conversion Diary for links to more 7 Quick Takes Fridays.

My garden: all the little sproutlings!

The storms we had last week were really great for our little garden! We have quite a few little sproutlings coming up, and I bought a few more plants on sale that were already started. Here's a long shot, the wooden teepee aparatus is for the the peas - SproutRobot told me to do that so they could climb up it. I do whatever SproutRobot tells me to do!



Here are the peas again:



The tomatoes and one bell pepper plant



Two beet plants and then one random plant that popped up - there at the bottom. I am not sure what it is, but I didn't plant it there - I think the seed must have washed over there during the deluge and planted itself. It is possible that it is spinach. I thought we had lost all the spinach. So it would be great if it is!



My main question now is whether I have enough room in the garden for more plants? I'd like to plant arugula and something else but I don't want to crowd everybody in there. I assume all the present sproutlings are going to expand as they turn into full size plants. Will I have any space left? Anybody know?

7 Quick Takes Friday #38

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You might have seen me mention on my Facebook page that Ashleigh found me a bread machine for $5 last weekend from a garage sale. I have made 2 loaves of bread already this week! It's totally amazing. The first was a small loaf using the recipe in the book that came with the machine. I did not take a picture of it, and I ate it all within 48 hours (Christian helped).

The second loaf I made from Ashleigh's recipe:



This was a larger loaf and the bread is almost exactly like store-bought. I had a sandwich made from it today!

--- 2 ---

In other making-my-own-food news, some kind of animal has gained access to our back yard despite our 6 foot wooden fence enclosing the entire yard. When I went to check the plants after this week's storms, all of the sproutlings previously in this picture were gone completely. Even some of the larger plants looked like this:



I actually suspect our very own cat, who likes to roam a bit outside when the kids are out there playing. She enjoys eating green things and then barfing them up in unexpected places in the house. But, she is also very fat and sedentary. I can't see her climbing up into the raised bed just to chew on green things when she is typically perfectly content chewing on grass, which is more on her level.

What is eating my plants?!! I will kill it!!

--- 3---

If you are going to BlogHer 2012, I am SUPER EXCITED that my friend Jill from BabyRabies and Gina, TheFeministBreeder whom I cyber stalk will be leading a panel called "Pro Tips: Branding and Blogging Professionally". See all the Room Of Your Own topics here. I hope that I get to mic-wrangle at this session!

--- 4 ---

I am also excited (although not AS excited) about the session called "Celebrate Your Small Blog". I went to one similarly named at BlogHer 2010 and it was very encouraging. As wonderful as I truly believe my readers are, you guys are a small bunch compared to what most bloggers can report. I am very thankful for each and every one of you!

--- 5 ---

We are now on track to get two chickens and a chicken coup from some friends of my parents a week from Saturday! Little Sir is going to be so excited when he sees the chickens. We have talked about the chickens we are going to get a lot in the last few weeks. He just loves farm animals. I am excited to have fresh eggs from our back yard! Not as excited about chicken poop, but it kind of just comes with the territory.

--- 6 ---

The Schwann's man just knocked on my door and I didn't answer it. I am out of grocery money AGAIN. I always feel bad telling him "no" because he doesn't take it well. He isn't mean, he just seems so genuinely crushed.

--- 7 ---

I have heard that it is going to get up into the 90's later next week. I guess that means we missed our window for camping AGAIN. Our children are not going to know anything about camping until we drag them on trips as teenagers and they complain the whole time. Or was that just me as a teenager?!

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Well that's all for this week, be sure to visit Conversion Diary for links to more 7 Quick Takes Fridays.

7 Quick Takes Friday #37

--- 1 ---

I have had a stomach bug or something this week. I had one exactly this time last womanly cycle. It really made me paranoid about Toxic Shock Syndrome since I had the fever, headaches, and nausea both times. I even went to urgent care to have tests run, but they blew me off. I am not sure they even did the tests for TSS. That did not stop them from prescribing me antibiotics (which isn't a treatment for TSS) even though the doctor freely admitted she couldn't find anything wrong with me even after doing flu swabbing and blood tests. I guess the good news is that I don't have mono, because they tested me for that too.

Don't forget that if you have any TSS symptoms at all, you can always visit You ARE Loved and download their pamphlet to bring to your doctor. You can also @ them on Twitter @youAREloved . I believe Suzan is the one who runs their Twitter and she is AMAZING. She talked me through the whole experience via DM. A big Thank You to my YAL friends!

--- 2 ---

I think my conclusion might be that apparently my immune system is taking a bit of a dive around the beginning of my period each month (TMI? you're welcome.), which results in me catching whatever stomach bug is going around. I am planning on treating myself with Thieves Oil and taking extra probiotics during the first few days of my next cycle and we'll see how that goes.

--- 3---

I am trying out a new Young Living product this month - NingXia Red. It's a supplement that's supposed to have tons of vitamins and antioxidants. I will do a post about it as soon as I see how it's going!

--- 4 ---

I failed to do a garden update post this week, so I'll try to do that this weekend. However, here are a few shots of the sprouts that are coming up from the seeds I planted!! Some of the seeds were possibly washed away last weekend in the rain, so they aren't all coming up and not in the places I originally planted them, but that's OK. I think?



On the other hand, the seeds I was supposed to start inside the house have done nothing at all after 3 weeks. Pretty sure they're dead. Which sucks since I was really hoping for lots of nice organic bell peppers. Those things are stinking expensive at the store!

Ah well, maybe I can trade beets or peas to someone for bell peppers.

--- 5 ---

This week we also got to visit my friend Ashleigh's chickens so that Little Sir could see what they were like. He was very excited the whole few blocks to her house and kept saying how we were "going to see the chickens!". I asked him if he wanted to get some chickens of his own and he said yes!

--- 6 ---

I was all excited to dye Easter eggs with Little Sir using natural foods for dyes, even though I only had 3 truly white eggs (the rest are brown or bluish or whatever comes out of the free ranging hens). I tried using red lettuce and beet juice for red and this is what I got:

Exactly the same color as the brown hen eggs.
Great.
It also took more than 30 minutes to do this terrible dye job.
I am not trying any more natural dyes, forget it. I will go use the toxic stuff. Christian and I are the only ones who will actually eat the eggs anyway, neither of the kids will eat hard boiled. We've spent more than 30 years eating dyed Easter eggs and it hasn't killed us yet.

--- 7 ---

One of my next goals is to acquire a bread machine. I am determined to stop having to buy gourmet bread from the grocery bakery, even if it is only $2 a loaf. I just have to figure out how to get one for little to no money. If you have an extra one lying around, let me know!

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Well that's all for this week, be sure to visit Conversion Diary for links to more 7 Quick Takes Fridays.

My Garden: soil and seeds!

I mentioned in 7 Quick Takes Friday that we filled the garden bed with soil from Texas Pure Products soil mix this week.

The cute baby in the picture is showing me the stick she was chewing on. YUM.

I used the last of my cash grocery money on Saturday to buy 4 packets of organic Seeds Of Change seeds, which I planted exactly like SproutRobot.com told me to. This included building some kind of weird 4 legged thingy around which I planted peas.


The peas are supposed to climb this thing?! Eh?

The final step in this planting was supposed to be to water enough that at least 1-2 inches of the soil are soaked. As you may not know, we are under water restriction in our area. We still have not built or acquired a rain barrel (I KNOW, right?). There was rain in the forecast when I completed this planting.

Rain, baby, rain!! It's my garden's only hope!

P.S. I had no idea gardening was so back-breaking. I am in so much pain in muscles that I had forgotten I had! I also have essentials oils for that. Anyone want to hear about those?

7 Quick Takes Friday #36

--- 1 ---

After publishing my post about raw milk, I made the mistake of going to the CDC web site and reading what they think of raw milk. I am not even going to link to it because it is too depressing. Let me sum it up for you: they are pretty adamant that it is going to kill everyone. I got freaked out about that, now I am not sure if I want to continue with the raw milk thing. We are still working on the gallon we have. I wouldn't be able to drive somewhere to buy it for almost a week, so I guess we have a little while to decide.

--- 2 ---

I am so excited to announce that I am officially going to BlogHer 2012! I think this warrants its own post, so I'll be talking more about it later.

--- 3---

We finally got the dirt put into our raised bed garden! Here is a super cute picture of Little Lady and Little Sir helping me fill it up.

 

He was digging up dirt from the yard with his sand trowel and walking over to the garden to dump it in. The cuteness kills me! Little Lady was eating dirt. Yum.
 

--- 4 ---

Here are some more things to be confused about: I signed up for SproutRobot emails and it is telling me that I need to wait 2 weeks to let the bed "settle" before I can plant anything. At the same time, it says that the planting time for my area for most of the things I want to plant is RIGHT NOW OMG DO NOT WAIT YOU HAVE TO DO IT BEFORE SUNDAY. What?!

There is no way I can win with this stuff. This is hard work! I want to take a nap!
Whine, whine, whine.

--- 5 ---

I have read Book 1 and Book 2 of The Hunger Games series in the last week and they continue to be more awesome than I thought. I am waiting to borrow Book 3 from a friend. If I am not able to borrow it by this weekend I may actually go ahead and buy it on Kindle like I did with Book 2.

I am sad that I probably won't get to see the movie until it comes out in Netflix, but oh well. That is how things work with 2 small children. Movies = Netflix.

--- 6 ---

I'm really working on trying to take this blogging more seriously, but I know that only posting twice a week is really not helping with that goal. We are missing the income from my part time job much more than I thought we would.

--- 7 ---

All the other things I wanted to put in this spot had to do with my kids. I am really trying to keep this blog from being all about them. So, have a great weekend everyone!

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Well that's all for this week, be sure to visit Conversion Diary for links to more 7 Quick Takes Fridays.

My Garden: raised bed setup & homemade weed barrier

This is the year that I attempt to garden. Also known as the year I will probably kill more plants simultaneously than I have ever done in the past. I apologize to these brave and doomed plants ahead of time.

That said, we have finally managed to assemble the shell of a raised garden bed. We are the least handy people that you could possibly know, so we bought these handy dandy assemble-itself raised bed corners with a built-in soaker hose plug-in in one corner.

All you have to do is buy untreated lumber and insert it into the slots. However, no one mentioned that untreated lumber actually measures wider than treated lumber because it doesn't shrink in production from being treated with chemicals. So the boards, instead of being smaller than the slots they were supposed to go into, were actually the exact SAME SIZE, meaning they wouldn't go in the slots. We had to borrow a table saw and Christian spent the kids' naptime on Saturday slicing tiny chunks off the ends of each board. I was scared he was going to cut of his fingers, but fortunately all he did was give everyone cedar allergies (it's cedar wood).

In the end, we have this awesome raised bed, all ready for me to call someone off Craigslist and get some compost and dirt delivered!



The cardboard at the bottom is one layer of newspaper and one layer of cardboard.



Theoretically, this will form a weed barrier that will eventually decompose enough for the plants to break through if they need to grow further downward, while still preventing weeds from re-growing underneath.

Step 1: build raised bed = complete!
Step 2: get dirt
Step 3: get plants

Any advice/suggestions on growing things and making a garden for a first-timer with a black thumb?