I Love A Good Read!

So, I was on Facebook recently, scrolling through the list of my friends updates and looking up parks that hubby and oldest son were reading about so we can plan out our camping trip, when Chris, over at Wicked Awesomology, posted a link to his latest post about a road trip he took through our state this weekend. Always up to read something he's written, and get ideas for places in Maine to visit, I clicked over... After reading yet ANOTHER great post from him, I happened to notice on his sidebar, a list of books he was reading and some he had currently read. Ask anyone who knows me, and they'll tell you that in my "abundance" of free time, if I'm not on the computer, I'm probably curled up with my nose in a book (that's how I spent most of Friday and Sunday in fact!), so I clicked through and got hooked!

I spent about 3 hours rating books that I've read (and wow, it didn't even come close to touching how many I actually HAVE read), and adding books to my "To-Read" list. This morning I found more, and actually went onto Amazon and bought a book that I'm now anxiously awaiting the arrival of. I was so excited to read about this book that I didn't even cash in my Swagbucks and wait for a gift card to arrive, I actually paid cash!

The book that I ordered is: Against Medical Advice and can also be found under the title  Med Head: My Knock-down, Drag-out, Drugged-up Battle with My Brain - This is a book by James Patterson (one of my favorites!) about 5 year old Cory Friedman waking up with tics and eventually being diagnosed with Tourette's syndrome and Obsessive Compulsive Disorder, the struggles that go along with finding the right doctors and treatment and the heartache of his family dealing with this.


I have read one other book called Ryan: A Mother's Story of Her Hyperactive/Tourette Syndrome Child that was a personal story of a boy living with Tourette's Syndrome, his was caused by his ADHD medications, it was an amazing book, I'd recommend it to anyone who is struggling with a family member who has been diagnosed (or is suspected to have) Tourette's Syndrome.
 
You can find me on Good Reads at http://www.goodreads.com/user/show/9659853-j  I'll be working on adding more books I've read and reviews as I am able to!

Full disclosure: If you click on any of the links that go to Amazon.com above and purchase any of the items I posted, I'll get a tiny reward for sending you their way, I'm all about saving money though so if you can find it cheaper somewhere else,  more power to ya! If you sign up for Swagbucks through my link, I'll be rewarded for introducing you to the site!

Springtime Crazy

I apologize for the lack of posts for the last month, it's been kind of hectic around here.

My mother got married a few weeks ago, and the little one had a birthday (she's THREE!), after that I got hit with a bunch of orders, and then my back went out and triggered a massive flare up of Sciatica that had me in pain for more than a week and unable to do much of anything.... And then when I started feeling better, the sun finally came out and I've been obsessed with gardening, lol. That was my month in a nutshell!

So, onto the gardening!

Hubby and I have had this grand plan, every year, for the last 4 or 5 years, that we are going to start growing as much of our own food as possible. It hasn't worked yet.

This year, I'm not working outside of the home, so I'm here to actually DO SOMETHING with the garden!

Back a few months ago we ordered an awesome seed kit from Baker Creek, a huge variety of seeds, specifically picked to grow in Northern Climates (YAY!), and ordered the book All New Square Foot Gardening by Mel Bartholomew. We had come across his website a few years ago, and liked the idea of this method, but never really did much research into it and it fell to the backs of our minds.

We've had the book for a couple months now, but hadn't read it. Hubby put together some garden beds, and we bought a few loads of a Loam/Compost/Vermiculite mix from a local farm and put that in a couple of the beds. Then I read the book. So we aren't using "Mel's Mix" like the book calls for, but it should still be a good start!

I started by planting some Lettuce that we had been growing inside. Some of it survived being harvested and then transplanted a day later and is coming back with new leaves, some of it didn't make it. I also started some seeds in the ground, other types of lettuce and greens (Oriental greens, swiss chard, etc).

That was about 2 weeks ago. This weekend I worked on transplanting Cauliflower and Broccoli and getting the grids up on the beds. Unfortunately, I ran out of string, so had to eyeball a few of the transplants. I came across a really good idea for planting Radishes and Scallions in the 1 foot grid lines, so maybe hubby can have his string back!

After I did all that and got the cauliflower and broccoli planted I was exhausted, so I relaxed the rest of the night. The next day I transplanted the rest of our seedlings (except the onions, those are coming due this weekend). I'll post a list at the end of this with the count of what I planted, it's kinda crazy lol

So here are the pictures:

Our "Three Sisters" bed (ONE of the two we will have) Corn and Beans/Peas in the center 2 rows and different types of Squash in the outer two rows

At the far end you see Hubby, next to him is where our lettuce is planted. This was taken before the picture at the top, as you can see from the top picture our tomatoes are now along the fence with peppers and eggplant in front of them

Our first time using "home grown" compost! Had to sift out some uncomposted materials, but found some useable!

Adding the compost to the soil (we didn't buy a mix for these 2 beds, they were an afterthought and we were broke haha)

Cauliflower in the top 6 rows, then Broccoli in the bottom 2 (and in 4 rows of the next box that you can't see)

As for the final tally, I sat down yesterday and figured out exactly how much I have planted, here we go:

I currently have 2 areas of the yard with garden beds, one bed is 64 square feet, it runs along our front fence (2 feet deep by 32 long) and another that is 4 sections that are 8x4 for a total of 192 square feet..... 

This is what I currently have planted:

1. 144 corn seeds (80 more will be planted this weekend in a new bed that will 10x4 feet and will also include more beans and squash/Pumpkins) 
2. 16 Zucchini plants
3. 8 Japanese Cucumber plants
4. 8 Winter Squash
5. 8 each of 3 types of beans
6. 8 sugar peas
7. 24 Cauliflower and 24 Broccoli plants
8. Lettuce and other greens
9. 8 varieties of tomatoes, up to 12 plants of each type (Nearly 100 plants total by my count)
10. 24 each of 2 varieties of garden peppers
11. 12 each of two types of hot peppers
12. 6 each of 2 varieties of eggplant

I also have 4 rows of 4 squares that are left empty, originally waiting for peat moss (at hubby's request) so I could plant 2 types each of carrots and radishes, but now I'm thinking of doing those in place of the grid lines, so I'll have those 4 rows for something else!

I also planted 13 Sunflower seeds. Hubby and I ordered more Corn, some Jack O Lantern pumpkin seeds and some Buttercup squash. Fast producing varieties because we have to have them shipped and our growing season is short anyway... All of our seed varieties are Heirloom seeds and we also ordered a book on Saving seeds called Seed to Seed: Seed Saving and Growing Techniques for Vegetable Gardeners so the $110 we've currently got invested in seeds will HOPEFULLY be a one time investment!

 I'll post more pictures as things progress, and try to get a big picture view of the whole garden area so you can get a really good idea of the layout, it's hard to tell from the pictures I've got!

 

Full disclosure: If you click on any of the links that go to Amazon.com above and purchase any of the items I posted, I'll get a tiny reward for sending you their way, I'm all about saving money though so if you can find it cheaper somewhere else,  more power to ya!

Mama On A Mission...

For years now I have leaned toward finding a more natural lifestyle, which isn't always easy. It started small, with me learning about my oldest son having dry skin which turned out to be Eczema, which he inherited from me (who would have guessed it, all those years I thought I just had pimples all over... heh.) from learning we had Eczema to educating myself on the best ways to deal with it, I started to discover that all of the "soap" products we had were really nothing more than chemical filled synthetic products, nothing natural about them, it's no wonder our Eczema was constantly flared up! That's how I learned about all natural handmade soaps, and began making them myself.

I grew up on convenience foods (Hamburger Helper and Rice-A-Roni anyone?) and thought nothing of continuing to eat those after I had children of my own. My family was eating loads of just-add-water "homemade from a box" (as my ex mother in law used to say) meals, generally cooked in a microwave. (Have I mentioned I haven't owned a microwave in 4 years? It's amazing to discover you don't really NEED one!)

I'll tell you that for a good 8 years I fed my own family overly processed, highly synthetic, convenience foods, just like 60% of the rest of the Nation***

In the past 5 years that I have been with my husband, I have learned to make some drastic changes. I started to eat healthier, mostly because he insisted, and gradually I began to like some of it... though I was heavily into the coupon game for awhile and most of what you can get with coupons is convenience foods, so that's what I bought.

Around the time I got pregnant with my youngest, who will be 3 next month, I was starting to really get a good grasp on the whole thing... actually paying attention to what products we use, and more recently what we eat. In recent months I've gotten to the point that I absolutely dread going to the grocery store. I walk through the aisles and I can just feel the labels screaming all their obscene nasty chemicals and additives at me. Two months ago when I went shopping I literally stopped in the middle of an aisle looking around and could just feel myself getting wearier by the second thinking about how I KNEW all the crap that was in the food I was buying, but I felt nearly powerless to do anything about it.

Not anymore!

When we got our income tax return we bought half a cow and a pig from a farm down the road. The meat was butchered by two local meat cutters, and cost maybe $1,000 between the 4 checks we had to make out... was well worth it to have a stand up freezer so full of meat that it was overflowing... AND we supported THREE local small businesses in the process. Our hamburgers and roasts don't shrink when we cook them, and our pork chops have fat that gets crispy not chewy... how's that for GOOD products?

The meat tastes so much better than the junk at the store, and in the end cost about the same, we won't have to buy meat again until fall at least.

We also have 2 chickens who started laying eggs this winter... not a lot for a family of 6 but 2-3 eggs a day is helpful! We are getting a few more chickens to help increase the yield and then we can cut out having to buy eggs... yet one more thing we will know where it came from and what went into it and can feel good about eating it! It's also another good source of meat!

We are working diligently on growing a nice sized garden this year, which I've already mentioned here, and Last time we went for a big grocery shopping, we bought almost all fruits and vegetables, which is great and since we didn't have the added cost of meat to consider, I splurged and got lots of fresh ones and as much organic/natural as I could. We did buy a bunch of pasta and pasta sauce, cause lets face it, my husband is Italian and pasta is one of the ultimate comfort foods (go me!).

I've been researching more about MAKING more foods from scratch, and today I convinced hubby that it would be a great investment to buy a pasta machine. He was planning to save up to buy attachments for our Kitchen aid Mixer (Super frugal find from a couple months ago, I'll write about that soon!), but when I got looking at the cost and everything, explained to him that it might be more cost effective to buy a separate machine. After doing some shopping around and him thinking back on his childhood (his grandmother used to make pasta all the time... heck, probably still does!) we settled on an Imperia SP150 and ordered it from Amazon using some gift cards I've earned from Swagbucks (not many because I just ordered a bunch of books for my son who paid me cash in exchange for the gift cards I used)

We also got a 2mm Spaghetti attachment and a Norpro Ravioli Maker and Press.

Pasta is a big thing in our house, though we pair it with lots of veggies, salad, etc. I like the idea of making it myself so I can control what types of ingredients are going in it... and I think that by including the kids in the process they'll become a bit more aware of what they are putting into themselves and hopefully keep the love of making their own food with them as they grow!




***I have no idea what the general statistics are, but I'd wager on it being more than half, lol

Full disclosure: If you click on any of the links that go to Amazon.com above and purchase any of the items I posted, I'll get a tiny reward for sending you their way, I'm all about saving money though so if you can find it cheaper somewhere else,  more power to ya! As for the Swagbucks link, if you sign up through the link, I'll get matching Swagbucks for your first 1,000, which will net me somewhere around two Amazon gift cards for $5 each :)

So Sad...

Back in December, on Christmas Eve, while preparing for our annual get-together with Hubby's family, he fell down the stairs. It wasn't a typical case of clumsiness, see half of our house is in a perpetual state of renovation, we tore everything out except the outer walls about 4 years ago, and every time we've thought we might get it done, plans have changed. Over time it's become an unofficial storage area. We were storing some things for my sister-in-law when she moved to North Carolina, and when she came up over the Christmas holiday she wanted to take some of her stuff home with her

Best Christmas Gift ever - Dixie, a rescue dog from NC

So in the process of him helping her bring her things down, she tells him to be careful on the stairs because there is some lumber laying on them. He gets cocky, says he's fine, that he's been up and down that death-trap set of stairs hundreds of times. No sooner does he say this, and he steps on the lumber, slides down the stairs, and then can't walk properly for a good month. After having it examined the day after Christmas at the ER and then by an Orthopedic Surgeon we knew that if it wasn't better by the beginning of February, we'd be looking at surgery.

Luckily for him, it was fine by the beginning of February, and after a month of living on short-term disability we were ready for regular paychecks again. No such luck. Work had no work for him, and he had to use the ONLY 3 weeks of vacation/personal time he gets for the whole year so that we could have an income. After that, still no work. Time for unemployment. It is now March 26th, he's been out of work for over 3 months and home with me every day... As a happily married couple, you'd think we'd be driving each other crazy and just about ready to start calling divorce lawyers by now.... not so much... the last 3 months have been the best in our married life, but alas, it had to end sometime... he went back to work an hour and a half ago, and I'm missing him like crazy already...

However....!

With him being gone, it will be much easier for me to find time during the day to get  some soap made and work around the house! So thank goodness for the rain today, this momma is gonna be busy!