Change of plans.....

Ok, so I've had a change of plans, which means that my blog has been massively lowered on the priority list. I'm FINALLY going to get going on my Etsy shop! After some discussions with other mother-owned small businesses, I've got my motivation back. Up first I'm working on fine-tuning the design of my Etsy shop. I will announce my shop's name and link here first.....hopefully soon! Then I'm off to work sewing & crafting. Yay!

Back in the game

So far I've met my goal of posting once a week...and yes, the post last week where it was just my weight loss; that totally counts as a post. :/

So I'm back in the game! My ankle is feeling better and I ran for the first time in 2 weeks last night. It wasn't too bad, I was only able to do half of my C25K time which means I ran 12.5 minutes, but I ran faster in those 12.5 minutes then I have yet so far. My goal is to complete the C25K program (duh) and then start over and do it again, sticking to each week until I can get my speed down to my goal, which right now is under 12 minutes per mile.

In other news, my crazy toddler has officially had his second trip to the ER. This time for a fall. I'm not kidding you, he literally fell in the grass at ground level, no big deal, right? Well he was unconscious. And let me tell you, that was the scariest thing ever! Of course by the time we got to the ER he was fine and talking about the helicopter outside, etc, so the doctor and nurses truly thought I was one of those crazy parents that overreacts about everything. "He fell.....in the grass?" YES! "Just the grass, no pavement?" NO! "And he looks totally fine right now, no blood or tears?" NO! Hmmmm. This is not what they said, but obviously what they were thinking. Anyway, thankfully it seems like he just had the wind knocked out of him or he passed out from holding his breath during a long cry. Either way, he is OK and that is all that matters. And he owes me his first 3 years of allowance for an ER visit, make that TWO ER visits.

Just saying....

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Jinx!

I always jinx myself! You know, when you say "my baby is sleeping through the night!" or "hey my kid is finally potty trained!"....and then the next night you are up every hour with your infant or your toddler is peeing on the carpet. That's the story of my life, except this time it doesn't involve my kids (amazing, right?)

I purposefully did not post about my C25K running adventures until I was far enough in that I knew I wouldn't quit. When I reach that point where most people drop out, and made it past that, I felt comfortable posting about it. And then the VERY next day, I got injured. A very, very small injury, but still I took 2-3 days off. Tonight I went back out to see how I felt and I felt great!! I didn't run one of my C25K programs, just a run. I ran 12.5 minutes straight. Not my best but not too bad. Anyway, as I was walking home I stepped in a hole, heard a pop, and was standing with my foot completely twisted. FUN! So now I sit here with an Ace bandage holding my ankle steady and I'm in immense pain. Guess I'm taking a few more days off. Sigh.

On a positive note, I had a victory in my weight loss journey this weekend. It's what's known as a "non-scale victory" or NSV. It's basically something that does not have to do with a number on the scale. M and I went shopping and after trying on clothes at 3 different stores, I realized I am officially down another pant size! That's two sizes so far. I was starting to get discouraged because my weight was not changing as quickly as I'd like, but this NSV helped me realize that even though the scale isn't changing, my body is. Yay!


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Run Forrest, Run!

This blog has been sorely neglected this summer!  Even though we haven't done much this summer, it feels like we have been constantly busy.   Add that to my laziness and lack of creative writing skills, and you have one pathetic blog.  I have a lot of things that I'd like to write about so my new goal is to update weekly, if not more.  I'm sure that anyone reading this (if anyone is still out there? Mom? Somebody?) is tired of hearing about my garden.  All I'll say is that it's still doing well,  I have tomatoes coming out of my ears!  Some things have done well and others will definitely not be planted again next year.

Something else keeping me busy this summer has been my exercise routine.  Yes, I hate that word....exercise.  Barf.  In February I started a Live Healthy Iowa program with a friend and have lost 25 pounds since then.  It should have been twice that but I've had several months were my weight just would not budge, no matter what.  Since the weather has been nice, I've gone walking nearly every single night.  Even in the rain sometimes.  I change my route so it's not boring but I almost always get is 3-4 miles each night.  On top of that, I started doing the Couch-To-5k (C25K) program.  If you don't know what it is, it's basically a 9-week program (you do it 3 times per week) that takes you from sitting your behind on the couch day 1 to running a 5k week 9 (or longer for some of us.)  I don't know what made me decide to start, I literally was just walking one night and though "hey, wouldn't it be cool if that C25K program had an iPhone app where you could play your music in the background and a little alarm went off when it was time to switch between running and walking?"  And, like everything in this world, there was an app for that.  It was 2 or 3 bucks so I grabbed it and that same day tried it out.  Since then I have been 100% faithfully running/jogging.  Here's a breakdown for anyone interested:

(All days start with a 5 minute warm-up walk and end with a 5 minute cool-down walk)

Week 1 (days 1-3) Alternate between 60 seconds of jogging and 90 seconds of walking, for a total of 20 minutes

Week 2 (days 1-3) Alternate between 90 seconds of jogging and 2 minutes of walking, for a total of 20 minutes

Week 3 (days 1-3) Run 90 seconds, walk 90 seconds, run 3 minutes, walk 3 minutes, then repeat all of the steps a 2nd time

Week 4 (days 1-3) Run 3 minutes, walk 90 seconds, run 5 minutes, walk 2.5 minutes, run  3 minutes, walk 90 seconds, run 5 minutes

Week 5 (day 1) Run 5 minutes, Walk 3 minutes, Run 5 minutes, walk 3 minutes, run 5 minutes
Week 5 (day 2) Run 8 minutes, walk 5 minutes, run 8 minutes
Week 5 (day 3) Run 20 minutes.  (yes, you read that correctly)

Week 6 (day 1) Run 5 minutes, walk 3 minutes, run 8 minutes, walk 3 minutes, run 5 minutes
Week 6 (day 2) Run 10  minutes, walk 3 minutes, run 10 minutes
Week 6 (day 3) Run 25 minutes

Week 7 (days 1-3) Run 25 minutes

Week 8 (days 1-3) Run 28 minutes

Week 9 (days 1-3) Run 30 minutes


There it is!  At the end of week 9 you can run 30 minutes, which is a typical 5K run.  I am MUCH slower than typical so I have to work on my speed once I get my endurance up.  Tonight I finished week 6, day 1.

If you were to ask me 6 weeks ago if I could do this, I would flat out tell you that you were crazy for asking.  Seriously, it was hard for me to run those 60 seconds the first week.....but as cliche' as it sounds, you can do it if you put your mind to it.  I'm 80 pounds overweight still and I can do it.  Last week I ran 20 minutes straight!  Plus, as a bonus, this is something you can do for FREE.  Once you get into it, you will want some good running shoes, and of course I LOVE the $3 app I bought (it tracks distance, speed, and even has gps to map where I ran.)

Harvesting

How lame is it that I was excited about picking our first tomato today?  And it was just a tiny little cherry tomato.  Sad.  But we also picked 1/2 pint of raspberries and a couple of onions, so I guess that makes it a little better.  I was too lazy today to take pictures but just imagine the last pictures I posted, just fuller.

 In my last post, I mentioned my venture into Once A Month Cooking.  I have to say that we are all greatly impressed with how it all turned out!  Our grocery budget was cut by a few hundred dollars (yes, hundred!) and making dinner has been so simple the past few weeks.  I basically set aside one day when the kids were behaving, which usually only happens one day a month anyway, and went to work!  I had the hamburger buns mixing in the bread machine while I did my prepping and cooking, so it went smoothly.  I had a couple of days of spaghetti on the menu, so I just made enough for all of those days, divided, and froze them.  I did the same with the other ground beef dishes (like maidrites, etc.)  For my soups, I diced up all of my veggies and froze, along with meat for those that needed it.  For my pizzas, I make one batch of dough (bread machine) and one batch of sauce, each batch makes enough for two pizzas, then I package them up.  When I'm done I have a bag of dough, sauce, and shredded cheese.  Easy Peasy! 
I have not had to go to the grocery store at all for meals this month, only for milk, some fruit, and stuff for Jason's lunches.  And maybe a beer or two. :)  Like I mentioned earlier, I sit down with a calendar, write down a meal for each day of the month, and then make a list of ingredients needed.  To make it cheaper, I stuck to 7-8 different dishes and just repeated them throughout the month.  It saves alot of time and money to do it this way.  Then I divide my list into things I can order from my monthly Azure Standard order, which is most of my ingredients, and what I need to get from the grocery store, usually just meat, milk, and a few produce items.  When my Azure order drops, I take a day or two to whip up all of the meals.  Voila!
If you are interested in seeing my menu for July/August, shoot me an email and I'll send it to you.   You can copy my menu, and you've saved even more time! :)  I don't have any fancy meals on my menu, anyone can make these things people! 

Summer!

It's here.....finally!  Although I can't honestly say that I love summer like most people.  I hate temperatures of 100+ degrees, especially around here where the humidity makes it impossible to grab the mail without needing to change clothes.  Yuck.  But the kids have been enjoying the days, now that we don't have to worry about getting a nap in before picking M up from school.  So far we've gone to Jester Park to play at the playground and playscape, visited the Science Center, been to a few libraries (and signed up for the summer reading programs), and lots of other fun trips.
We started summer out with the kids making lists of "goals" they want to accomplish this summer.  It's mostly fun stuff, M's includes stuff like visiting Grandma for a week, learning to ride a bike without training wheels, visit the zoo, etc.  K's includes things like working on potty training, learning his colors, and of course a trip to the airport to watch the airplanes!
Speaking of K, his vocabulary has really picked up lately.....he's still way behind by most standards but that fact that he is learning is encouraging.  He knows most of his animal sounds (the elephant is his favorite) and, like any little boy, he knows all of the different vehicles.  He's obsessed with them to say the least. 


Let's see, what else is exciting here.....oh yeah, I'm going to make a feeble attempt at once-a-month-cooking this month.  I'm not following any particular plan and I have done zero research on the best ways to do it, but I'm still going to try, mostly to save from the typical 5-10 trips to the grocery store each month.  I wrote out my menu for the entire month and have my list all ready to go!  It does have a lot of repeat recipes, but I figure if I change it up each month we won't get bored quickly....or at least that's what I'm hoping for.  For anyone who doesn't know what this is, it's pretty self-explanatory.  I plan on cooking all of the meals for the month (or at least prepping the ones that can't be cooked ahead) and freezing them.  If this works out, I will share my menu, shopping list, and cooking steps here next month.
We order most of our foods from Azure Standard, and since we only get them delivered once a month, I planned my start day to coincide with that order.  Then I just have to get meats and fresh produce and dairy from the grocery store, although I'd really like to do some research and find a local farm to order fresh meat and dairy each month.  I'd love some suggestions if anyone has any!  Hopefully next month our garden with help with the fresh produce portion!

And a blog post from me wouldn't be complete with talk about the garden.  I don't have pictures this time, but the garden is doing well.  We only got about 12 strawberries this year, but they are new plants so we didn't expect much.  We've had lots of lettuce and snap peas already, and the herb garden has really been handy lately.  Also, we have tomatoes starting!

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Garden Update

It's so exciting to finally see the garden coming together...with stuff growing in it!  I have everything planted that can tolerate a light frost, and I'll be planting the rest within the next few weeks.  I have updated pictures below.  I didn't realize that you couldn't see much with the covers on, but those covers have been a life saver.  The first week that I planted, the pesky animals (squirrels, rabbits, and birds) ate 75% off my seeds/seedlings :(  So the covers, while unattractive, were necessary.  Anyway, this is what it looks like today:

 This is the first box on my deck.  The back row is/will be:  Rosemary, Cilantro, Basil, & Dill in the back row.  All of the front row will be lettuce

This is my other deck box.  It is/will be Oregano, Parsley (cut out of picture by accident), Radish, Thyme, Lettuce, Chives, and two squares of spinach.

 This box is/will be cauliflower, cabbage, red onions, white onions, peas, and green beans.  The box to the right is empty but will be all sweet peppers.

This is ALL strawberries!! YUM!!  The box to the right is completely empty but will be all tomatoes.

This is my larger box for things that need deeper root space.  This will have a pumpkin and butternut squash plant up against the fence, I'll use the fence as a trellis to grow these two things vertically.  The next row forward will be carrots and celery.  The next row will be all potatoes.  The row closest  is broccoli and green onions. 

All of these lovely green plants are raspberries!  It started about 2 years ago as 3 raspberry bushes and has easily grown to about 50 of the little guys.  These grow well here, I usually pick a 1/2 pint a day!

As you can see, the garden is still covered in black weed fabric.  We should be getting our mulch soon.  I'll take a picture of the garden at that point so you can see the boxes all together.  Other than what you see here, I have 4-5 rhubarb bushes in the yard, they are small and I won't get much fruit from them this year, and a blueberry plant that could very well be dead.  :/

And in case that isn't enough pictures for you, I have these pictures of my plants still inside! :)

 The small ones are lettuce.  The red cups are tomatoes, and the others are a mix of basil, sweet peppers, and cucumbers, along with the various herbs.

The little cups are more lettuce and lots of chives.  The bigger plants are mostly celery with a few sweet peppers mixed in.

Just wanted to share...

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That is all.

Progress!

We were SoOoOoO lucky to have nice warm weather all week, we made a lot of progress on our garden.  Here are some pictures of our deck boxes.  We have very limited sun in our back yard and our deck gets a good chunk of it.  We decided to stain these ones.  After a few "discussions" back and forth about the safety of using stain for vegetable boxes, we decided to stick with it, only the top inch of the insides are stained and the bottom of the lath strips are not stained.

After we finished those, we started working on the main boxes.  We decided to paint them white, hoping to extend the life of the wood, and to match the neighbor's garage.  They are not painted at all on the insides.

We've since filled them with soil/compost (look close and you can see the big pile of dirt!)  and will add the lath strips to the top as soon as I mix in peat moss and vermiculite.  Also, I've finished laying the brick around and have wood chips coming soon!  The area next to the garage that is not covered in weed cloth is where my raspberry bushes are, I just cut them down but they fill up that whole area.

And because I finally found the camera cord and have tons of pictures, here are my seedlings!  M and I transplanted them to cups this weekend and we were so happy that all but two of my seeds sprouted!

Now we're back!

You know how my last post was about us being sick and then getting better?  Well guess who was sick AGAIN!!!  K and I both had some nasty cold that lasted yet another week of our winter.  I think we are now finally better (looking for a piece of wood nearby to knock on.)  So I'm going to stop talking about it all together and hope that helps.  On to better things....gardening!!!

This year we are doing a square foot garden.  I learned a little about this method from a friend and took time to research it even further.  We have a nice, large yard but thanks to gigantic oak trees, it is mostly shaded.  So I have a small area that is maybe 20 feet long, and in it I have HUGE plans!  I suggest reading up on this method if you have any interest in starting or expanding your garden.  Basically you are planting in raises beds but each bed is divided into 1 foot sections.  You would really be surprised how much you can grow with this method.  This year my plans include the following: (the number represents how many of each plant)

16 Strawberries
3 broccoli
2 cauliflower
3 cabbage
16 green onion
16 radish
8 tomato
6 green pepper
3 red pepper
4 pole beans
4 peas
9 garlic
1 butternut squash
1 pumpkin
32 carrots
8 potatoes
8 celery
9 red onion
9 white onion

and just on the deck alone, I am growing:

1 oregano
1cilantro
8 basil
16 chives
4 parsley
24 lettuce
18 spinach
1 thyme
1 rosemary
2 dill
3 stevia

Sounds like a lot, doesn't it!  Well i'm not counting on ALL of it growing, since this is my first year doing more than a few things, so I thought I'd plant more and just be pleasantly surprised if they all take off!  I'm starting everything from seed, most of them I will start indoors.  I have a few indoors already and they are really doing well under my new plant light.  Take a look...although you will have to look pretty closely to see most of them!

We're Baaaaaaack!

Holy cow what a month it has been!  A little case of bronchitis turned into a weekend in the hospital!  Good news is that everyone is seemingly back to normal.  Bad news is ...... well I guess there really isn't any bad news.  I don't even remember February starting and here it is half way over.  We do have a big birthday coming up in our house though....M is turning 7 on the 26th!  It seems impossible, I don't feel like 7 years have passed since the day I gave birth to a ginormous baby girl.  But it has, and if her attitude is any indication of how the next several years will be then we are in for a fun ride!  Don't get me wrong, she is an amazing child; too smart for her own good, a fantastic big sister, and very loving....BUT she tells me day in and day out that she wants to be a teenager.  And that means she acts like one half of the time. 

K is doing well.  His hearing and speech evaluations both went fine.  He's not really showing any major signs of being behind developmentally, but we do  need to work on his vocabulary and we were given some great advice.  Jason and I both agree that God made him as freaking cute as he is for a reason.  Jason calls it his defense mechanism.  He can act like the biggest turd one minute, but the next minute he is doing something so cute that you forget about the bruise you have from having a toy car launched at your head.  Exhibit A:

A New Year....A New Look!

How does it look?  I got notification that the site I got my designs from was changing, along with the code.  I figured I might as well change it up, since I had to adjust all of my code anyway.  It is very typical of me, if you know me personally you will know that I like to change and rearrange things.  Come to my house today and then again next week, and most likely our furniture will be moved.  I'm not sure what a therapist would say that this says about me however.  Hmmm.  Well anyway, I have some upcoming posts planned regarding my participation in Live Healthy Iowa, some new blogs to check out, and obviously more photos of my kids.  Duh.

Mazie

A few friends were talking today about the story of our Nativity and it really got me thinking about the story of our cat.  By the way, if you haven't heard already, she is going to be in next year's I Can Has Cheezburger calendar!  After her appearance in their How To Take  Over the World book, they liked the picture enough to add it to the calendar.  And after you read the story, the calendar will be even more exciting!

When Jason and I were dating, he go the idea to get me a cat for Valentine's Day.  At the time we thought it was going to be practice for having a kid (HAHA!!)  We went to a local animal shelter to find a cat to adopt.  The only thing we knew going in was that we didn't want a kitten since it would be more work (because when you are practicing for having kids, it's highly practical to get one that is already trained, right?)  They led us into a room full of cats and we started looking around.  We saw a few adorable ones and they let them out of their cages for us to pet.  Most of them just wandered around aimlessly.  Jason sat down in a chair next  to the cages to pet one of the cats.  As he was sitting there, a nearby cat reached out of it's cage and started to gently paw at him.  We thought it was funny, again because most of the other cats could care less that we were even there.  After a few more minutes of this, we asked to have that cat taken out for us to look at.  The cat immediately jumped on Jason's lap and cuddled up to him.  It was adorable!  Being that it was a Calico cat, he remembered something his grandmother had told him.  He was always very close to his grandma and

More projects completed

I finished up M's quilt. It was absolutely adorable...until I washed it and parts (not all of it of course) shrunk.  I think that she'll still like it though.  Here is a part of it, she picked out the pink and black skulls on her own.  I also make her a white polka-dot minky pillow.

I also whipped up a little pillow for K to go with his alphabet letters.

And my final project today was a set of Dora crayons for our niece.  I mixed

Just another homemade Christmas in Kentucky....

....or Iowa.  Whatever.  I finished 1 of the 3 projects that I have planned for the kids this year, and I wanted to show it off :)  M's quilt is about 75% done, just waiting for my fabric to come in the mail.  I'm planning on making a little fishing pole set for K next, and then he'll be getting these ABC's as well:

Welcome December!

Wow, time has flown by this year!  I can't believe it's December already, but maybe that has something to do with the fact that it's Iowa and we haven't had a blizzard yet. 
And December doesn't just mean Christmas at our house...it means birthday!  TWO....yes, he's going to be TWO this month.  He's been busier then ever, learning things left and right. I am extremely happy to report that our house is 100% binkie-free!  Jason and I decided we were going to quit cold turkey after the holidays, but then a few weeks ago all of the binkies went missing.  A blessing in disguise I suppose.  Amazingly he has taken it well.  The first nap he cried for about 5-10 minutes, and I was sure he would never sleep again.  But after those few minutes, he was out, and he has fallen to sleep just fine without it every single nap & bedtime since.  I'm so proud of him!!  And now the rest of us are all very careful not to use the "b" word in our house anymore.
His vocabulary is also picking up.  He's never been much of a talker, more of a point-and-grunter.  He says please and thank-you perfectly.  We've been working on "sorry" lately, since it seems to come up often with this child.  He is now saying it regularly...but not in the right context.  He says it when he falls or bonks his head.  So I guess he is only really sorry when he's hurt himself. :)  Other words that we hear regularly are apple, cookies, juice, choo-choo (the boy loves trains!) and sissy (he also loves his sister!)  Surprisingly he hasn't picked up on "no" yet.
M has been doing great in school. She stayed home sick today, she's had a terrible cough for a week or two now and her throat is raw from coughing so much.  Although, she certainly doesn't act sick when she's at home.  She sure is smart though, it's been very challenging dealing with a child that outsmarts me every single day.  There is no lying to her!  And she is reading like a champ, so we no longer can spell when we don't want her to know what we are talking about :) 

Christmas countdown!

I am so excited to say this....I am about 90% done with my Christmas shopping!! Jealous? I have a few of the last minute things left, which I will save until later because I actually enjoy doing a little holiday shopping in December.  Not the kind where I have to wrestle other parents to get the "it" toy for my kid, but things like stocking stuffers and such.  The only thing I don't have prepared for the holidays?  Christmas cards.  Some years I look forward to writing out tons of cards, some years (and this is one of them) I want something that's pretty much done for me (but still looks just as nice.)  I love the look of the photo cards that everyone sends out, but usually I'm too cheap to buy them.  This year I found a great deal at Shutterfly.  Right now they are offering 20% off all Christmas cards, just use this link.  The hardest part was picking out the one that I wanted, there are way too many cute ones.  Here are a couple of my favorites:

 

It is so easy, I literally typed out our names and uploaded a photo.

I'm not going to tell you which one I ended up with, what fun would that be?!!?  I have some top-secret photos picked out just for these cards too.  Shutterfly also has matching address labels.  And if you're lucky like me and have a near-Christmas baby, check out these cute birth announcements!  I've purchased photo books from Shutterfly in the past and the quality on them was amazing, so I am anxious to get my cards in the mail!

Cooking monster...

...not to be confused with Cookie Monster. I have really been cooking a lot these past few days, I have found so many recipes that I wanted to try.  Especially this time of year, when it's not too hot to have the oven on all day and of course the fact that there are apples and pumpkins everywhere!  Today I made some pumpkin butter.  It doesn't have butter in it like you may think, it's more like apple butter.  It wasn't my recipe, I found it here, the only changes I made were using organic brown sugar, pumpkin, and apple juice.  It turned out great, although it was not as thick as I was expecting.  I tried it hot off the stove on a piece of toast and it was amazing.  Most of it ended up in the freezer, awaiting it's fate....pumpkin pancakes! 

Speaking of butter, did you know you can make your own?  And did you know that it's pretty much the easiest thing in the world to make?  It isn't cost-effective though, it's not cheaper to make it yourself.  But it tastes better, and we make it to keep for our guilty pleasure....buttered popcorn.  All you need is heavy cream and a jar.  I used an old, clean Miracle Whip jar.  Put the cream in, and shake it till your arms fall off.  I used one of the little boxes of organic cream and it ended up making about 3/4 of a stick of butter and 3/4 cup of buttermilk.  Yeah, that's the bonus, you not only get butter but buttermilk too (which I saved to use in pancakes.)  As you shake it it gets really thick and coats the jar.  You will shake it and it will feel like you are doing nothing, but keep shaking!  If you look at the jar you will notice after that it starts to "peel" away from the side and you eventually have a big old lump and that's it.  But don't stop, keep shaking till all of the buttermilk separates and it sounds juicy :)    Just pour out the buttermilk into a container, rinse the butter with really cold water a few times, and then I take the butter out and give it a good squeeze.  That way you'll get out all of the liquid.  If you want it salted, add some salt and then pop it in the fridge till you need it.  Just a warning though, if you melt it in the microwave, like we do for our popcorn, it melts much faster then store-bought butter, so keep an eye on it.

Jason's video game marathon was yesterday (they did great, more on that when they have final totals!) so I was in charge of whipping up unhealthy snacks for the guys.  They had monkey bread, spicey Chex mix, chocolate chip cookies, and soft pretzels.  I must have been in a crazy cooking mood because the next day I made chili, chicken noodle soup, applesauce bread, and a few other things I've already forgotten about.   I've already got my list put together of what "snacks" I'm making for Christmas.  We always put together a little goody bag for our neighbor and some friends.  Can you believe it's only 2 months till Christmas!?!??!?!?!