Spring!!!

I love when plants start coming up in the spring! It always amazes me that after all of the cold and snow; spring comes and plants start popping up! It is a beautiful sight to see flowers blooming, green grass and trees pushing out leaves; a great reminder of the blessings of life!

Last year we planted some bare-root strawberry plants and were excited to see that they took root and grew. Late in the fall they started to die back and go dormant, my wonderful in-laws brought us some straw that we needed to cover them during the winter. Somewhere around late March or early April we started to see green leaves come out :) and now this is what we have:

Strawberry plants!!!!! I hope they continue to do well and that we can get a decent crop of strawberries this year. I still need to build a cage for them in order to keep the birds and rabbits from eating the precious strawberries that grow, hopefully I can get that done in the next couple weeks.

We also started some seedlings to grow stuff in our garden this year (we still need to haul some more cinder blocks for that). So far they are doing well. We started seeds for tomatoes, broccoli, cauliflower, sweet and hot peppers, cabbage and a few other things. Here are our 1 and a half week old seedlings:

This year will be mostly an experiment to see what grows well in our garden. As long as something (other than weeds) grow in it I will be happy :)

I have wanted to grow some herbs indoors for awhile now. However, our punk cat likes to eat anything plantlike that resides in our house (including pineapples). I am not opposed to growing herbs outside, except that it leaves me without fresh herbs in the fall and winter. I came up with a solution :) I got some hanging baskets at the Dollar Store and am going to plant them with herbs and hang them in front of our kitchen window. Jules could make it up to them, but hopefully will not. Right now I have the baskets hanging from the blinds until I can put the hooks in the ceiling, so I'll post a picture later. But for now, here are our little basil seedlings:

We had snow the other week, but the strawberries seem fine, we also planted some raspberries that seem okay so far. I am looking forward to some more home improvements this summer and hoping I can develop some sort of green thumb!

Soap Overload!!!

You would think that with only two of us, we would hardly have any laundry to do...but it seems that there is a never-ending supply. God help us whenever we have kids!

Thankfully my wonderful hubby does most of it. I usually fold and put most of it away or fold it and leave a nice supply of clean clothes on our table :D

Well, I've gotten sick of paying so much for laundry detergent. I've read several blog posts about making your own laundry soap and decided to try it. The final recipe is from a combination of the different recipes I read.

What you need:

1 cup of Washing Soda (Not baking soda)
1 cup of Borax
1 bar of Fels-Naptha Soap
a 5-gallon bucket
LOTS of Water

1. Grate up the bar of Fels-Naptha soap add to a pot with 6 cups of water.
2. Cook on Medium-Low until the soap melts (don't let it boil).
3. Add 1 cup of Washing Soda and 1 cup of Borax and stir.
4. Cook on Medium-Low for another 10 minutes or so (a couple of the recipes said to cook until it got thick -honey consistency- but mine never did and I lost patience, besides many recipes didn't mention it getting thick)
5. Add a gallon of HOT water to your bucket and carefully pour in your soap mixture, stir to combine.
6. Add hot water to your bucket until it is almost full (leave a little space so you don't spill).
7. Cover and let sit over-night or until cool. It will separate into a gel on top and liquid on the bottom.
8. Once cool you can either use an immersion blender to mix it all up....or use your hands like me :) just smush up the gel and mix it with the liquid as much as you can.
9. Take a clean laundry detergent container (or other container of your choosing) and fill it Half-full with your soap mixture, add water to fill up the remainder of the container, close and shake!
10. Shake container before each use and use 1/4 to 1/2 cup in your washing machine. I checked several places and found that this is safe for front loading washers.

So if you paid attention you've realized that this ultimately makes 10 GALLONS of laundry detergent!!!!!! We have been using it for a couple weeks now and are Extremely happy with it, it seems to work as good if not better than our previous name-brand detergent! WooHoo!!!

Now for the cost:
I got all of the ingredients (minus the bucket which we had and water) in the laundry aisle at Walmart:
Borax (box with enough for several batches) less than $3
Washing Soda (box with enough for several batches) less than $3
Fels-Naptha soap (1 bar) less than $1

Total is less than $7 for 10 gallons of laundry soap!!!

Okay, so back to the soap overload :) This is so cheap and makes 10 gallons of soap, even with our never-ending laundry supply it would take a lot of time to go through, so if you want to try it or have run out of laundry soap or whatever and live close....bring me a clean container and we will fill it half-way with soap (other half needs to be water) and you can try it out and help lighten our supply! I want to keep enough for a couple bottles, but that still leaves several gallons to give away.

Just so you know, the clothes come out smelling clean but no other scent, if you want a scent you can just add a bit of essential oil in your scent of choice to the soap container.

Yummy Veggies :)

I like vegetables, my husband likes vegetables and actually our dogs do too :)

Anyway, just because we like our veggies, that doesn't mean they have to be boring....

I went to the store the other day and got a lot of stuff, including some brussel sprouts. I know most people cringe at the thought, but give them a chance.

I cut off the ends and took off any bad outside leaves (there weren't many, they were very fresh) and cut them in halves or quarters. Then I mixed up some dry ground mustard, paprika, salt, pepper, minced garlic and oil; I tossed the brussel sprouts in the mixture I made and roasted them at 400 for 20-30 minutes (Sorry I don't know the exact time, cause I just checked on them every so often and would just add a little more time. I let them roast so they got a nice golden color and some of the outside and loose leaves were browned.

I planned to grill some chicken for dinner and thought they'd be a nice side, but I don't know if they will make it that long.....They are awesome!

Here's a pic to pique your interest, give them a try:

One Word.....

We missed church last week because I was sick. However, our pastor sent us the notes so we wouldn't miss out. One of the challenges was instead of the typical new year's resolutions (which most of the time get broken) was to come up with one word.

It is easy to think of things that I want to improve on, but narrowing it down to a single word was difficult. I spent the week thinking and praying and trying to determine what my word should be. It wasn't until we were driving to church in a heavy snow on slick roads that I committed to it.

The drive wasn't what committed me though, it was my husband asking me. I had been bugging him all week to tell me if he came up with a word and what it was, but he wouldn't tell me. Well, on the drive this morning he asked me; I said I wasn't sure yet. I finally told him that the word that kept coming back to me is "focused". However, once I said it, I decided that was it. I had wrestled all week long trying to come up with something else and I ended up where I started. I finally got James to tell me his word, but if you want to know you'll have to ask him :)

I am not entirely sure how my word will affect me, but it definitely gives me a lot to think about. I hope that when I get distracted by things in life that I can stop, think about what I need to be focused on and then follow through. Sometimes that may be the thing I was working on in the first place and other times it may be that I need to shift my focus somewhere else; but I hope that I will take the time to determine where my time and energy (my "focus") is best spent.

I think this was a great challenge and I encourage you to try it!!!

Happy New Year!!!

I can't believe it is already 2011

2010 went by way too fast, I guess that means I am getting old :(

We had lots of people up to our house for Thanksgiving this year, it was a great time with LOTS of food! It was fun to cook so much in our own home and have family and friends come to visit. We missed seeing those that couldn't make it, but enjoyed not having to travel.

Christmas was again a great time with friends and family! Each time we get together I am reminded how blessed I am! I couldn't ask for a better family, in-laws, extended family and friends.

I hope to be better at updating my blog this year :) we'll see if I can keep up with it; I apologize in advance for any ramblings that may occur in my attempt to do so...

Since it is much more fun to see pictures than just read, here is a pic of my new "toy"



It is my hope and prayer that all of us will have a wonderful and prosperous year!

Surprise Stop!

On Friday, in the midst of our basement cleaning, I got message from my brother-in-law.


I didn't realize I had a message until a few hours after he left it, but it said something to the effect of "We camped in Rocky Mountain National park last night and got rained on and since we are so close we were thinking of dropping by for a visit."


I called and said that hopefully I wasn't responding too late, and that I hoped they know they are always welcome and still planning to come. Ed said that they were still planning on it....YAY!!!!


They called when they made it to town and got to our house a little after 4. We came inside so they could relax a little and then my niece asked to go to the park. We usually take the kids to a big park in town, but it is a few miles away and requires driving. I suggested a small park a couple blocks away so they wouldn't have to get back in the car :)


It was a nice little walk to the park and ended up being a great spot! There were swings, slides and plenty of nice grass. I even snapped a few pictures with my phone:

James called saying that he was done working and almost home, just and we were getting ready to head back so we didn't get rained on. He beat us home by a couple minutes and Cordelia wasted no time running inside to surprise him!

Ed made steaks and corn for dinner and we had smores (made over the grill) for dessert! The kiddos got baths and everyone had nice dry beds! Ed and James played video games a bit and Rachel and I hung out talking.

It was a nice visit, and we are so glad that they were able to come by....such a great surprise!!!!!

Vacation?!?!?!

So we had been planning for a few months to go camping at Arches with my brother-in-law and sister-in-law, and were really looking forward to it! Fortunately James got work with both Boulder County and the City of Fort Collins for the summer (yay work!!!) unfortunately this also meant that he had too much work to be able to take the time off needed to go on this vacation. So although we are happy for the work and subsequent income, we were really bummed not to go camping with family.


I decided to still take Thursday and Friday off and tackle some of our basement cleaning. Once I mentioned this intent, my wonderful mother (aka. the cleaning and organizing Queen) offered to come up to help me. She promised to be nice since I take after my dad in regard to "stuff" as in I am a complete pack-rat! I like to do a lot of different projects and have all sorts of supplies and things to help me accomplish them all...even if it won't happen for 10 years :) I like knowing that if I need something that I have it and don't have to go out and buy something new.


So, my mom came on Thursday afternoon and we went to lunch and then worked downstairs for about 2 hours before calling it a day and making dinner. We then started up again on Friday morning and worked for most of the day. It turned out great, we threw some stuff away, made a trip to the thrift store with stuff to donate, found a couple things my brother could use and mostly just organized all of our (mostly my) stuff. Here's the result:

Isn't it great! Now we just have to finish the other half :) Which is not near as bad as this half was. We've worked on the other side before and it is mostly books that we are going through (we have ALOT of books, even double-stacked they don't fit onto our bookshelves). We've turned in several boxes to the used bookstore and have several more that will be going that route as well. Hopefully we can manage to cut down enough that they fit on the shelves we have. Ultimately I want to build floor to ceiling bookcases and make a library, but that will be sometime in the not so immediate future.

Thanks Mom for your help, you were GREAT!

It's been a busy few days, cleaning downstairs was just the start. I'll update more soon!