Garden Bounty

I picked bibb lettuce, red leaf lettuce, and spinach from the garden this weekend. We now have enough greens for both Hubby and I to have salads for lunch for the rest of the week! And I have no regrets informing you that a hapless little worm who was enjoying himself a little too much on my lettuce plants perished in the process.

Changing of the Mantle

Okay, so it's a few months too late to have snowmen on my fireplace mantle. Even my husband started making a weekly comment about it being okay to take the snowman down now that it is officially spring. Am I the only person who stops seeing things in a room?

I am a paper waster and love to get catalogs in the mail. There is nothing more satisfying than sitting on the love seat next to the window during naptime and casually flipping through my catalogs and magazines. When the latest Potter Barn catalog comes in, I start envisioning all of the different things I would purchase out of that catalog and how they could decorate my house - if only I didn't have this basic disdain for spending too much on things that simply aren't worth it. Take the following...

Wall Bells - $129 for the set. At most I would pay $60 if I was feeling extravagant. A deal for me would be $25 for the set.

Wall Organizer - $149. What??? It's a corkboard covered in burlap!! If I had time to make it myself, I would. But if I had to purchase it, I'd pay...eh...$30.

Lanterns - $29 to $99 currently on sale for $20 to $79. I love lanterns. I don't love their price here.

VERY similar lanters at Pier One - $15 to $50.

I bought two of the smaller Pier One lanterns (actually taller than PB's smallest lantern) and three little accent lanterns. And then I went to work on replacing the snowmen.

Behold! The snowmen on the mantle in April.

Our lantern mantle. I bought LED candles with timers (did you know they came with timers?) for the inserts. My next quest is to take that small picture off the of brick and replace it with a mirror - I think. And also de-clutter some of the stuff up there. I need more ideas. And the black fireplace screen? It's a goner. I took it off and revamped my candle collection in the firebox - real candles in there!

A Letter to My Hormones

Dear Body,

Why must you do this to yourself? I realize that hormones are hard to control. They are like having 589,125,364,465,253 wild animals running rampant on a 30-year old zoo. It is not an easy situation to control. Even dear Hubby understands the mood swings and the food cravings. But why? why? why do you retain water? Do you realize that it is some special kind of torture? I know how much water you are holding because I know how much water I drank yesterday and I KNOW I didn't have to wake up to pee in the middle of the night.

From the moment the alarm woke up, I knew that you were bloating. I looked in the mirror and my normal jiggle around my mid-section was markedly enhanced. My boobs, damnit, don't fit in my bra! I had to layer a tank top with a shelf-bra over my regular bra in hopes of containing the two extra boobs now squeezing out from around one of Frederick's fine creations. Frederick's does NOT account for extra boobage!

And now we play the waiting game. How long will I live in this state of puffed limbo before the hormones convince my uterus to begin torturing me? I go from bloated to agony. You really jack with me, you know it? Just know this - I am within twenty years of menopause. Yes, menopause! Where my biological clock puts the kabash on your ability to torture me with bloating and cramps. Where my biological clock instead shifts you to a whole new dimension and I no longer have periods. Instead, I will have hot flashes. Dammmmm.

Sincerely,

A woman clearly need in chocolate and alcohol

The Garden Grows

It has really been fun watching the garden progress. I was out of town all last week and when I came back it seemed like my child and my garden had grown by leaps and bounds.

The lettuce, spinach, and broccoli are really covering some ground. I have lost three onions but that's the reason I planted over 20. What I don't use at harvest time, I will chop up and throw in the freezer. At $3.00 a bag for the pre-chopped frozen onion, there is some serious coin to be saved with this little farmer's plot. The container in the garden is radishes. My tomatos are slow but I think they'll pick up the growing pace once it really starts warming up.

Here's a close-up of some lettuce plants and the interspersed onions. I have been reading in several of my magazines about mixing in different vegetables together in order to fit more into the garden. So far, so good. We'll see how things look in another few weeks. It is also time to put another layer of compost on...the rain washed some away.

And this blurry last photo is the other side of the patio for garden number two. I pulled my hamstring this weekend and couldn't bend over to plant on Sunday evening, so I walked around dropped the plants where I wanted them and Hubby planted for me. Against the wall, there is a bell pepper plant, a jasmine vine, asparagus (second year harvester), and rhubarb (second year harvester). The cucumber plant is on the left hand side where I will eventually put stakes in the ground with string creating a growing net. There is a zucchini plant in the middle. Another squash plant on the lower left corner, and two watermelon vines on the front edge (so they can grow out into the yard). On the right hand side those are two different types of potatoes with red onions to intersperse between the potato plants. I don't have high hopes for the spuds, but will be pleasantly surprised if we get a few.

And that is how our garden grows right now!

Breakfast in a Basket

A laundry basket to be exact....eating mini-waffles out of a ziploc baggy...watching cartoons.

Friday Funny

First Harvest

I harvested my first batch of lettuce yesterday evening! It was enough to make a salad for lunch today. While I was grilling steaks last night, I turned my attention to our mini farm and noticed that things had really done some growing in the past few days. My stance with lettuce is that I harvest leaves as it grows, so what we get may be small leaves but they are power packed with nutrients and the plant will keep producing. I generally pinch the leaves off about an inch from the base of the plant. The spinach is giving it the good ole college try - we'll see how they do in the next few weeks. I have strawberries in hanging baskets on the front porch, however I suspicion they are not getting enough direct sun, so I may have to relocate them this weekend.

Plants left to put in the ground - watermelon, squash, and a jasmine.

time flies

Two years and four months old. He can talk, run, hop, throw, hit, bounce, yell, laugh, sing, cry, and pretend. Sleep can last anywhere from 15 minutes to 10 hours. Words and phrases are repeated back to us - whether we intended them to be or not. He can test our patience to the n'th degree. Our hearts can break in an instant with one sorrowful look. He can say "no" 147 times in a row and can gently whisper "sawwy" in a voice so gentle you almost sink to your knees. Temper tantrums are his forte but so are the games of chase and tickle and leggo building. A cuisine fanatic he is not, but he subsists very well off of chicken nuggets and graham crackers. His hair is always a mess but curls are forgiving. He is our baby...our toddler...our little boy.

The Garden - Part I

K has finally reached an age where he can do stuff with us and partake in the work/fun. We are doing a garden this year. Hubster used the tiller and made us a nice patch of dirt to play in. So far, there is two different kinds of lettuce, sweet onions, spinach, swiss chard (what's that for anyway?), broccoli, sweet banana pepper, jalepeno pepper, two tomato plants, a squash plant, and four herbs. Then all was covered with compost. Here's our little "farm" as of last week...

I placed rocks around the plants that fall under the dripline of the roof - hate seeing perfectly good roots exposed.

Butter Lettuce - grow baby grow!

Lessons from "Da" on using our shovels for dirt work and not for beating the tar out of the earthworms.

The water hose won.

Can't let the plants think we're too serious about this growing business!

Easter Egg Fillings - the alternatives

As a mama of a child with food allergies, I dread the Easter egg hunts because K-man cannot have any of the candy. Hubby and I have mastered some slight of hand tricks when it comes to cracking open a brightly colored plastic egg and saying "Oh! It's empty!" while shoving Hershey's kisses and Willy Wonka candy into our pockets. In honor of our attempts of keeping tomorrow's egg hunt allergy safe and as a method of preserving these ideas for next year when I'm standing in the middle of Target thinking "now what did I do last year?", here is what K will find in his Easter eggs tomorrow.

• Little People figurines (about five different ones)
• sidewalk chalk in the shape of easter things
• a wind up bunny that hops
• stickers
• little bouncey balls
• two talking eggs

In his Easter basket is three little books I found on the dollar display at Target, a spinning blinking egg wand flashlight thingy, a bottle of bubbles, and two finger puppets. We will make cupcakes together tomorrow for the special treat. My guess is that he'll eat more batter than actual baked cupcake!

What's in your Easter basket?

Authentically French

A friend of mine from college sent me a real French berret...from France! I love hats so to actually have something directly from the region in which it was born - totally awesome!

Easter Plans

I am so excited for Easter weekend this year. I have a two year old to play with! He understands hunting for eggs and digging in his Easter basket to find all the neat little things that I have snuck into the Target shopping cart over the past few months while saying "Oh! What's that?" and pointing the other direction. And we're supposed to have a gorgeous Sunday - 83 for a high! Woopee!!

Both Hubby and I have tomorrow as a holiday, so we get a three day weekend. My to-do list is never ending....

• Bake cookies and crackers for K-man to take to his Easter party - made especially for his allergies, they will be dairy and egg free. Here's hoping that the other kids eat them and that he in turn will try them since they are. Yay peer pressure! (or boo! depending on how tomorrow turns out)
• More laundry - this never ever ever leaves my to-do list
• A toy overhaul on little man's room. All that stuff needs some serious storage and organization. I don't think two year olds appreciate organization.
• More planting in the garden and I need to go give my onions a pep talk (losers).
• Salvage that old window frame that came off of my grandparents' farm and turn it into a faux window in our bedroom - I'm thinking some white paint with distressing to show the old wood through and then some antique lace that I can pick up cheap at the local antique shop. Maybe? I dunno...still thinking.
• Buy a duvet cover that I like so I don't have to keep looking at the quilt I bought for the bed six months ago that I never really and truly liked from the beginning. I walk into our room and think "meh" when it comes to decor. I want a master bedroom that I walk in and think "ahhhhh". Does that make sense?
• Buy or re-purpose a chair to go in the corner of the bedroom to give some more life and color to the room. As of right now, the current theme is wood...wood floors, wood furniture, beige walls....like I said above, "meh".
• Keep staring at that big wall of nothing in the living room until an idea forms.
• Take the snowmen off the mantle...it's spring!
• Visit the AT&T store and drool over the iphones....need to quit procrastinating and get a new cell plan.
• Oh yeah....dye Easter eggs. Which means I better hard boil them tonight or tomorrow morning. And then we'll be having egg salad sandwiches for lunch on Sunday. Or deviled eggs....yummmmm.

If I get half of that done, I'll be super happy. What are your holiday weekend plans?