Sunday, April 29, 2012

Planting Seeds in the Veggie Garden

Today was the perfect day to plant seeds in my vegetable garden. This week, the weather is warming up significantly, which will be good for seed germination. It's hard to believe that June is only a month away considering we just had sleet yesterday! I planted one bed for now and will plant more once it nears the end of May. Our beds are approximately 10 feet by 4 feet.

Here is a rough map of where I planted everything:
Last year, the only vegetable I started from seed were radishes. They were a huge success, so I am hoping for good results with others as well. I plan on buying some transplants from a nursery as well, as a kind of insurance against the seeds! I decided not to start my tomatoes indoors this year, so I will be buying transplants for those in particular. I plan on growing my tomatoes in place of the radishes once I harvest them. They will provide some shade for the turnips as well as the leaf lettuce. I'm also going to plant tomatoes in between the marigolds around my rosemary plant. That should also help shade the broccoli a bit. The peas are currently planted along a tall medal rod that is used for hanging baskets. I didn't plant very many since I need to get some sort of trellis in place in another area, but this will get us started.


One of my goals is to keep better records for this gardening season, so I will be blogging about my progress, updating my planting map accordingly. Once I get some things growing and transplanted, I will update with pictures too.

Have you started a garden yet? What are you planting?

Tuesday, April 24, 2012

Easter Sunday

I know this a couple weeks late, but I wanted to post pictures of our sweet, growing Peanut and Snowflake on Easter. I made both the their dresses, the first of hopefully many to come. 

Peanut in her dress after church. Her dress gave me the most grief (note to self: do not attempt to sew buttons and weird back pieces the night before she needs to wear it!). She would not look at the camera. It's tough getting a good shot of a constantly moving toddler!


Snowflake in her dress, probably watching her crazy sister doing something odd.


The Campbells - AKA Queen, King and Princesses of the Campbell Castle.


My attempt at getting a good shot of the sisters. This was after their nap, and Peanut was not thrilled with the idea of getting all smiley to take pictures. I'm pretty sure she has a talent for not smiling in photos when it counts!

Our Easter was spent at the church and with family. It was a busy, long day, but so wonderful. It's days like these when I realize how truly blessed we are.


Luke 24:46-47
"and He said to them, 'Thus it is written, that the Christ should suffer and on the third day rise from the dead, and that repentance and forgiveness of sins should be proclaimed in his name to all nations, beginning from Jerusalem.'"

Monday, April 9, 2012

Our Minimalist Spring/Summer Wardrobe

Having another baby means our laundry has increased significantly. It's amazing how many loads a little life can create! I had been struggling to stay on top of it all, and it was becoming a bit of a problem. I decided to minimize all of our wardrobes in effort to streamline laundry by creating less to do and also forcing myself to keep up with it since I will have less to wear!

Here's a peak into our small closet! Yes, this is ALL of our clothing except for underwear, pajamas and socks!

As you can see, we have worked hard to narrow it down to only the items we love and wear! A few of our clothes were in the hamper this day, but not very many since I had just finished with the laundry.

Daddy C actually has MORE clothes than I do, but he needs more since he is the worship minister at our church and is in front of a lot of people every week. Even so, we narrowed his church shirts down quite a bit!


I keep my pants and hats on the top shelf. On the right I have my ball hat and sun hat as well as a clutch for special date nights. In the middle are what I like to call my "house-clothes" - a pair of shorts, capris and sweatpants. On the left I keep my jeans, nice capris and shorts.


I hang up all my shirts. We are in between seasons right now so I have tank tops as well as long sleeved shirts! My 2 tee-shirts were in the hamper this day. I keep my church clothes on the right followed by nursing tanks, nicer casual clothes and then on the left I keep my "house-clothes". I have 4 belts, but I think I may get rid of some of those too since I hardly wear them!


As you can see, Daddy C has a lot of shoes! He used to sell shoes for a living so that's how his collection began! In this picture I have 3 pairs of shoes not pictured- my tennis shoes, hiking boots and my casual slip on shoes. I have one pair of special occasion shoes, one pair of white sandals, black church shoes, summer sandals, slippers and crocs. I need to get some new flip flops for the summer as well since I threw my old ones out.

It has been so freeing to get rid of clothes we do not wear, old raggedy and ill-fitting clothes. This really was not that hard for me since I have been going through so many sizes with pregnancy in the past 2.5 years or so! I really did not have much that fit me! I still have a couple items I need to get to fill in some gaps, but now I can clearly see what we have and need and don't need! It makes getting dressed in the morning so much easier!

I am working through Peanut's and Snowflakes clothing right now as well and will post as soon as I am done with that. It is much harder to narrow down children's clothing than adults, so I am moving slow on it!

Monday, April 2, 2012

Simple Homemade Nursing Cover

When Peanut was still nursing, I bought a nice nursing cover from Target and loved it. It was a bit of a splurge for me, but it made nursing discretely much easier. Fast forward to now, and I am nursing Snowflake, again using the handy cover. However, about a month ago, I somehow lost it and was having a lot of trouble nursing with just a blanket since Snowflake apparently hates being covered up. After several weeks of debating whether or not I was going to shell out money for a new, I decided to make my own!


This project is so easy and I am proud of how resourceful it is! All you need is a good sized receiving blanket (which I somehow had like a bajillion of), some scrap fabric and a piece of boning (if you have any, but not necessary).

Cut 2 strips of fabric 4 inches wide for the straps. You can make these as long as you want. Fold in half, and sew along the edges, closing one end in. Then pull right sides out. Fold the raw end a few times to hide it and sew it onto the backside of cover for each strap. And that's it! I found some boning in my sewing box, so I added that in as an afterthought, but if you wanted to do it, I would sew it in first so it looks more even.

The ties are simple, but I found I never really adjusted the cover anyway, so it works for me!

Since making this cover, I have actually found my old one, but I don't think I will be going back since I like this one better! And it's nice to have a backup in case something like this happens again! I saved at least $10 making this cover myself, but since I had the boning to put in it, I saved more like $30 since those cost more. Frugal win!