Cinj's Chat Room

I Think our Ancestors Had it Right

2012-01-30T15:13:00.003-06:00

The more I have gone through in recent years, the more it has gotten me to thinking about the way we run our lives in modern society. Every thought that I have always seems to lead me back to the same conclusion, ancient folks had it right. Why are we losing so much of their knowledge and skill?

They had no mortgages. Their homes with their own two hands or carved them out of the earth. Who wouldn't like to have that 30% of our income to spend on something else?

They worked for themselves. There weren't huge corporations out there driving them to work 60 hours per week and forcing them to move place to place. Whatever they did, they did because they chose to and for the benefit of themselves, their family, or their neighbors. They had time to help each other.

They knew their neighbors. It is very easy with our hectic lives filled with modern day conveniences not to have ever talked to our neighbors. I am guilty as charged. Living on a 2 acre plot of land out in the country I have never had the need to go to the neighbors and they have never come here. People used to depend on their neighbors and help each other out. There were communities that stood strong together. I don't know about you, but I certainly don't feel that same sense of community where I live. No one will stand up and speak out against someone being treated poorly, no one will lend a helping hand, no one cares what happens to anyone else. So many people are wrapped up in their own little world worrying about their own little worries and nothing else matters.

They didn't need power to entertain themselves. They were creative and used their many talents to occupy their free time. Those extra talents probably earned them a little extra income too. We waste so much time glued to the television watching non sense, seeing ads that don't speak the truth. Our young are being brought up to think there is always going to be someone or something there to tell us the answers. There isn't!

They thought for themselves. As I said before, we watch so much TV that many people lack the mental skill to figure anything out for themselves. When is the last time you added something up without a calculator? Be honest now... They could figure out the exact angle they needed to hit an animal with a rock in order to take it down. They couldn't wait for someone else to tell them, if they did their dinner would be running the other direction.

They bartered for goods and services. Come on, we all know that money isn't everything. If they didn't have the money to pay their doctor bill they didn't set up accounts and pay on a monthly basis $40 per month until the bill was paid off. They fixed his toilet for him or gave him a chicken or some eggs.

They heated their own homes. Many relied on fire, but some discovered the power of the earth's internal heating and cooling systems and sun's heat. They didn't pay large heating and cooling bills to giant electric and gas corporations.

They saved up for the hard times. Who hasn't had a tough go of it in the last few years? I know we have had several times where we have struggled. Unfortunately circumstances didn't allow us to save extra cash to pay for higher medical insurance bills and such. It used to be that when times were plentiful they dried extra beans and meat and stored it up for when the food wasn't so plentiful. What could be more practical than that?

They helped each other. In times past, they helped people who needed help. They didn't ask how much their home was worth, how much they had in their 401K account, tell them to go apply for assistance else where, or anything of the sort. They didn't say that they made $300 more than the income level that they can help you at and close the door in their face. They saw a need and they helped, plain and simple.

I think I'd like to go back to simpler times and live a few of the lessons people from the not so distant past could teach so many of us today.

Thank you for stopping by to chat with me. Please leave me a message, I'd love to hear your thoughts! Cindy

I Give UP!!!!

2012-01-22T18:25:00.003-06:00

Have you ever felt like you could just collapse on the floor in a huge blubbering pile? Like nothing in the world will ever go your way again? As if you need to take out a white flag and wave it for everyone to see and call a truce? The endless barrage of hardships and difficulties are just too much to bear!

I don't know what has been going on the last 5 years so that nothing will ever go our way, but I am at my wits' end. It just seems like it's one thing after another. As soon as we start to see the clouds breaking up, more clouds roll right in to take their place. It's just one never ending storm after another. I feel empty and hopeless. I am truly at a loss and no one will help us. I feel like I am in a bottomless pit of quicksand from which there is no escape. I have a feeling that the depression is trying to move back in and take back over my life, but I don't want it to.

I am usually a pretty optimistic person. I know it is always darkest before the dawn, really I do. I have made many batches of lemonade out of my pile of lemons, and some earrings, lemon bars, lemon sherbet, lemon bread, lemon meringue pie, lemon drops, lemon chicken, lemon poppy seed muffins, and lovely scented soaps too. But I am running out of things to make with these lemons and I would really like to get something else instead. Did you know that we have had 10 qualifying hardships within the last 5 years? I am sure I could find even more than that too if I tried. Sad. Pathetic. Unnatural.

Why does no one see my pain? Why will no one reach out a helping hand? Why does everyone think my business is none of their business? Even when I ask for help, no one will help. They won't see my need, it's like they put blinders on, plug their ears and sing a merry tune until I have talked so much I can't talk anymore. They change what I tell them to ease their guilt and so that they are able to do their worst to me. I am sick of it.

Bad service, rising expenses, job transfers, job losses, botched rentals, home sale staging, deaths, depression, short sale, foreclosure, credit clampdowns, home repairs, credit counseling, stress, illness, refinancing, medical debt, loan modifications, I could go on and on. All the while I always try to do the right thing and take care of my debts at the expense of our family and our life. It's sickening really. Why won't it stop? Why do these things keep happening to me? I need to put an end to this vicious cycle.

Everyone has a plan, and everyone tells me what to do when they can't help me. When I tell them I've tried that already, they simply tell me that I must have done it wrong or that I need to do X as well. They tell me someone else will help and pretend to act incredulous and disgusted when I tell them that didn't work either.

Can't anyone just listen, support a person, and help them out? Why does everyone feel the need to require documentation of everything even though I have never told any lies about my situation? Why can't we prepare for something bad that is going to happen when we know in advance it will happen simply because it has yet to happen?

Yeah, I know I have a lot of questions. Why can't anyone answer any of them? Doesn't anyone else have these kinds of questions too? Hasn't this kind of thing been happening all over the world? Why is no one willing to help a person simply to be helpful, not just because a law says they have to?

Apparently no business, no government program, and no job performance bonus is going to get us out of this mess. Only God can and only God will. How do I give this all up for him to deal with when all I do is worry about tomorrow? How do I give it all up into God's hands? I want to give up.

Thank you for stopping by to chat with me. Please leave me a message, I'd love to hear your thoughts! Cindy

Insurance Comparisons

2011-12-15T21:01:00.004-06:00

My husband just got a newsletter from his work in the mail. In it, there was a summary of our 2010 insurance's annual reports for both medical and dental. We have gotten new medical insurance companies every few years, but have had the same dental insurance the whole time my husband has been with the company. (13 years at this point in time.) I could not believe my eyes when I read the report. How can our health insurance company keep up with their greedy ways in the middle of a recession? It drives me absolutely insane!

Medical premiums paid by employees of his company for medical amounted to $57,042,365.

Aetna paid out claims equaling $48,567,376.

Premiums - Claims = The profit made $8,474,989. This is just from one company's employees.

Yet they need to raise our premiums on a yearly basis by between $40 and $60 per month why? We certainly aren't seeing that big of raises in our monthly paychecks. Deductibles are high and they do not like to actually cover much of anything and find every excuse in the book to make us pay for each service out of pocket.

Curious, I decided to do some math to figure out how much each family paid Aetna to line their pockets. I know my math isn't exactly right as not all people have family coverage or the best plan like we do, but I thought I'd aim for some ball park numbers just to occupy my mind and satisfy my curiosity. I am also unsure of how much they pay their employees or how many they actually have on staff, but I think my guesstimates are fairly reasonable. Here is what I came up with:

We paid $144.10 per week for our family health insurance coverage.

Multiply that by 4 and we paid $576.40 per month.

Multiply the monthly amount by 12 and get $6,916.80 as our yearly premium.

This is where the math might seem a little fuzzy to you, but I wanted to find out my share of the overcharges. Dividing total premiums received by our monthly premium amount gives us the number of families served if all of the payees had family plans. $57,042,365/$6,916.8= 8,246.93 families.

Granted some of the profit is paid to people who use our money to pay our bills, but now to find out how much Aetna charged each family to earn their profits. I took the profits that they made and divided it by the number of families who paid in premiums.
$8,474,989/8,246.93=$1,027.66.

I wonder how many employees it takes to service these accounts? Is 8 a fair number? That leaves each of them to deal with customer issues for 1,031 families. If they were paid a salary of $60,000 per year (just guessing here...) that would take $480,000 out of their profit of $8,474989 leaving them only $7,994,989. Let's say $100K for overhead stuff (utilities, phone, etc) that leaves $7,894,989 profit. We were each bilked out of $957.32 just so they could make a tidy profit. Does anyone else think that companies should not be in the health care business to make money?

I believe that is where all of our problems are coming from. If you are in it to make a large profit you raise the prices of procedures every year, making insurance companies pay you more for each service provided, increasing the premiums of each consumer involved until no one is able to afford anything at all. No wonder our health care industry has so many problems! People are also dropping insurance left and right because they simply can't afford it. Health care clinics are unwilling to work with people who can not afford to keep paying more money toward their bill every year so more people simply don't pay and end up declaring bankruptcy which leaves the company holding the bag so they increase prices some more to cover their losses. Add to that the people who sue places for millions of dollars just because the lawyer told them they have a case and won and you have a perfect way to bankrupt an entire country.

With everyone out there only to get money for themselves any which way they can and no one looking for the common good of mankind, no wonder we're in such a pickle!

In contrast to our health insurance there is the dental insurance.

We pay $4.92 per week x 4 = $19.68 per month x 12 = $236.16 per year.

We each go to see a hygienist twice per year, we only go to the doctor once a year. Hmm...

Premiums paid to Delta Dental by employees of his company $2,580,841.

Claims paid by Delta on behalf of same employees $2,390,665.

Premiums - Claims = Total profit $190,176.

Taking premiums paid divided by how much we paid in premium is giving me the number of families served. $2,580,841/236.16=10,928.358

Taking the profit of $190,176/families served 10,928.358 leaves each family paying an extra $17.40 per year not counting Delta's expenses.

Sorry, I'm not going to do the math here to figure out how much of that goes to employees and such because it simply isn't worth it to me. Obviously they provide some services and deserve to make a little bit of profit. They also do not refuse to pay things like our health insurance company seems to enjoy doing leaving me to pay most of the bill.

I have a much higher opinion of Delta Dental than I do of any health insurance company that I have ever had.

Obviously dentists make money or they would not be open and running their own businesses. (Not run or owned by corporations I might add.)

The dental insurance makes money or they would not be in business. They treat their customers well or they wouldn't have more customers than the medical insurance company has.

I often hear the excuse that doctors are highly paid because of the number of years they went to medical school, but don't dentists and vets go to the same amount of schooling? Sorry if you buy that line, but I don't! Look at you vet bill and dentist bill next time you go to either one and compare it to your own medical doctor. You probably see the doctor at each place the same amount of time, right?

Is there a lesson to be learned here? I think so! Actually I believe there are several noteworthy lessons here.
1. Treat your customers well, they are not just giant ATM's.
2. Profit can be made without ripping off your customers.
3. Work with your customers, when you help them you help yourself.

Thank you for stopping by to chat with me. Please leave me a message, I'd love to hear your thoughts! Cindy

It Makes No Sense

2011-12-04T20:23:00.003-06:00

Ten years ago both my husband and I worked full time. We owned a house and had 2 kids, owned two cars and lived in a nice house in the suburbs. He worked an average of 50.61 hours per week and both of us had a 15 minute commute. We made $11,000 less per year then than we do now, but we lived a better quality of life. We had money to enroll our children in activities (well, okay it was daycare but I also had to buy diapers so that counts, right?), we didn't feel the strain of not being able to pay our bills, we had a healthy savings account, retirement account, and owed more money on our house than we owe on the one we are living in now.

Fast forward to today, I am not working. Hubby works an average of 57.05 hours per week. Our savings has been depleted by various events in our lives, we have more bills than we ever have, we never do anything or go anywhere that doesn't involve our son and his school sports, I make tons of our own cleaning and health products, grow and can lots of our food, and home decor items, and people feel they can take advantage of us and tell me what they think I can afford to do. No one seems to think I know what I'm talking about when I tell them about our circumstances, they look at me like I'm an alien life form or that I am talking gibberish. They think they know my finances better than I do? WTH?

Has inflation really increased so much? What is wrong with this picture? Now when I mention any difficulty to anyone they tell me all I need to do is get a job. Should I really have to? What is wrong with everyone? They are saying that I am the problem? Ugh! It drives me absolutely mad!!!

Thank you for stopping by to chat with me. Please leave me a message, I'd love to hear your thoughts! Cindy

I Cried Today

2011-11-29T20:06:00.003-06:00

I am not an overly emotional person. I am not in touch with my feelings. It is easy for me to put distance between my thoughts and my feelings. I keep drama out of my life at all costs. It is easy for me to keep people an arms' length away. I do not share my thoughts and feelings with many people, especially not those whom they should be shared with. I am not sure how I got to be this way.

I have searched for ways to connect more with both my feelings and other people, with little success. I barely cried at my dad's funeral, until I saw one of my friends from high school that I felt really comfortable with. The only times I can recall crying, aside from funerals and sad movies, are times that I tie into my depression. What made me cry? All I know is that this time it wasn't just because of my depression and this isn't any spilled milk we're crying about here. Or is it?

I madly started swiping the tears away with the backs of my hands. Why can't I stop crying? Thoughts and possibilities swirled through my head. Past events, circumstances, times I have just let people walk over both myself and my family. My insecurities surfaced and I could not quiet the voices that were telling me I would never and could never be good enough. Things I feel I have no control over, things I feel that I can not change, and people who won't hear me or don't care about my circumstances just frustrate me so much. Anchors I have tied my life to are slipping through my fingers. I have always thought having faith, dedication, perseverance, and making smart decisions were all I needed to get through this life in one piece, but now our life is so far off course, so far from what we tried to plan for ourselves I don't know which way to go. Storm clouds keep rolling through my life and I can not do anything to make them go away. It's all I can do to try to stay out of the pouring rains. I cry out to God, but he doesn't seem to be able to hear me. Where is that megaphone?

Why must life be so hard? It is obvious to me that I am supposed to learn a lesson in this, but what is that lesson? I am still searching. What choices am I supposed to make? What changes am I supposed to make? Is there such a thing as being too open to change? I refuse to give up. I will keep pushing on, pressing forward, and hoping and praying for God to show me the way.

God, please come and take me by the hand and lead me to whatever it is that you want from me. I can not find my way to the sheltered harbor without you. Please do not leave me to drown. Instead, give me the faith I need to get out of the boat and to walk on the water towards you through the scary storms of life.

Thank you for stopping by to chat with me. Please leave me a message, I'd love to hear your thoughts! Cindy

The New American Middle Class

2011-11-15T21:49:00.002-06:00

It used to be that people in the middle class owned their own home, had money to buy all of the necessities that their families needed, had decent saving accounts, 401K's, didn't need to live paycheck to paycheck, and were able to take a family vacation every year even if it was just going to a nearby campground just to get away. It seems that picture has done a whole lot of changing over the last few years and I am not really liking the direction that our country is heading. Families do not leave their homes, pack lunches for every family member every day, wear the same clothes year after year even after they are tattered and stained, there is no room for any emergencies as saving have been eaten up by increased expenses, homes are on the brink of foreclosure, there is a lot of deficit spending just to keep the same lifestyle we have always led.

Now more than ever we are all finding ourselves struggling. Some of us have never had to put up with some of the situations we are finding ourselves in, and it can be a scary place to be. We are needing to be creative and make some major cutbacks in our lifestyle in order to keep the same standard of living that we have always had. Some are clueless as to how they can do this and are petrified of having to change their lives.

What lead to this state of affairs? No pay raises for years at a time, increasing costs of living, forced job transfers, not being able to sell our homes, decreased credit availability, declining home values, foreclosures, increased taxes and medical expenses, businesses who have no regard for positions people are finding themselves in, banks who are unwilling to help struggling homeowners, job losses, increased disease caused by new stresses that we are not used to dealing with, shrinking 401Ks as well as other savings avenues, and reduced work hours available are just some of the problems that have contributed to this new reality.

It seems like this problem is insurmountable. It looks like a giant mountain that we are both unwilling and unable to climb and conquer. What is there to do but to throw our hands into the air and give up? Now, more than ever, we need to pull together and make some sacrifices. We need to help those that are in need of help even though we may not think they need it. We need to band together and take care of each other. We need to have less focus on our short term profits and more focus on the gains that can be made in the long term.

Being just one person, what can we do to make the world a better place? I will give you some ideas of things that we have done as well as things that could be done if people weren't so hung up on following the highest profit line they can get. Some of these ideas are things that we can do to help ourselves, while others are ideas that we can use to help those around us which may indirectly benefit us as well.

When I found myself with less cash flow than we have traditionally had, I found ways to stretch our budget. I switched out all of our regular light bulbs for CFLs, turn on less lights at night, turn down the thermostat when no one is home, and run all of our televisions and other electronics on power strips so they do not use electricity when they are not turned on. Instead of buying clothes at the retail stores I used to frequent I found myself buying them at garage sale or thrift shops, same with other household necessities such as plates, books, and pot. Recreating clothing that we already own is a great way to save money. Why not make that shirt with the stains on it into an art project that your children can proudly wear to school? Those pants that are too short can easily be turned into a jean skirt or jean shorts. Making our own foods from our homegrown garden has also been a Godsend to our budget woes. Sugar free blackberry jam in the stores was $5 per jar. Picking the blackberries from the woods and making our own saves us a lot of cash. That $5 easily buys enough pectin to make at least a dozen jars of jam if not more. Who ever thought before this all began that I would learn how to make my own green cleaners, sausage, dog food, canned veggies, frozen soups, broths, and dried herbs?

Businesses can help people too. If you can't afford to give them a discount, at least work with them so they can fit your goods and/or services into their budget. If they say they can't afford the bill and try to arrange things to make everything more affordable for them, believe them. Charge an affordable interest rate and don't change all kinds of extra fees just to add to their misery and to your bottom line. Then the business will not loose customers and the customers can still afford services on an affordable payment plan. I think it is despicable when a business tells a person to sell their home at a large loss or spend all of their life savings just to get paid sooner. What will they do the next time? There IS going to be a next time, you DO know that, right? Why can't we spend more time helping others who are also struggling to get their feet under them so they can then pay that kindness forward? If they can afford the payment then you will not have to worry about these customers declaring bankruptcy costing you even more money either.

Banks can lower a current customer's interest rate. If they are already your customer and they are paying their bills in a timely manner why not try to help them make their payment more affordable if they request your assistance? This will free up some of their cash so they can spend it to help stimulate the economy. This will indirectly help a bank as they have invested their customer's money into various stock markets. Increased spending will increase the value of those holdings earning the bank more income thereby helping the bank as well as it's customers.

Insurance companies don't need to keep adding a 10% increase to their customer's charges every year either. If people feel less taken advantage of they will be less likely to take advantage of others.

I also feel that fraud and lawsuits are destroying our country. People seem to be looking for a quick profit around every corner. Taking people to court costs everyone money, as does charging for services not actually provided. Even those of us who aren't even involved in the situation. That is how prices got as over inflated as they have. Businesses don't eat the cost of these lawsuits and payouts themselves, they divide the cost and spread it out as increases to all of the other customers weather it's insurance or some other business. Why do you think our cost of insurance has risen so dramatically over the last 15 years? Certainly not because the equipment is that much better. Think about it. How much does it cost to go to the vet vs going to the doctor? Both went to the same amount of school, but there isn't insurance in most veterinary practices. What about the dentist? I still pay close to the same amount now as I did 13 years ago when we got our dental insurance. Why? Because people are not abusing the dental insurance plans in the same way as they are abusing the other insurance companies. My health insurance cost on the other hand has increased more than 250% over the same amount of time. Are we REALLY that much less healthy?

Start seeing the sanity and refusing to take the easy road, instead take the road less traveled. Help yourself, help others, stop being greedy, and together we will make it through the rough times.

Thank you for stopping by to chat with me. Please leave me a message, I'd love to hear your thoughts! Cindy

Helping Each Other

2011-10-27T08:26:00.003-05:00

In recent days I have been making further attempts to lower my monthly payments so we can get back on track after all of the recent upheaval. I have learned a great many lessons in these attempts and it puzzles me what some places are thinking. Here is my story...

When I was told that I met the qualifications to get a loan modification from our current bank I was extremely happy, because that 6.875% interest rate is killing us. I was told by a great many places that we would not qualify to refinance because of the foreclosure we had in 2008, my bank said a loan modification would be the only way they could lower my interest rate. Fine, I understand with a score of 640 I can see not wanting to take a risk (although I have both a first and second with them both of which have always been paid on time. Well, except that once when I skipped a payment on purpose because their responses when I asked for help was to say I wasn't struggling since I was making on time payments. Besides why wouldn't I pay on time, we do need to keep a roof over our heads.)

If I had a lower house payment, I could pay my husband's commuting expenses monthly instead of each time he gets a bonus from his work. I HATE having to rely on credit cards as they have this habit of checking your credit report and dropping your credit line even if you always pay them on time. I'm not sure how we would survive if my last credit card did the same thing that all of the others have, what bills would I have to skip paying in order to buy him gas? He has been driving this 110 mile per day commute for 2 years now and frankly I am tired of not having the money in each pay check to cover the expense. No one is buying houses in our price range right now if it is not on a lake, so after a year on the market we took it back off.

I follow every rule during each modification period, I keep meticulous records, I pay the bill with plenty of time to spare so it gets there before it is due, and I do everything that their employees ask me to usually involving sending a more recent fax of pay info or an updated hardship letter. I am not sure what it is they decide between the time the modification starts and when it's over but they keep coming up with excuses as to why I don't qualify in the end. I report my expenses, my bank statements back up my financial worksheets and everything. The first excuse was that I don't pay more than 31% of my income on housing and that I can afford to keep my house, the second excuse was that I can just get cheaper health insurance so I don't need a modification (huh?), the third time I can't afford my house and I need to run a short sale on it, this last attempt I finally got them to approve the modification but they will keep the interest rate the same as it was to begin with and lower my payment just a few dollars. Not sure how putting me through 9 months of hell gets me into a better place than I was to start out with, but whatever. I guess I could say at least I passed this time, but it doesn't help free up the money I need for daily living expenses. Apparently though when it's over they have promised to fix my credit back to showing the on time payments that I have been making. I guess we'll see if that's yet another lie that their employees place in front of me while they try to steal our house out from under us.

I think the refusals come down to corporate greed. They don't want to loose any of their precious money that they get each month from my higher interest rates, so they only want to go with a government sponsored program that will pay them to do the right thing. It's just crazy! Since when is it the government's job to pay a business to make their borrowers into better borrowers? Wouldn't they rather a borrower has the foresight to see a problem arising and try to head it off before the bank has to deal with it directly in the way of a foreclosure? Why can't they take the proof provided and not make up monthly income that we do not receive? Why can't they just help a person who needs help? Don't they see that freeing up some of the money I pay to them in interest rate charges could be freed up to help spur the market into economic recovery?

I have run into that very same problem in the health care industry. Our deductibles make us pay thousands of dollars out of pocket every year before they cover any expenses. We have accounts with 2 different clinics that we are paying monthly payments to from previous years of medical bills, they each have an arrangement with the same bill collection agency to get 10% interest to stretch the payments over 3 years. We currently pay $78 to one of the clinics, and $40 to the other. Each is trying to say adding our new balance to the old one will "only" raise our monthly payment $6-12. That's all fine and good, but my husband has not had an hourly pay raise since either the late 90's or early 00's, I told them we can't afford to pay more on a monthly basis. They asked me to send in bank statements, monthly paystubs, and all kinds of other stuff which all back up what I am saying. Instead of looking at what we bring home each month, one of them looked at the amount he gets per year with the once yearly bonus. We use the bonus to pay down our debt, we no longer have that to pay extra bills with. They say we make plenty of money so we don't need their aid in getting our bill paid, I need to arrange with them to pay the bill in full. Apparently they can only help people who fall into guidelines set forth to them by the government. Ah, another place looking to get paid to do the right thing. Don't they think I know our finances better than they do? I am hopeful that I don't run into this same situation with the other clinic since my son has a surgery scheduled there for December.

My husband has also recently been informed that our work sponsored health insurance cost is going to increase another $40 per month to cost us $661.12 total for the 4 of us. That's more than 10% of our gross yearly income and I think that is outrageous. There is NO way we are going to be able to afford that. Since other attempts at less expensive health care has turned out no one willing or able to help us simply because of my weight, I decided see if I qualify for the Wisconsin sponsored health care insurance. Apparently I not only qualify for that, but also for reduced price meals for the kids, food share, and help with our utility bills during the winter months. I only pray that we get an answer fast enough so we can drop the insurance before the open enrollment period is up.

How is it that government can see a need and offer assistance to someone that businesses deem unworthy of helping? Is my doing the right thing and paying my bills on time the thing that makes me unworthy of their assistance? If so, that is totally messed up. It is my opinion that people should always try and do the right thing if it is in their power to do so. I have cut back in every other area of my life, we rarely go anywhere, I only buy clothes off of clearance racks at Goodwill or garage sales, I can and make my own foods, I have one little lamp on at night with a cfl light bulb, turn the heat down at night and when the rest of the family isn't home, my kids can't even afford to eat school lunches so I pack everyone's meals daily before sending them off, I make my own soaps and cleaning supplies,... Housing expenses and health care are the only places I can seek shelter in until our other debts are paid off. I am praying to God that he helps these business people to see reason and they help people who request their aid, not only for myself but for anyone else who is standing in my shoes in similar circumstances. We can't all rely solely on the government to get through this crisis, if we all can do something small in the life of another person we can change the world and make it a better place for everyone to live in.

Why shouldn't we stop and help someone less fortunate than ourselves? Why not buy the homeless person a cup of coffee? Why not donate our kids' used toys to the someone who will use and appreciate them? After all, we don't want to end up like Scrooge do we?

Thank you for stopping by to chat with me. Please leave me a message, I'd love to hear your thoughts! Cindy

Miracle Gro Potting Mix vs. Shulz Moisture Plus Potting Mix- Update

2011-08-01T15:39:00.003-05:00

I have anxiously been waiting this summer to reach the conclusion of my experiment. So far the results have been fairly good with loads of green tomatoes developing on my plants, but I have ran into a few difficulties that have made me consider calling an end to the experiment.

First of all, if you recall my previous post you will notice that the topsy turvys were filled to the top with soil (see the picture of the super fantastic tomato). I have had some major settling issues which is what I am going to blame for my other problems. Would it be fair to continue the experiment when not all of the soil is what I started out trying to test?

This summer has been averaging hotter than normal temperatures so there have been days I have looked out the window and have noticed that the leaves are beginning to look droopy and wilted. With the lesser amount of soil to hold the water the plants have needed on those hot days, has that affected the quality of my tomatoes?

The soil settlement also made me wonder if there are sufficient nutrients in the soil for the tomato plants as well. Many of my early formed tomatoes have ended up with blossom end rot. Is this because of lack of moisture, lack of nutrients, or inability to absorb the calcium they needed from the soil? To attempt to remedy this problem I have been adding a teaspoon of epsom salts to my gallon watering can and I've watered each of the tomato plants with 1/3 of this solution. I haven't noticed any new tomatoes developing this problem, but only time will tell if it has actually worked.

I do not like to have to water the tomatoes so often either, so I have been considering filling up the tops of the planters with a mixture of other soils that I have on hand for another project. I could buy more bags of the expensive stuff, but since I have this on hand it seems to be a much more economical choice. Since each container seems to have settled about the same amount, would it be fair to add this to each planter and continue the experiment?

So, my questions above need to be answered by others who are unbiased. Do you think it is fair if I continue on with the experiment with the ideas listed above? If not, do you have other suggestions to offer me?

Thank you for stopping by to chat with me. Please leave me a message, I'd love to hear your thoughts! Cindy

Home Made Reed Diffuser

2011-07-21T13:33:00.004-05:00

I've been a bit upset today for a variety of reasons that I won't bore you with here, so I decided to finally make that reed diffuser I have been thinking about making for some time. I needed an inexpensive pick me up and I had all of the ingredients I needed to do it too.

I grabbed the bottle that I bought at our local Goodwill store for 99 cents. It needed a small neck and I chose a clear bottle so I could keep track of the fragrance level in it. The reason that diffusers have narrow necks is so the essential oils do not evaporate and are instead forced to travel up the wood to be disbursed throughout your room.

Next, I needed the reeds that would draw the oil up from inside the bottle and disperse it throughout the room. I decided that my bamboo skewers would work perfectly for that. If you deem that the points are sharp and/or dangerous they can easily be trimmed off. They should be twice as long as the container is tall. Once they have soaked in the oil for an hour or so, flip them over and put the dry end of the wood into the oil. This will help the oil wick up the wood.

For the carrier oil I have read that baby oil works well. As an added bonus it also has a pleasant smell to it. Other oils can also be used mineral, sweet almond, safflower, or sesame seed to name a few of the lighter varieties. I have also read that water can be used instead of oil, it just evaporates faster.

To the oil I added 2 Tbsp of 91% rubbing alcohol. The alcohol helps the oils wick up the reeds better. You can use other alcohol as well, this just seemed to be the most practical and inexpensive.

The last thing is to add your scents of choice. I added 4 different essential oils. Sweet orange, Bergamot, White Grapefruit, and Clary Sage essential oils, all of which are supposed to have mood lifting properties.

Add everything to your bottle, stir, and enjoy.

Thank you for stopping by to chat with me. Please leave me a message, I'd love to hear your thoughts! Cindy

Miracle Gro Potting Mix vs. Shulz Moisture Plus Potting Mix

2011-05-20T19:05:00.004-05:00

As you may know I like to run different tests to compare how things work. (As if I didn't have enough to do.) I came upon the idea for this one quite by accident.

You see, last year was the first year for us growing tomatoes in those Topsy Turvy tomato planters. I thought we did rather well and kept the plants slug and disease free all year, but hubby had seen some at his work that were more productive than the ones we had at home. He decided to buy some of the more expensive garden soil to give us results like theirs too. (we all know I can't possibly make a good mix of my own...)

He bought whatever was on sale at the time of soil purchase, which just happened to be Miracle Gro Potting Mix. Who would have thought that 3 large bags wouldn't be enough? With the temps warming up so incredibly fast, I decided to start planting my tomatoes even though frost danger has yet to be completely gone. We bought 29 seedlings in all, most of them were different kinds sold in 4 packs (except the Mortgage Lifter that was sold in a pack all by itself). There are currently no favorites or least favorites, but he did request no grape or cherry tomatoes in the mix this year. Apparently they're too small.

We have 14 hooks for tomato planters on my grape arbor, but last year we only used 10 bags so I had to go buy more. Unfortunately they didn't have the same style that we already had. I'm a little OCD when it comes to things matching and stuff so I bought 7 more (all on rebate for less than $2). I decided if all of the planters on one side matched it would look good so this is sort of a two pronged type of experiment.

On the first side of the experiment, we can test the older model of bag against last year's model. The old ones will be planted on the back side of the trellis (because they're not as nice to look at now that the color is faded) and the new bags will be in the front. Both sides get equal amounts of sunshine and water. All of them except one is planted in the Miracle Gro mix, the last one is planted in Schulz Moisture Control. The front and the back bags are each planted with two tomatoes of the same variety in the same position. So one the fifth hook from the left as I'm facing the arbor both front and back bags will have the variety Super Fantastic planted in them.

The second side will test the Shulz soil against the Miracle Gro. It is going to be compared only to the tomato variety that is the same as it is which is Super Fantastic so we can see if one has better fertilizing qualities or soil moisture retaining abilities in them. Hey, I'm not trusting my memory on this one, hence both the picture and the blog post showing the variety to check. It is easy to tell the difference when you actually look into the bags, but I am too short and don't want to have to climb up and down ladders all of the time just to peek at the soil.

Any guesses on which soil is the better soil???

Thank you for stopping by to chat with me. Please leave me a message, I'd love to hear your thoughts! Cindy

News From Cinj's

2011-04-26T08:09:00.005-05:00

Can it Be? Is That Spring I See? Can I Really Have Chickens?
Wow, it has been the longest winter ever! Snowfall after snowfall, cold weather would not leave, and the sun keeps hiding behind the voluminous gray clouds. The plants are so confused they don't even seem to know if they should come up or stay dormant. Finally it is almost May and things are coming to life.

The weather is warming up to melt the final remnants of snow that lays in the shady areas of yards and ditches. Piles shrinking little by little each day until they will finally disappear. Some of the piles are so well hidden by the many layers of sand thrown out during the winter they can't even be distinguished from the surrounding ground.

When the sun comes up, not only do my spirits lift, but it seems that the plants' do too. These buds would not swell, I've been examining them for weeks as the snow has slowly tried to creep away. Not matter how much snowfall we had gotten to ensure plentiful amounts of water, without the sun they refused to come out.

This is the first season that we will be able to harvest some rhubarbs from our plants. We planted two of them a few years ago, patiently waiting for the roots to grow strong enough to withstand the harvesting of the luscious stems. I have heard many people have already begun to harvest, but our leaves are just beginning to unfurl from it's winter sleep. I caught them when they were just beginning their wake up stretch. Now I will just need to come up with some tantalizing recipes to feed my family with. I am not sure if we will get enough of a harvest that we will be able to can any this year though, but only time will tell.
As my final shot I am showing you the future location of the chicken coop my husband has finally begun talking about building for me. Apparently I will be having a bit of work to do as well before we can place anything here. Our subdivision bylaws say that we can have a few birds if they are caged, so we will be building a nice big run for them too. I have yet to come up with plans for these things though. Any thoughts or advise from the chicken keepers out there?
Thank you for stopping by to chat with me. Please leave me a message, I'd love to hear your thoughts! Cindy

Doing What we Can to Save the Earth and our Health

2011-03-15T05:23:00.002-05:00

Our wonderful friend Jan is once again hosting the Gardener's Sustainable Living Project in which we can share what we are doing to protect our environment. Check out her link for all of the details on this wonderful project that helps encourage us to even just do one thing. Thank you Jan!!!

This is my post from last year's event in which I won a cobra head weeding tool in the drawing she had once the project was completed. It is a pretty neat little gadget, though I don't get many weeds to pull with it. This is in part because of my mulching efforts that save me a lot of back breaking labor. It's always very nice to have a backup plan though, just in case.

In addition to the composting, reusing plastic water bottles, canning, buying gently used items in place of brand new when possible, my gardening methods, and the conservation efforts that help to conserve our precious resources I have added some new activities to my efforts over the past year.

1. I have tried to limit my use of commercially prepared products. Not only because the packaging that these products come in, but also because of the way that chemicals and preservatives may affect our health. Some of the things I have begun making for my family include making tooth powder, cleaning supplies and laundry detergents, soap, and pet food. I may have forgotten a few things, but you get the idea...
2. Using less disposable bags. Not only can I use the bags that you can buy at the store for putting my purchases in, but I have also made some of my own bags. I just got done making some reusable produce bags out of a sheer fabric remnant that I bought about 6 years ago. The remnant that I found downstairs in my fabric stash only cost me 75 cents for almost 4 yards of fabric. So far I have made 4 of them, but I am sure that I will need many more than that before my garden veggies start ripening this summer.
3. Reusing creatively. Many of you may know about ways to reuse paper and cardboard, but what about those styrofoam packing peanuts? We used ours to revitalize a flattened pet bed. Word to the wise, if there is any scent on them at all do NOT put them in a beagle's bed... My husband had planned on throwing these away so he put a piece of aluminum foil that he had used on the grill on them. I thought I avoided all of the pieces that came in contact with the offending aluminum foil, but apparently he must catch a whiff of something and tries to tear the bed apart.
4. Replacing paper towels and paper napkins in most circumstances. This is a no-brainer. How often do we instictively reach for a paper towel when we go to dust? You spray the cleaner on the surface, you wipe with a paper towel, and when the towel starts to fall apart because it is too moist or whatever, we throw them away. What if we only used paper towels for something really nasty and gross (like a cat's hairball)? Do you know how much less waste we'd be sending to the dump just by using cloth instead?
5. Ditch the wrapping paper. Okay, it is fun to rip wrapping paper off of packages, but is it worth garbage bags full of trash to the dump? How many households are there? Even if you "only" send one garbage bag per holiday celebration, how many bags of trash will each country send? I made cloth bags simply because they're more durable than the paper version, but it's the same idea. I tried to make the bags more fun by using cartoon characters on my reusable gift bags. I will also add a draw string to the top of each bag to eliminate peeking as well as feeling the need to use reams of tissue paper to hide the gift inside. This picture shows my Finding Nemo gift bags, cloth placemats and napkins, and the produce bags I made.
6. Less plastic bottles. Not only can we reuse our bottles for water, but we can also use less bottles when we drink soda. We all know we really shouldn't drink soda because it's not good for us, but I know many of us give in to the urge once in a while anyway. I got this great solution for Christmas this year. Carbonate your own water in a reusable BPA free plastic bottle, add soda flavoring, and make your own. Not only does it have less environmental impact in the number of bottles, but the cola has only 35 calories in an 8 oz serving. If you compare that to Pepsi which has 150 calories in a 12 oz can you can see it's also "better" for you. Let me do the math for you. 150/12=12.5 calories per oz 12.5*8=100 calories in an 8 oz serving. It also has less than 1/3 of the sodium and less caffeine as well (it's lower on the ingredient list). If you want the true Pepsi taste though, this isn't it since the cola has more of a coke taste to it. Most people won't really notice the difference though.
7. Using less canned goods. Alright, I know it's not quite as "easy" as canned good vs dried, but there isn't the amount of salt in the dried goods either. To keep them fresh I store them in airtight containers. The dried good also cost less than canned goods do. If you buy a 15 oz can of beans, you know you're not getting 15 oz of beans, you are also paying for the liquid that the beans are packed in. If you rinse and drain the beans then that money is also being washed down the drain. Add to that the effort you go through to dispose of the cans those beans come in and it's another no-brainer. As an added bonus if you run out of seeds for your garden, you can plant these beans and grow some more food. You can't plant a canned bean because they have already been heated and will not grow into a new plant. Once the dried beans are rehydrated the beans will weigh more than 15 oz too, usually at least double the amount of the beans in a can.

What are you doing to help? To join this project create your own post. For a chance to win her awesome prizes you'll need to leave a link to your post on Jan's web page.

Thank you for stopping by to chat with me. Please leave me a message, I'd love to hear your thoughts! Cindy

Reader's Digest Article

2011-03-11T20:21:00.002-06:00

I know that many of you wanted to know when our article was going to get published in the Reader's Digest. It is in April 2011 edition. Our story is on pages 100 & 101. It is in the larger section on how the recession has changed us.

The photographers were here all day shooting tons of video and pictures of all of my eclectic activities. They said some of it may be used for the ipad app that goes along with the article, though I didn't see any mention of it. I can't verify either since I am too cheap to buy an ipad.

When we got it in the mail the magazine was snatched from my hands and read by both of the children before I got the chance to read it. They were very excited to get their picture put in such a big magazine. My daughter brought our subscription copy to school today so she could share it with her teacher and class mates.

Thank you for stopping by to chat with me. Please leave me a message, I'd love to hear your thoughts! Cindy

Home Made Tooth Powder

2011-02-04T08:19:00.003-06:00

In my quest to be more chemical free, I found so many interesting things that I could make with the same base of ingredients that I thought why not try to make some of these things. The problem is to actually find the products that I am looking for. I mean one recipe calls for powdered calcium carbonate. What the heck is that, why do I need it in my tooth paste, and where do I find it?

It turns out that calcium carbonate is in lots of stuff. It's in the lime we use to neutralize the acidity of our soil. I don't think I want to use that though... Those OTC antacids have it in there and they are already flavored so that's a bonus. That's what I ended up using since my choices are limited around here, but ideally I wanted to use something without any additives. I hear you can get it at health food stores so I may have to look into that next time I'm out and about.

The recipe in Home Made, Best Made from Reader's Digest called for 13 TBSP calcium carbonate (used as an abrasive to clean the teeth), 4 TBSP baking soda (detergent), 1 tsp salt (? more abrasive perhaps?), and essential oils of 12 drops cinnamon and 25 drops mint (to cover yucky taste and to soothe sensitive gums).

Well, I don't like to be wasteful so I used my berry flavored antacids. I used my pill crusher to turn it into powder. Somehow I don't think that would go well with cinnamon or mint, so I skipped that. It took a lot of work so I wouldn't recommend that unless there are no other alternatives. By the time I was done crushing all of the purple ones I had 4 TBSP of powder so I cut the recipe by 2/3. At least you could use the tums for their intended purpose though if you would choose to use them. I think I will also skip the salt next time. It does not taste the best though, so I will be doing some tinkering with the recipe. I also used too much baking soda in it. Blah!

It works well as far as cleaning the film off your teeth goes. I have used it twice. The first time I wet my toothbrush before I dipped it into the powder. Don't do that, it's messy and may leave clumps of nasty stuff in your powder. It is stored in a tightly sealed container and it's supposed to keep well. That's one of the reasons I made the powder first.

I think next time I may try to make a paste so I can add the fluoride that I keep forgetting to use. Save your smile says it's the most important ingredient in toothpaste. It's not required in the recipes I found, but it is supposed to help strengthen and protect our tooth enamel.

I will also need a humectant such as glycerin if I am going to make toothpaste. I would chose glycerin because it is also used in lip glosses and lotions so I would have it for more than one purpose.

I will not use a thickener, preservative, sweetener, or a coloring agent though. I am thinking that as a flavoring agent I may use some dried sage or mint from my garden. What would you use?

The actual paste in the book also called for wights of items, a few ounces of this,... so I want to get a digital scale before I do that. It will also help me make my soaps more accurately.

Thank you for stopping by to chat with me. Please leave me a message, I'd love to hear your thoughts!Cindy

Soaping 101

2011-01-20T20:44:00.005-06:00

I finally got around to making my own soap last year. I have been thinking about it and researching for quite some time, but I was rather nervous to try because I see so many warnings about the caustic elements of soap making. One day when the kids were off somewhere and the dog and I were home alone, I decided to try my hand at it. I set up shop out in our garage this summer and took my first run at it gearing up with all of the equipment the books suggested. These included gloves, long sleeved shirt, goggles, face mask,.... When I say everything I mean everything!

Some people might think I am crazy for doing this, after all isn't it just easier to go to the store and buy a few bars off the shelf? That's really not the point though. There are some very good reasons to make your own soap.

The reasons I wanted to try it though are the following:
1. I can control the quality of ingredients in my soap.
2. I know what ingredients went into my soap, nothing is missing from the label of ingredients.
3. Knowing what is in my soap allows me not to worry about toxic chemicals that I'm cleaning my family with.
4. I can provide my family high quality soap for a very low price.
5. Naturally occurring glycerin is kept in home made soaps, it is normally removed from commercial soaps. This is a natural emollient which makes the soap easier on your skin. (info from The Complete Soapmaker)
6. It is an enjoyable hobby that provides me another chance to take better care of my family.

I got my recipe from The Everything Soapmaking Book. It's a very simple recipe that makes castille soap. It was made with only three ingredients; lye, water, and olive oil via the cold process method. One of the problems though, is that home made soaps don't always turn out in the way you expected it to. The picture on the top shows that my first batch turned out crumbly and did not hold it's shape well. While paging through the trouble shooting section I found that problems may occur because of wide temperature variations, that's my guess for what went wrong with this batch. Luckily my soap could be rebatched though. This included shredding and melting the soap in a pot of water and then molding it into soap molds. This is called hand milling.

This batch of handmilled soap did not turn out. The soap would not harden, you can see where I pressed on the soaps to check for hardness. I will have to melt these again and try over again. The book I got from the clearance shelf at Goodwill told me that. (Making Potpourri, Colognes, and Soaps)I think it may have been the addition of coffee and/or green tea that contributed to the inability of this soap to set as I did not have a recipe and I just threw a few things into the batch. I guess there isn't a way to be completely sure.

This batch was made with essential oils that are supposed to help with symptoms of depression. The information on essential oils was found in The Everything Soapmaking Book as well. I followed a recipe from a library book that called for specific amounts of shredded soap, water, and castor oil and just went out on a limb with the addition of the essential oils which are added after saponification has taken place. I also like the silicon mold that I used for this, it made it very easy to remove the soaps from the mold. I hope that I will find some more of these on clearance sometime since they aren't cheap.
Once the soaps come out of the mold they are trimmed to make the surfaces even. The extra soap pieces will be used to make some laundry soap for the family in the (hopefully) not so distant future. It made my skin feel very soft when I tried it and I didn't even have to use any lotion or anything.

Thank you for stopping by to chat with me. Please leave me a message, I'd love to hear your thoughts!Cindy

Making my Own Pet Food

2011-01-17T10:30:00.006-06:00

You know, it's kind of funny but it never really occurred to me before my move out to the country that I could make my pets their own food from ingredients I already had in my kitchen. It's really crazy now that I think about it. I mean, I make food for my family all of the time, why wouldn't I be able to make food for my pets too?

When I started researching ways to save our family money in this recession I started buying old books from the shelves at my local Goodwill store and checking out a lot of books fro our local library. It's amazing what people used to know that most of society seems to have forgotten.

One book in particular was really inspiring. It was called Home Made, Best Made and it was published by Reader's Digest in 1998. It has all kinds of things I can make it there from marshmellows to composting, home remedies to pet food, and quilting to orchards I swear it has almost everything in it that an eclectic person such as myself would enjoy finding out about. Granted, there aren't any long descriptions of any of the processes in there but it's great exposure to new ideas that may not have ever occurred to us to think about.

Today I thought I'd share with you the idea of making our own pet food and treats. It's really not as hard as one might think. Contrary to what you may have been told, you do not have to go to the store and buy specialty foods for your pets from the shelves. You can make a healthy, well balanced meal for your pet from ingredients that you probably already have in your kitchen.

The recipe calls for 1 pound browned ground beef, 2 chopped hard cooked eggs, 4 cups cooked rice, 6 slices crumbled white bread, 2 tsp vegetable oil, 1 Tbsp bonemeal, and one crushed pet vitamin. Stir all ingredients together and add a little water if the mixture is too dry. Voila!

That's not exactly what I did to make my base food though. I had some frozen veggies that the family refused to eat and soup bones to dispose of so I used those instead. Once the meat was cooked I cut it off the bones. I also cooked the veggies. My dog does not care much for most veggies so I added the veggies and meat to our blender and mixed them together. Not only does the dog like it, but so do the cats!

Once the pet food was made and I saw that it would be devoured I decided to also make some treats which comes right after the pet food in the book. After all, I knew the actual food wouldn't last all that long from the look of things. The treats will keep for a month if refrigerated. I took pictures of the process, those are the pictures you'll see throughout this post.

Start with a base of 1 3/4 cups homemade dog food mashed to remove lumps, add 1 cup processed bran, 1 cup old fashioned oatmeal, and 1/2 cup vegetable oil. Preheat oven to 250 degrees. Mix to consistency that is easy to mold into patties. Arrange biscuits on an ungreased baking sheet and bake 3 1/2 hours or until hard.

Yeah, as you may have imagined I didn't follow that either... I had way more dog food than that to preserve for our pets. I just added stuff until is looked to me like cookie dough. I had to switch spoons in the middle because the spoon I started with wasn't moving the heavy mixture very well. I know I could have made them into a dog biscuit molded shape, but I was anxious to get on to other projects and do not know where my bone mold wandered off to so I just dropped them like cookies onto the baking sheets. They are now baking in the oven and the house is smelling rather good.

Thank you for stopping by to chat with me. Please leave me a message, I'd love to hear your thoughts! Cindy

Our Half Cow

2011-01-09T17:26:00.005-06:00

I wasn't sure what to expect when we picked up our cow the other day. We have split meat other relatives have purchased before, but never went through the whole process all by ourselves. It was rather interesting so I thought I would share the experience with you.

It all started when one of my husband's co-workers wanted to buy half of a cow. A whole cow for two people would have been completely overwhelming for them I am sure, so he asked Cheesehead if he would be interested. Well, if you know Cheesehead at all you'd know he LOVES meat so he was ready to jump at the chance. It sounded rather expensive to me though when I was told it would cost us around $600 for our half. I usually don't spend more than $300 a month for groceries. Where would I put all of that meat anyway? I asked MIL if she'd be interested in 1/4 of a cow and then I felt much better. We knew that individually raised cattle tasted much better than those from the feed lots as we have had it before, so that also helped. No added hormones, less fat. I could do this...

They found a local farmer in the Antigo area who had a cow that was ready. Last time it seemed to take forever, but this time it only took a matter of a few weeks. I suppose that's what happens when you don't have to reserve your animals from the farmer months in advance.

We got the number the week before last of the place where the meat was going to be processed after the farmer brought the cow in. I called it and we were told all of the different choices. We could choose meat thickness, How many per package, what wanted it wrapped in, which types of steaks did we want, ribs or hamburger, soup bones or hamburger,... It was really pretty nice since most of the soup bones from the first time are still in the freezer downstairs. This time I get to choose? Awesome! I just did "standard" sizes of things as I was rather clueless as to what everything they were asking about was anyway. The lady I spoke with on the phone was really very helpful. I asked if we could just get the bones for our dog but get the meat ground into hamburger and they said yes. Double awesome.

Last week Thursday I got the call that our order was ready. The lady told us to bring boxes. I wasn't looking forward to it, because last time all of the meat we got had all these different names on them. Would there be a lot to sort through? I was a bit apprehensive, but gathered the boxes and coolers from the garage and set out on Friday to help with the pick up.

Our halves were neatly separated into stacks of metal crates and everything was ready to go. All we had to do was take our orders out of the crates they brought out with our names on them and put them in our own boxes.

It worked out well that we had hubby's truck with us since we didn't have to bend or stoop to move the meat. I will use a truck for sure next time we do this too. We carried a crate at a time to the tailgate and easily transferred everything into our own containers. It also worked well that we picked up in the winter so we didn't even need coolers, the back of the truck was a very nice freezer transportation unit.

Let me tell you, 1/2 a cow produces a whole lot of meat. This is an inventory of what we got (in standard packed form i.e. 2 per pack, thickness, etc).
Roasts: 3 Arm, 2 Round, 8 Beef Chuck, 2 Rump, 2 Sirloin Tip
Steaks: 2 Porterhouse, 7 Ribeye, 9 Round, 5 Tbone, 5 Sirloin
3 packs of short ribs
2 coolers full of hamburger (sorry, I didn't count those. Not sure I could even count that high ;) )

Thank you for stopping by to chat with me. Please leave me a message, I'd love to hear your thoughts!Cindy

Does Anyone Else Love After Holiday Sales as Much as I Do?

2011-01-06T07:18:00.005-06:00

I have looked at these curtains that have been hanging on my windows since we moved here for a while now. I bought them a few years ago on clearance around the time we moved here. They are still perfectly nice curtains and all, but they are a bit short for the tall windows that we have and I have been debating what I could do to inexpensively update them. I didn't have the money to go to the fabric store and pick up a couple of yards of fabric to add the chocolate brown border onto the bottom and possibly the edges as I wished I could. I'd also like to add a little edge of color to the ties and panels if I think I can do it without making a complete mess out of it.

Then I stumbled upon these fabulous items at the 75% off after Christmas clearance sales with a recently received gift card in my pocket. Originally they had been $9 each, which is a fairly good price. I got them for $2.25 each. I snatched them up quickly as they each contained about 4 yards of fabric that I could use for various household projects. I actually got 3 of the brown table cloths, only one is being used for it's intended purpose.

This one is getting used to update my curtains. It's a good thing I have recently rediscovered my sewing supplies that were purchased in 2004 to help me make this job easier. Why in the world would a person get gifts and wait 6 years to use them? I'm going to blame the depression that I had been dealing with for who knows how long. I always wanted to make stuff, I just didn't have the energy or motivation to do it.

So, I got out the quilting mat and rotary cutter to easily make straight cuts in long pieces of fabric. Okay, maybe it's not so easy. I wonder how in the world you keep the fabric lined up on the edge, laying flat on the mat, AND cutting it all at the same time?

Once I cut three strips 6 inches wide, I verified that the length was more than double as long as needed. The tablecloth dimensions on the package stated that they were oblong 60 IN X 102 IN. Since each curtain panel is only 45 inches wide, that should be more than long enough. I cut the strips in half, one pair of extensions for each set of curtains to be updated.

I needed a total of 5 inches of length on each curtain to reach the ground. I must admit that I did cheat a little teeny bit by using the pre-hemmed edges of the table cloth as one of the sides. I lined that edge up with the 5 inch mark on my hem measurer and folded the excess fabric over the top and proceeded to pin it. My sewing machine made quick work of the rest. Once my extensions were hemmed and ironed, I added them onto my curtains.

I love the look of these curtains! I am now debating the possibility of making a brown stripe the width of one of the existing stripes on the curtains to add a little touch of color, but I'm afraid I'd be opening a whole can of worms then. I mean wouldn't I then also need to add the brown to the ties and the valance? How would I add it to the valance, just on the hem? Would just some embroidery look okay? What do you think?

Thank you for stopping by to chat with me. Please leave me a message, I'd love to hear your thoughts! Cindy

Busy, Busy, Busy!

2010-11-14T09:42:00.005-06:00

Wow, it's been quite a while since I've gone blog hopping again. I have really been missing hanging out with my cyber buddies, but the recession we are in has caused me to do a lot of looking for more ways to cut our expenses further than I already have. Of course the bank has not helped us at all, so I've had to be very creative in my searches.

I have searched for home health remedies to move us further away from the world of chemicals (for cleaning our house and healing our bodies), recipes for eating healthy without having to spend an arm and a leg on prepackaged (and preservative laden) foods, soap recipes (and yes, I did finally make some soap), and new insurance providers (for everything but our life and dental insurance which are the only products that haven't raised their premiums through the roof). If things stay on track with our finances and we have no other increased or added expenses we should manage to come through this storm in just a few months, then I can concentrate more on getting our health on track (which I have spent considerable amounts of time researching).

I decided about my recent thoughts on how companies who have to do with our health really don't care about the customer, they're way more concerned with making money in the short run. They need to focus on the future and they too could even help us get out of our economic recession.

When my husband and I got married we paid very little (maybe $100? I can't remember for sure) for our health insurance and it was excellent. It included 100% of maternity costs being covered, free yearly well visits, and we only paid 20% of the trip to the doctor costs up to our deductible and insurance paid 100% after that. We also never paid more than the stated office visit copays for other visits.

Fast forward 15 years...

Starting in January we will be paying over $600 per month for our health insurance through my husband's employer who pays half of the cost of this insurance. We still get yearly well visits, but somehow our well visits are never viewed as well visits and I have to fight with the insurance company them to get them to pay. Any trips I make to the doctor almost always comes completely out of my pocket. I have never actually gotten to the point of paying our deductible and then having them pay 80% because we rarely ever go to the doctor.

Besides the monthly insurance cost, I am also paying $78 per month to one clinic and $40 to another for past visits , labs, mammograms (plus 10% interest because I can't afford to pay the bill in full) that my insurance didn't feel the need to pay. Add to that our monthly prescriptions and we are well over $800 per month just paying for our health. That's crazy!!!! Who has any money left for food once we pay for that AND our mortgage? If we could just reduce those expenses for each and every American family by $200 per household, we would all have a whole lot more money to spend on other goods and services.

Any rational human being can see that by having a family pay less money for health care costs, the family could afford to buy healthier foods and health club memberships with the money they are saving. This would reduce the overall medical cost to the health insurance company giving them greater profits within several years.

If people are healthier it would also reduce the number of visits needed to doctor offices giving the doctors more time to concentrate on helping their patients to get healthy and reducing the numbers of malpractice claims. The doctor wouldn't have so many people to take care of that they don't spend the time to get all of the information they should have had. This would give the doctors more money because they wouldn't have to spend so much of their money on malpractice insurance. It would also save the clinics money because they wouldn't be so over run with patients that they need 4 receptionists to check patients in and verify their insurance plans.

Prepackaged foods are very inexpensive, but they are also not very good for us. They have few nutrients in them and lots of added chemicals and preservatives. Spending all of our money on paying drug companies, insurance companies, and clinic and doctor bills leaves us with less money for taking care of ourselves. This actually makes us LESS healthy because we are forced to buy more inexpensively produced foods in order to have enough food and skipping the health club memberships because it's not something we really "HAVE" to have. These foods add to our inability to loose weight, our feelings of tiredness, and lack of motivation to exercise compounding the problems that we already have.

I don't think people in the health care system should be large for profit companies. If everyone could stop being greedy for just a moment and just use the brains that God gave us, they could actually spend some time and energy to help people live healthier lives we would be a healthier, wealthier, and happier country.

Thank you for stopping by to chat with me. Please leave me a message, I'd love to hear your thoughts! Cindy

Loan Modification Lessons Learned

2010-09-13T08:43:00.003-05:00

I am not a banker, I have never worked at a bank or as a financial advisor, nor have I had any schooling in these areas. That being said, I seem to have become somewhat of an "expert" in this area having tried to get my loan modified three times. I have learned many things that first time loan modification applicant may find helpful. Here's a little background information.

The first time we applied for a modification, they wanted us to undergo a forbearance. This is a plan that does not guarantee a modification but helps you to pay off outstanding debt by reducing your mortgage payment so you can apply the additional money you would be paying to your mortgage company to pay down other debt. I did not want to do that because I was leery about having the $5,482.97 needed at the end of the plan arrangement and chose not to agree to their plan because a modification was not guaranteed and my bank has pulled a whole lot of stunts on me in the past that caused me not to trust them or their motives.

The next two times I prequalified for the federal loan modification and went through the entire process twice, getting disqualified in the end because they took into consideration the fact that we get a couple of bonuses a year and added that into our monthly income.

I'm going to make one final attempt at a regular bank backed loan modification with my bank since that seems to be my only option. Why try again? I have learned some lessons from the first few times that may help me to get a non-federal loan modification.

Now, for the tips you were searching for.

If you are trying to get a federal loan modification, I just want to make sure you are clear on the point that keeps hanging us up. The 31% of income that your home payment should not exceed is taken on a before tax basis, so do the math yourself before bothering to attempt it. It also only includes p&i, property tax, and insurance no other expenses. Even if you meet all of the other qualifications this one will get you thrown out of the program.

My other loan modification tips are good for any type of loan modification you may be seeking.

Loan modifications create a bad payment history for you with your bank as well. Here's how: you pay less than the payment agreed to on a time table set up for you by your bank. They hold the funds you send them (on time according to your agreement) in a non-interest bearing account and only apply payments once they are enough to pay the original loan amount. If refinancing may have been an option for you before attempting a loan modification, it probably won't be by the time you are done. Believe me, I've asked. I also can not get rid of my escrow account because of that same problem.

In general they want you to update your income and expenses every month. Even if they don't ask, you should keep them updated anyway. If you don't, they may call and try to update your information over the phone. Guesstimates will get your prequalification thrown out because your statements are not in keeping with the facts that they discover. They research the stuff and catch you on anything they can so they don't actually "have" to give you a modification.

Keep meticulous records. I started keeping all of the letter and communications I have gotten from the bank because it not only helps me to keep track of what happened when, but it has also helped me when they tried to claim I didn't pay the proper amount for my payment. I was able to come up with proof of how much they asked me for even though their records may have stated otherwise. This means keeping copies of letters, paperwork, fax transmission confirmations, and documentation that you send to them as well. It does become quite a lot of paperwork to keep track of, but it gives peace of mind that even though it may take a while to find the information I'm looking for, I'll have it.

Get the name of every person that you speak to at the bank, record major points of discussions with each person, as well as the date and time of the conversation. Every time you are transferred to a different department, get the new person's name. This may seem like tedious work, but it can help to save you many headaches in the future. Unfortunately I did not do this at the beginning which is what caused my lack of trust in my bank. They do not always document all parts of your discussion in their records and if you can't even come up with a name then they won't believe anything you say even if you've been a good customer of their for over 20 years with a spotless payment record.

Even though the bank says they want you to have a balanced budget, with a little bit of money left over each month, be careful. This doesn't mean to lie about your finances or anything, I refuse to be dishonest to get the help I need. I cut all of the corners I possibly could before seeking help from my bank and I was "only" short by about $40 per month according to my records, so apparently I just need to cut a few more expenses and don't need a modification. They don't seem to understand that employer sponsored health care has this thing called an open enrollment period which prevents us from changing our coverage whenever we "want" to.

I hope I have provided you some helpful information and insights. If you are looking for a loan modification I want to with you the best of luck with your process.

Thank you for stopping by to chat with me. Please leave me a message, I'd love to hear your thoughts!Cindy

Summer Update

2010-09-01T20:59:00.003-05:00

Wow, this summer has been flying by entirely too fast. I just thought I'd share a couple of updates with you all.

There seemed to be quite a bit of interest in my Ubiogrow vs Miracle grow experiment that I started this spring/early summer. I had to end that experiment rather quickly, the plants were not doing well because the strawberry bags they were planted in dried out entirely too fast. It was a very wet and rather hot summer. The plants were salvaged and planted in areas of my garden that had already been harvested. It took quite some time for the plants to recover, but they are flowering beautifully now. I hope to get at least a little bit of produce from them before the weather gets too cold.

I have been a canning and freezing fool this summer. My cupboards are fairly bursting with freshly canned produce and, though son left the freezer wide open when a friend stayed over, we managed to fill the freezer too. I am very thankful that God has been providing so plentifully for us and I hope that he continues with his generosity.

We have salsa, cucumber relish, dill pickles, tomato sauce, tomatoes, spaghetti sauce, pizza sauce, carrots, apple sauce, many kinds of beans, and a variety of jams and jellies. Tomorrow I plan on canning corn, cream corn, corn soup, and corn relish. I sure hope the kids will like the new recipes, I have sampled them and find them to be quite delightful. I am trying to make a wide variety of foods so the family won't get bored eating the same things all the time and my hubby likes to have ready to use canned goods for us to make quick meals with.

We have also been working on training our new dog that we rescued from the shelter in May. Buddie has kept us extremely busy.

The children have helped us pick choke cherries, black berries, and apples so far this summer too. The birds ate all of the blue berries, strawberries, raspberries, and cherries that we planted recently, but I'm hoping to get a harvest from them next year. Our asparagus and rhubarb will also hopefully be ready for us to harvest from next year.

Thank you for stopping by to chat with me. Please leave me a message, I'd love to hear your thoughts! Cindy

Obama's Loan Modifications Are a Joke

2010-07-13T07:05:00.004-05:00

As many of you may know, I have been attempting to get a loan modification for over a year. We meet all of the qualifications for the federal loan modification. We have gone through the modification process twice. They send you tons of paper work to fill out to see if you qualify. You send them a hardship letter as well. The bank then comes up with a payment for you based on the information that you provide along with documentation to prove that you aren't just making something up. You are also required to meet with a credit counseling agency to make sure that you can afford to pay your bills.

After you have went through that circus, you have to jump through a bunch of hoops out of fear that you won't be modified if you don't follow the instructions to a t. The requirements that my bank told me to follow included purposely skipping one payment and then paying ONLY the modified amount to a special address with pre-printed coupons that they send me. I was supposed to keep sending my modified payments to that address until the modification process was completed. They require you to keep your information updated and I was just recently told that I should be faxing updated information in to the bank every month even though they don't even ask for an update. Sounds like an awfully expensive requirement if you ask me...

The first time it took at least six months for them to complete the process even though we were given a three month trial period. Somewhere along the way my information got changed from what we actually make monthly to what we make yearly divided by 12. Yeah, of course we wouldn't need a modification if we brought that home every month. Are they that big of block heads that they can't get it through their thick skulls that we don't get huge bonuses every month? I mean, don't they do the very same thing with their employees? Hello!!!!!!!

So we went through the whole process a second time and prequalified again. This time our payment was even lower than the first time. This time the bank was asking for about $6 less in the payment, but I kept paying the first amount anyway. After the "trial" payment period was completed it went in to negotiations. Again, my income was modified even though we sent in documentation of our income on June 25, 2010. I was then informed that we did not qualify for the federal loan modification, but the bank would review my information to modify my loan. The bank decided that based on information we provided we could not afford our home and we either needed to sell our home in a short sale or give them a deed in lieu of foreclosure. What??????

I am now so confused and frustrated that it's not even funny. Time is running out. My husband is getting a bonus this week which would allow us to pay the money to the bank, but we were hoping that amount would have been modified into my loan (since it's interest charges mostly anyway) and I would use the money to pay off the credit card bills we racked up when we fixed up the car my mother in law loaned my husband for his now much longer commute. These bills add to the hardship anyway, so wouldn't it make sense to be able to get rid of these?

The day before my birthday we got several letters from the bank informing us that if we didn't pay all of the "missed" payments within one month, they would begin foreclosure. Nice gift, huh?

I have called and talked to them twice since then. They said they would only accept full payments from now on and would accelerate my foreclosure if I did not jump to do what they want me to do.

Is this really the way the federal loan modification was meant to work? What a joke. Total waste of our hard earned income paid to a government that is supposed to help make our lives easier. I would have been better off if I would have ignored the modification process in the first place!

Hmm, and I wonder why I'm battling depression and hypothyroidism and can't loose a single ounce of weight no matter what I do.

What have your experiences with loan modification been like?

Thank you for stopping by to chat with me. Please leave me a message, I'd love to hear your thoughts! Cindy

Ubiogrow Vs. Miracle-gro

2010-06-16T12:54:00.004-05:00

I know, I know. I said I am trying to be chemical free. I have this Miracle-gro sitting in my cupboard which is almost gone and I decided that I wanted to run a scientific experiment. I got a sample of this new organic fertilizer from Tom and I want to compare the results of the two fertilizers over the growing season. I have two ice cream buckets of exactly the same size which are properly labelled so no cross contamination can occur between the two fertilizers. They will be mixed and watered according to the instructions included on the package.

While that may be difficult to do in most situations, I happen to have two identical planters planted with the same soil mix (2 parts topsoil, 1 part sand, 1 part sphagnum, 1 part cow manure compost) and 3 plants from the six packs of veggies that I bought, so they were all the same size at planting time. The planters are actually strawberry planters that I hung on either end of the new grape trellis that my sweet hubby built for me this year. They both get the same amount of sun during the day as well. The leaves are yellow indicating the fact that they could use some nitrogen. I took pictures of both, but the other one didn't turn out as nice as this one did (plus this one shows off my lovely trellis).

May the best fertilizer win.

Thank you for stopping by to chat with me. Please leave me a message, I'd love to hear your thoughts!Cindy

Stepping Slowly Toward Self Sufficiency

2010-06-06T06:38:00.003-05:00

When we moved here almost four years ago I had no hopes or aspirations of trying to produce anything of my own except beautiful plants and flowers to landscape my yard with. It sure is funny how time can change our attitudes.

I am used to being a city girl, I've lived in town my whole life. I never dreamed or imagined how so many things that we use are made, they just came to our house from the grocery store shelf. Well, obviously we all know that's not true. It seemed like such hard work and really we should leave cheesemaking to the experts, right?

As I've lived in the country new insights have come to me through many avenues including nature, new friendships, and checking out books from the local library. Our health has continued on a gradual decline and I have begun to search for alternatives that do not include taking pills for the rest of our lives.

It occurred to me as I was reading one of the many diet books from my own personal library that many people are declining in health, and it's not just the unhealthy people either. What's the cause? I am no scientist, nor have I done any experiments to confirm my theory, but the more I think about it the more I feel that chemicals in our every day products are part of the blame.

What better way to begin thinking about self sufficiency? It's not a program that a bunch of hippies are attempting to implement going back to the 1800's, but it's a way to provide some things for ourselves and to know what's in the products that we consume.

When we moved here we found that we had an abundance of wild blackberries, blueberries, and strawberries growing in the fringes of the woods surrounding our house. It was a nice bonus since my children tend to prefer sweeter fruits to the healthier vegetables. We have since added plenty more plants to help provide us with inexpensive, chemical free food. (To see a list please check out my side bar.) Last year I decided to take it a step further and planted a veggie garden. After much research, I combined a bunch of different organically based garden styles into one with which I had tremendous success. It was so successful that I added two more beds which I just finished filling with dirt this spring. Unfortunately it doesn't appear that this dirt was as rich as the last batch that I used, but I will continue to enrich it and hope for more future successes.

My nine year old daughter has begun to "bud" as well. This perplexes me since no one in our family was early to develop that I can recall. I was talking with a bunch of mothers on one of my many recent field trips about this fact. We came to the conclusion that it's probably due to the growth hormones given to animals whose meat and milk we consume. These same animals are also fed lots of antibiotics which we feel is contributing to the antibiotic resistance that we hear so much about these days. These conversations got me wanting to raise my own meat and milk products as well. I know that this can't happen anytime soon since we can not have livestock in our development, but once we move I think I may just have to look into the possibilities.

While I will never produce my own beer (I hate the stuff and don't feel that it's worth the effort), I can see myself doing many other things on our little homestead. What's even better about this approach to living is the fact that we can all do little things that fit into the lives we want to lead and we don't have to wait for any government's slow wheels to bring a change about.

Thank you for stopping by to chat with me. Please leave me a message, I'd love to hear your thoughts!Cindy

Square Foot Gardening

2010-05-17T16:52:00.009-05:00

My garden vegetable garden was so successful last year that I decided to build two more beds. I had started building them last fall, but just finished filling them this past weekend.

I know that I didn't get as many vegetables into my garden last year as Mel Bartholomew's book said I could, so I decided to mark the squares as he suggested. This isn't really required, but I am not very good at judging the proper spacing without these visual markers. My raised beds are 4 feet wide by 12 feet long.

The first step to adding the markers is measuring out each one foot section. I used a tape measure locked just over 1 foot to make it more manageable to manipulate. At each 1 foot increment, I used a galvanized exterior nail to mark each space.

Once each section was marked, I simply slid the tape measure up by the next nail and pounded in another nail. I suppose any nail would probably do, but if they aren't graded for exterior use they'll rust more quickly.

Once I got each section marked off, I connected some twine to each nail opposite each other. First I strung the ends together since there are only 3 nails. They will also act as supports for the cross twine as I weave the twine under one string and over the next as it crosses.

Once each section is marked off, we are ready to plant. You can plant pretty much anything that can be 12 inches from something else into this style raised bed. Read the planting instructions for specific plants. Divide each section into the proper number of sections by drawing lines with a stick prior to planting your seeds, bulbs, or seedlings. Some plants do not require this work such as tomatoes which require 12 inches between plantings. Those plants are placed in the center of the square.

I decided to try to plant some corn this year too. I've never grown corn before, so this is another new thing for us to try. I read that corn needs to be planted in blocks. Most gardeners prefer to cut extra seedlings off once they are growing well, but I had these great little corn plants growing two per section. How could I choose just one? I gently pulled them out of the pot, squeezed the dirt to loosen the roots from each other. Once most of the dirt had crumbled away, I slowly separated my corn seedlings from each other. It looks like my efforts were successful too, each of them looked to have a nice healthy root system. I was so happy! This doubled my corn supply. I planted for corn plants per square. Normally you don't group food in rows with square foot gardening, but corn is an exception.

Interspersing blocks of onions, marigolds, garlic, and other strong smelling plants can help to disguise the scent of more favorable plants preventing many insect infestations that most gardens fall subject to. Square foot gardening is a great way to put some of the organic gardening techniques into practice. Once my seedlings are up, the whole bed will be mulched to prevent weeds, to preserve moisture, and to add additional nourishment to the soil.

Today I got all of the seedlings that I purchased at my husband's place of employment planted into the gardens. Tomorrow I will plant some of the seeds I got from Hometown Seeds last fall (to check them out, please click on the link in my sidebar).

Following is a list of the plants I planted (or will plant) as well as how many plants can be grown per square.

1 per square- broccoli, cabbage, head lettuce, tomatoes, strawberries, asparagus
2 per square- cucumber
4 per square- potatoes, arugula, corn, leaf lettuce, Swiss chard
9 per square- peas, beans, spinach
16 per square- onions, turnips, beets, carrots, radish, chives

I hope to have an even more successful year this year and plan to get lots of use out of my canning equipment. What are you growing this year?

Thank you for stopping by to chat with me. Please leave me a message, I'd love to hear your thoughts! Cindy

A Gift for My Mom

2010-05-10T20:46:00.002-05:00

Mother's Day 2010

A little video I made for my mom for mother's day, if you want to view it click the link above. My son made me one and I thought it was a fabulous idea. It's super easy to use too. He got a free trial account at school that they used to make some poems and stuff.

Thank you for stopping by to chat with me. Please leave me a message, I'd love to hear your thoughts!Cindy

Living and Gardening Sustainably

2010-04-05T13:41:00.006-05:00

My blogging friend Jan is running this great little giveaway over at her blog. For details please click here. It is a sustainable living giveaway in honor of Earth Day which is on April 22 this year. To see what other garden bloggers are doing, please visit Jan's page.

I would like to take this opportunity to thank everyone who has put forth an effort to help make our earth a more sustainable place to live in. I want to do all that we can to help preserve the pleasures we have been able to enjoy all of these years for our future generations. It's all the small things that can really add up to make a huge difference for everyone.
One of the many things I have been diligently working on is reducing the amount of trash that my family creates. At the rate some of our landfills are filling up we will run out of room in no time. I am doing my best to keep things that will break down quickly out of them altogether. My husband built me this great compost bin last summer to aid me in my efforts. In it I place all fruit and vegetable waste as well as leaves, hair, dirt that I sweep up, small pieces of cardboard, shredded up paper, and grass clippings. I am also trying to produce more of our own food so we don't have so many cans and plastic bags to recycle since that also uses precious energy. This food can then be frozen in plastic boxes or canned in my reusable glass containers. Reducing the number of plastic bottles that my family uses is also a major feat I am working to accomplish. We do this by reusing them and drinking water from our faucet whenever possible. Anything that we get rid of that is still in usable condition is donated to a charity such as Goodwill as well. I send less meat fats to the dump too as I am saving them to try to make my own soap. I have yet to get to this, but I'm sure I'll get to it eventually... I'm also still working on trying to figure out if it would be possible to ground the animal bones down to make my own bone meal too, if I find a good, practical way to do this I'll be sure to let you know. Cutting down on frivolous waste also slashes our bills by large amounts because we are sending less to the dump and buying less from outside sources. It's a win-win!

Often we waste precious resources as well. Think of all of the back breaking work it takes to make a traditional garden work. You need to till up so much soil, pick all of the rocks out of it, and dig through copious amounts of tree roots. So many people think that it's such hard work that they often give up altogether only part of the way through the summer. I mean think about it, there's weeding, watering, fertilizing, and thinning the plantings not to mention all of the space a garden takes up it the first place. My garden beds were so successful last summer and required so little time, attention, or resources I decided to add more of them this year. These gardens are modeled after Mel Bartholomew's Square Foot Garden method with a lasagna style layering design to it as well as integrated pest management. The amount of water needed is drastically cut because once your seedlings emerge you simply mulch bed with grass, paper, leaves, pine needles,compost,... whatever. This mulch helps the soil retain moisture in the hot summer months and also adds nutrients so no artificial fertilizers or pesticides are needed. Not only does it decrease the amount of time we spend, but also water and money too. It also limits our exposure to chemicals that are abundant in many commercially prepared foods. Could there even be a better idea than that?

Conservation has always been pretty high on my list of priorities as well. Part of that tendency runs in my family, I think. We have a long line of frugal people that I am perpetuating by teaching these same values to my children. I don't like to use more of anything than what I need and I look for the cheapest possible way to get a job done. Let's think about water for a minute. If you live in town, you pay for sewer and water usage, but if you live in the country you want to be careful not to use too much water or your well may run the risk of running dry. We turn out water gets off when not in use, the water heater and hot water pipes have blankets and/or wraps to retain their heat (I'd also like to purchase a recirculator but I can't afford it now), I wash most clothes in cold water, and we use low flow shower heads to cut back on the amount of hot water used when showering. Then there's the whole issue of electricity which costs everyone everywhere money no matter where you live. Some of the steps we take to conserve energy include keeping the refrigerator and freezer full so they run less often, I use energy saving light bulbs which I try to use only one of at a time whenever possible, we live on a heavily treed lot so our central air is rarely needed since I artificially shade the house from the sun's rays when trees aren't blocking out the heat using blinds and curtain, I keep most appliances unplugged and put away when not in use, and I have installed power strips on the electronics I do keep plugged in so they only use energy when the power strip is turned on. Then there's gas for both our cars and heating our home in the winter. I try to plan my trips to town so I go as few times as possible, I keep storm windows closed in the winter to keep out additional cold but open the sun facing windows' blinds to let in as much light and heat as possible during the day, and we bought a programmable thermostat so we can lower our home's temperature when no one is up and/or home. I'd love to be able to afford a rain barrel to water my gardens with so I can conserve my well water for family drinking too someday, but they're not cheap to buy.

What are you doing to make our world a better place for our children and grandchildren?

Thank you for stopping by to chat with me. Please leave me a message, I'd love to hear your thoughts!

Cindy

Things That Make you go Hmmm

2010-03-28T10:01:00.003-05:00

Recently I shared with you all of the reasons and motivations behind our having to move away from our dream home, now we seem to have come to the conclusion that we won't end up being able to move no matter what. There are several influencing factors behind coming to this decision. It's really a very frustrating situation for us! Could you please pray that things work out for us?

There are lots of stress factors working against us moving right now. My husband found an oddity in my left breast the other day. It has my stomach tied up in knots since my mom had breast cancer a few years ago. I will be making an appointment tomorrow. I'm SO nervous!

Add to that the fact that our house has been on the market for almost a month and we had our first showing yesterday. While I haven't yet heard any feed back on this showing, I don't think people are going to be knocking down our door offering us large sums of money for our little piece of heaven on earth. Isn't the first month supposed to be the most active time for buyers looking at a house? Apparently no one is looking in this price point.

We were super excited about moving closer to hubby's work so we would once again have more family time together. His commute adds a two hour drive to his work day which is already long and is scheduled to get even longer very soon. Two hours is much longer than the 1/2 hour total drive he used to have. My husband and I found many nice homes in the new town we intended to move to, I mean there were at least 4 of them we could see ourselves in. They were all a bit less expensive than the home we currently live in so we assumed they were well within our price range, right? I mean if we can come up with a bigger mortgage we should have no problem coming up with a little less...

That is not the case though! No bank is willing to lend us money to buy one of these homes. With our recent forced foreclosure and ensuing credit card debt there is no chance we can get a mortgage with less than 20 % down through an in house loan at a local credit union. We built up that credit card debt trying to do the right thing and sell our house instead of just letting it go immediately like so many other people did. We rented it out for way less than our mortgage and ended up getting taken advantage of and got into an even bigger hole than we started in. Our so-called friend, who was one of two people living there, trashed the place and we had to spend even more money to fix it back up to the way it looked when we moved away in the first place. After a couple more months of trying to sell it we had to stop. We had placed ads to rent it out but didn't even get one phone call on three month long ad runs.

So, even though our debts are getting paid off, and paid in a timely fashion, the foreclosure totally messed everything up! Our credit cards all lowered our credit limits to less than 10% of our previous limits causing us to look like we spend over our credit limit routinely. (This totally messes with our credit report even more than the foreclosure.) That is SO wrong! We never had any problems with paying any of them on time, so I why did they feel the need to pull our credit reports anyway? (This also drives down our score because we've had too many inquiries on our report. I didn't ask for any more credit than I already had!) Some of them decided to close our accounts all together because they don't like seeing the foreclosure. (Further affecting our credit scores.)

So, because of this foreclosure we went from very low credit risk to one of the highest risk brackets. How can a score dive so far so fast?

We will only get about $14,000 out of our current house if we do get offered the full asking price (which is extremely doubtful). That amount will buy us about 1/2 of the home we currently own if it needs to be a 20% down payment. We NEED to have 20% down because we are such a high risk. We'd have to buy a total fixer upper. Not to mention the fact that I'd have to start all over again with my gardens!

Having put so much time and effort into this house, we really aren't feeling up to putting all of our efforts into fixing up another home at this point. I'm finally seeing an end to the to do list here and moving would just add SO much more work for me to do.

Is that list long enough for you? It's making my head ache just to think about it all.

Thank you for stopping by to chat with me. Please leave me a message, I'd love to hear your thoughts!

Cindy

Moving Again?

2010-03-06T07:28:00.002-06:00

Well, it's official. We've put our house on the market. I know that now is not the best time to sell and if my husband didn't have such a long commute we probably wouldn't even consider selling right now. I am hoping that all of the hard work we've done here isn't lost on someone trying to snatch up a good deal. We have decided to put it on and wait and see what happens, we just have to have faith that everything will work out for the best. I really don't know what else to do!

It wouldn't be a big deal having a long commute if he worked an 8 hour day or something. There are some days that he works open to close, that's 14 hours. Add two hour commute to that and I get to see him for about 5 minutes before bed. That's not the kind of life I want to lead forever. Something needs to change!

We are going to go out today and see what kinds of places are on the market down in Antigo. I am not worried about finding something we like since we always change whatever we find anyway, I guess you could say it's a hobby of ours. I am more worried about selling the house we live in right now. I will not end up like we did last time!

I guess I'm telling you because I could use a few prayers that our situation will work itself out. Also looking for home sale tips and house hunting ideas. What do you do?

Thank you for stopping by to chat with me. Please leave me a message, I'd love to hear your thoughts!

Cindy

An End to the Diet Wars?

2010-02-04T14:53:00.005-06:00

I have shared a little of our family's diet struggles with you before, but things have been going downhill fast. I put the whole family on the same eating patterns so Son wouldn't feel left out and we could support each other with our healthy eating habits. Despite several trips to the dietitian, Son was back to his old over-eating tricks. I had even portioned out all of the snacks into sandwich baggies to keep us from eating too many servings at one time. (I'm just too darn cheap to spend all of that extra money on the packaging materials for those ones that come individually prepackaged.) He just wasn't getting the fact that he should only have so much of a certain type of food per day. How do you keep track of all that you've eaten anyway? I guess I probably do that kind of thing too. I mean, it's easy to look at a food pyramid and decide what you SHOULD eat. Do you actually eat that way?

I was tired of acting like a police officer and reminding him to slow down all of the time. I decided that there must be a better way of getting the family to self regulate what we are eating. We have done food journals in the past, and while they are effective they are also time consuming. There had to be something else I could do that didn't require as much work and could be done quickly.

While cleaning up my craft room the other day, my eyes landed on the left over magnet pieces I had used for blocking unused vents to reduce our heating bills. They would be perfect to use with that rusty old baking sheet that Cheesehead had insisted I throw out. Quickly, I grabbed my permanent markers so the words wouldn't smear and got to work. To make it easier to find each food group, I color coded them. I wrote the portion sizes from the food pyramid he had been given by his dietitian under the name of the food group so he'd know how many of the magnets to move after he'd eaten.

I divided the sheet into two columns. One was titled "What can I eat?" and the other "What have I eaten?". Then all he had to do was move a few magnets from one column to the other.

I even had enough scraps left to make one for my daughter too so she wouldn't feel left out. They have been using it for five days now and they haven't gotten bored with it yet OR forgotten to use it after eating. Is this idea going to keep working? I sure hope so, I haven't had to remind them of anything they can or should eat since we started using this thing. YAY!

Thank you for stopping by to chat with me. Please leave me a message, I'd love to hear your thoughts!

Cindy

Dad's Birthday

2010-02-02T17:16:00.004-06:00

Today is not only Groundhog's Day, but it also would have been my dad's birthday. It's hard to believe that another year has already passed. Time flies so quickly it is almost impossible to keep track of it. This is the forth birthday that has passed since he passed away.

As I cleaned my craft room today I came across my dad's slides. I really think tonight will be a good night to look at some of them. I'm sure that most of the pictures I'm sharing with you were once among my grandpa's slides. I'm sure glad that some of them were made into pictures or we wouldn't have anything left since my dad's landlord so rudely threw out everything in the trailer that I had given to my uncle after my dad passed away.

This picture is a picture of my grandpa and grandma on the steps of the Tyler hospital on February 10, 1942. I assume that was the day she was discharged. Wow, 8 days in the hospital? That would NEVER happen with the insurance companies of today!

He sure was a cute little baby, wasn't he? Grandma was pretty good looking too I think. I feel sad sometimes that I never got the chance to meet her. I don't even remember my dad ever sharing specific memories of her with me. I suppose it was a bit painful to talk about since she died so young. Dad was in college when she died so my mom never even met her.

Dad was the oldest of the three children. My uncle was middle born and my aunt was the youngest. There were also a couple of foster sisters that show up occassionally in some of the pictures. My dad is the one sitting on the arm of the couch wearing the tie. He sure looked a lot like his dad, didn't he?

This is the last family picture of the four of us that I have. It was taken on my wedding day in 1996. I wonder why we never thought to get a picture of all of us and their grandchildren. We had a little over 10 years between the time this picture was taken and the time he left this world.

Happy birthday Dad, I love you!

Thank you for stopping by to chat with me. Please leave me a message, I'd love to hear your thoughts!

Score!

2010-01-22T10:14:00.005-06:00

Winter gives many of us cold climate gardeners a lot of down time. What on earth are we supposed to do with all of that time anyway? Well, let me tell you I have been finding many things to keep myself busy with.

One thing I like to spend my winter doing is reading. Somehow I just seem to have way more time to read when it's cold out rather than when the temps warm up. The last time I went to the library, I only checked out three books. One was about organic gardening, there was the all new square foot gardening book, and a book about a homesteader who shared her experiences with her readers. Since I had gotten all three of those books finished in less than two weeks time, I decided to check out a couple of extras this time. I wonder if these will keep me busy enough? I checked out two books that will help me to decorate my garden inexpensively with home made accessories (I want to make some different signs for my berry patches and some more bird houses), one about healthy skin naturally, one about herbal remedies for better health (Maybe I'll find out about a couple of plants I need to grow in my yard?), and a book about chickens. Hmm, I'm sensing kind of a theme here...

As many of my regular readers may know I also taught myself how to crochet last winter. It seems to take me way longer than it ever took my grandma so I just know I'm doing something wrong, I just am not sure what it is. Since none of my projects have really turned out all that well anyway, I haven't made much with yarn lately. The last few scarves I attempted to make were turned into belts or purses or something, I just didn't have the patience required to finish when my pieces end up looking like something that may have looked nice at some point but shrank in the dryer. I found this great contraption in the craft department while I was visiting Cheesehead in Antigo the other day. It's the round nifty knitter set. I don't know how to knit, but I have PLENTY skeins of yarn. It's idiot proof, meaning even I can make a good looking product! I am almost done making a baby hat and it looks like something I could have bought from a store. There are four different sizes, I could easily see becoming addicted to this. I just MAY have to go get the other set that you can make afghans and sweaters with, I'd adore a hand made sweater. Then there were a couple of books of patterns, I wonder if our local library has any of those...

Winter is also a great time to get organized. To keep all of my projects close at hand, but out of site, I found this great organizer that everything fits into. My family likes to help our home to become unorganized, so I'm always searching out new ways to be able to find stuff. I put this together in just a couple of hours worth of time and I just LOVE it! All it required was a philips head screwdriver to put it together and a few reading and matching skills for the proper sized screws. I also condensed the endless piles of movies and video games in some inexpensive cd wallets which fit perfectly into one of the openings. Most of the time the kids put the wrong game or movie into the wrong case anyway so why not just eliminate the cases altogether? I put them all into some plastic storage totes that will be kept just in case we ever want to set up a nice big movie library or something. You never know...

Yet another great things to do is go window shopping. Usually I just browse through the stores to get ideas of things I can make myself at home, but I found one gem that I just couldn't resist! The best score of all though was this wonderful bread maker that I found at Goodwill. Unfortunately I didn't get one for Christmas (though I DID get the camera I wanted), so I had to buy one on my own. I've been holding off on making the purchase though since they do take up a bit of space, seem pretty complicated if you don't have instructions to go with them, and they are somewhat expensive to buy brand new. This one was "used" (I say that because it looks brand new and had all of the pieces including the instruction manual but had no box) and it was $19.99. So far it seems to be working great, it's an hour into the cycle and it didn't puff out smoke or explode or anything. Thank you God! The bread is now on it's second raising cycle and I am happy to say that it looks like Cheesehead will be coming to a fresh loaf of bread when he gets off of work. Another great way to cut chemicals and preservatives out of our lives without the work of doing all of the kneading and stuff myself.

Busy, busy, busy! I hope everyone is managing to keep themselves warm!

Thank you for stopping by to chat with me. Please leave me a message, I'd love to hear your thoughts!

Cindy

Winter Visitors

2010-01-17T15:17:00.004-06:00

I tend not to spend much time outside in the winter time here, I imagine if you lived up here you'd probably spend most of your time inside too. That means I don't really have much opportunity to see which of my animal neighbors have been visiting me. Of course there are signs of life even among the mounds of snow and piles of ice covering just about anything your eyes land on up here.

What signs of life, you ask? Well, while I don't see sprouts from my bulbs popping out of the ground, buds swelling on tree branches, or anything of that sort yet, I do see animal foot prints in the snow. They show me that not everyone headed south for the winter or went into hibernation mode like me. I do not venture into deep snow piles or anything as the snow would probably spill over the tops of my boots and freeze my poor feet. These pictures were taken in the snow that as most recently fell onto our driveway.

The most obvious visitor to the winter garden is the deer.

They have large footprints and sink deeply into the snow. The cloven hooves give them away, not many animals that live around here have prints like these.

Apparently the path Cheesehead had made for me to access the new compost bin he built me this summer for my birthday was quickly discovered by the deer too. It seems they have used the path much more recently than I have. Conveniently, it goes right by my apple trees. I need to remember to get the soap hung in the trees soon or the deer will start nibbling on them soon.

The bin is easily visible from the driveway. I think it looks good, but once the snow levels decrease and before the ground is no longer frozen, Cheesehead seems to think we need to move it. He doesn't like the fact that it can be seen.

Our next biggest guest is our lovely friend, the rabbit. Their foot prints come in groups of four as they hop their way through the snow. They don't sink as far as the deer do, but you can often find which direction they came from as well as where they headed off to. They aren't quite as noticable as far as the footprints go, but they also leave many other signs that they've been here. Our eaten seedpods which are now buried in the snow drifts along with the extra fertilizers they add to my beds. Those two signs make them the most visible visitor to my yard prior to the next new snowfall.

Our last visitor is a little mouse. It has stayed away from the house more this winter than the last time, but if you look closely you can see their barely discernable footprints in the snow near the shed. I had to adjust the exposure and the brightness of this photo to better highlight the prints in this picture. They are so light they seem not to sink at all even in our loosest of snow.

Thank you for stopping by to chat with me. Please leave me a message, I'd love to hear your thoughts!

Cindy

Inexpensive Greenhouse Lighting

2010-01-06T16:02:00.007-06:00

As I was surfing the internet the other day, I got a great idea from one of my blog roll buddies. I don't seem to get much of a chance to read blogs much anymore, somehow I always seem to be busier than ever even though most of our major household projects are getting wrapped up. I read Cheap Vegetable Gardener's Blog and he had this great idea for using LED lights for starting plants in grow boxes. Since we were just in the process of putting away our Christmas decorations, I thought now would be a perfect time to start that project. I decided that would be a wonderful idea for how to solve my issues I had last year with my table top green house.

If you recall, I attempted to start my own seeds last year for my brand new raised lasagna style square foot veggie garden. I had attempted to use my table top greenhouse once before when we lived in MN to start my own flowers, but I had little success. Last year I used a reflective light, heat mats, a timer to turn the light off and on (I tend to be a bit forgetful sometimes), and domes to help the seedlings keep in the moisture better. Apparently they were a little too toasty in there since all of the seedlings shriveled almost as soon as I used my new setup. I think the bulb I have can be used as an incubator bulb, so I'll keep it just in case Cheesehead ever changes his mind and lets me get those chickens I'd like to raise.

I needed a new, inexpensive way to light my small table top sized greenhouse. It isn't long enough to fit those nice conventional sized grow lights in, so I had to be creative. These LED lights I got on clearance at Menards a few years ago seemed like a good solution. I still have 3 boxes I had never even opened. They had only been $3 per box, so I guess I went a little bit crazy. They are much cheaper to use than conventional lighting too, which is a big bonus when you are looking for ways to save money. I think I would have bought some now if I didn't already have some as most stores are clearing out the leftover Christmas stuff this time of year.

To attach the lights to the frame, I used some of the smaller sized zip ties I had sitting out in the garage. I simply wrapped the ties around the wire racks twice, once on either side of the bulb to direct the light in the proper direction. Twine would have worked too I'm sure but I like the sturdiness of the plastic ties as well as the ease of securing them tightly to just about anything.

I am planning on lining the top of the greenhouse with cardboard backed aluminum foil to add extra brightness for my plants as well as prevent the remote possibility of melting the flimsy plastic exterior cover with the low powered bulbs. I also think I should have some protection between my grow trays and the electrical wiring, so I will line the middle shelf with towels on top of the cardboard backed aluminum foil sheets to absorb any possible spills.

The seed starting will actually have to wait quite a while though since winter has just begun here. I'll have two additional veggie beds to fill with seedlings this spring too, for a total of three raised beds. I am also trying to do everything with home made organic products and ideas to save even more money as well as freeing us from the use of potentially harmful chemicals. I'm sure hoping this scheme of mine works out!

What are some of your winter projects you are working on?

Thank you for stopping by to chat with me. Please leave me a message, I'd love to hear your thoughts!

Cindy

Out With the Old, In With the New

2009-12-31T22:20:00.004-06:00

This past year has been full of ups and downs for all of us, though it seems that this year has been better to my family than 2008 was. As the year draws to an end, we often reflect on choices made in the last year and think of ways to help the new year go better.

As I sat and filled out yet more paperwork for our 6 + month long loan modification process this evening, my mind whirled with things that most people might make into resolutions a little later tonight. I don't do resolutions though, I prefer to think of them as life style choices.

Finances jump into my mind first (gee, I wonder why). I want to pay down as much of our debt as possible, hence the loan modification. Most people don't think too hard about the money they spend every month. Hard times make us examine much more closely our financial situation. I have been thinking long and hard about buying those things that I don't really need and have gotten an excellent start down this path. It's hard sticking to a budget, but I am going to work even more diligently on this goal as the year progresses.

Having to fill out endless piles of paperwork and finding w2's and pay stubs among other things has really gotten me thinking about my organizational habits. While I am probably more organized than many, I hate to have to dig through the same pile of papers more than once, what a waste of time! I want to become even more organized in the coming year. I will make several folders for my file cabinet to organize anything I may need to keep handy to send to the bank. I'm not sure why they would need so dang many updates anyway, but I'm going to be ready for their request when it comes.

My exercise habits also leave a lot to be desired. All of this cold weather we get in northern Wisconsin makes me want to retreat from the outdoors and hibernate until spring rolls around. To combat that thought process, I am looking for ways to get some fun exercises done inside our house. I hope I am able to break out the Wii and get more exercise with some of the games we have for it, though it would have been nice to get a dancing game for the kids and I to do together. I have also set up some second hand exercise equipment in the family room for us to use while we watch tv. I hope I can do a better job of enforcing the rules this coming year, maybe it would even help us all to loose some weight?

Then there are fruits and vegetables. It is getting a little easier to work into our diets, but I am still working on ways to get my family to eat healthier. Last year we started a small garden that seemed to be rather successful. I want to expand that operation in the coming year and get the kids involved in choosing which vegetables we should grow. I built two more raised beds last fall. In the spring we will plant lots of seeds, I have even gotten a canning and preserving book of my own. No more relying on the books being at the library for me to check out.

Most of us also probably spend way too much time sitting around, don't we? Whether it's using the computer, watching tv, or sitting on the couch playing video games, I think we all have our weaknesses. To combat this bad habit, I have purchased video games that we need to be active to play. I will also be trying to set a better example for my children by trying to follow the same rules I set for them. I only allow them one hour of "given" game/tv time, the rest has to be earned by being active and/or doing chores. I guess that means I won't have as much time to surf the net then unless I can figure out a way to use my laptop while I ride the exercise bike. Hmmm...

Lastly, I will take better care of myself. I will spend more time doing things I want to do than what I have to do. This includes making craft projects with my kids, I have a long list of things I want to make with them that I have been putting off in order to get various home projects done. I will take some long bubble baths just because I enjoy them, I will read some books that don't have anything to do with learning how to do something, I will draw something that doesn't include redecorating a room, I will write more things that are not lists of things I need to do, and I will take more time to play with my kids.

Will I do everything I want to do? I sure hope so! 2010 will be a great year if it's as fun as it sounds like it will be. What are you planning on doing to make this year go better than the last one did?

Thank you for stopping by to chat with me. Please leave me a message, I'd love to hear your thoughts!

Cindy

Christmas from a Cat's Perspective

2009-12-21T11:45:00.004-06:00

My name is Speedy, and I have a few complaints I'd like to lodge about the upcoming holiday that the kids are all abuzz about.

Firstly, I am not sure whose idea it was to have this crazy holiday called Christmas right in the middle of prime lap sitting and cat entertaining season. I have an owner who likes to sit on the couch and pet me all day when it's too cold and snowy to go out in the garden, it's not like she has anything else to do. Sometimes she likes to entertain me with yarn and a metal hook or thread and small metal needles. Personally, I'd be much happier if she just got rid of those pesky metal pieces when she wants to play with me, but she seems to prefer using metal stuff for some reason. I assume they must be some sort of counterweights or something. Anyway, this whole Christmas business takes her away from our favorite spot to sit together and she is entirely too busy for our scheduled dates on the couch.

Take, for example, this morning. We were having a nice time watching the news when all of a sudden, she rudely discomforted me when got up and started to make a lot of noise in the kitchen. I waited and waited for her to come back like she usually does, but she didn't! Curious to see what she was up to, I wandered over and started sniffing around. She wouldn't even let me climb on the counter, she kept yelling at me to get off. Boy, was she crabby! I decided to lay by her feet instead, but she just wouldn't stay still. It was very hard to keep up with her. I began to drift off into a nice nap when it suddenly sounded like it was raining in the kitchen. I wonder what that metal rattle was all about.

Startled by the unexpectedness of this experience, I opened one eye to find treats raining down from above. Black, crumbly pieces of sweet tasting goodies were falling on the floor. Boy, did they smell good! I got up, but she wouldn't even let me eat them. Party pooper!

My second complaint has to do with this weird tree that looks like it's made of pine needles, but it's not. It doesn't smell or taste like pine, but somehow I keep forgetting that. I like to play with the nice toys she set up for my sister and I to play with a couple of weeks ago that hang from this tree. Why else would someone put things that dangle from branches of a tree up?

Some of my favorite toys are the ones she made with a string of white pearls that I can rip right off of the bigger, red beaded part of the ornament. So far I have managed to dismantle 4 of these, what fun! I also tried playing with a yellow bear that was playing a drum once, but he ended up being no fun at all. She yelled at me for playing in my new playground too. What is it about this holiday that makes her so darn grumpy anyway?

Then there are these fun paper wrapped boxes that sit under the weird tree too. I like to chew on the neatly folded corners to see if I can get some of that clear sticky stuff off of them. I don't know what her problem is, they open them too...

My final complaint is all of the screeching she likes to do while listening to the radio. I mean she does this occasionally during the rest of the year, but this time of year she screeches along with almost all of the songs that she hears. It's exhausting, I tell you. It's almost enough to make me want to pack my bags and move out!

Thank you for stopping by to chat with me. Please leave me a message, I'd love to hear your thoughts!

Cindy

December Dash

2009-12-15T21:36:00.005-06:00

Normally I'd do a bloom day post today, but with the deluge of snow and cold we've gotten lately, I decided to stay inside. A LOT. Most of the month. The bunnies have munched away at all of the once perfectly intact seed heads of my blazing stars that I had thought about showcasing. They looked so pretty laden with snow as I walked past them the other day. I wonder what they will eat next...

As of Thanksgiving we had only a skiff of snow and our lakes were still not frozen over. Once December hit all heck broke loose though. So here I am, half way through the month of December. Where has this month gone?

This is the snowfall from just one storm. We got it last week and schools were closed on Wednesday because of it. Crazy, isn't it? I know many place may get these amounts of snow too, but it melts throughout your winter when your temps rise. Ours won't be warming up enough to melt anything until almost springtime though, so it will keep piling up. Just in case it doesn't look like much to you, I decided to go grab a tape measure for you just to show you the depth of it.

Yeah, that would be why Cheesehead stayed at a hotel a few days ago.

Yesterday we got another 4 inches of snow. Pretty much a couple of days after it was warm enough to go out and blow the snow out of the driveway. I'm taking my time with finishing that project up though since the temperatures have dipped back below zero. It was 15 degrees below zero today, so I just did enough work in the driveway that I didn't feel like I didn't do anything today.

What is a gardener to do when they are cooped up inside? I've been keeping myself as busy as ever. Is that a big surprise?

I have attended two concerts/programs this month.

My son started to play in the middle school band this year. I remember when I was in band it was always so hard to pick out the outfit I was going to wear. You needed something nice looking, yet comfortable enough to play your instrument. His director has removed that distraction, so all he had to worry about was practicing his part.

I didn't take a picture of my daughter's program with this camera since I had to record it for the rest of the family who couldn't make it today, but she was glowing. She even brought a brush to school today just in case her hat messed her hair. I don't think I worried about such things when I was in third grade.

Can you believe that Christmas is only 10 days away? I still have to buy a few presents, wrap them all, and bake some Christmas cookies. At least the tree is up and I just got the cards in the mail today. No Christmas letter was written this year though since I couldn't seem to find the time to write one in a timely manner.

I had the kids help me decorate the tree this year, as usual, but forgot to hang all of the fragile ornaments myself. Usually, I put them at the top of the tree out of the cats' reach. I didn't do that this year though. The crazy beasts have only managed to mangle 5 ornaments so far. The rest have migrated higher up the tree. Thankfully most of the damage is repairable.

Speaking of decorating trees, does anyone else like to do theme trees? Usually I try to stick with a color scheme and change things up a bit each year. Most people seem to have more Christmas decorations than they know what to do with them anyway. I buy a bunch of stuff when it hits the extreme clearance racks after Christmas just for this purpose. In the past I have done a white and silver tree, green and gold, red and white, and everything home made on our tree in the past. I even try to match the lights to the theme if possible. Not so this year.

I accidentally grabbed the big tree and brought it in from the garage to warm up this year. I didn't discover my mistake until we were ready to put the tree up, so I wasn't about to go out and look for the other one. This tree is entirely too big for my theme minded tree plan, so we just mixed it all up. I can't believe the kids couldn't seem to tell the difference from last years' tree and this one.

I don't dare put any presents under the tree yet. The cats seem to think we put the tree up for them to run around, sleep under, climb, and play under. Do your pets do that? That is also why we do artificial trees instead of real ones, I'd have more pine needles on the floor of my house than I've got in my compost bin the way those maniacs play. In the past they have even given away some surprises to the kids by ripping holes in wrapping paper! I guess I have a good reason for procrastinating, I'll just blame my cats...

Thank you for stopping by to chat with me. Please leave me a message, I'd love to hear your thoughts!

Cindy

WInter Plans

2009-12-05T20:10:00.003-06:00

Wow, fall has really flown by this year. I am glad that I was able to get so much done out in the yard this year. It is not usually possible to get some of the things on my enormous to do list done, but it was usually warm this fall. Strangely, our ground has just recently frozen so I was able to get the bulbs I purchased at 75% off planted. Our lakes are also frozen by this time of year most of the time, but we are still waiting for that to happen.

Winter has rolled in with full force and unusual brutality within the last week or so. Though we are having "normal" temps for this time of year, I feel like it's colder than usual. Winter will officially begin this month, but the garden catalogs have already began flooding my mail box. It is time to begin thinking ahead to the spring gardens.

I know I sometimes complain (okay, maybe a little more than sometimes...) about the cold and snow up here, but I feel like it's is a much needed enforced break that I may not otherwise take. Sometimes we gardeners get so wrapped up in our "stuff" that we forget to take time for ourselves. I think that winter is God's way of reminding us that we need to take a break and take care of ourselves. Frozen grounds and feet of snow really make you stop in your gardening tracks. What will I do this winter?

Well, you know me, I always have something up my sleeve! I am hoping that I get a chance to work on some of my long neglected craft projects this winter. My craft room is finally almost as organized as I would like it to be, so that should help me feel more motivated. I will hopefully also get a chance to do some more blogging and blog hopping. This year has been especially busy and I seem to have been neglecting spending time with my blogging buddies lately. They have done so much to help to bring me back from the brink of despair, I'd hate for them to think that I have forgotten about them. My larger home improvement projects seem to be winding down so I shouldn't have too much of that type of thing to do. One day I would like to put an egress window in our basement as well as a door onto our new deck, but I am thinking these projects may be past my amateur skills.

I have also been working on cleaning stuff out lately while thinking about the possibility of having to move again within a few years. Along the way, I have discovered many choice pieces of wood collecting dust in the scrap wood pile. I am imagining a wonderful cold frame being built from them as well as making some various bird, butterfly, and bat houses.

Although I am banished to the indoors for the winter, fear not, I have plenty of winter plans. What are your plans?

Thank you for stopping by to chat with me. Please leave me a message, I'd love to hear your thoughts!

Cindy

I Think I Got a Little Carried Away

2009-10-30T08:55:00.003-05:00

I went to bring Cheesehead some lunch and dinner yesterday at his new store since he was working open to close. When he does that he doesn't like to have to pack a lunch in the morning before he heads off to work, I don't blame him! I had told him ahead of time that I'd bring him his stuff because I only worked a half day and I actually like to be able to spend a little time with him each day.

In the course of our discussion over our lunch from the local BK, he happened to share with me the fact that their flowering bulbs were 75% off. He knew I had been eyeing up some bulbs but managed to restrain myself from buying any of them earlier in the season. I mentioned that I'd go check them out before I got the stuff he needed me to get to put in the work car's gas tank. I don't imagine he'd really thought about what a hog I would be after browsing for a few minutes.

They had such a wide variety of the lovely plants left I just couldn't resist their alluring temptations. At around $1 or $2 per package it was much harder to just say no. Look what followed me home!

I guess this means I have some more to do out in the garden before the ground freezes. I will be planting these honeys this weekend. I was thinking about waiting to move and divide some plants needing division until next spring but now I'm not so sure. Should I just get all of the beds done now so I can have a little more time to relax in the spring? I also want to mark where they were planted so they can come with me if/when we sell this house. We keep wavering with that decision. We love this house but hate his new commute. With two homes out of 6 already for sale in the neighborhood we know we won't be selling it this fall or winter.

Someone came by the display I set up to see what was going on. I think we may know which one is the plant eater... what do you think?

Thank you for stopping by to chat with me. Please leave me a message, I'd love to hear your thoughts!

Cindy

When It Rains, It Pours

2009-10-06T11:46:00.002-05:00

We are finally getting that much needed rain that I complained about all summer, but that's really not exactly why I titled this post. You want me to explain?

My wireless Internet connection has been rather spotty for quite a while now so I haven't been able to visit my regular Internet hangouts as often as I'd like. Well, now my laptop has also crashed. The only computer we have left is running on Windows 98 and I don't have the money to fix it. I'm rather annoyed. As luck would have it, my dsl contract expires on the 15th of this month so I have asked them to cancel our Internet for the time being. I will not be blogging or blog hopping much until I'm back up and running unless I drive all the way into town and visit my local library's computers.

To complicate matters further, the money I could be saving by not having Internet will be getting spent on gas for Cheesehead to drive to a different store. He was "promoted" but the store is 3 times farther from home so I anticipate us loosing money on this deal until we can get a decent price for the house we are currently living in AND qualify for financing for a new house closer to his work. Supposedly he should be getting promoted again soon so I'm going to attempt to have patience and wait to see what happens with that whole mess.

To get my fix of interaction on the Internet I am now resorting to try to figure out how to use my cell phone to access it. So far I have figured out how to access face book and my email. I guess it remains to be seen how proficient I become at using my free phone. Hopefully I'll have it figured out soon! In the mean time could you please pray that we get our issues resolved quickly? Thanks!

Thank you for stopping by to chat with me. Please leave me a message, I'd love to hear your thoughts!

Cindy

Frostbite

2009-10-01T08:32:00.003-05:00

Well, it's official now. The vegetable garden is done for the year. I heard we were expecting a killing frost on the news a few nights ago. I'm sure glad I listened otherwise we would have had a whole lot of wasted tomatoes, zucchini, cucumbers, and beans. All of the plants looked droopy and down cast. Don't be sad guys, you'll help to give my new raised garden bed some organic matter to mix into the soil.

I got anything that was a decent size worth saving, picked it , and brought them inside. Some of them were just about ready to pick anyway, though I prefer them if they are ripened on the vine. It couldn't be helped though. I was so done with hauling plant coverings around I decided I could be done. I gave it a good try, right?
Yesterday morning the tomato plants caught my eye as I was headed out for my third job of the school year. The deep white on the plants looked pretty, especially with the large crystals on them. I wished as I rushed past that I had time to take a picture of them, they were gorgeous all dressed in white. Too bad I had windows to scrape and kids to get off to school.

They looked extra sad this morning. I guess I'll be pulling plants for the compost pile when I'm done chatting with you.

Seeing the van windows again this morning sure made me glad I didn't have to rush off to work again this morning! Did I ever mention how I hate to scrape my windows? I really need to make some time to get my van back into the garage so I don't have to worry about such things. The sun sure looks pretty when it glints off the tiny ice crystals. They remind me of diamonds.

My poor hydrangea never did make it's debut on my gbbd post. I can't believe I forgot to make a post in September. I suppose it was a pretty busy month. Before they turned brown they were a wonderful shade of pink.

Thank you for stopping by to chat with me. Please leave me a message, I'd love to hear your thoughts!

Cindy

Heaven Sent Harvest

2009-09-27T11:26:00.006-05:00

We really didn't have much of a summer here, it was more like a really LONG, not to mention dry, spring with just a couple of short weeks of mildly warmer temps thrown in. Now that fall has arrived, summer has too. Heat, but still extremely dry. We have only had one day with any measurable amounts of rain in the month of September. Hence the title of this post.

Add dryness to the fact that I have never once had an even reasonably successful harvest from any attempts at veggie gardening and I'd have to say it's miraculous. Thank God I mulched or I'd probably had yet another miserable failure!
My tomatoes are finally kicking it up into high gear. I was wondering if it would ever happen. This is my third harvest of the year of tomatoes. I am quite pleased with my first attempt at growing them, although I will not be using those flimsy store bought cages next year. There's got to be some sort of crazy artistic sculpture or something I can make with those useless things!
My hand pollinated apples that showed such promise this spring were a rather miserable failure. I guess next time I'll do better at keeping them watered. Now I'm listening to the kids argue over who gets to eat it. I sure wish I'd had enough foresight to see this train coming. Hopefully we'll have better luck in the coming years.
The zucchini practically grew itself. I've had so much of it I haven't known what to do with it. Apparently the only thing the family likes that's made of zucchini is bread. Any creative ideas of something not so boring would be greatly appreciated. I forget, have I ever mentioned that my family is just a wee bit picky?
The cucumbers could have done better, but this is my second decent batch. My family only likes pickles although MIL said they tasted really good. I wish I had done a better job of exposing my family to these things earlier in life. Maybe I wouldn't have all of these health issues now, not to mention complete and total food boredom for the most adventurous eater of the house. Sigh.

We had quite a few green beans though I think I will use the square foot garden method with them next year so I can squeeze a few more plants into my garden plan. I loved these beans fresh from the garden. I'd love to have some for canning purposes.

I must say my green pepper experiment taught me to not plant them so close to the tomatoes next year. It was way too shady for them to do much of anything productive. Better luck next year.

I also had some success with my potatoes that otherwise would have landed in the compost pile. I am wondering if some of the small ones can be saved as seed potatoes. How small is too small for a seed potato anyway? Anyone?

Now I suppose I better get working on my canning and preserving skills. Who would have known you could burn watermelon in a food dehydrator anyway? Oops! I love being able to reuse my glass jars and not having to send store bought cans to the landfill or recycling too. I feel like we're making great strides in being more earth friendly, chemical free, and building a healthier household. Yay us! Too bad some of this stuff is so time consuming, I bet more people would be going back to the old ways if they could.

Thank you for stopping by to chat with me. Please leave me a message, I'd love to hear your thoughts!

Cindy

Mulching Does Wonders

2009-09-09T16:42:00.005-05:00

We got a bunch of yummy wild blackberries last year, but they were rather small. They made an extremely tasty jam too! This year I decided to mulch a few of them and see what happened.

Look at the difference...

This was one of the two bushes I mulched. It was absolutely bursting with robust, juicy berries.

This was not mulched. Many of the berries dried out. Those that didn't were small and not nearly as satisfying to eat on a hot summer day.

I think I'll be mulching more plants next year. Hopefully I'll get some paths cut and have a nice berry area in my yard.

Now, to make some more blackberry jam. It's SO easy! Also WAY less expensive than buying jars of jam at the store. My recipe is a freezer jam so it doesn't need to be pressure canned OR cooked. My kids like to help me pick the berries, we have even taken their grandma and their dad picking with us. They could probably make the recipe too if I could trust them not to eat all of the berries on me...

Pick your berries. You'll need about 3 cups of crushed berries for this recipe. I like to be lazy and crush my berries in the blender. It does a bit more than just crush them but it turns out great.

Once the berries are crushed, add sure gel of your choice and sugar. I used Sweet and Low to help with my son's prediabetic condition. The recipe calls for 5 cups of sugar I think, but I used the equivalent of about 3 cups. My jam is plenty sweet. I think you should make it as sweet as you prefer. You can taste it before it gels, it'll just be syrupy and may drip on your shirt. (Don't even ASK how I know!)

Mix together throughly. Pour jam into jars leaving about 1/4 inch space at the top. Let set up for up to 24 hours at room temperature until thickened. Store in refrigerator for up to three weeks or freeze. (Make sure jars you use are freezer safe.) Enjoy!

That will keep us in jam for a while...

Thank you for stopping by to chat with me. Please leave me a message, I'd love to hear your thoughts!

Cindy

The Health Care Debate

2009-09-04T12:49:00.003-05:00

People seem to have many issues with our health care system. I want to present some problems that I see with the health care system as it currently stands and open it up for debate/discussion. I have included numbers with each point to make discussing each issue easier to follow.

1. One of the main problems with our system is the greed that runs so rampantly through it all. If people aren't in the health care industry to help others, they should get out. Health care is supposed to be about making people get well, not putting money in doctor's, corporation's, or insurance company's pockets. Some people are bound to be harder to get healthy, that's just a fact of life.

2. We need to place more emphasis on prevention of health problems. If more insurance companies paid for things that could help prevent something expensive from happening we wouldn't have to spend so much money on the complications that arise from those conditions.

3. We need to figure out ways to cut excess expenses out of our system. Do assistants really need their own assistants? Do we need to have 10 different people to check you into the clinic to see if all of our information is current? Yes= go to appointment. No= update information. Is it that hard? One or two people should be all that any place should need.

4. Insurance companies need to stop putting conditions on what they will and will not cover. If they will pay for one well visit a year great. I HATE the fact that our insurance will only pay for a dietician IF someone has been diagnosed with diabetes. Not for a person who's prediabetic. HUH???

5. I think we need to put caps on what can be charged for procedures. Does it really cost a hospital $3,000 for someone to be in their ER for 1/2 an hour with kidney stones? I hardly think so. IF it does, they really need to find a cheaper way to do it!

6. Doctors should trust the results of tests run by other doctors. Why does each doctor of three need to run their own tests? If some of them are duplicates can't they just use the results that you've already gotten? No wonder some people pay their medical bills for years!

7. Drug companies should not be allowed to give incentives to doctors or clinics in order for them to prescribe their products. No wonder some of the name brand prescriptions cost so much! Between payoffs, research, and advertising it's just crazy!

8. More tests does not make for better service. Find the problem in the most logical way possible.

9. Do we need to run to the doctor for every little cold we have? Antibiotics will not cure a cold. I know people that take their children to the doctor every time they run a fever. I wonder if they've ever heard of teething causing a fever...

10. If companies are going to charge money for services provided, shouldn't they actually provide services? Why pay $600 per month for insurance in order for us to pay 1/2 of the bill when we're really only supposed to pay 20%.

11. It's not really the fact that I'd be against universal coverage if it really was universal. I am afraid that it will end up being a welfare suplement and I will be excluded because of my finances. It seems I always make too much money to qualify for any type of services.

12. The government has a way of goofing up a lot of well intentioned things. I do not want them running our health care system though I would appreciate more oversight pertaining to some issues I have discussed above. The way they run medicare and medicaid is going to make them run out of money. They need a better strategy.

13. Did I miss any important major issues?

Thank you for stopping by to chat with me. Please leave me a message, I'd love to hear your thoughts!

Cindy

The First Day of School

2009-09-01T07:22:00.004-05:00

The birds were twittering as we stepped out of our front door into a day that felt much more like the end of October than the beginning of September. The still dew wet grass shone like brilliant crystals as the sunlight streamed through the tiny droplets of water. I couldn't believe that school was starting already and Labor Day hasn't even come and gone yet. It just seems so strange.

Our breaths puffed out of our mouths as we talked about the events of the coming day. We passed the tarp covered tomato plants as we walked down our sidewalk towards the driveway. The plants seemed like giants next to my daughter as she walked down the sidewalk next to me.

The crunch of the gravel under our feet as we walked down the driveway was like a favorite song of mine. We had many good talks as we sauntered to the bus stop together. I couldn't help but wish my son had allowed me these stolen moments with him too. He asked me to stop accompanying him to the bus stop when he was in second grade.

The constant chatter continued until we reached the end of the road and stood on the corner. We took the ceremonial first day of school pictures. I made sure to move the camera all around as I took a few more shots than usual. I need at least one of them to turn out. I am annoyed that I can't even look through a tiny window to see if my subject is centered in the frame.

We heard the bus coming before we saw it. We hadn't really even been looking for it. We had been talking about the new school year and the coming day. She wondered out loud where her new line would be when they line up on the playground. She asked me who was in her class so she knew who to look for in the line. I reminded her of two of the names we read on the list last night at the open house. Her eyes shone as she thought about being in class with two of her good friends again. We exchanged a quick kiss and hug before the bus pulled into view.

As I saw the familiar yellow bus number 224 rumbling down the road towards our stop, I couldn't help but feel the anticipation and excitement of the start of a new school year radiating from my daughter. Larry has been Peanut's bus driver since she was in kindergarten so he knew the sight of us well. He smiled as he pulled up and drew the bus to a stop. It seemed somewhat strange to have the bus company's name on the side changed.

But even the rumbling down the road had seemed like it was just a matter of routine, so it might even be the same bus with a new paint job. It was almost as if summer never happened.

Larry waved my little peanut across the street. Her energy seemed boundless as she practically leaped over the road to the welcoming door of school bus. Her ponytails waved in the chilly morning air. Gentle puffs of white vapor rolled out of her mouth as she breathed.

The next thing I knew the bus was pulling away from the bus stop. I waved goodbye to my youngest child. How fast they grow up. She's already in third grade? It seems like just yesterday I was sending her off for her first day of kindergarten. I suppose that means it's time I replace her backpack. Has she really had it that long?

As I look ahead to the start or the new school year, I can't help but wonder where summer went. Did we even ever have a summer?

Thank you for stopping by to chat with me. Please leave me a message, I'd love to hear your thoughts!

Cindy

Garden Blogger's Bloom Day August 2009

2009-08-15T13:14:00.006-05:00

The summer continues to fly by at a frantic pace that shows no signs of letting up. At least we've had a taste of summer weather now. The plants weren't liking the coolish weather that we've had most of the summer, though I throughly enjoyed it.

After returning from a football scrimmage on one of the hottest days of the summer it suddenly struck me that it's already the 15th of the month again! I'd like to thank Carol of May Dreams Gardens for hosting garden bloggers bloom day on the 15th of every month.

I feel bad that I haven't had the chance to blog hop much this summer, but I've been keeping myself too busy once again what with health issues that keep cropping up uninvited and stuff. I hope this coming fall will help me to ease my schedule.

Now, on with the tour! I have a lot of plants that have not bloomed yet this year until after my last post. Those are the plants I will show you here.

I guess the cool nights and non steamy days have stiffled the blooming and growth of the heat loving plants. Now I've got fragrant stargazer lilies to enjoy.

As well as some unknown lilies. I had ordered lollypop lilies which are supposed to be pink and white. These are NOT the flowers I ordered.

The day lilies have also begun their nonstop show. I think I need to get some more colors to all to my collection.

Only one of the clematis has put out more than one set of blooms this year.

The tomatoes are still growing. So far still none to pick. Hopefully we'll have some when we get back from staying with great grandpa this week.

The coneflowers have also finally begun to bloom.

One of the hostas that Lisa gave me last summer is still blooming with it's neighbor featured last month. I never realized how much longer the pink astilbe lasted than the others.

The choke cherry tree put out tons of cherries this year. The kids helped me to pick a bunch of them, we got a pound of them this year. Not bad for the size of the berries. We left all of the ones at the top for the birds. Apparently the robins really like them.

At least the blackberries are on schedule. Soon I'll be harvesting more berries than I know what to do with. If you ask me, that's a good problem to have!

Which brings me to the pride of the garden! Okay, so I have more than one thing I'm proud of... The family, the shed with the shutters Cheesehead made for me, a newly added light. We have also put in some new landscaping around the shed, installed a flag, added river rock as mulch, and red granite to connect the turn around to the ramp in front of the shed. Apparently I cut off the landscaping and turnaround part though. I only have one battery for my camcorder so I used the old camera.

Thank you for stopping by to chat with me. Please leave me a message, I'd love to hear your thoughts!

Cindy

15 books

2009-08-15T08:12:00.002-05:00

Rules: Don't take too long to think about it. Fifteen books you've read that will always stick with you. First fifteen you can recall in no more than 15 minutes. Tag 15 friends, including me because I'm interested in seeing what books my friends choose. (To do this, go to your Notes tab on your profile page, paste rules in a new note, cast your 15 picks, and tag people in the note - upper right hand side).

Gone With the Wind
The Hobbit
The Bible
The Red Badge of Courage
Under the Blood Red Sun
The Giver
Star Wars, A New Hope
Square Foot Gardening
The Maker's Diet
The Sugar Solution
Stone Soup for the World
The Book of Virtues
Anne of Green Gables
Island of the Blue Dolphins
Scarlett

Thank you for stopping by to chat with me. Please leave me a message, I'd love to hear your thoughts!

Cindy

A Healthier Blueberry Muffin

2009-08-13T09:47:00.003-05:00

My son has been dying for some blueberry muffins. Wanting to feed him what he wants but still trying to help him with his diet and health issues I changed the usual recipe to lower the glycemic index. I thought they were good. If you don't like the wheat flavor (son didn't like it) maybe exchange it for oats in place of the wheat flour. I think I will try that next time.

Here's the recipe

1 cup milk (I added a little extra because wheat flour soaks up moisture)
1/4 cup oil (I used 1/2 cup applesauce instead)
1/2 tsp lemon extract
1 egg
1 cup all purpose flour
1 cup whole wheat flour (I sifted it to add some air so they wouldn't be so dense)
1/3 cup splenda (to get some browning effect that normal sugar helps with, I added a few drops of liquid stevia extract to the batter)
3 tsp baking powder
1/2 tsp salt
a sprinkling each of ground flax seed and wheat germ
1 cup fresh blueberries

Preheat oven to 400 degrees.
Grease bottoms of 12 cup muffin tin.
Divide batter among cups.
Bake about 25 minutes until golden brown.
Remove from pan immediately.

Thank you for stopping by to chat with me. Please leave me a message, I'd love to hear your thoughts!

Cindy

Making an Upholstered Headboard

2009-08-05T14:35:00.003-05:00

Some of my friends and relatives have requested to see what my headboard looks like. I think it looks pretty nice even though we haven't taken the time to install it yet. I'm even going to do one better though! I will walk you through the process of making it. It was really very easy as well as inexpensive.

Materials needed:
1. A piece of wood that is at least as wide as your bed. I used some scraps we had laying around from building our shed last year.
2. Spray adhesive.
3. Padding to line to wood the with. This gives it a nice luxurious feel. I used the foam pad that son had on his twin sized bed before we replaced his mattress.
4. Batting used for quilting. This helps anchor the foam in place as well as softening up the exterior lines of the headboard.
5. Durable fabric of your choice. I used a heavier linen type fabric I had sitting in my fabric stash which I feel compliments our bedding without being matchy-matchy.
6. Staple gun and staples.

May people may like a curved headboard, but I went for simple, straight lines. It's a rectangle the same width as the bed. Also made less cutting for me to do!

Spray the wood with spray adhesive. If you only spray one surface, the foam can be repositioned. Once I got the foam in place, I sprayed the foam too. Spraying both surfaces is supposed to create a more permanent bond.

Next comes the batting. Mine was queen sized, folded in half to make it extra soft. I sprayed both halves to help keep them in place and then sprayed the foam as well as the back of the batting. I pulled it and made sure it was even before gluing it in place. Maybe I went a little crazy with the glue but I didn't want it to fall apart on me.

I wrapped the batting around the wood and secured it in place on the back of the wood with plenty of staples.

The final step is putting the fabric in place. Pull securely and wrap the edges carefully and check how it looks from the front before securing in place. I used glue on the front to keep it tight and then stapled it on the back.

I had planned on making this for Cheesehead for his birthday, but I didn't have time earlier this year. Now we just need to install it!

Thank you for stopping by to chat with me. Please leave me a message, I'd love to hear your thoughts!

Cindy

What in the World?

2009-08-03T22:07:00.003-05:00

This so-called summer is flying by so fast it feels like I just blinked in May and it's already August now. The temps are still feeling about the same, though not quite as cool at night. Where has the time gone?

I have been keeping busy as usual, I'll share more details and some pictures sometime soon but just thought I'd give you an idea of what I've been up to so far this summer besides spending too much time on facebook. I spent a couple of minutes compiling a "short" list detailing my activities.

1. Installed edging and crushed red granite in front of the shed.
2. Cheesehead made me some shutters for the shed which I painted green.
3. Painted and stained swing set, new trellises, and siding for Peanut's playhouse.
4. Helped Peanut construct her own garden space under her slide.
5. Planted a new garden in front of shed and added river rock and edging.
6. Expanded side yard and moved a bunch of rock and brush around.
7. Helped Cheesehead build a deck.
8. Stained ramp we built for shed last summer.
9. Cleaned and organized craft room.
10. Took son on several different doctor appointments. We think he's diabetic.
11. Researching how to make foods like our own tomato sauce with less sugar.
12. Suffering with tooth pain. Have appointment with dentist tomorrow.
13. Son started PW Football tonight. Next 3 weeks we'll be running 5 days a week!
14. Now working on the new garden back by the new deck in backyard.
15. Caring for plants. Tomatoes are growing like crazy but all still very green.
16. Glad I mulched some blackberry bushes earlier since so many are drying up now.
17. Painted crown moldings to be installed in living room area.
18. Made upholstered headboard for our bedroom.
19. Searching high and low for decent sandals with an enclosed back not high heeled.
20. Helping MIL with various home projects.

Man, seeing all that I've been working on made me even more tired than I already was. What in the world was I thinking? I need to go to bed!

Thank you for stopping by to chat with me. Please leave me a message, I'd love to hear your thoughts!

Cindy

Fire Sale Update

2009-07-25T20:16:00.003-05:00

I know some people out there may be interested in the house I just wrote my last post about. Some may have been following my story since I met them at the HGTV home selling message boards, I met some really great people there. Here's the latest as well as some information for people who may be going through this process and want to find out some more info. Please feel free to ask me any questions you have. We underwent this process in MN so it may be different in other areas of the country.

As you may be aware, our old house in BL was sold at a fire sale last year. As owners, we are never made aware of this information about the sale, so I only found this out the other day.

We were given a six month redemption period after the fire sale before it was finalized so my mom continued to live there until last November or so.

We were made aware of the fact that we could contest the transfer of title out of our name being sent official papers with the time of the "trial" and everything. This happened in June this year. It may have been interesting to go, but it was a long way away and my nerves are still really raw about all of the effort we put into that house and trying to sell it. It was best to make a clean break, so I didn't go. I wanted it to be over as soon as possible.

If I could have saved them the attorney fees and just handed the house over to the bank, I would have. Apparently MN has a law that says you can not do a "deed in lieu of foreclosure" on a home you are not living in. We tried every possible route that the bank suggested but apparently nothing but foreclosure worked for us in MN. It really was too bad since we had no interest in holding onto the house.

The house was listed in the court papers as being sold for $125,550 on 7/18/08 so I guess someone must have bid on it then. That is a far distance from the $230,000 we were told we could sell it for when we first contemplated the possibility of moving over three years ago!

At the end we had it listed for $124,900 (dropped from the original listing price of 197,000) but in all we only had two offers in total. Crazy for such a wonderful home on a corner lot so close to the lake. With our main competition being foreclosures and new construction we really had an uphill battle to try to win.

I tried negotiating with the first person who made an offer before we really knew that the housing market was in a virtual free fall. This right after we signed up with our second realtor. I am sure she would have sold it if she had been our original listing agent, if we didn't have a messy renter who refused to show the house or do the agreed on lawn care, and if the floor in the family room hadn't gotten so badly damaged. I would have owed more than the first possible buyer offered in September of 06 and thought I needed to take out a loan to cover the rest of the money I would have owed the banks and realtors. She wasn't willing to up her price and ended up walking. I really don't think she would have sat still for a short sale anyway since she was in the process of getting a divorce.

Our second offer got held up on a bank negotiation deal since we held both a first and second mortgage. After waiting forever those buyers also walked. I have found myself wondering if the final purchasers are those second people or not. I guess maybe I'll never know. I suppose it really doesn't matter. I am out from under that burden and I am not going to look back!

We were notified of the outcome of the court proceedings by mail. They sent a list of all transactions on our house including all of the times we refinanced, when we bought the house, second mortgages, fire sale, and other filings. It is now completely final and I could not be happier to be able to move on free and clear.

I hope the new owners enjoy that house as much as we did, it really was our dream when we lived there. Who knew my dream house would change so much when we moved here? I used to only want to live in town and have lots of kids for my kids to play with and be close to shopping. Now none of those things are even on the radar of my dream home. If our relatives and friends lived closer I'd have to say that the house we live in now would be my dream home.

I am also glad that living through that ordeal didn't end up breaking up a third marriage as it did the marriages of the first two pairs of owners. The neighbors shared the divorce house story with us after we moved in. The second couple only lived there for a year! I'm sure it very well could have broken us up if we had let the stress of the last few years overcome us. We've gone through a lot of loss, pain, and difficulties over the last three years.

Now we are a better, closer family than ever and I feel ready to conquer the health battle that lies ahead.... I hope! God help us.

Thank you for stopping by to chat with me. Please leave me a message, I'd love to hear your thoughts!

Cindy

The Garden I Left Behind

2009-07-19T17:43:00.007-05:00

I have talked to you often about the garden I left behind as well as babbling on about plants that made the trip with us on our last trip before the fire sale. Well, I finally got access to the old pictures that were on the computer that crashed. Now I can finally share them with you. Unfortunately we had to send the computer to the scrap yard as it was unsalvagable.

We moved into our second home when my youngest child was still a baby, just a three months old. She has no memories of our first home. We decided we needed a bigger yard for our children and a bit more space, so we moved about 5 miles away. It was the 30th of May in 2001 when we moved in.

We had looked at the house in March when the yard was still under snow. I fell in love with the inside, it was perfect for us! We put in an offer right away. It was only on the market a couple of days before came.

Imagine our shock when we saw the grass did not come back. Wasn't that the whole point of not buying new construction? Our first home had been new construction and we looked at established homes so we wouldn't have to do landscaping or finish a basement. The yard and landscaping were supposed to be in already. It looked wonderful in the winter with lots of trees and everything. Did I mention that most of the trees were dead too when spring came?

The back garden area was wonderful looking. I loved the bushes that hid our back yard from the street behind our house. It was a great place on a corner lot and it was close enough to walk to the beach. Inherited shrubs in the back mulch garden included a staghorn sumac in the center of the garden, 2 sensation lilacs, a white lilac, and red weigela, along with a few plants I never did figure out what they were.

The kids had lots of neighbor children to play with too. My son met his best friend when was about to start kindergarten. They seemed to be attached at the hip always either playing at our house or theirs every day after school.

After we lived there for a while and got to know the neighbors, we were told the people that sold it to us had lived there less than a year. The original owners were gardeners and the yard was always the best yard in the neighborhood. (I could tell from all of the earthworms that completely covered our driveway after the rain in spring.) It was just a shame a year of neglect could ruin all of that hard work. We intended to bring it back to it's former glory. After a bunch of hard work I thought it was right back up among the best.

We enjoyed most of the plant choices of the original owners, but the sumac was a total thug. It kept trying to take over the entire yard, sprouts shot up everywhere. I managed to talk Cheesehead into helping me rip it out even though it had beautiful form. To fill in the gap, we added some arborvitae that were passed along from some of Cheesehead's friends at work.

We added a couple of new garden areas including my prized rose garden. I had 3 climbing roses and 2 bush roses as well as creeping phlox at the entry path. The roses managed to thrive all summer and looked gorgeous each and every year. Somehow I was never able to keep them alive through the winter though. They got replaced each year. It sure was hard pulling out those rose bushes! But my was it lovely smelling to sit on that little bench under the arbor. When we were getting ready to move we planted 3 clematis to climb the arbor and two knock out roses to fill in the space.

The corner must have gotten too much salt spray from winter plowing, we never could get grass to grow in there so we expanded it into a large rock garden. We added a raised perrieneal garden as well as a wide variety of flowering shrubs.

There was a wonderful ornamental crabapple tree. The fragrance by our front door was always so sweet in the spring time. It was like heaven on earth between the flowering crab apple and the carol mackie daphne that grew next to the door. I put a bench there too. We also added plants that lined both sides of the driveway. Why in the world would you have all that rock but no plants anyway?

Near the door all plants the original owners had put in had vanished but the tulips they had planted. I filled it with color and various textures. Anything that survived our long absence before the fire sale came with me from this area. So far the monkshood is the only plant that died from the transplant process.

I added a pink weigela in an open space in the front garden, but the rest of the plantings were put in by the original owners. I think the green we chose looked better with the vinyl siding than the original color. I matched the new exterior lighting to the trim too. Looking back, I think we overspent on the improvements we made.

The back yard was spacious and we enjoyed outdoor entertaining here. It tended to get very hot in the afternoons in summer. We had plans of adding some sort of shade structure but never got around to putting one in.

This was the second garden shed we built. Somehow I never managed to get a picture of the whole shed. I am not sure what I was thinking when I planted these things in there, it was such a small space. They got very overgrown after we moved out. We like to landscape around all of our outdoor structures to add more enjoyment to our time spent outside.

Can you tell Cheesehead likes using landscaping blocks?

It was heart wrenching to have to move from our dream home just over three years ago. We had put a lot of blood, sweat, tears, and money into that place to make it perfect for us.

We moved into our "new" home three years ago this July. I guess I still call it new because we never really got the closure of selling our old home, signing papers, and the whole 9 yards. It was finally foreclosed on after being on the market for more than two years. Technically we've only really been rid of the burden of that house for 7 months. I'm sure glad that never ending saga is over!

Right now I wouldn't change our house for the world, it's really starting to feel like home.

Thank you for stopping by to chat with me. Please leave me a message, I'd love to hear your thoughts!

Cindy

July Garden Blogger's Bloom Day

2009-07-15T08:04:00.007-05:00

Bloom Day is brought to you by our wonderful friend Carol of May Dreams Gardens. Thank you Carol. This post will include my veggie garden update as well since I haven't given you one lately. Busy, busy!

This is a coconut lined basket that I'm growing a tomato out of the bottom of. It combines my flower gardens with my veggie garden, so I thought it would make a great lead off picture! The growths on the top part of the stem I told you about have turned brown so it looks like the tomato is trying to put out more roots. Note to self: please stop over watering tomato plants.

I'd like to add before I continue, that I have decided to use the camcorder I bought about 5 years ago for my pictures for now. I almost forgot I had it! I love the zoom on this thing and got some great pictures at the zoo last week. Now, on with the garden tour!

Many of my flowers from last month are still in bloom, but I won't bore you with those again. So many other pictures to post anyway.

First, the food.

We've already eaten most of the peas. Only enough for one meal. Maybe if I hadn't eaten so many right off the bush.

The peppers have flowered and appear to have been pollinated.
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No flowers on the beans yet, but boy are they huge. Don't they look like they're holding hands? Broccoli, cabbage, lettuce, watermelon, radish, and zuchinini are still growing but not near being ready for consumption. Lots of hopeful signs in the garden though!

My cucumbers have just begun to put out flowers, the blooms aren't much to look at, but you can see the mulch. I am glad I finally got them mulched with the long grass from across the road. Our yard isn't big enough to supply me with large quantities of mulch. The kids were even kind enough to rake up the grass AND help place the clippings on my gardens. Will wonders never cease?
The wild blueberries are still small, but I love the pinkish huge they're picking up. Does that mean they'll be ready to pick before the other ones?

Look at all the flowers on the potatoes. I wonder when I'll be able to start picking potatoes.

The other blueberries are getting ready too. There won't be enough this year to make much of anything, but I'm hoping we'll have lots for next year. If I'm not careful the kids will eat them all right off the bush like they've done with the strawberries.

My paintbrush pollinated apples are falling off the tree right and left. It's been a dry summer so I won't have a bountiful harvest as I had anticipated.

We're down to two apples left on the tree now. It's a shame, we had so many apples too. So much potential just dried up and withered away.

The tomatoes are bursting with blooms. This one out front has a three small tomatoes growing on it now.

Gay feathers are beautiful. My BIL thought they were really pretty until he heard the name. He wouldn't change his mind either when I told him the other name was Liatris. I picked up a few different plants on sale a couple of weeks ago and planted them around the garden shed.

I forget what particular kind of potentilla this is, but I adore the yellow with orange streaks, I'd never seen anything like it before.

Angelina sedum produce some interesting blooms too. I like them for their ease of care and how easy it is to start new plants from them. This is the third area I've placed cuttings and they are performing wonderfully there.

The yarrow attracts butterflies to our garden. The flowers are so small and delicate. I love the fern like foliage of these plants too.

I have four kinds of Astilbe in my shade garden that I will move to the area behind our garage once it's all ready for the plants. It takes a lot of work to prepare new beds for flowers and plants.

The bumble bees were loving the lavendar. I tried not to get too close. Can you believe I was around ten feet away from this guy?

Past it's prime, but still a few blooms on this plant. I think it's some kind of dianthus though I'm not completely positive. I seem to remember something about fire being in it's name. I wonder if I still have the tag? This is a plant that came with me from my Big Lake garden.

The baskets and containers are really filling out too. I had a Martha Washington Geranium last year too, but I think the stones in the pot really help it to flourish more profusely than the plant I had last year.

My Beards tongue managed to bloom and pass it's prime since my last post. How could I have been too busy to get a picture of them? Geez, I guess I'm slipping this year!

Thank you for stopping by to chat with me. Please leave me a message, I'd love to hear your thoughts!

Cindy

Tomato Trouble! Calling All Tomato Growers!

2009-07-07T17:39:00.003-05:00

I don't remember if I told you or not, but I ran an experiment on two of my tomato plants this year. I planted two of them in two different coconut lined baskets. Many people were at Cheesehead's work were skeptical about my efforts and thought they would dry out too fast. They're gardening experts and really seem to know what they're talking about most of the time but I wondered why I wouldn't be able to grow them in there if I kept them watered enough.

Being determined to do my own thing, I simply lined my large coconut lined baskets with cardboard before I filled it with my wonderful dirt recipe that I came up with last year. Containers tend to dry out rather fast, so I have religiously been watering them every day so I could prove it wasn't a crazy idea after all. I mean, if they can grow in a bag, they should certainly be able to grow in a basket, right???

Things progressed beautifully and one of the two plants put out so many flowers I didn't know what I was going to do with all of the tomatoes. Remember I planted a total of 16 plants this year?

Imagine my displeasure when I went about checking my plants on my daily rounds and saw that some of the leaves were wilting!

Upon closer inspection I saw all kinds of crazy bumps on the stem of the plant. I was sure it had become infected with some horrid pests and started to panic. I checked my other plants too, but none of the rest seemed to be affected yet.

What in the world would affect one plant and not the others? Was this just the first of the great tomato blight of 2009? Should I pull the plant out and dispose of it in hopes that the other plants would thrive despite the pest infection?

Thoughts like these swirled through my head as I attempted to scrape these "eggs" off the lower stem of my plant with my thumbnail. They weren't coming off too well and I didn't want to severely damage this plant if there was anything I could do to save my experiment so I can complete it. All I could think of was running inside to ask my tomato growing buddies what was wrong with them. This is my first attempt at growing tomatoes after all. What did I do but headed for my favorite resource, the internet!

I managed to google bumps on tomato stems and all that came up was things about humidity and over watering that causes the stem to think it needs to grow more roots. Their bumps were tan though and mine are all green or white so I'm still a bit unsure. Is that all that is wrong with my plants? Did I just catch the bumps at an earlier stage causing them to be a different color than what others have observed? Can I really over water something in a coconut lined basket? If so, I'll be completely relieved. If it's something else that I need to worry about, could you please let me know?

Thank you for stopping by to chat with me. Please leave me a message, I'd love to hear your thoughts!

Cindy

Parades and Proper Flag Etiquette

2009-07-03T07:46:00.003-05:00

I'm sure most of us will be going to a parade of some sort soon. If not tomorrow, sometime this summer. I am wondering what your thoughts on the following story are.

It happened last year at the forth of July parade. I arrived early at the parade route as usual to stake out a good spot for the kids to chase candy and hopefully remain in the shade so we would be less likely to get a sunburn. We didn't bring chairs, just sat on the curb.

I guess some people came along and decided we had a great spot and set up their folding chairs behind us. When the first flags of the parade passed by, everyone rose and removed their hats so there wasn't a problem with my standing in front of them.

After the next few color guards came by with their flags raised, I stood for those also. They got rather annoyed at me and complained that I was blocking their view. I explained how I was showing my love and respect for my country as well as my respect for their contribution to our country when these color guards came by.

They started sneering and jeering at me when I didn't stand for the cars that came by with their postage stamp flags on them waving from what seemed like lollipop sticks. I tried to explain to them how it wasn't the same, but I really don't think they got it. They just kept up with their rude comments.

Who was right? What is proper parade etiquette when it comes to flags and color guards anyway?

Wishing everyone a safe and happy forth whether they're driving or staying home. Try not to blow yourselves up!

Thank you for stopping by to chat with me. Please leave me a message, I'd love to hear your thoughts!

Cindy

Cut Flowers

2009-07-01T22:51:00.005-05:00

Most of my flowers have just begun blooming since my last bloom day post. Many of my flowers don't bloom terribly long here since it races from cool to hot so quickly.

In most places peonies are long past bloom time, but not here! Aren't they supposed to bloom in late spring? My peony just began blooming today and I was so excited. They smell like heaven. Last year I wasn't able to enjoy my peonies in bloom since I went on vacation the day they began blooming. I decided I wasn't going to miss out this year!

Of course the poor peony would be lonely in the cup all by itself so I went to find a few more companions. The first one that entered my mind was the white delphinium my MIL was drooling over when she was here this weekend. I'd guess it's about 6 feet tall.

These blue ones aren't as monsterously huge as the white, but still extremely pretty. Now if I only had some red ones for the upcoming holiday!

My miniature rose was also blooming now, but the stems are not nearly long enough to be a companion to these long stemmed counterparts that I have chosen.

I also considered adding a few sprigs of spiderwort but thought it may not match the best with the blue delphinium. I wanted the pink peony to be the standout in my floral arrangement, so to fill the rest of the space I chose to use some of the abundant ferns we have growing here.

I ran inside and grabbed a sharp pair of scissors and a "lovely" vase. It was the only properly sized to fit the arrangement I imagined.

Well, what do you think of my first floral arrangement?

The poor thing is banished to the bathroom for it's own protection. We can't allow the plant eating cats to tear the flowers to shreds, can we? I want to enjoy them more than one day!

Thank you for stopping by to chat with me. Please leave me a message, I'd love to hear your thoughts!

Cindy

Where Did June Go?

2009-06-23T19:07:00.005-05:00

The month has brought about much growth both in my life and in our yard, I am constantly amazed at the progress I'm seeing. It's also brought me much needed peace too.

I'm looking at the calendar and I see that there in only a week left of June. Where did this month disappear to? I've been working on getting our current home loan modified, getting lots of little things done I've wanted done in the last three years, finding ways to cut our expenses so we can make it on our reduced income, and just generally getting everything in order.

I seem to have suddenly sprung to life too. I feel so much happier, unencumbered. I feel like life is good again and things are only going to improve. I see hope and harmony and I'm loving it. My energy levels reflect that too, I can't believe how many things I get done in a day nowadays. Not like the days when I was happy to even get one thing done!

Looking around I can see so many blessings that God has sent us, I think that helps lift my spirits too. Everywhere I look I am reminded of these wonderful things that tell me he still loves us. Blackberry brambles seem to have overtaken the entire woods surrounding our house. There are drifts of white blackberry flowers floating all over on the fringes of our yard. Any picture you take seems to inadvertently include pictures of these blooms. If we didn't like wild fruits so much this may annoy us, but it makes me feel truly blessed. I wonder if my blackberry jelly is good enough to sell to raise money to buy my dad a headstone....

The apples I pollinated with a paintbrush continue to swell into fruits. It looks to be covered in numerous apples that are on their way to becoming food for our table. One of the new trees we just planted this year even has one apple growing on it. I'm pretty impressed!

Our first strawberry of the season was ready today. I picked it and gave it to Cheesehead as a gift. He's been kind enough to water the veggie garden even though he hates any vegetable that's not corn or potatoes. He has even talked about giving me more room from his back yard for more future veggie gardens. Will wonders never cease?

I planted two tomatoes in coconut lined baskets earlier this spring. You know... like those green bags that hang on a hook? It's a little experiment. So far it seems to be working out great. Look at all of the blooms it is forming!

Our other tomato plants are taking off too. I have all 16 plants that are in the ground caged up with those cheap little cages. Two of them aren't doing so well, but the others seem to be thriving. Would you believe I got all of these as those cheap little 6 pack plants? We have a total of 18 tomato plants. Looks like I may need to start looking for ways to prepare and can some of my garden goodies! I also planted a six pack each of green peppers and zucchini and a three pack of broccoli in the garden.

Cheesehead can't believe the difference between this year's garden and the gardens of the past. We were just talking about that earlier. I guess I might not believe it either if I weren't living in my body feeling so much better and getting so much done. Cucumbers, beans, and peas are all growing from seed. I also planted some carrots, lettuce, water melon, banana peppers, and squash seeds last week. It may be a bit late but I guess we'll see soon enough. I think I'll try planting a late summer garden of spinach and other goodies too.

This fall I will move the asparagus I planted this spring to a sunnier location with much better soil.

Thank you for stopping by to chat with me. Please leave me a message, I'd love to hear your thoughts!

Cindy

Garden Blogger's Bloom Day June 2009

2009-06-15T14:12:00.005-05:00

Before I share my bountiful blooms with you, I'd like to take this opportunity to thank Carol of May Dreams Gardens for hosting this wonderful event on the 15th of every month.

This last month has just flown right by. I think we once again managed to skip right over spring and bounded headlong into summer. Up until last week my plants continued on their almost nightly plant parade into the garage or under their covers.

I didn't have much of anything blooming last month, do you remember my pathetic turnout of exactly three flowers (not including annuals)? Since then the temps have soared, the heavens have poured out their mighty blessings, and all of my spring flowers have peaked and passed their prime.

I'll show you a brief review before moving on to what's still blooming today.

I brought these sensation lilac suckers with me from my old garden in Big Lake. I am now regretting the decision to only bring two of them with us. These flowers are so beautiful and they smell so sweet. I wonder if the new owners would let me grab a few more if I ever head back over there...

They were tightly closed still when mom was over visiting us, these lilacs just sped right on through their blooming period.

These lovely plants produced more seeds than I knew what to do with for me last year. Somehow the name is slipping my mind right now. Such a busy day with the painting the living room, redecorating and bloom day posting. I guess my mind is pretty slippery sometimes anyway.

One of the four apple trees that we planted last year was in full bloom. I sure hope we get lots of apples out of the deal. We got three more apples trees this year so we'll have a total of 7. Did I ever mention to you that we like apples? When we got them home and planted, they were still in bloom so I grabbed a paint brush and hand pollinated the flowers. I don't think they would have been close enough to leave it up to nature to cross pollinate them, especially since it was so cold.

Our choke cherry tree also has an abundance of blooms on it but apparently I didn't snap a very good picture. I really should get a new camera before we go on vacation. Who knows what I'll miss out on if I keep taking crazy shots. You should see the green fruits beginning to swell up now. Maybe this year I'll get to try to make that choke cherry jelly I wanted to make last year.

As I showed mom around town we got to admiring some lovely trilliums that some friends had. Mom recalled how they always had a bunch of them at her house when she was growing up. I remember admiring them in Grandma's woods when I went to visit her in the spring. We got two small clumps of them and transplanted them to our yard. I'm not sure how they'll do here with so many pine trees hanging around but I sure hope they'll thrive here anyway.

The wild blueberries and strawberries have also managed to slip by without getting their pictures taken too. I can imagine how wonderful they will taste though picked freshly off the bushes. We took a walk in the woods while my mom was here and found all sorts of patches of them all over the place. Just thinking about it is making my stomach rumble!

Now, on to what's still blooming. I didn't get many good pictures because I can't see a blessed thing in my camera's viewfinder. I sure wish digital cameras still had small viewfinders too just in case their cheap LCD screens cracked!

I ordered 25 Ozark Beauty Strawberry plants from a catalog this year. I know I was supposed to pinch off the blooms this year so the roots could grow stronger but I just can't help myself. Am I naughty or what?

The wild blackberries have just begun their show for the season. Many blooms left to unfurl themselves on these plants. Looks like we're going to have a bumper crop if I can keep everything from drying up on us. Who wants some blackberry jam?

These lily of the valley will look wonderful in my new deck garden I'm hoping to start creating tomorrow, won't they? I almost forgot they were here. I need to move my shade garden closer where I can remember to enjoy it a bit more often! The regular bleeding hearts were also blooming now but I only managed to get a picture of it's leaves. SIGH. Stupid camera.

Cheesehead and some friends from work picked out these lovely plants to add to our deck garden landscape too. They are awaiting my final design inspiration and bed preparation before getting settled into their new homes though.

Last, but certainly not least are my pansies. These self seeded themselves last year and and freely growing all over the place. I just adore these plants. They're cute, colorful, hardy, and cheerful. I don't have to worry about 30 degree weather killing them either. I love to look at the variety of faces that pansies have. I have loads of pansies around here, but not having a decent camera makes it difficult for me to capture their charisma and charm so I'll just leave that to someone else for now. In warmer climates these plants are perennials, but here they are treated as annuals because of our extremely cold winters.

I hope everyone has a fantastic bloom day wherever they are in this great big world. Glad you could drop by. Thank you for stopping by to chat with me. Please leave me a message, I'd love to hear your thoughts!

Cindy

If Only...

2009-06-11T05:56:00.005-05:00

June 4, 2006 It was a tough day. The day my mom found my dad had passed away. It was so unlike him to miss church she decided to go over for a visit. They had been divorced since before my daughter was born in 2001, but they weren't bitter enemies or anything. I think they got along better after the divorce than before it. I know that dad regretted getting divorced every day. I know he wished he haded actually gotten the papers this time, he told me that many times. So many fights included the threats from both of them about divorce. If only he hadn't gotten those papers they'd still be together.

I know mom has her regrets too. I have heard her say it, if we hadn't gotten divorced I would have been there...
He wasn't living alone though, his brother, my uncle was living with him at the time. Unfortunately he was away and wasn't there to find him either. Why did he choose to be away? If only he would have been there, he could have called 911 and saved him.

Dad had just had surgery in February or March that year. He had a valve replaced in his heart. He was really weird after the surgery, seemed so out of it. He had needed the surgery though, but I wish I would have seen how much care he really needed. I think if he had health insurance in place after the surgery they would have placed him in a program until he was further recovered but they assumed I had the capacity to care for my dad along with the help of my mom and uncle. Little did they know... If only I had asked them to try to place him in that program.

He stayed with me for a after the surgery but I was under so much stress I couldn't stand it. Mom was living there with us and it was totally strange to have a divorced couple living together under your roof. Which one do you kick out? I was watching mom's friend's boyfriend's grand kids too. I never could say no to helping others you know... Mom couldn't care for him in my house while my family and I took vacation to get away from it all, it would just be too strange. The church set it up to bring him meals and check on him while I was gone. He seemed to be doing so well when I got back he decided to stay in his own house. If only I hadn't been under so much stress and he was still living with me.

Dad liked to spend time with his grand kids. He was trying to help my son learn to ride his bike. He took them to sporting events (like this Twins game), swimming, fishing,... if only he were here to still do that with his grand kids. He wasn't here long enough!

This was what his grave site looked like last summer after I visited him. He's been gone three years already? Where did the time go? If only I had the money to buy him a proper headstone...

Next week I'll be researching his side of the family tree some more. If only I had taken the time to attend some of those family reunions, I'd know his relatives a little better!

I better stop thinking about my regrets and start living in the moment! We are going to MIL's house this weekend to help her with some home repairs done and hopefully get some quality visiting time in with her and grandpa. Life's too short for regrets. I think I need to tattoo that on my forehead!

Thank you for stopping by to chat with me. Please leave me a message, I'd love to hear your thoughts!

Cindy

Farm Town... Now with Flowers!

2009-06-08T21:16:00.003-05:00

Does anyone else use Facebook? I found this great little application on it about a month ago called Farm Town. One of my cousins from the Chicago area introduced me to it once we became friends. I have been SO addicted to this new little game lately, it's just crazy. You'd think I'd have better things to do with my time, but it's just neat interacting with my friends and planting stuff. My kids even like to use it, though Peanut is too young to have an account all her own.

What does it do? Well, it started out where the animals are just decorative (though sometime soon we'll be able to milk the cows and collect chicken eggs, etc), you plant crops that can be ready in 4 hours to 4 days, if you don't harvest them in a timely manner they will go to waste, you can give your friends free gifts of trees or animals (flowers now too), and you can tend your neighbor's farms by watering their stuff, pulling weeds, or raking leaves. I have just recently discovered that you get more money for your crops if you hire others to harvest them (again, thanks to my fore mentioned cousin) and have been goofing off in the chat room (aka marketplace) whenever I'm not remodeling the farm since that discovery.

We discuss all of the possibilities (like the fact that we should be able to go to the beauty shop so we don't all look like clones) there and I try to get my character to do the hokey pokey and stuff just to see if any one's paying attention. Most of the time they don't. Either that, or they ignore me because I'm SO dang crazy???

When I got up this morning I had no idea that there were some changes that had been made to the game. Since I started playing flowers would be available in two weeks. They FINALLY were this morning, I got 6 of them as gifts today. (Thanks everyone!) Son was SO excited when he noticed all of the changes he just couldn't help but shout out all of the new animals and accessories that he saw while I was painting the last two walls of the kitchen.

I've been saving up for a greenhouse on the game, so I had a stash of money to splurge on a bunch of new toys. It'll be a while until I'm a high enough level to buy the greenhouse anyway, I have 3 levels to go still. I bought a grill, water pump, gated fences, and a doghouse so far and was planning on adding some rivers and bridges once I got everything satisfactorily rearranged.

I was on it remodeling my farm for the 6th time until I got booted off. Seems to happen more often than I like but I guess not so bad that I wouldn't want to go back. Now I can't even log back on. Hope the glitch doesn't last too long, I have flowers that need to be watered and pumpkins to harvest. They were 98% ready. Plus, my farm is in total disarray and I don't like it that way.

Does anyone else play Farm Town or use Facebook? I think I like Facebook better than Myspace.

Thank you for stopping by to chat with me. Please leave me a message, I'd love to hear your thoughts!

Cindy

Protecting Our Hard Work (and Other Updates)

2009-06-04T17:45:00.000-05:00

Wow, the last month has been a whirl of craziness. Between plant parades to protect the tender plants from cold temps (should I REALLY need to be doing this in June?), ancestry research, my new Farm Town on Facebook addiction, working on a deck, weeding, prepping a new garden area, watering new plants to get them established, looking for free sources of mulch, building a birthday gift for Cheesehead, sports taxiing, class trips, plays, concerts, and school picnics, not to mention having company three out of four weekends I've barely had time to breathe.

I think I need a vacation and summer hasn't even started yet. Here are a few of the highlights.

I have been meaning to tell you about a lovely guest we've got living in the back yard for a while now.

Mother robin picked a very smart place to build her nest. She has chosen a variety of materials for her nest and chose a well sheltered, protected place to raise her family. It is high up and far out of reach of predators and protected from wind and rain too. The only thing she really has to put up with is us. She seems to be fairly tolerate of Cheesehead and I as long as we all just sit quietly and watch each other. I was sitting 20-30 feet from her. I've never gotten so near a wild bird while she's sitting in her nest. She's not so fond of movement or noise so does not stay in her nest when we do either of those things. She is very good at scolding us too. Her favorite perches to scold us from include the kids' swing set or a tall nearby pine tree. She has some new babies in the nest I know now as I saw her feeding them earlier. We decided to let her have the back yard to herself for a while so we don't endanger the health of her babies.

Well, as much to herself as I can anyway. I have to keep an eye on my garden!

The endless plant parade of covering and uncovering plants has continued into June. Some of the plants are not happy with this occurence.

Those plants include the tomato plants in the front yard. They seem to like warmer weather than we've had lately. I guess I need to drink more milk!

The tomatoes in the back yard seem to be much happier. It has stayed cool enough that I have kept the milk containers on them still. Gallon milk jugs with the bottom cut off work great. The semi-transparency allows sunlight and warmth in and the small hole in the top allows water in and extra hot air out. I think they've been in place for about 3 weeks? Look how much bigger this one is than the one in my front yard! I cover them all with blankets, tarps, or towels when it's supposed to get down around freezing. Don't want the poor things to get frostbite now, do we?

It's trying to escape out of the top of the jug. You should have seen the look of surprise on Cheesehead's face when I took him on the garden tour. He was a bit miffed about all of the garbage I had sitting in the garden until he saw the results.

We had a few other people to bring on the garden tour too.

"Grandpa" used to love to garden. He's going to be 91 soon and has trouble bending down and isn't as agile as he used to be. He just moved in with MIL and BIL and he's really enjoying it there. I just HAD to show him my garden.

He was feeling upset living at the nursing home for the last several years, but stayed because he and his wife were both there. She passed away several weeks ago and they had him on 24 hour watch. They were afraid he'd run away after his second wife died.

Remember how I was talking about MIL's helping someone as well as herself? He's been happily living with them now for a couple of weeks and they're getting along well. MIL seems happier now that she's got some one to fuss over again too. She's been out of sorts since FIL died almost 2 years ago. I don't remember seeing "grandpa" happier in a long time either. He told us many good stories and enjoyed our house in the woods while they visited for Cheesehead's birthday.

I showed "grandpa" the ancestry work I've been doing too. He was fascinated and wondered how in the world I got all of his relatives' names. I printed him a copy of his grandson's five year chart to take home with him. (His looked woefully pitiful) Hopefully someday I'll be able to get a bit farther back for them too, but it will take more time and a bit more information gathering.

Looks like I've got another busy summer ahead of me. Sorry if it seems I'm slighting anyone by not visiting much, it's not that I don't want to catch up and chat with you. Sometimes it feels like I'm meeting myself coming and going. I miss our chats and silliness. I'm sure I'll manage to fit some of that into the rest of my schedule sometime....

Thank you for stopping by to chat with me. Please leave me a message, I'd love to hear your thoughts!

Cindy

Food For Thought

2009-06-02T21:21:00.003-05:00

I got a very thought provoking email from my mom today. Read it and tell me what you think. Before you ask, no I have not investigated to see if this is a true story or not. It's more the point of the story than weather or not all elements are fact or fiction.

Catching Wild Pigs

A chemistry professor in a large college had some exchange students in the class. One day while the class was in the lab the Professor noticed one young man (exchange student) who kept rubbing his back, and stretching as if his back hurt.

The professor asked the young man what was the matter. The student told him he had a bullet lodged in his back. He had been shot while fighting communists in his native country who were trying to overthrow his country's government and install a new communist government.

In the midst of his story he looked at the professor and asked a strange question. He asked, 'Do you know how to catch wild pigs?'

The professor thought it was a joke and asked for the punch line. The young man said this was no joke. 'You catch wild pigs by finding a suitable place in the woods and putting corn on the ground. The pigs find it and begin to come every day to eat the free corn. When they are used to coming every day, you put a fence down one side of the place where they are used to coming. When they get used to the fence, they begin to eat the corn again and you put up another side of the fence. They get used to that and start to eat again. You continue until you have all four sides of the fence up with a gate in The last side. The pigs, who are used to the free corn, start to come through the gate to eat, you slam the gate on them and catch the whole herd.

Suddenly the wild pigs have lost their freedom. They run around and around inside the fence, but they are caught. Soon=2 0they go back to eating the free corn. They are so used to it that they have forgotten how to forage in the woods for themselves, so they accept their captivity.

The young man then told the professor that is exactly what he sees happening to America . The government keeps pushing us toward socialism and keeps spreading the free corn out in the form of programs such as supplemental income, tax credit for unearned income, tobacco subsidies, dairy subsidies, payments not to plant crops (CRP), welfare, medicine, drugs, etc. While we continually lose our freedoms -- just a little at a time.

One should always remember: There is no such thing as a free lunch! Also, a politician will never provide a service for you cheaper than you can do it yourself.

Also, if you see that all of this wonderful government 'help' is a problem confronting the future of democracy in America , you might want to send this on to your friends. If you think the free ride is essential to your way of life then you will probably delete this email, but God help you when the gate slams shut!

Keep your eyes on the newly elected politicians who are about to slam the gate on America ...

"A government big enough to give you everything you want, is big enough to take away everything you have" -Thomas Jefferson

Thank you for stopping by to chat with me. Please leave me a message, I'd love to hear your thoughts!

Cindy

Please Read My Other Blog

2009-05-25T08:50:00.003-05:00

I don't usually plug my other blog, but I really think I need to today. In it I write about spiritual matters that may make some of my readers a bit uncomfortable.

This weekend we found out some information that concerns us all greatly. I wrote a story about it on my other blog. If you're prone to praying and don't get turned off by spirituality I request that you pop over and read it and pray for my eldest niece and nephew.

The blog is called I Cannot Live on Bread Alone. (Just check my profile if you can't find it in my sidebar blogs.)

I appreciate any additional prayers they can get. Their court date is supposed to be this Thursday. I forgot to mention this on my other blog, but my sister is acting as her own lawyer and can't afford to physically go to MN to attend court so will do it over the phone. She needs a whole lot of help! Thanks.

Thank you for stopping by to chat with me. Please leave me a message, I'd love to hear your thoughts!

Cindy

Planning Our Deck Garden

2009-05-20T21:33:00.001-05:00

If you know me at all you'd have to know that Cheesehead's building of a deck is inspiring me to plan yet another garden. When I told him of my plans I got the typical eye roll. It will be a while before my plans come to fruition since the deck is still not finished, but I'm having fun making plans. Let me know what you think!

Our deck is rather oddly shaped. It was originally going to be 12x20 and all materials were purchased for it. Since Cheesehead mentioned a change in plans to a smaller 12x10 size, I grabbed two of his 12 foot boards for my veggie garden. He took my two extra 8 foot boards and made an 8x10 extension "for the grill". Yeah....

I have decided to surround the deck with curved lines with wood mulched beds. (Hopefully I'll be able to make some free mulch out of all of the dead brush I've accumulated.)

I think it would be wonderful to be able to sit at my table and smell the wonderful fragrances of my plants. I have already added 3 fruit trees (apple, peach, and pear). I would also like to add peonies (which I will divide from existing plantings after they've bloomed), roses (I bought last year and they died so I will put the replacements here), and maybe a compact lilac bush as well as some soon to be divided creeping phlox. Herbs are also on my list, but I have yet to plan the exact areas and layout. This is assuming I can get some of those darned seeds I bought to grow of course....

Since money is extremely limited (what else is new?) I am thinking of migrating my woodland garden plants to this garden area. I think I'd be able to keep a better eye on them if they're closer to the house anyway. The deer really did a number on the hostas Lisa sent me last summer. When I went to check on them earlier this spring there were no dead leaves to show me where the plants had once been. (Luckily they all seem to be coming back now.) I also have lily of the valley, astilbe, periwinkle, traditional bleeding heart, and lavendar in there. I may be missing something.... Right behind the house has an area that always shaded too, perfect for some of those shade plants.

Cheesehead also wants me to move my arbor garden with the three clematis I brought from Big Lake up near the house into this garden area. I'm not sure if it would be sunny enough there though. How much sun do you think they'll need? It would be a shame if I killed them after they've been through so much!

Thank you for stopping by to chat with me. Please leave me a message, I'd love to hear your thoughts!

Cindy

Veggie Garden Report

2009-05-19T07:47:00.003-05:00

I'm not quite sure what in the world I am doing wrong, but my early seedlings haven't begun to sprout yet. It's been two weeks since I planted them. They should be up by now. The ones I started in the basement had all begun to sprout in just a few days. I wish I hadn't fried them with that silly light. I thought they needed a little light, apparently the one I owned was too strong though....

So, here I am trying to start them outside. I suppose it takes longer when there are no heat mats to aid with the germination process though. (I had got a wonderful deal on two starter sets hubby's store was selling earlier this spring.) I sure hope they sprout soon or they'll be struggling to grow when it gets too hot for them.

I knew I couldn't do my own peppers or tomatoes since my seedlings all got fried to a crisp, so I bought a few 6 packs from hubby's store when they were on sale. They're nestled into the garden too, though I've been told I should have waited to put them into the ground. I've been adding milk jugs as they become available since they like it a bit warmer than we have it just yet. It's an easy project. Cheesehead was happy that most of our recyclables were used for it too, double bonus.

I didn't take any pictures, but it's pretty simple to do. Just cut the bottom off of a gallon milk container and throw the lid away to allow air circulation for the plants. If you're careful to cut the jugs off above the curved part you'll be able to shove them into the soil a bit too. This keeps them from blowing away AND helps keep some nasty bugs away from them. The ones inside their own personal greenhouses seem to be a bit happier than the ones out in the elements. I guess I'll need to drink some more milk.

So far, so good! I just hope the peas, beans, carrots, lettuce, spinach, and arugula start to sprout soon. Maybe they need some milk jugs too.

The potatoes are beginning to form a few leaves too though many have yet to break the soil's surface.

Thank you for stopping by to chat with me. Please leave me a message, I'd love to hear your thoughts!

Cindy

May 2009 Garden Bloggers Bloom Day

2009-05-14T20:07:00.006-05:00

Blooms, FINALLY! I've been looking forward to this day all winter long. Before I get too far into my post though, I'd like to take a moment to thank Carol of May Dreams Gardens for hosting Garden Bloggers Bloom Day on the 15th of each month. Seeing all of those wonderful colors in the bleak whiteness of a VERY long winter helps make it more bearable.

Now, off for the tour.

I don't have tons of flowers or anything, but I do have a few perennials and bulbs that have just begun to bloom in the last several days. Thanks to lots of rain and some wonderful warm weather, things have really started to spring to life in the last few days.

The tulip bulbs that didn't get gobbled up are showing me a cheery yellow color. I never knew the crazy critters ate the leaves of tulips, it's just plain crazy. Most of them have at least been snacked on.

My candy stripe creeping phlox is beginning to bloom. I think I will divide this huge clump into several plants in a new garden I want to plant in my back yard. I just love bi-color blooms.

My fern leafed bleeding hearts have begun blooming too. Somehow I thought that the traditional bleeding hearts started to bloom first, but apparently I was wrong. It's not the first time, and I'm sure it won't be the last!

I like these because I think the foliage is more interesting than the others.

These garlic bulbs that had just barely begun to sprout and the nasty chipmunks (or squirrels, I don't think we decided) had eaten? Some of them escaped the smorgasbord and sprang into these plants. They're coming up everywhere. Hooray.

Let's not forget the annuals. The poor things have been hauled around so much that some of their hangers have started to break. Maybe I jumped the gun buying all of these beauties already. The 6 packs were only $1.29 each plus an additional 10% off with hubby's discount.

I think having them sit beside the snow blower is a nice touch, don't you? At least I haven't needed it this May!

I know they look pretty sparse right now, but they'll fill in later. I don't have a ton of money to make them look like those $20 baskets in the garden centers, but hopefully they will soon. I've been working hard on my patience over the long winter so I'm sure waiting a bit longer for thick, lush hanging baskets won't kill me.

Several of my containers are not mobile, so they don't get to go on parade like all of the others. I have to tuck them in instead. I have a lot of terry towels that have been retired from the bathing service. They have a much more important job to perform right now.

We have a frost/freeze warning for tonight so I got out before it got too cool outside to trap in some warmth. This is just one of my plants nestled in for the night.

I brought out my canvas painting tarp to cover the seedlings in the veggie garden. Yes, I know I started the tomatoes, cucumbers, and peppers too early but I'm sure everything will work out great.

I hope I get going early enough to get everything uncovered before I go to work for the fourth day in a row. They need some sun. It's been a crazy week! I hope to break out and visit you all again soon. Wish me luck at the Junior High!

Thank you for stopping by to chat with me. Please leave me a message, I'd love to hear your thoughts!

Cindy

Waste Not, Want Not

2009-05-12T07:00:00.000-05:00

With these more difficult economic times, it is making some us us reflect on our past behaviors. Things that annoyed us, we find uses for and maybe have even come to like, use and depend on. Things we may have once thrown away become valuable decor. Take a look at some of the things I've been working on lately.

Let's first think about rocks. I'm sure we all have plenty of them, they can be dug up from just about any corner of any . Usually they're piled in a corner of the yard once we run out of uses for them. I've been known to throw a few into the woods around here. I hated digging these things up in my yard and I didn't knew what to do with them. Sure I had a couple of uses last year that I shared with you such as filling in the bottom portion of a raised bed, edging a garden, and filling in the window wells so sand would stop splashing onto my basement windows, but then the ideas ran out.

Today, I found some more uses for them.

They make great weights for the bottoms of flower pots when you don't have enough soil to fill a whole pot. Who ever said the whole pot needs to be filled with soil anyway? Some pots are quite large. Why not fill the part that no roots will grow into with those extra rocks? They'll also help keep the plant from drowning in too much standing water. They promote good drainage in those pots.

They also keep out mulch in place around our plants. These plants need plenty of TLC while they become established. Sure, just mulching them will probably work just as well... Unless you live here with oblivious children playing in the yard or people who don't watch what they're mowing down. They serve as great garden markers to call attention to sticks that may otherwise be destroyed.

Did you run out of mulch? Rocks can help shade the soil, keep it moist, and prevent weeds too. They work in containers as well as gardens.

Do you need splash blocks? Why waste your money on those store bought ones? Just arrange as many rocks as you need at the end of your downspouts to divert the water.

Let's not forget about the soil we used in our containers last year. Cheesehead used to throw the containers, soil, and all out every year. How wasteful was that? If your plants were not diseased the soil can be used again, but it may need some rejuvenation.

I dumped all of my hanging baskets out into my wheel barrow, broke up the clumps, and added some leaves, compost, perlite, and spaghnum to the mix and refilled the baskets. Not only did I avoid buying $10 hanging baskets but look at all of the stuff I kept out of the landfill! I'll show you my filled baskets on bloom day.

Memorial day is coming soon.

What do you do with your cemetery flowers from last year that have faded in the sun? Why not repurpose them?

I placed some of the stryofoam over the rocks in the clay pot I showed you earlier, cut stems from various faded cemetery flowers, and rearranged them into a plant to place in my wishing well. After all of the flowers were in place, I weighed down the styrofoam with more rocks.

I seemed to forget to water that a bit too often. With the roof on it I can't count on rain to keep it watered either! I don't need to remember to water fake flowers.

Sprouted potatoes? Don't throw them out. I was thinking about placing mine into my compost pile, but I decided to see if they'd give us some potatoes to eat instead. Mine were rather large potatoes, so I cut them into smaller pieces. You should let them cure prior to planting to help prevent disease.

Look what's popping up already. Looks like we should be getting some of our very own potatoes soon!

Cardboard can be used in places other than lasagna gardens too. I cut pieces to place into some of my containers to help the plants retain a bit more moisture. They dry out very fast in the summer. It is my hope that this will help them have a happier home.

Broken clay pots? One of those pieces will make a nice toad house I think. The rest...
can be broken down further and help keep the roots of the cardboard lined planters dry and happy.

The bluebirds really did a number on my coco lined basket. There were a few places that were getting rather thin. Cheesehead wanted to throw it away and buy a new liner. Not me!

I made those thin spot into holes where more plants could round out the fullness of the planter. I tore up some leaves and placed them around the holes I cut to help the soil retain some moisture that might try to evaporate out of those holes.

What about all of those pesky pine needles?

Why not use them to mulch your acid loving blueberries? The sand looses moistures pretty fast so the pine needles also make a wonderful mulch for that blueberry patch. Maybe I'll add some rocks later....

Lots of lumber but no place to burn it?

Then cut them into thinner pieces and make them ready to be used as stepping stones for your garden. I haven't had the time to get them dug in yet. So many projects, so little time! I'd better get back outside and get back to work.

Thank you for stopping by to chat with me. Please leave me a message, I'd love to hear your thoughts!

Cindy

The Best Mother's Day Gifts Don't Cost A Thing

2009-05-11T16:37:00.000-05:00

Mother's Day is such a wonderful day for me. I enjoy it tremendously. In fact, I'd have to say that it's my favorite non-Christian holiday. Not because of the expensive gifts some people give, the dinners at fancy dinner establishments, $5 greeting cards covered with glitter, or the gourmet chocolate candies. (Don't get me wrong, I wouldn't turn my nose up at those things.) I enjoy it for the simple pleasures in life.

It is the one day of the year when I know I will not get a headache from my children's incessant arguing that normally seems to last 24/7. There is peace and quite in my house. They both played on the same side in our 2 on 1 tennis match today and I didn't hear one complaint about how the other child missed the ball!

There is only one day a year that the children will jump up and do whatever I ask them to do the first time. No "bad" hearing, ignoring, or outright disobeying occurs on Mother's Day. I speak and they obey, no questions asked. They were even ready for church and outside waiting for me at the appointed time without one single reminder! That NEVER happens any other day of the year.

They do things they wouldn't normally do like prepare meals and make my bed without me even requesting it of them. Thank you Peanut, I enjoyed my peanut butter toast for breakfast. Son plans on making dinner tonight. They both decided to fold the laundry and clean up after meals too. I've got the best kids in the world!

Let's not forget the thoughtful gifts and cards they make. It's not the expense of the gift that really matters, it's the simple thought of them making something with their own precious hands just for my pleasure and delight.

Days like these are heavenly, aren't they?

Thank you for stopping by to chat with me. Please leave me a message, I'd love to hear your thoughts!

Cindy

Stamp Out Hunger

2009-05-08T16:34:00.004-05:00

I just remembered that tomorrow is Stamp Out Hunger Day. You may have forgotten too, so here's your reminder! It's a rather new phenomenon that our wonderful US postal carriers participate in one day per year. You may want to check to see if your local post office participates.

If you don't know what it is, I'd be happy to tell you about it.

We can leave a bag of non-perishable food items by our mailbox before our usual delivery occurs tomorrow morning. I like plastic to use bags for this purpose because it helps to protect the contents inside from the elements.

When the mail is delivered, your postal carrier will pick up the bag(s) of food and the post office will bring the bags of food to your local food shelf.

It's a great way to help keep the food shelves supplied because many people seem to forget about sending food or money to the food shelves when there isn't a big local food drive of some sort going on. I have heard that the utilization of food shelves is far higher now than it has been in past years. I am sure that this economic downturn is a major cause of this need.

I will donate some of our pantry staples tomorrow since we will soon have an abundance of fruits and vegetables to feed my kids from our wonderful new veggie garden. I don't plan on feeding my family much prepackaged food soon anyway if I can talk Cheesehead into following this whole Maker's Diet that I've been reading about. God will provide us with what we need just as he does the chipmunks, rabbits, birds, bears, deer, and squirrels.

It's amazing how many people forget that simple things like soap, ketchup, noodles, bbq sauce, and baked beans don't need to come from cans, boxes, or jars. I used to be one of those people. I'm glad I'm not anymore. Here's hoping that I find enough time to take care of my family, myself, AND my plants throughout this season as well as trying to make healthier versions of commercial products for my family. I'm going to have my hands full, aren't I?

Thank you for stopping by to chat with me. Please leave me a message, I'd love to hear your thoughts!

Cindy

Who's Been Hanging Out in Our Yard Now?

2009-05-06T18:24:00.005-05:00

While I was taking a stroll through the garden a few days ago, I noticed a few things that were out of place. A few other things just brought a smile to my face.

Take, for example, the bird feeders. They had no bird seed in them since I've been too lazy, er busy to fill them. I wonder what they wanted with those empty feeders? This will just give Cheesehead another excuse to ban my bird feeders from our yard. We're pretty sure that only bears would do this to a poor hapless pole. No smile here!

I also like to check on my recent plantings while I'm out in the garden.

I planted some sprouted garlic cloves in several areas of my garden. Cheesehead wanted me to throw them out because apparently he thinks once they've sprouted they can't be eaten. HUH?

Anyway, I planted them wherever I had some open space. They were coming up very nicely until I noticed some large, gaping holes in my mulch. *Scowl* They even left evidence behind, do you see the scraps that were left behind on our stone ledge? I assume it was the chipmunks this time instead of the squirrels that pestered us earlier this season. Can anyone help me to verify that suspicion?

Speaking of sprouts, we also had a bunch of sprouted potatoes in the basement that Cheesehead also wanted to throw away. I planted those too. They were so big that I had to cut them first.

I realized as I was preparing the potatoes for planting that I wasn't voted class klutz for nothing. I managed to slice my finger which bled profusely. I think next time I should ask someone else to use the sharp implements so I don't injure myself again. The potatoes are still under the sand so the critters must be too busy digging up the garlic cloves to notice them.

A week ago I planted the seeds in my garden. I noticed that I have a couple of spinach sprouts out there. Nothing I can really get a decent picture of though as they are still pretty tiny.

A huge smile spread over my face as I saw all of the perennials coming up. There are only a couple that have yet to poke their sleepy heads out of the ground. I hope they come up soon, I'm worried about my beautiful peonies that we transplanted last fall didn't have enough time to establish themselves in their new home.

The rabbits must have enjoyed nibbling on my tulip leaves too. I didn't think animals liked the leaves, wasn't it bulbs they eat? Hmm, I wonder where that picture went. Must be one of the 12 that didn't turn out and ended up deleted.

Thank you for stopping by to chat with me. Please leave me a message, I'd love to hear your thoughts!

Cindy

A Bit Bummed Out

2009-05-04T19:12:00.002-05:00

I've been looking SO forward to trying to meet some of my blogging buddies at the Chicago Spring Fling. I had high hopes and really planned on trying to make it. Chicago isn't so very far away. I may have even been able to arrange meeting my cousin who lives in IL while I was down there and even hoped to meet up with my sister if she didn't have to work.

All of those plans just started flying out the window. I'm just now realizing that I don't have the money to drive down there, eat, and stay over night. Son had to go to the doctor again for more problems with breathing and the bills seem to be piling up higher and higher. All of this even though we finally unloaded that unsellable house from MN.

Oh well. I'll just have to continue my visiting via the web with my blogging cyber buds.

Here's hoping my seeds start sprouting soon. We're expecting rain tomorrow as well as several other times this week so I hope to be sharing a ton of veggies with MIL for all of her kindness and generosity. She's got some plans of her own in the works which I think will benefit her as well as at least one other person. I can't say much about it yet, but I hope to be able to share the news soon.

Thank you for stopping by to chat with me. Please leave me a message, I'd love to hear your thoughts!

Cindy

Building My Accidental Lasagna Garden's Soil

2009-04-28T20:32:00.000-05:00

Upon the well-educated advise of my wonderful blogging pals, I have foraged ahead with my lasagna garden. I started to fill my new veggie bed with inexpensive, good soil and other free amendments found laying around my yard. Not only is this a cheap way to build up dirt for my garden, but it will help to suppress weeds and gives me some organic fertilizer too.

I didn't want my new garden to be any wider than 4 feet wide so the soil wouldn't get compacted when I work in the garden. I can work from the edges and reach the middle without a problem. I was told to make my garden small, a 4x4 area and work my way up from there.

Those of you who know me know that I can never do anything small. It's only 3 times larger than the advised size at 4x12. If all goes well, I will expand next year, adding 2 more raised beds. If you're wondering why I am doing raised beds I have a lot of tree roots in my yard. Along with the fact that my "soil" is pretty much pure sand so amendments need to be added no matter what.

The carrots and potatoes will be kicked out of the garden this year, I hear they do well in sandy soil anyway. I want to save space for the plants that need better soil.

Would you like to see my work?

I raked the area I wanted to place my garden in order to eliminate grasses and other weeds from the garden. This isn't necessary with the lasagna-style garden, but the weeds were easily pulled out of the sand with two swipes of a rake.

In order to suppress weeds, keep in moisture, and attract earthworms to my veggie garden, I added a bottom layer of cardboard. Newspaper is another alternative that can be used. Either of them should be wet ted down before proceeding. I used small buckets to catch the snow that was melting off my roof since it is still cold outside and didn't want to turn the exterior spigots on just yet. Hopefully someday I will be able to get rain barrels.

After wetting the cardboard, I added a layer of pine needles, leaves, and grass clippings. They had begun to decompose in my new compost pile. It smelled wonderfully rich when I was pulling the materials out to put into my garden. I also grabbed several loads of leaves from the woods. Such a sweet, earthy smell, it was like heaven on earth!

After putting in a nice layer of mixed browns and greens, I started to use my reserves of topsoil topped with sphagnum. I didn't have much of either leftover, but it was enough for a thin layer. I also emptied any containers I wasn't planning on using this summer to add to my topsoil layer.

As I was emptying my 2 bags of sphagnum that were both half full, I found a mouse nest in one of them. There were 4 babies in it along with their mom. Cheesehead wanted me to kill them but I refused. MIL thought I was crazy, but I took the bag off into the woods and released the family quite a way from the house. What an ordeal!

Working in small sections, I added a thin layer of sandy soil from my yard onto the soil that I had placed in the bed. It took quite a bit of time to dig up this soil from my yard, especially when I couldn't get to my wheelbarrow to make the job easier. I only did one corner with this sand since I was using our spreader to carry the dug up dirt. It worked okay for a small amount, but I really wouldn't suggest using it for a big job like this. How could the shed be so messy after such a short period of time? I had to take some time off to uncover my garden tools by cleaning out the shed.

After all of that hard work I got my new plants so this project was put on hold for a few days.

On top of the layer of sand I added another fine layer of pine needles, grass clippings, and leaves. Then it rained for several days.

Today I finally got a break from many days of rain, so we got back to work on the garden. After I got back from my second day of full day subbing in a row, I saw a wonderful present was waiting for me in the truck. (YAY!). I needed the garden cart for the surprise Cheesehead brought home for me, so we had to empty out the rocks. Wasn't Peanut helpful? I think she's getting too big for this job anymore.

What was my surprise? A pallet of broken bags of miscellaneous soils, manures, and composts. Hurray! Now I don't have to dig up more dirt. At times like these it's nice that he works at the garden area of his store! He told me it only cost him $12.50. Not bad for so much good soil and stuff, right?

The whole family pitched in this afternoon. Son was more than happy to putter around on Cheesehead's tractor while hauling the dirt. It took much less work than the wheelbarrow would have.

Peanut helped me even out the piles of poured broken bag contents in the garden. Isn't it wonderful? Whew, is my back sore! Tomorrow night it's supposed to rain off and on for a few more days. I'm hoping to get some of the direct sown seeds into the ground tomorrow morning.

Thank you for stopping by to chat with me. Please leave me a message, I'd love to hear your thoughts!

Cindy

One Step Closer

2009-04-26T06:43:00.004-05:00

It is my goal for our home to be as self sufficient as possible. In order to do this, I need more trees. Why? Well, I hate to tell you this, but I don't think pine trees produce enough edible fruit for us to munch on. I DO like the pine straw I get from them though.

These last few days I have been as busy as ever. Doing what? Why planting of course! I really shouldn't have bought so many plants from those dang catalogs, but the sooner I get them planted, the sooner we'll be eating our own home grown food. Right? I'll figure out how to pay for them once the bills from the credit card companies get here. I know, it was a VERY bad idea. I don't use them much anymore except to buy gas (so I don't have to go inside to pay) so it shouldn't take long to get them paid off anyway, I hope.

The kids were excited to help since I bought some of their favorites. We have 2 different kinds of cherry trees, 4 different types of blueberries, 2 kinds of strawberries, 2 kinds of asparagus, 3 kinds of grape vines, as well as Manchurian apricot, paw paw, elderberry, persimmon, cold hardy kiwi, and rhubarb. The raspberries haven't come yet, but that's only two plants worth (BOGOF) so it shouldn't be a big deal.

The packages started flooding into my house the day I began putting the soil amendments into my lasagna veggie garden so that project got put on hold to get all of my lovely plants into the ground. Doesn't it figure? That was good for me though since we were supposed to get several days worth of rain in a row and I needed to work quickly if I wanted to take advantage of God's abundant gifts. I'll finish the veggie beds when it stops raining. (Please keep raining until Monday like it was forecasted!)

I grabbed my spaghnum, manure, mushroom compost, and topsoil from the stash that I bought last year and set out to work post haste. The blueberries didn't get much added to their holes since I have heard that they like sand. We just added some spaghnum and pine needles to the sandy soil we had already, planted the bushes, and mulched them with the abundance of pine straw that was laying in nearby piles. No piles left anymore, it's all either mulch for the lovely blueberry patch or in the bottom of my new veggie garden!

The other plants were treated to my soil amendments to varying degrees. It depends on if the kids were planting them or if I was. I suppose I should have provided them more guidance in this area, but I guess I learned best from my mistakes. I just let them go off and to their own thing with one of the types of cherry trees. I'm hoping that everything takes root and I can show the children some proper ways to care for the trees once they begin growing.

It was a lot of hard work, but we managed to get it all planted without getting rained on. I'll let you know when my little "sticks" (as Cheesehead refers to them) have begun to wake up. He laughed at the size of my plants, but this was the only way to get such a wide variety of plants fit into our yard. Big plants are awfully expensive for a tightwad like me! I sure hope it was worth it.

Looks like I have some arbor building in my future too....

Thank you for stopping by to chat with me. Please leave me a message, I'd love to hear your thoughts!

Cindy

My Accidental Lasagna Garden

2009-04-22T07:54:00.002-05:00

Well, as you can guess I didn't finish my new veggie garden on Monday. I was waiting for it to stop snowing. I got a bit cold with the construction portion of my garden. (That, plus the CNN film crews were there with their cameras trying to film my crazy antics. I think Nola leaked the news to them!)

Thanks to everyone for your advise. I guess great minds think alike. I never knew my "crazy" plan had a name attatched to it already! I decided to research this lasagna gardening idea I was told about. (Sorry, I can't insert my link. Just google it if you want to find out more!)

It snowed again all day yesterday so my garden project got put on hold. I didn't relish digging in stepping stones past a layer of snow. Luckily it was a spring snow, so most of it has already melted, but I was told we got 10 inches of the stuff. What did I do instead? I tore apart my living room and began painting two walls. I suppose I should finish my painting and put the living room back together before I go out, but I don't think I will. Cheesehead will probably explode when he sees I put those plans on hold to finish something else.

I'm planning on going outside after the sun dries out the spots I will be digging my stepping stones into the dirt. Since I am not starting my lasagna garden in the fall, I need some soil to add to the top of the layers so I'll have to do that before finishing my garden. I don't have boots and I don't want my good tennis shoes completely filled with sticky sand. Thankfully sand doesn't take much to get dried out. I'll supplement the sand I dig up with some of my leftover bags of topsoil. Stay tuned, I'll show you how I built up my garden bed once it's completed.

What a great way to celebrate Earth Day, isn't it? I hope you all have a great one!

Thank you for stopping by to chat with me. Please leave me a message, I'd love to hear your thoughts!

Cindy

Is This a Crazy Idea?

2009-04-20T09:20:00.008-05:00

SOS!!! Fast responses desperately sought after! Where's a crazy garden lady supposed to get enough inexpensive good dirt to fill a 4x12 raised bed? Let me tell you how it "grew" into a bigger project than it started out to be....

Saturday was a beautiful day. It was bright, sunny, and clear with temps in the low 70's. We had lots of plans for the weekend, although Cheesehead's plans were different from mine. He wanted a deck and kept interrupting my work to help him with his plan. It was evident from the start he wanted to derail my healthy eating plans for the family.

Somehow I just don't think a vegetable garden is high on his priority list. That could have something to do with the fact that there are only two vegetables he'll willingly eat (but only prepared certain ways). The kids aren't QUITE as picky eating about 5 willingly without complaint. Not a large variety, but I'm hoping to turn their opinions of vegetables around after they sample vegetables fresh from our garden.

Thankfully he invited his brother and mom over or I wouldn't have gotten anything on my list done. He wanted to install a deck behind the house. Our yard is completely slanted so there really is nowhere to put our patio table set. I think a deck would be nice, but I wanted to get my veggie garden put in.

The kids were put in charge of moving the rocks that we had made into a rock garden for Cheesehead last year. Apparently he didn't like it so much. It did get a bit overgrow. I'll use the rocks else where. We had already transplanted the flowers last fall, so all that's really left to move are the rocks, logs from the trees we cut down on Wednesday, and the birdbath.

After a few minutes of picking up rocks, they got bored and wanted to take over my job. They thought it looked more fun to level a portion of the yard, remove perennial weeds, and clear out the brush. Whatever. At least they weren't holed up inside stuck to the video games all day.

Somehow I don't think they did the best job of removing all of the brush.

Friday the kids and I had moved the smaller logs into a pile. Now we just have the large ones to move. I'm thinking about making some of these into some stepping stones for our back yard landscaping project. I thought we could dig a hole in the dirt so the surface of a thinly sliced log is flush with the dirt. Does that sound like a crazy idea? When I mentioned this idea to Cheesehead, he just rolled his eyes at me. He dutifully asked BIL to bring his chainsaw with him anyway though.

After a morning of hard work, the guys were ready to take a break. I figured it wouldn't take much to finish my small raised bed so I agreed we needed a break. My plot was all cleared, leveled, and ready for the lumber! It's desperately in need of some good dirt too. Doesn't that look like fine beach sand over there?

We went for a ride up to the cemetery. (Only a "short" hour and a half from home.) We didn't get home until dark. Plans for finishing our work on Sunday were put on hold for an all day long dousing drizzle. Hooray! We really need the precip. I suppose we all need to take a day off once in a while anyway. I decided I'd finish my garden on Monday.

Look what I woke up to this morning. It's been snowing all day too. No matter, I was determined to finish my project though. Luckily I'm working in the back yard so I wasn't seen by many passers by. They'd probably think I was crazy out there working in the snow to build a raised garden bed. As I worked, I got a brilliant flash of idea. Cheesehead decided that he wasn't going to make his deck as big as he had planned on making it, so I grabbed his two extra 12 foot boards so my garden will be 4x12 instead of 4x8. That'll show him not to help me with my projects. Mwuahhahah!

I came inside to warm up for a while and chat my crazy head off before going out to finish my project. Also to get some MUCH needed advise before I continue my endeavor.

I can't afford enough dirt to fill my new garden and I don't have any finished compost from the relatively new mismanaged compost pile. Here's my "brilliant" idea: Would it be stupid to fill the bottom 2 inches with leaves and pinestraw from my "compost" pile and fill is as much of the top with dirt from last years planters and left over spagnum and shredded leaves?

I need dirt fast before Cheesehead derails my evil healthy eating plans. HELP!!!!

Thank you for stopping by to chat with me. Please leave me a message, I'd love to hear your thoughts!

Cindy

GBBD April 2009

2009-04-15T09:15:00.001-05:00

Before I start, I'd like to say a big thank you Carol of May Dreams Gardens for hosting the monthly garden bloggers bloom day on the 15th of every month. I like to see what's growing around the world. It's especially great when my garden is bloom less. I never realized how long I went without blooms before....

Now you're probably wondering what's blooming in my yard. Come, take a peek!

Umm, nothing. At least there are signs of life though....

The stores just got a scant amount of flowers in the other day but I had no money to buy any. I'll just have to be patient for my current plants to begin growing. There are only two perennials that have started to awaken from their winter slumber. This one is filling in wonderfully, but you could barely see the green of the bleeding heart even in an extreme close up so I left it out.

Well, I guess there is a pussy willow showing off it's fuzziness.

Another month has passed and the snow is finally almost gone. The temps are warming steadily and the yard is now no longer muddy. Hurrah!

Time to start putting in those new vegetable gardens in raised beds. Then there's the herb garden I want to start. Don't forget the back yard landscaping. I hope my plans aren't too overly ambitious. Something tells me that they are....

The tulips are slowly awakening and stretching into the warming sunshine.

Look at the ground near that tulip, do you see more evidence left by the Easter bunny? Or is that from the naughty bunny that lives under my shed?

Some of the buds are swelling a little. Usually they're a bit more full right now, but we're in a severe drought. Maybe I shouldn't have wished away all of that extra snow that was threatening us earlier this spring.

I sure hope it rains soon.

I'm a bit confused about the temperature.

This thermometer says it's about 70, but my other one seems to disagree...

it says the temp is about 40. Do either of them work?

At least my body can tell me it's warm enough not to have to wear a jacket. The flies were a buzz in the warm afternoon of sunshine. It seemed like the yard was alive with swarms of flies. I guess that means the toads should be fat and happy this year. A couple of them landed on one of the wooden tulips offering a wonderful photo op.

Thank you for stopping by to chat with me. Please leave me a message, I'd love to hear your thoughts!

Cindy

AAADD, Know The Symptoms

2009-04-14T06:00:00.001-05:00

Thank goodness there's a name for this disorder.
Somehow I feel better, even though I have it!!Yes, I have it ! ! ! ! !

Recently, I was diagnosed with A.A.A.D.D.. -
Age Activated Attention Deficit Disorder.

This is how it manifests:

I decide to water my garden. As I turn on the hose in the driveway,
I look over at my car and decide it needs washing.

As I start toward the garage,
I notice mail on the porch table that I brought up from the mail box earlier.

I decide to go through the mail before I wash the car.

I lay my car keys on the table, put the junk mail in the garbage can under the table, and notice that the can is full.

So, I decide to put the bills back on the table and take out the garbage first.

But then I think, since I'm going to be near the mailbox when I take out the garbage anyway, I may as well pay the bills first.

I take my check book off the table,and see that the re is only one check left.

My extra checks are in my desk in the study, so I go inside the house to my desk where I find the can of soda I'd been drinking.

I'm going to look for my checks, but first I need to push the soda aside so that I don't accidentally knock it over.

The soda is getting warm, and I decide to put it in the refrigerator to keep it cold.

As I head toward the kitchen with the soda, a vase of flowers on the counter catches my eye - they need water.

I put the soda on the counter and discover my reading glasses that I've been searching for all morning..

I decide I better put the m back on my desk, but first I'm going to water the flowers.

I set the glasses back down on the counter, fill a container with water and suddenly spot the TV remote. Someone left it on the kitchen table.

I realize that tonight when we go to watch TV, I'll be looking for the remote, but I won't remember that it's on the kitchen table, so I decide to put it back in the den where it belongs, but first I'll water the flowers.

I pour some water in the flowers, but quite a bit of it spills on the floor.

So, I set the remote back on the table, get some towels and wipe up the spill.

Then, I head down the hall trying to remember what I was planning to do.

At the end of the day:
The car isn't washed.
The bills aren't paid .
There is a warm can of soda sitting on the counter .
The flowers don't have enough water.
There is still only 1 check in my check book.
I can't find the remote.
I can't find my glasses.
And I don't remember what I did with the car keys.

Then, when I try to figure out why nothing got done today, I'm really baffled because I know I was busy all damn day, and I'm really tired.

I realize this is a serious problem, and I'll try to get some help for it, but first I'll check my e-mail....

Do me a favor.
Forward this message to everyone you know, because I don't remember who I've sent it to.

Don't laugh -- if this isn't you yet, your day is coming.

My cousin sent this to me the other day. ROFLMYBO! I sounds like a dead ringer for what I've got...
P.S. I thought I'd post it on my blog, then I can't forget if I already forwarded it to anyone or not!

Thank you for stopping by to chat with me. Please leave me a message, I'd love to hear your thoughts!

Cindy

Happy Easter

2009-04-12T14:03:00.003-05:00

Guess who stopped by our house last night!

Look, there's even some evidence left behind. EEEWWW. Cadbury's creme eggs are one of my favorite Easter candies. What is your favorite?

WHEW! I can't believe how crazy things have been lately. I want to apologize for not visiting with everyone recently. I have gotten my master bedroom painted and decorated, as well as finally finishing the bathroom. I even got the craft room organized. It doesn't look pretty, but it'll be nice and functional. I hope I'm able to throw some drywall over the studs soon, I don't like the view down there right now.

Then there's all of the pictures I've uploaded onto my computer, the ancestry research, the hat I've crocheted, the researching ways to get son healthier since the doctors can't find anything wrong with him, the seeds I started, and doing the plumbing in our new bathroom. Geez, I'm making myself tired just thinking about it all!

I hope to be by your blogs soon, but the snow's almost melted so I'm sure we'll be installing the vegetable gardens next weekend....

Have a wonderful Easter!

Thank you for stopping by to chat with me. Please leave me a message, I'd love to hear your thoughts!

Cindy

Weird Question

2009-04-04T17:41:00.003-05:00

My mom told me that someone bought the house finally. It's about time, we moved out almost 3 years ago now!

They must have put in the offer right as it went into foreclosure. I'm assuming this since they were already moving in a couple of weekends ago. It was supposed to be "officially" foreclosed on December 16. We never heard anything about it from the bank and had trouble getting the utilities straightened out because the bank refused to notify them and I couldn't just shut everything off because of the cold weather rules. (Yet another mess!)

Anyway... the neighbor told us these people moved in a little while ago.

(Sorry about all of the rambling, but I think that some people are wondering about what happened to our house.) My question is... would it be stupid of me to write the new owners a letter about where to find everything and what some of the stuff is for? (ie fertigation tank, liquid fertilizer, NOT asking Green Lawn for sprinkler system maintenance, etc)

MN house chapter CLOSED!!!! FINALLY! Hurrah! (Though I still may share my former gardens if I can ever get the pictures from the old computer.)

Thank you for stopping by to chat with me. Please leave me a message, I'd love to hear your thoughts!

Cindy