Early Indoor Gardening

I am completely aching for spring + warmer weather + spending more time outdoors.

At a trip to the store earlier this month, I discovered that they'd just stocked their vegetable seeds and gardening pots.

They were calling my name.

So I bought some.

I may have started my gardening efforts a bit early for this year.

Oh-well.

I think gardening is great for the soul; a fabulous way to chase away any of those seasonal winter blues.

Winter still may be here, I still may be sporting my nifty gray winter slippers around the house, but gardening has begun in full swing around this neck of the woods.

These plants should be good and ready to hit the outdoor garden spot once we can say good riddens to any signs of frost for the year. Can't wait!

Bonus to starting a garden early: Planting from seed is so much cheaper than planting a garden from the already half grown little plants you can purchase at any of those big box stores. So not only am I chasing away the winter blues, in the long run I'm saving some moola too!

Giant Carrot

This week I've spent a lot of time outside in our garden, clearing it out to get ready for the upcoming winter season.  As I was pulling out the leftover carrot section, I came across this big guy.

I have never seen a carrot this big in all my life!  I just had to snap a quick picture of my little helper holding it up. 

Even after holding this big guy up for only a few seconds she said, "Mom this is really heavy ...can I put it down now?"  Too funny, considering it's just a carrot! Lol!

What a blessing a garden is.  Just clearing ours out this week, blessed us with grocery bags full of green onions, tomatoes, carrots, a few giant zucchini's and a bunch of purple wild flowers.  Plenty for us and plenty to share!

Summer Wildflowers

I hope everyone is enjoying their summer this year.

I know I am.

You can probably tell {by my lack of posts recently}, that I've been blogging less and relaxing more.

I just figure that the summer of 2011 only happens once.

The summer where my children are eight, six, and three will only happen once.

I don't want to forget it. 
I want to live it.

Normally, not getting any projects around the house done or not blogging more regularly would totally bug me. 

But surprisingly {at least for me}, this summer I'm not bugged about it. 

No sir-e bob. 

I've been perfectly happy lately to wake up early, do a quick work out at the gym, take my kiddos to swim lessons, and then fill up the rest of our day with no real particular plan. 

Whether it be playing in the water, eating popsicles, reading books with the kiddos, playing with cousins, playing board games with the family, taking short walks for a local donut run, whatever ...it's summer. 

The one time of year that we don't have to live on a strict schedule.

I've totally enjoyed growing a garden this year too.

We've planted lots of vegetables + cilantro + wildflowers.

I've never planted wildflowers before.

But a friend gave me one of those wildflower seed packets from Target's dollar section, so I planted them in the spring.

I think I'll be planting wildflowers in our garden every spring.

They are beautiful and there is nothing better than decorating your home with a bundle of free flowers from the garden.

How to Make the Most out of Cilantro from the Garden

The only herb I have ever grown in my garden is cilantro.  We love using it to make homemade salsa!

{I'll have to share our recipe with you another time.}

Last summer, I showed you here how I preserve my cilantro so that it lasts us throughout the fall/winter months.

This summer, I'm going to share anther use you can get out of home grown cilantro, besides cooking with it. 

After the cilantro gets chopped off with some scissors a few times {to use for cooking/preserving, etc.} it will get a little over grown and it will start to flower.  You can use it's little white flowers to make cute little flower arrangements!!!  {The smell can be a little intoxicating if you get too close, but it looks so pretty!}

I found the medium sized round vase {shown above} at the dollar tree today.  And can you believe that I saw school supplies and Halloween decorations galore already being featured there!  Geez Louise!  I'm still trying to enjoy summer here people!

Anyway, ...back to the cilantro flowers, adding a couple sliced lemons to the bottom of the vase gives the whole arrangement some additional summer zest.  I love it!

And I'm still loving summer so I'm going to ignore the fact that the Fall season {which I do honestly love but am not yet ready for} is being pushed on us by retailers so soon.

Happy Summer my dear readers!

Fifty Percent Off Summer Bulbs

Just FYI:

If you're interested in planting some summer blooming bulbs in your yard this year, go check out Lowe's.

When I was shopping at my local Lowe's a few days ago,

almost all of their bulbs were fifty percent off.

They had a pretty big variety of bulbs too.

I probably grabbed more than I really need, but they were such a good deal!

I can't wait to see all the color that will pop up in my yard in a few months!!!

Harvesting Memories in the Garden

School doesn't start until early tomorrow morning for us.

So today I had a few little extra things around the house I wanted us to get done before the crazy business of school officially begins, {and I lose some of my little helpers}.

One of them was harvesting all of our carrots and thinning out some of our other vegetable plants.

I learned a few things while in the garden this morning.

1. Next year we need to plant WAY less carrots.

2. I need to call my sister to get her yummy carrot cake recipe before all these carrots go bad.

3.  I feel so much love for my family when we're working together...especially in the garden.  It's something about being out in the fresh air, laughing, and talking about all the seed planting and watering that went on before we got to this point of harvesting.

Before this morning, my kids had no idea what harvesting even meant.  LOL!  Now they know what it means and they know that hundreds of years ago, people didn't have it so easy.

They HAD to have a garden!

We garden because it's fun, it's a good skill to learn, it teaches our kids the value of work, we're able to share with our neighbors, and it helps us build a lot of fun memories together as a family.

We also get to find fun squiggley things in the dirt!

.

.

.

Eeew!!!

Reversible Flower Pot

When we moved into our house, the previous owners left a few old dirty flower pots on the back deck.

I was THRILLED because I knew that with a little TLC they could look great.

I don't have a before picture, but this pot used to be dingy white.

I spray painted it with some Walmart $1.00 black gloss spray paint, and added about three bunches of orange flowers from the dollar tree.

Then I used some left over white paint and painted our house numbers on one side and painted "BOO!" on the other side.  I'll turn the flower pot over to the BOO side when it gets a little closer to Halloween.  But for now, the house number side works great for late summer/fall.

:: one side ::

:: other side ::

one old pot :: two great looks

Linked to these lovely blogs: Tidy Mom, The Shabby Nest, It's FUN to craft, Tatertots and Jello, C.R.A.F.T.

We grow 'em big & Closet Organization

Before we left for Montana, I had checked on our garden to see how everything was coming along.  We had quite a few zucchini that were about eight inches long.  {still a little small}  So I thought that after we got back from our trip {we were gone four days}, they would be the perfect size to start picking and I would get cracking on cutting and grating them to freeze for later use. 

Hahahahaha!!!  

{They look soooo much bigger in real life!}

Instead I was greeted with zucchinis so big you could probably literally club someone over the head with them.  {I didn't actually say that out loud when I saw them because I didn't want to give my five year old or two year old any ideas.  LOL!} 

After spending a few hours preparing as much of the zucchini as I could to freeze, my freezer just couldn't take any more.  So I split the rest between good neighbors and friends...who probably thought what the heck are you trying to feed us?!?

.

.

Now onto the next topic of the day {it probably needed it's own post but I'm too lazy to do that}.

 Please hold onto your chairs!!! 

I have to confess that I have a VERY messy closet in my upstairs hallway.

{Pardon the unfinished molding...we're still in the process of getting to that.}

It mostly stores games and craft stuff but a lot of other things have found their way in there too...like when company is coming over and you're rushing to clean the house so to quickly clean up clutter you shove random objects in a closet...anyone else do that too???

Well I'm not going to do that anymore.  I have a mother who is very good at organizing everything!  So much so that when I was younger I got really sick of hearing that word!...organize.

But there's a reason for it!!!  You know where everything is!  When someone in your household is looking for something{...and let's face it, if you're the mom in the house you're expected to know where every little thing is}, you can find it!

That's such a good feeling!

So starting this last weekend I got to work.  I'm far from done but I'll have an "after" picture for you by the end of this week, if not sooner.

Here's a little hint as to how I'm going to keep everything in it's own little organized space:

...and guess what?  I'm going to organize the whole thing without spending a dime!

Wish me luck!!!

Freezing Herbs

My garden this year is thriving and I am beyond thrilled!

So far we've harvested some zucchini, sugar snap peas, and cilantro.

The thing with cilantro, or any herb for that matter, is that if you planted a lot of it, it's hard to use it all at once while it's fresh.

So I freeze it!

In case you've never done this before, here's how:

After the cilantro is picked and thoroughly washed, chop it into small pieces.

Then put it into ice cube trays and fill the trays with water.

{Approx. 1 tbs per cube...but I didn't measure it exactly.}

Put the ice cube trays in the freezer for about one day and then break the frozen cubes of cilantro out of the tray and put them in a Ziploc freezer bag.

Now when I want to make salsa or some other yummy dish later in the year, all I have to do is defrost the cubes.

This little bit of work and planning makes cooking in the future so much easier!