Bedtime Blessings

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Remember
This?
Dadzoo and I have been married for 10 years and up until 3 weeks ago we had been sleeping in the same bed and on the same mattresses I brought into the marriage. I had bought this bed and mattresses about a year before we got married, and I bought super cheap stuff, it was all I could afford at the time.

Over the past 10 years our bed had served us well, however, the last few years the mattresses have been giving out and the last 6 months have been terrible. Dadzoo and I have been sleeping restless and waking up with sore backs.

I knew we needed to get new mattresses as soon as we could afford it.

About the time the government announced they would be giving us all a “stimulus” check and we had decided that we would be using a small portion of that money to buy new mattresses I got a call from my sister.

She said “do you want this:”

and I said “um, heck yeah!”
She had gotten it from my aunt, who has a beautiful house and had just done some re-decorating. My aunt offered it to my sister and she took it, fully planning on using it. My sister put it into storage (it is a long story) while they were looking to buy a new house and once they bought the house they decided to buy bedroom furniture that matched their style better. so she offered it to me.

So, Dadzoo and I went and bought new mattresses (king size, our old bed was a queen).

Then he borrowed a truck and trailer and went to pick up our new bed…yay!!!!! and along with the bed came a beautiful armour.

We now have a beautiful bedroom set for the cost of gas and new mattresses. The bed pretty much fills our room now and we ended up getting rid of two dressers (both those dressers we had had since we were both little).
Now we sleep like babies (actually I have never understood that phrase, my babies didn’t sleep all that well)….anyway now we sleep like we did before we had babies and we don’t wake up with sore backs.YAY!

 

Now all I need to do is paint the bedroom and save for the bedding that I really want on the bed. Something big and white and fluffy, like a down comforter…mmm….

Lets Take a Walk

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I had have a request by Hadias, she would like to see pictures of my gardens, so happily I will oblige. We all know how much I love my gardens.

This year had been a challenge. I planted a full spring garden, and I was anticipating basket loads of produce, but that didn’t happen….not at all. There have been several factors contributing to my springtime garden failure, none of which I had any control over. First of all we had a very cool spring and things were slow to start, but that in and of itself shouldn’t have stopped me. For a while I had cats using my newly planted garden boxes as their kitty litter boxes (urgh) but I re-planted and covered the boxes with floating row cloth and that kept them out, then we had an invasion of cut worms. About the time my gardens had recovered from the cats and cold weather the worms came out and in about 2 nights they ate everything, my lettuce, spinach, cabbages, carrots and all my peas. I am so thankful that my family wasn’t relying on my gardening efforts to feed them….we would have starved.

Anyway, I am not one to get too discouraged. I have planted my summer garden, it is a little slow in coming, the weather is still a little cool, but the cut worms have gone and the weather man is predicting hot weather in the next few day. So here goes, a little tour of my gardens, flower and vegetable.

This is right out my back door and I am looking to the right, you can see my veggie gardens and the roses/flower gardens up by the house. I have 4 box gardens, one is 4×8 and the others are 4×4. I also have a garden space surrounding the shed/barn/chicken coop.

This is box #1

This box has my potatoes, I planted 32 chunks of potato

This is a little potato (I need to hill this little guy) I am excited to see what happens with these, I have never planted potatoes before.

This is box #2, half of it is in onions and the other have as misc veggies.
There is: three varieties of lettuce, spinach, Broccoli, Bok choi, Basil, Chard, Zinnias and Kolrabi all planted in this little box.

A little baby Bok Choi…

Box#3 it had the two surviving cabbages from the spring planting and two more little sprouting cabbages, the middle strip has carrots (I am hoping to get two crops of carrots) and the back is full of sweet peas. I love sweet peas they smell wonderful, they are my favorite cut flower.


This box is half beets and half beans.

These are little bitty baby beets

I am hoping to get two crops also.

Here is the big main garden, it was a lot bigger then I decided we needed to plop a big shed in it. The shed holds the inside of the chicken coop and the rabbits.
On your left is a big compost pit and a pile of soil I am using to hill my potatoes with.
There are six summer squash planted, three cucumbers and six tomatoes.
I usually have very, very bad luck with tomatoes.

This is a little baby zucchini just coming up.

And here are the tomatoes all caged and ready to go

This picture I am looking back towards the back steps.

That pot in the background is full of garlic plants.

The vegetables are fund and functional

but
I love my flowers
and especially my roses

It is kind of hard to see here, but my rose bushes are full of buds, they will be beautiful this year.
They are a little late, usually by now they are close to blooming,
but like I said before it has been a cool spring.

This is looking left from my back door.
I planted my annual bedding plants about two weeks ago

I am just waiting for a few hot days and they will take off.

This is down the south side of my house. (I have shown you this view before) I have a lot of sun loving perennials. This is also where my raspberries are going to go and my strawberries are also on this side. I have trellises that I plant morning glory (the real kind not the bind weed that is called morning glory around here) on. I also like to plant the big giant sunflowers along the side of the house.

Here are my sunflowers just peeking out.


Some summer perennials that are enjoying the sun


These purple flowers are creeping thyme, I have it planted all over, I really like all the different varieties of thyme and the flowers are lovely


This is the front of the house (sorry the picture is crooked)
This is all planted in summer annuals.

My front porch

And some Columbine that is under the bushes
(I am going to move them to a better place once they stop blooming)


So there you go, my yard, or the parts I was willing to show you anyway!

The Kindness of Friends and Strangers

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Saturday our family had an experience, we experienced kindness.

About 5:00 we were all loaded up in the mini-van on our way to my sisters house for a birthday party barbecue. We were all pretty excited, I love to spend time with my family and the kids wanted to play with their cousins. The weather was great, it was nice and sunny, we had potato salad and birthday gifts in hand, life was good!

About 7 miles down the road the oil light in the van came on. Dadzoo figured we could get the few yard to the gas station (this is the closest gas station to our house…I know, 7 miles to the closest gas station…nuts!) so we rolled in. Our van is old, with many miles in it, (it is paid off, so I am willing to over look its elderly status) it pretty much leaks oil and antifreeze so we just figured we could buy a quart of oil and be on our way. As we slowed to a stop I noticed a little smoke coming our of the hood….oh stink….and when Dadzoo opened the hood there was oil all over everything and dripping down to the ground in a puddle. Oh double stink!

As we sat there looking into the guts of the van, dollar signs, and the worry about our lack of dollars dancing through our minds, a lady came over and offered us the use of her cell phone. “I can’t really help much, but I have my phone if you need it,” she said. We thanked her, but had a cell phone. I called my mom and explained that we wouldn’t be making it to the party and asked her to call my sister, then I called my neighbor, Brandi, asking her for a ride. She didn’t even hesitate and told me she would be right there.

Then we stared into our van again. Then a man came over and offered help, “Do you need to use my cell phone, is there anything I can do?”

“No thank you.” we said “we have a cell phone, but thank you so much for offering.

We then called a tow truck and waited for my neighbor to come.

As we were sitting on the grass waiting another man pulled up and asked if we needed help!

Our neighbor arrived and drove all but Dadzoo and Punk#1 home (there wasn’t enough room) h about half way there I realized that I didn’t have a house key. Sigh….so my dear Brandi turned her car around and we went to pick up the house key from Dadzoo, then she drove me home. She dropped me off at my house and helped me unload all the junk from my van (including the potato salad I had made for 40 people, that I was now going to have to get rid of myself) and took my kids to her house so I could go pick up my two stragglers.

We ended up getting pizza for the two family and had our own little picnic, the evening ended up really nice, despite the fact our family car is broken down.

I was really touched by the kindness that was shown to my family. First by our neighbor and good friend Brandi, I knew I could count on her, she is very giving and kind. She is the first person to stand up and help when help is needed, even when she hadn’t been asked. I have many, many stories about times she had stepped up and helped me. I thank my Father in Heaven for friends like her, and I hope that someday I will be able to repay her. Second, I was surprised how many people stopped to offer their assistance. There was a time about a year ago I was stranded on the side of the road with all my kids and no one stopped to help, so I was happily shocked to have three people stop. There really is goodness and kindness left in this world.

Favorite Things

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One of my favorite kitchen tools is:

Vinegar!

My Favorite Things post for this week has to do with cleaning microwaves.

Now,
I know my sisters, and mom and mother-in-law are going to have a chuckle.

I am not known for my sparkling clean microwave.

In fact,

usually it is pretty dirty….

I mean, I don’t even see that it is dirty

out of sight out of mind…

right?

hey, just keeping it real!

However, this year one of my informal goals has been to keep it clean, and I have done a pretty good job. I try to keep it wiped out and once a week it gets a cleaning along with the rest of the kitchen.

One thing I really can’t stand is scrubbing off cooked on food. It is awkward reaching inside and you can never get it all the way off…sigh…..such a dilemma.

So here is how I solved it.

I fill my 2 cup Pyrex measuring cup all the way full of water and I put it in the microwave for 10 minutes. It will boil after about 5 minutes, but leave it in the whole time, as it boils and steams it naturally softens all the hard yucky stuff and it wipes out with no problems. Very easy!


Now…

How to get rid of that yucky microwave smell, you know the one I am talking about, it smells like yesterday’s left overs and that bag or popcorn you had three days ago. Stinky!

I tried adding some white vinegar to my water, and that cleared out a lot of the smell, but then it left a vinegar smell. (BTW white vinegar is great at getting out smells, it will take vomit and urine smell out of carpet) So then I boiled a couple of drops of lemon essential oil with my water and it worked! Really well.


So now every Friday when I clean my microwave I boil two cups water and a few drop of whatever essential oil catches my attention that day and I have a clean, fresh microwave!