There's no grass here

Hello Victory Garden!

We added over 100 square feet of garden space to our yard and here is the finished project.Jeremy designed the boxes on his own using cedar wood, but here is a tutorial if you want to check out the project for yourself.

We lined the yard with landscape fabric (purchased from Costco!) and had 3.5 yards of 1/4" crushed rock delivered to our house. All of the pathways are composed of this crushed rock and we already road tested it with our bare feet and it doesn't hurt at all to walk on it.

Along with the rock, we had 6 yards of organic composted "power plant" soil mix (organic composted dairy manure, composted yard waste, and top soil) delivered. Local gardeners around here use this soil mix and swear that their tomatoes are are big as cantaloupes and their dahlias are like dinner plates. I'm not planning on using any sort of fertilizer (just a touch or two of compost tea as fertilizer) so I'll let you know how our natural fertilizer works out.

Fred Meyer has all of their seeds at 40-50% off, so the boys and I are taking a small field trip to purchase this year's seeds.

What we plan on planting:

BUSH BEANS -

CUCUMBERS: regular, lemon, and pickling -

SALAD GARDEN: romaine, mixed greens, spinach, and arugula -

SALSA GARDEN: onions, cilantro, mild chile peppers -

BELL PEPPERS: red and yellow -

TOMATOES: Big Boy, Heirloom, yellow bell, Roma, cherry (sweet 100), stupice, and Early Girl (that's 7 tomato plants if you count them!)

ZUCCHINI

EGGPLANT (this year's wild card plant) (every year I plant a wild card plant or some plant that I'm not sure how to grow- last year it was Brussel Sprouts which worked out fine until the aphids got a hold of them and then I lost them all)

*PEAS - sugar snap, shelling

*BROCCOLI

CANTALOUPE

PUMPKINS: mini and regular

That should do it. Don't worry, I'll be posting lots of pictures of the garden. I can't tell you the joy it brings me.

Sick Sick Sick

Some of you have asked why I haven't called or written in the last week.
A two year old with a bad chest cold equals a week of going nowhere and getting nothing done.

Screw turf grass!

What bitter words that come from mine mouth when I speak of the turf grass in our backyard! Geez! I know you want to say, "Keep a lid on it lady," but I cannot anymore. I'm going to say it loud and clear - I HATE GRASS!!! Here's why: 1) it sucks up water and costs me a lot of money to keep it green, 2) you have to fertilize it to keep it green and lovely - I don't like fertilizer, esp. when my children are running around on it, 3) it is a pain to mow, 4) my dogs poop on it rendering it unusable for all members of the family until we get the poop and all the poop smears cleared off the grass, and 6) in the fall and winter - it turns into a soggy, murky mess that I don't enjoy looking at and my dogs won't walk on which means they walk on the side PLANTING BEDS which means more dirty paws and plant trampling. Blah! blah! blah!

Now if I had acres (okay, even ONE acre) of backyard - I may keep the grass because then it would be worth it to maintain. But I have a teeny tiny runway strip of grass in my teeny tiny backyard that really doesn't lend itself for boy playing.

SO WHAT DID WE DO??

Remember when we painstakingly leveled and planted NEW GRASS last year at this time? Yeah, well that grass looks like crap. It's uneven, the dogs have pooped on it for a full year, and it is unpleasant to step on.

So we went to the drawing board.....

And decided to rip that grass up - make SIX new planting beds - and reinvent our backyard to be a huge wonderful nice VICTORY garden!! (More victory garden info) (check out the links for more info on victory gardens if you feel compelled. In short, a victory garden is a wartime concept where people grow their food supply in their backyards because food supplies are limited. I do it for the cheap organic food because I want organic but my budget can't afford it)

Folks - I basically quadrupled my veggie garden capabilities.

Jer went to the lumber store and purchased cedar for making raised beds. The project cost about $350 and just one afternoon of my man's hard labor.

Say goodbye to the grass in the backyard and hello to tomatoes, peppers, onions, zucchini, beans, broccoli, herbs, a huge salad and salsa garden, and much more! Stay tuned for finished pictures.

I am a fan

Hardwood floors are simply the best bestest best thing ever for my family. They are a new living requirement for me in all future habitats.

I'm a-nesting

Well my friends - I'm a-nesting. I'm 25 weeks pregnant with new fabulous hardwood floors and I'm ready to start feathering this nest. Please allow me to finish up a few painting projects before I post pictures of our beautiful and wonderful new floors. (May I just say this - every mother of three boys and two large dogs NEEDS hardwood floors!)

I just ordered these rugs from Overstock.com. Probably will go in office.
Now moving on to the new baby and Chase's room. They have to share and it is currently a navy blue, red, and denim blue room. Over the weekend I got instant inspiration from this sock combination I saw on old navy.

Why not make the girl part of the room navy, hot pink, and white and make the boy part of the room kelly green, navy, white and grey? Win. Win.

I got a bunch of inspiration from a good design friend (Hi Jamie!) and I really want paper lanterns hanging over the crib. Check out this site for every single color and shape of lanterns you could ever want or need.

I was looking on Etsy for some original artwork and saw these amazing prints from this artist.
Good way to incorporate pink, navy blue, white, green, and all the colors in between.

Here's my wild card idea. I'm thinking about buying a roll of really dramatic wallpaper (look at above samples) and putting it on the wall and then framing it out with white molding so it is like an over sized piece of artwork - it would add that pop of pink (and of course I would find a cool green wallpaper sample for Chase's side of the room).

Anyway, that is what I'm working on for now. I'm currently sanding out our coffee table, kitchen table, and kitchen island to match the black columns in the front part of my house.

Lots of nesting going on. Too bad I don't have a really good quality camera to take really great pictures of all my completed projects. My old point and shoot with the bad flash will just have to do.

Vomitous Deshazer(s) Part Two

Jackson was home sick with an upset tummy Tuesday.
Blake just started throwing up yesterday (Wednesday).
Now my tummy is cramping up.

The Universe must think I need a good strong healthy dose of Karma.

Well at least my floors look good and can handle accidents on them now.

Let the Demo Begin!

We recently received all the settlement money from our insurance company to compensate for the damages from our kitchen fire and flood. After much thought and research, we decided to go ahead and not only replace the damaged kitchen flooring, but replace the flooring in the family, office, and hallways. Lucky for us Costco has boxes of wood flooring on sale right now and saved us about $300. We shopped around for contractors and found a dad/son team that not only bid us a great rate, but included prep work and finish work in their bid. They would have to charge us for demo, so we decided to put our older boys to work and have them demo the floors.
Tune in soon for the finished floors!

Vomitous Deshazer and the Universe

I just can't help but laugh at the Universe and all the Karma that runs through it.

A few days ago I was changing the sheets on Chase's crib and I had this random thought that went something like, "Huh - interesting enough - I don't think I've ever had to change throw up sheets for Chase. I'm sure Jackson and Blake had each thrown up in their cribs by two years old - that's really funny that Chase has never thrown up in his bed. Wow. Lucky us."
And then I went about my day.

24 hours later Chase began to spew vomit beginning at 2am and still hasn't stopped. The first twelve hours, he was throwing up on his crib every 30-60 minutes. And silly me, I kept changing the bedding and putting him back in thinking he would just get over it and fall back asleep. I think I did five loads of laundry that NIGHT.

And just for extra credit, last night he blew chunks again in his crib after he had NOT thrown up for 8 hours. I guess the Universe thought I needed one last push.

Let my warning be heard - be careful what you put out there.

A new song to sing to your kids at home

Here's my belly today (at 24 weeks)
My wonderfully creative son decided to make up a new song for me in my everblooming pregnant condition.

It goes something like this:

(tune of BINGO)

There is a girl who had a baby and PREGO is her name-O

P-R-E-G-O, P-R-E-G-O

And Prego is her Name-O

How sensitive my boy is! And what a lucky mom that I get a song about me. Yes, my nickname is PREGO and I think he has even written stories about me in school. His teacher asked me who Prego is.

Okay - I'll admit it. I'm a bit of a hypochondriac. Add an unborn fetus into the mix and I go into overdrive. I literally have to keep myself away from any and everything medical so I don't go into crazy worry about the unknown. Stupid stupid me - I accidentally started watching Mystery diagnosis on TLC this afternoon.

Dumb. Dumb. Dumb.

two thousand and ten or twenty ten

Once again, I'm in the minority. I can't wrap my brain around the phrase "twenty ten" in regards to the new year - 2010. I keep saying "two thousand ten". Why don't you check out my side bar and vote on how you say it.

One of my favorite podcasts, "Grammar Girl's quick and dirty tips", had a podcast on just this topic a week or two ago and it seems that the general consensus is twenty ten - just like we used to say "nineteen ninety nine (1999)" before the turn of the century. The official title of the Olympics is the "Twenty Ten Olympics" so I really should get my tongue in gear and switch my pronunciation. But for at least one decade I've used the two thousand prefix to the year so it is hard to switch - i.e., "My son was born in two thousand three" or "We moved in two thousand seven".
Anyone else given thought to this topic?

Oh, and may I just say this? Once upon a time I used to think I had pretty good grammar. I thought my speech reflected an educated person. After listening to Grammar Girl for a month now, I realize I'm woefully naive in my linguistic ability. Oh well, guess I'll have to teach this dog some new tricks.

I love teacher in-service workdays

I love teacher in-service days. It is beyond wonderful and fun that my boys get to spend the day indoors with me. What added joy and bonus that it is super rainy and wet and they are unable to go outside. Icing on the cake that the dogs can't go outside either.
So it is all of us snug as a rug in this house with flooring torn up, the broken dishwasher still sitting in the middle of the kitchen, dogs following mom everywhere she goes because they think they can somehow pester her enough to get outside, mom having a hormonal fueled emotional breakdown, dad is on vacation from work and gets to spend ALL DAY in his pajamas on the couch playing Mass Effect 2.

Boys - I love you home so much during teacher in-service workdays this one that I think I just may keep you home and homeschool you! This has been so much fun today!!

(I hope you catch the dripping sarcasm in this post and know in your heart that I would sooner birth sextuplets and become best friends with Kate Gosselin than homeschool the boys)