2014 Garden Update: First Seedlings

Happy Birthday Cap: 11 months and counting

2014 Summer Outings: Albany Tulip Festival

Happy Birthday! Cap at 10 months

Garden 2014: Fencing 101

I know, I know, absentee bloggers aren't really the right way to work a blog but I was so stressed with having to accomplish a post all of the time that I had to cut somewhere and this was first! Honestly, I figured that if I was stressing about blog posts then it just wasn't worth it, I want this to be a stress-free zone, a place for me to unload (or upload) my life, a way to detox and let some out without overburdening Hubby and freaking out the neighbors! So, no promises that I have returned indefinitely, but I am hoping to restart (again) and stick to it. 

My biggest issue is that I feel like I need a schedule, so I make one post a week, which seems too little so then it becomes three posts a week, which also seems cheap but I can't keep up with five posts a week either. So let's settle on a number here, my obsessive nature demands it. I will post twice weekly, I can manage that through the summer, while the kids are home. In the fall, I might change that, but for now, I can commit to some Momma time spent here. On to what I actually came here to chat about!

I have epic plans for a brand new garden this year. Plans that may or may not actually come to fruition, considering that we had snow not so long ago and this Northeast weather has decided to skip between winter and summer, pretty much skipping spring! We have just now got around to putting in the posts, Hubby says that we have to have all the plants in by May 15 in our zone. We shall see if that happens. We needed a pretty fair sized fence since we live surrounded by woods and we have three dogs. We found a great deal on pressure-treated posts, which, looking now, may be a bit overkill but I suppose, that it is better to be safe than sorry. 

Hubbs had a day off and our two older kids were spending a weekend with their mom, so we had relatively unhindered time to get half of the posts in. Cap fell asleep and took a nap with his grandpa while we dug so that was helpful too. 

This adorable helper had me in teary smiles with how cute he was. Not very helpful but who can say no to sunshine and smiles

Digging went a bit slower since a few of the spots had rocks the size of my hand in them. 

My brother even came out at one point to help me dig one post hole while Cap tested his leg strength

Cap desperately needed to climb into the holes that I made and then use the trowel to pull the dirt back into the hole, just in case it was an accident that it was in a pile next to the hole. 

I am so happy and grateful that I have this beautiful child to help me enjoy the sunshine

Happy Spring Everyone!!!

Bookstore Score

I know that I have gloated about our wonderful secondhand bookstore, but it really is amazing. If you live in the Middletown, NY area. Go there, it is cute, tiny and perfect! I love being able to walk in with pocket change and be able to walk out with entertainment for us and the kids. While this trip was not the bank breaking excursion that we have made before, when we ended up with more than $20 worth of books and not enough bookshelves at home, I was happy with this collection. 

These two were random pick ups that I figured would be read because there was nothing else closer to read but at least one of them has ended up on Grif's bed almost every night. So I guess they aren't too bad. I am also trying to start my collection in preparation for homeschooling. I am hoping that the US does not change too much in the next five - ten years, or the human body for that matter. I am hopeful on that front. (internal scream about planning homeschooling already!)

 

These were other random choices, I can barely turn away from old, hardbound books. If it is before 1950, I pretty much have to say yes, especially at a dollar a piece, I have even found a couple that were pre-1900. The Blue Fairy Book is one that I have on my Kindle (free downloads!) but I wanted a hard copy to be able to read to the kids at some point. They are just a collection of fairy tales, some familiar, some a little odd. The Forgotten Realms book was one that was a pure luck find. I had finished one of RA Salvatore's other books (remember that I am trying to finish the whole collection!) and there was an excerpt in the back for this book called Daughter of the Drow. I did not have this one so I figured that I would keep it in the back of my mind and try to find it. Lo and behold, not a week later we found it on the bottom shelf at the bookstore and I was thrilled.

I am dreading when we move and I have to find another bookstore with such great finds and such great prices. I also need to get my library card for our Thrall Library updated so that we can use that as a rainy day playdate. The library also offers movies, knitting lessons, games on the Wii and lots of other fun things that I really need to get more involved in! 

Happy (belated) New Year: Chinese Year of the Horse

Happy Chinese New Year!!!  I know that I am about two weeks late, but between weather and the fickleness of planning with three kids, we only just got around to actually celebrating the Chinese New Year. Since we only have the two older kids on the weekends (the pros and cons of a blended family!) I try and plan at least one big sit-down meal and some sort of crafty activity to do with them. 

Two weeks ago, we celebrated Chinese New Year, which was at that point a week after the fact but it was awesome. I created a Pinterest board to collect ideas for Chinese food, crafts and decorations that I ended up almost completely ignoring. We are lucky enough to have a relatively diverse neighborhood so we do have a Chinese supermarket in town, so Hubby and I went there to try and find some decorations and food. Oddly enough, they had no little Red envelopes so I was disappointed. We picked up scallion pancakes, chicken dumplings, sweetnsour sauce, soy sauce, almond cookies, jelly candies, wasabi peas, red bean pastries, coconut flavoured cookies, Panda cookies, and some other random bits. I also had meatballs and chicken in the freezer that I ended up using. Weirdly, the meatballs were Italian seasoned which I did not account for when cooking them, but they turned out okay. 

Through Pinterest, I found great instructions for making paper fortune cookies. I was under the impression that no one in our family really liked the taste of fortune cookies, I was mistaken. Note for future parties, fortune cookies are an okay choice.

While Hubby was at work, the kids and I decorated a bit and then I tried to help them through making the fortune cookies. This was one of those stressful momma activities that I did not forecast. I tested out a few to make sure that I knew how to make them, I laid out all the supplies so that we all had our own circle template, glue sticks, pencils and scissors. I thought that this would limit the fights. I was incorrect. We were about two minutes into the project when the baby woke up from his nap so I had to go and get him. In the time that it took me to walk from the kitchen table to the bedroom and back, the two older kids got in a fight over gold shiny paper and ripped one of my scrapbooking templates. This did not set the mood well for me, I took the paper away all together, I still don't know if that was the best option but sometimes I need to wipe the slate and start over. 

The instructions were easy to follow, but our ten year old does not have much patience and when things do not work out immediately, a meltdown is imminent and our eight year old would much rather just do whatever grabs her goat before listening to any instructions. So while I was positive that this craft was in their ballpark, I was a little wrong. It may very well be a child dependent craft so heads up!

This was my template, I was able to get four cookies out of one sheet of 12 x 12 scrapbooking paper. I missed mentioning that to the kids and then just traced their circle into the middle of the paper, thus getting one cookie per sheet. Next time, I may just make them all and have the kids write the fortunes. That was hands down the best part of the entire project. We all wrote our own fortunes, some funny, some mean, some good, some random. Since Hubby wasn't here while we made them, we made him guess who wrote them after we read them outloud.

Reading them outloud and laughing about them all made up for the stress of making them. It was really fun while we were eating to giggle over Hubby guessing incorrectly. The tutorial I found here at Duitang, which is in Chinese but Google will translate if you need but the pictures were plenty to walk me through it. 

I wanted to do other crafts, but sometimes I run into a wall whether the kids are too old or two young for some things. So instead we just ate and laughed about some of the food that was not quite to out palate. Overall, it was successful, we ate tons of food and dinner lasted an hour with us just talking and trying lots of food. Happy Year of the Horse everyone!