Teaching Our Children

Hey guys!  I guess I better post this month since this is a topic I'm super interested in.

What do you do with your child(ren) that you would consider moving them in a forward direction (rather than backward or just not moving).?  Sorry if that was confusing.  Let me explain what I'm trying to say...

When I teach Vidalia how to play her violin or about saying please and thank you when she wants things, I feel like we move in a forward direction.

When I dislike what Vidalia is doing (i.e. pulling my hair) and I tell her to stop or say no without explaining to her why, I feel like we move in a backward direction.

I can't think of anything that I wouldn't consider either moving forward or backward, so forget the not moving.

I feel like when I do small things that make me a better person, they help Vidalia to become a better person as well.  So, what I'm asking, I suppose, is what is it you do that betters your family?

One of my favorite things to do is learn about what other families do, how they function and then evaluate how those same things would or wouldn't work for my family...so if you have a little time, please share with me (in September or next February or anytime).

Oh and p.s. we are officially in Orem now.  Although we will probably move again within a month.  We move way too much.

Off topic...

...well, or completely on topic, I guess... What in the world do stay-at-home-moms DO all day? You guys, I hate that I'm even asking this because it makes me feel useless and stupid, but seriously. I am so bored. I mean, Luke and I have a riot all the time because that's all I have to do, and I love that. I really do. And don't get me wrong, there are plenty of things I could do to "use up" my time, even some useful things. But it's a year into the full-time at home gig and I'm running out of steam for the stuff that I've been doing to "keep busy." (Ugh, I always HATED women saying that, because for my working mom it was like a slap in the face.) I mean, I'm running out of desire to do any more crafts again ever, and I think if I spend another minute trying to perfect the art and science of homemaking that my head is going to implode.

I keep thinking about part-time jobs, but the time away from Luke wouldn't be worth the money to me (it's surprisingly difficult to find work that's less than, say, 10 hours a week that will pay you more than minimum wage--which means that after paying a babysitter, it would cost us more money for me to have a job). I don't think I'm skilled enough to teach piano lessons. I've thrown around the idea of babysitting or nannying, but stuff like that is regulated strangely around here and there's a glut of college students and low-income young women that will take the work for pennies on the dollar.

I'm looking into picking up old hobbies (like piano) and maybe starting up some new ones (like photography). But I feel like I'm just spinning my wheels. I feel like I'm an educated, motivated, ambitious person and it feels like I'm wasting so much precious time that I could spend doing something...I don't know. Meaningful. Not that raising a child isn't meaningful (!), but I guess I just feel like I could be doing more than I am. I've thought about it for hours and hours and talked about it with Scott over & over; he's not ready for another baby just yet, and I bet that boredom is a really, really bad reason to get pregnant anyway. Ha ha.

We're planning on getting a second car soon, so that will expand my horizons exponentially, but I have no idea what to expand said horizons into. We just moved into a new ward (with moving and vacations and everything, last week was our first Sunday there), and on the new-member sheet they have you fill out, I tried to hint as strongly as I could that I was very willing and able to help out a lot in the ward. I doubt that will come to much, though, because it's an enormous ward with about a quadrillion students that constantly come and go, and I don't think we'll escape that category since we're the same age as everyone else.

Man, I'm sorry, I don't mean to complain. I just feel bad...like I'm ungrateful or something. I feel like I should be more content. Maybe I'm just having a hard time downshifting after the craziness of school school school college college work work work, you know? But it's been a year and I still feel...itchy. Brain itchy. Or something. Help?

Family Home Evening

Hey all,

With a topic of "Building Righteous Traditions" for this month, FHE is the first thing that comes to my mind.  I find FHE a little bit awkward with a 1-year-old.  She's at an age where she understands things if they're simple (perhaps she understands more, I guess I wouldn't really know).  It makes for super short lessons (i.e. we should take care of our bodies, let's do push-ups and eat berries) and sometimes completely unrelated activities.

What do you guys do for FHE?

Cheap dinners

So my meal planning usually goes like this:

Sunday night I sit down and pick 4 dinners I'm going to cook the next week. I usually try to pick 2 that I know I can make quickly (like 20 minutes or less), one a little more complicated, and one that I make ahead of time (like in the crock pot). That way I can still make the longer cook time recipes that I love, but I can do it on a night when we're not very busy or when I know Scott will be home with plenty of time to watch Luke while I cook. Having two quick-cook recipes takes a lot of stress off of me at the "magic hour" (5 pm at our house)--you know, the time of day when you've run out of steam and the baby is getting cranky and dad is getting home and everyone's hungry and it seems like there's too much to do.

Maybe 4 dinners a week isn't much to cook, but I always make 6-8 servings (Scott and I are kind of pigs, I guess...we each eat more than one "serving" at dinner, and Luke eats almost a small adult serving if it's something he likes) so we have leftovers. Lunches during the week are leftovers or sandwiches. So 4 nights a week (usually Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, and Sunday) I cook a meal, 1 night is "gecheroni" (get-your-own-ey, meaning clean out the leftovers in the fridge...usually Thursdays because it seems like I get more tired as the week goes on), and 2 nights we plan to eat out (almost always Friday & Saturday, but if, say, Tuesday one of us has just had a crappy day or we've got too many errands to run, then we might eat out then & stay home Saturday night).

I have a Pinterest board of new recipes that I really should try, but it seems like we get into kind of a routine of eating the same comfortable things all the time and I don't really mind. I think these are all dishes that I can make for pretty darn cheap, and most of them take about 20 minutes to half an hour to cook. We usually have the main course plus a veggie (frozen, canned, fresh, whatever) on the side, and a grain on the side if it's not already in the recipe (say, something like rolls).

(Well, drat. I thought I had brought my list out to Utah, but I guess I left it at home. We'll see how much I remember.)

• Tacos
• Quesadillas
• Rice & beans & grilled chicken
• Pasta al forno
• Carbonara
• Spaghetti bolognese
• Stir fry
• Curry
• Tikka masala (I've only ever made it with chicken, but I want to try paneer sometime)
• "Oriental" chicken salad
• BBQ pork sandwiches
• Bratwurst roll-ups
• Hamburgers (well, turkey burgers, since I'm too cheap to buy beef for anything anymore)
• Oven roasted chicken (bone-in) & potatoes
• Chili cheese dogs
• Cabbage patch soup
• Crock pot "roast" (I usually use boneless pork ribs since I can get them cheap & they're mighty tasty)
• Egg & sausage hash (meaning I try to make omelets and they end up scrambled eggs)
• French toast
• BLTs

I think I've left off a few that we do all the time, but that's a good enough list for me for now. Basically my grocery lists look like this:

Meat 

• Ground turkey--1.49 lb (I use half a pound for a meal)
• Ground pork (sausage)--2.29 lb (same story, half a pound at a time)
• Boneless pork ribs--2.49 lb (I usually use about a 3-lb package)
• Bratwurst--2.69 for 5
• Bone-in chicken--0.99 lb (don't use this very often...basically only for roasting)
• Boneless skinless chicken breasts--I can get these on sale for 1.69 lb about 6 times a year; otherwise I use the flash-frozen ones in the big bags that are 2.00 lb. 
• Bacon--2.69 for 12 oz (I use half a package at a time)
• Eggs--man, I don't know...how much are eggs? Not very expensive.

Can you tell our grocery store is awesome?? Most of those prices are pretty killer, although I know you can find similar to that in Utah if you watch sales. I only bothered to list the prices because meat is almost always the most expensive food you buy. Basically I can keep our grocery costs low by refusing to buy meat for more than about $2.75 a lb., which does mean no beef--but I love pork so much that I don't care. Scott misses it a little, but he just orders beefy stuff when we eat out. :-)

Dairy

• Milk
• Butter
• Cheddar cheese (block)
• String cheese
• Cottage cheese
• Yogurt (I usually buy 1 pint a week, alternating plain & vanilla--I use the plain for cooking whenever you'd use sour cream, and it's yummy to eat on its own if you stir in honey)
• Parmesan in a can (once in a while we'll splurge and get the real stuff)

Grains

• Bread (I get 2 loaves a week since Luke & I eat so many sandwiches & toast)
• Penne pasta (our grocery store doesn't carry the whole grain kind, so I try to get that if we're ever in Walmart or whatever)
• Spaghetti (whole grain...it gets kind of gummy if you get the thick noodles, so I buy the angel hair)
• Breakfast cereal (raisin bran, mini wheats, granola, cheerios, and Scott's pick of the week, usually the generic Honey Bunches of Oats)
• Tortillas
• Tortilla chips
• Oatmeal (when we run out, which is like 4 times a year)
• Rice (I like to buy the 25 lb bags at the international foods store--something like $17 for my favorite brand of brown rice, which is a steal)
• Sometimes a box of hamburger helper for crazy/lazy nights
• Frozen crescent rolls
• Triscuits

Fruit & veggies

• Apples
• Bananas
• Blueberries, blackberries, raspberries, some kind of little berry (whatever is cheaper, frozen or fresh)--these are Luke's favorite food in the universe and they go on sale often enough that I try to keep some on hand.
• Oranges--well, whatever citrus is cheapest that week (tangerines, clementines, whatever)
• Strawberries*
• Pears*
• Avocados*
• Kiwi*
• Mangoes*
• Grapes*
• Baking potatoes (yukon golds)
• Roasting potatoes (reds)
• Sweet potatoes
• Onions
• Carrots
• Spinach (bagged)
• Romaine lettuce
• Broccoli (frozen)
• Cauliflower (fresh or frozen)
• Asparagus (frozen)--only because our grocery store carries an awesome generic kind
• Green beans (canned)
• Other canned veg as the mood strikes (beets, corn, whatever)
• Raisins (for Luke)

You know, listed out like that it sure looks like a lot. It doesn't seem like it when we're shopping. And the * ones I pick one or two of only if they're on sale.

Baking goods
Okay, so I am trying very, very hard to be good and quit making dessert so often. I used to just keep a constant stock of things like brown sugar, chocolate chips, powdered sugar, etc., but now I'm trying to get to where I need to make a trip to the grocery store if I'm going to make dessert. Wish me luck!! I do keep flour, white sugar, and canola oil on hand, but I buy those in bulk when they go on sale.

Other stuff
And then misc pantry items like peanut butter, honey, jam, olive oil, ketchup, salsa, soy sauce, etc. as we run out. The ones in that category that we go through the fastest are peanut butter, honey, and olive oil; I love love love love love Costco's olive oil and peanut butter (I'm going to have to figure something else out when our membership expires next month...), and the honey at our grocery store is usually not too expensive.

Snacks
Scott and I each have our weaknesses for snacks that we want but don't need...he always likes to get a bag of chips, and I have to keep otter pops on hand (even in the winter...I stock up in the fall, haha). We try to limit ourselves to only one snacky thing per grocery trip (so per week), though. Most of the time at home we'll snack on stuff like popcorn, tortilla chips with salsa or cottage cheese, fresh fruit, and whatever dessert I've made lately because I have no willpower. I did try making kale chips the other day, and I thought they were awesome. Salty and crispy and yummy. They have a weird aftertaste, though. My family didn't like them. What kinds of snacks do you guys eat?

So that's basically my "pantry" list--stuff that I buy if I've run out, no matter what I'm making that week. And actually, there are a few exceptions (like I get the tikka masala mix at the oriental store, and I get cabbage if I'm going to make soup), but basically all of those dinners only need the pantry list stuff. I don't buy anything else unless I've got a pretty darn good reason to (like I've been asked to make a specific dish for a party or something). I guess all the produce can get expensive, but we don't buy very many things that are pre-processed anymore (the ones I can think of are all of our breakfast cereals, the crescent rolls, and the chips), so I know we save loads of money that way.

I don't really use coupons at all. I tried to use a coupon on the kind of sunscreen I like the other day, but I think I left it at home. The foods I buy (fresh meat, fresh dairy, produce) never really have coupons. Things that aren't food (like cleaning supplies and diapers), I can beat the coupon prices by ordering in bulk on Amazon like Melissa said. I think couponing works really well if you have a lot of pre-packaged foods that you buy, or if you don't care what brand of health/beauty supply things (like shampoo) you buy.

Well, what do you guys do for dinner? What are your stand-by meals that you make all the time? Any grocery store tricks I can steal from you? :-)

Saving Money on Food

Man, I'm so behind the times! We moved like 5 weeks ago and I've been in Utah for like 3 weeks, so I guess I have kind of an excuse. :-)

So groceries...we took a hard look at our budgets back around February because we're really trying to save for a house and we just weren't making much of a dent. Our biggest cost was rent (obviously), so we moved to a smaller, cheaper place (that is also much closer to Scott's work). Our next biggest cost was food. We were spending usually around $600 a month on food (holy CRAP!). My mom fed a family of 7 on that much the whole time I was growing up! So we knew we had to make some changes.

Almost half of our food costs came from eating out. It's almost embarrassing for me to admit that, since when I was a kid, my family only ate out like 10 times a year, if that. My parents kind of ingrained it into me that even going to McDonald's was a very special occasion. Maybe that's a little too tight fisted (and my parents certainly aren't like that anymore), but Scott and I really were spending too much money eating out. It's obviously not healthy, either. It's something that progressed over time--when we were first married, we almost never ate out, but lately we'd gotten up to 3 or 4 times a week, sometimes 5 if we ate out for lunch on Saturday when we were running errands.

The problem was that in the years we've been married, our two favorite things to do together are go to movies and eat out. We love eating out because it feels like a special event, and we love to try new kinds of food and get to know the different parts of our city. Eating out in Salt Lake (when we lived there) was my favorite way to experience all the different cultures there. Eating out is a great way for us to relax too, since we don't have to cook or clean up, and Luke loves to watch all the lights and sounds and people in a busy restaurant--meaning we get to actually talk over dinner. Since we couldn't take Luke to movies and we didn't have access to any babysitters, date night automatically meant eating out.

But we looked at it and decided that we could save a lot of money just by being more conscious of what & when & where we were spending it. We set a goal to eat out just 2 meals a week (instead of 4 or 5!), and set a dollar amount that we could spend on those two meals combined (say, $30). That way, if we wanted to go somewhere a little more expensive one night, we would try something new on the dollar menu at Wendy's (or whatever) the other night--or just stay home. It's hard sticking to the budget and we don't always make it, but choosing to limit how frequently we go out has made a huge difference.

The groceries thing too was actually even easier than I thought. We had been spending about $400 a month just on groceries, which really is ridiculous for two adults and a baby who still breastfeeds some. In literally one week I was able to cut it literally in half--from about $90 a week to about $45--by doing just 3 things: I planned economical meals for the week in advance, I made a grocery list for only the ingredients we didn't already have, and I ONLY bought what was on my list at the store. If we "ran out" or I didn't have something I wanted later in the week, I decided I would just have to wait until next week's shopping or I would have to make do with what I had in the pantry. It wasn't nearly as ascetic as it sounds; Scott actually didn't even notice the change in the kinds of meals or groceries we had in the house. He certainly noticed the difference in our checking account, though! Cleaning out the pantry was a good thing, too...I discovered a couple of boxes of pasta and a cake mix that dated back to before we were married (4 1/2 years ago!). Holy cow. We had moved like 6 times and took those boxes each time because I just wasn't thinking consciously enough about using what we had instead of buying more than we needed.

So basically, we decided to stick to a budget and shop consciously, and it cut our food costs nearly in half (about $600/month to about $350/month). We still go over a little sometimes, but nothing like before. It's very exciting to me to have the extra moolah piling up in our savings! I guess the real lesson here though was that we had gotten pretty irresponsible in our spending up to that point. Oops.

Hmmm...Textiles

Does anybody have a favorite craft?  Mine is making baby shoes.  Like these.  I was amazed at how much easier they are to make then I suspected.  And they're cute.  I think that's why I like making baby shoes.

Feeding my family

Okay, I don't have much to say on this topic I guess.  We don't spend tons on groceries and the best way I've found to save money is to make huge meals and eat leftovers.  It is rare for me to make a meal that we don't have for at least 2 dinners.  One way to do this is to make soup.  I love making a huge pot of soup that lasts for several meals.  My favorites to make are Zuppa Toscana and clam chowder.  Plus, soup is one of the only ways Savannah will eat vegetables :).

May

Hello!  I had a May thought, regarding good food and feeding our families.  What's one thing/recipe/whatever you want that you feed your family all the time because it's simple/stores well/they eat it so well/none of those, but you just love to make it.

One thing we make is chicken stuffed crescent rolls.

I've used this recipe before and often use this recipe for crescent rolls.  Don't make bread, buy the canned crescent rolls things.  I often don't follow a recipe for the stuffing at all.  Some combination of chicken, cream cheese, milk, cream of chicken, peas/broccoli/something not disgusting in a roll that is green, and onion.  Sometimes all those things, sometimes only a couple.  It depends on what's on hand really.  And as far as rolls, I buy zero attention to what kind of flour recipes require and always use whole wheat, since I've stopped buying any other kind (this is recent though, so I really need to make some cookies to make sure they're not disgusting).

Side it with some vegetable and rice and gravy and I think any family will be satisfied and full.

What we've been trying

Feeding my family healthy AND staying on a budget is one of the constant battles in my life as a mother/stay-at-home wife (if I wasn't stay-at-home, I don't think I would feel as responsible).

It seems like the price of groceries has tripled, maybe quadrupled, since we were freshmen (which is when I started noticing prices of food).

I'm open to all and any good ideas people have.  These are some of the things I've been trying to help my budget, my food storage, and the health of my family:

• Limits.  There are some foods we eat that are just expensive.  Cereal for example.  So what we do is at the beginning of each month we'll buy 1 or 2 of the bulk bags of cereal.  When it's gone, it's gone.
• Freezer.  When things that can freeze (such as cheese) are on a good sale, I buy up to $20 worth and put it all in the freezer.
• Cans.  Same as freezer things.  The things we use in cans (tuna, cream of whatever, corn, etc.) I buy a case of when they are an extraordinarily cheap sale.  I don't know what the prices are around you, but if I can find cans for less than 40 cents, it's a good price.
• LDS Cannery Items.  This is one I've been working with a lot and for several reasons.  These items can be so useful and the number 10 cans store for 30 years!  I try to purchase all of our oatmeal from here.  I also have some cans of dry milk.  I use it in recipes that require milk, but not real milk.  If you get it from the cannery it makes things cheaper, if you buy it from the store, it may not be.  Dry milk is super expensive in stores.  I use other cannery stuff too, this is just an example.
• Amazon.  I order some things off of amazon.  Not everything can be shipped, but I've found some items (such as peanut butter) are cheaper when bought online.  If you have a prime membership (free from buying baby things...formula, diapers from them), sign up for subscribe and save, and collect amazon gift cards from websites like swagbucks, you can get some seriously cheap, possibly free (depending on how much searching you do and how often you buy things from amazon) peanut butter.  I buy dishsoap this way too.  (It's not necessarily cheaper than buying the cheapest dish soap, but normal dish soap makes my hands bleed and I use a more expensive kind that does not.  Totally worth it to me to be hand pain free.)
• Make your own stuff.  This won't always save you money, so I think you have to be really realistic about how much something costs you to make it vs. how much it costs you to buy it.  My mother gave me her grain grinder, so I buy wheat from the cannery and grind it (actual whole wheat flower).  I use it to do, well, everything.  I haven't noticed a huge flavor difference.  I actually like it better.  The cannery sells wheat you don't have to grind too.  I usually spend about $20/month on cannery items.  We don't use all those items in a month, so it builds our food storage and it's stuff we use in our regular diet, so if there were a disaster, we wouldn't suddenly switch to a weird diet, ours would stay the same.  (I make bread [still searching for a recipe I'm in love with], tortillas, biscuits, pierogies, and pretty much anything else I feel like.)
• I try to make sure to always have at least one fresh vegetable and/or fruit in the fridge.  I would like it if I always had a few choices, but the end of the month it tends to dwindle.  This one saves zero money, but I've felt like it's a huge benefit to have these things available.  I clean them and put them in bowls so that if we feel like a snack an already prepared something healthy is available upon inspection of the fridge.
• Rice.  We eat a lot of rice.  We eat brown rice.  Is it better for you for real?  I don't know.
• We rarely make a dessert.  There's only three of us here.  When we make a dessert it lasts forever and we all get way to much sugar, so it really has to be a special occasion or we have to have company and even then sometimes we don't have dessert.
• Snacks.  I've come to be really realistic about snacks.  We snack when we feel like it, so I've started making sure something is available to snack on so that we don't eat the food that was intended to be our meals.  If you don't buy super expensive snacks, I think it can save money.  And when you have set things that are snacks already, you have a lot of control over how healthy too.
• Vegetables.  I've been trying really hard to make sure a vegetable accompanies every meal.  Sometimes salad, sometimes a can of corn, sometimes something frozen from a bag, sometimes just potatoes, but anything I consider a vegetable.  I don't know if it's actually helping us be healthier, but it makes me feel better about our eating habits.
• Left-overs.  When we have left-over breakfast, it is our snacks until lunch.  When we have left-over lunch, its our snacks until dinner.  When we have left-over dinner it becomes part of another meal.  This just seems like a good idea to me.  It's what Ryan's cousin does and she knows more about healthy everything than any person I know, so I always assume that the things she does are a good idea.  If you're curious about her this is her blog about being healthy.
• I've been working on figuring out an exact system for grocery shopping so that I'm always getting the same amount of the same things for the same price from the same stores with a dollar amount of flexibility for trying things.  It's a huge work in progress.  Sorry for the long list.  I've been working on this topic for quite a while now.

There are so many DIY things available online for other things to like shampoo or cooking oil or laundry soap, or a rinse aid...blah blah blah.  I've tried the baking powder as shampoo thing.  I hated it.  I love my shampoo and conditioner and will not try it again.  I don't buy cooking oil.  I have a misto can that I exchanged at a fancy department store from our wedding.  I just put some oil in it.  I've also heard of putting some olive oil and water in a bottle and spraying it on things.  Try it if you feel so inclined.  I've never used a rinse aid before, but I've been putting vinegar in my dishwasher (we have extremely hard water here) and it's been helping my dishes.  I'm going to start trying a 1 to 1 vinegar water mixture as an all purpose cleaner and disinfectant (when my stuff runs out).  I'll let you know how that goes, but vinegar really is amazing.  I'm also thinking of starting to make my own laundry soap.  I know of two ladies in my ward that make their own (both of their clothes look nice and they've been doing it for 5 years minimum).  It ends up costing you about $4 to make, what was it, I think 10 gallons of laundry soap.  The price has me sold on trying it.  I've been trying to research it for the sake of my clothe diapers especially.  So far my research is inconclusive, but there are lots of people who use it and write about it online.  All about the same recipe.  I have yet to hear someone who doesn't like it.  I get skeptical of these things, but with the purchase of our van, I'm looking for as many ways as possible to cut money that we can use to pay it off so that we can have a savings again.

That was long.  Sorry.  Ryan was nice not to complain that I was using the computer while he cleaned up dinner though.  :)

Congratulations if you read to here.  I consider it a feat.

March--April--May

I'm going to be lazy and do three months in one post.

For March: Gardening.
Well, I'm still renting and don't have a place to garden but someday I do plan to have a garden! Mostly a flower garden. I love flowers and they seem a little less intimidating than food. I have no idea what food I would grow. I think it'd be fun to have a couple fruit trees though! But definitely a colorful flower garden. :)

For April: Strengthening Personal Testimony
This one's hard, I think. I'm like Cathryn. It's really hard for me to make habits. I was really good at reading my scriptures and saying prayers every day and then it kind of broke when I got to college. I felt weird doing it in front of roommates and that carried into my marriage where I felt weird doing it in front Colin. I don't know where this self consciousness came from. Maybe I have a deep fear that I'd look self-righteous or that I would be doing it "wrong?" No clue.
Through many talks with Colin we decided that I pray daily better when he reminds me and we do it at the same time, so I've been getting a lot better at my own daily, personal prayers. Scripture study is trickier. I feel like it's also so much more important considering I'm in nursery and the only spiritual upliftment (it's a word now) is what I can get out of sacrament between dealing with my two girls. It's not exactly like I don't have the time to do it. Somehow I found the time to read 15 books in the last six weeks. It's just a matter of thinking to do it and then in that moment of thought actually doing it. I haven't gotten there yet. But I'm grateful to read your girls' words as a cross-country encouragement! I look up to you girls and it honestly helps to hear that I'm not alone in struggling to do it. I'll let you know how I do! I'm putting it out there so you can hold me to it. :)

For May--Good Food on a Budget
This is another category where I'm lame and useless. Being the poor med student family that we are we have been on food stamps for a couple years now and I don't remember how to be on a budget as we never spend the whole monthly allotment the government gives us. It's massive. We're actually going to use it to build a food storage soon! So, I'd love to hear what you girls have to say so I can file it away for two years from now when we no longer qualify for food stamps but still don't have a lot of money as we need to pay off loans. haha

Our yard!

This is totally cross posted from my other blog, but I figured I'd put it on here anyway...


When we moved in, our yard was BAD.  It hadn't been taken care of for a long time.  So, we're in the process of fixing it.  It's going to be a few years before our grass is super nice, but we're working on it!  We also want to grow a vegetable garden and we've planted some flowers and trees.  It's an uphill battle because our soil is absurdly rocky, it's clay, and we live in Utah.  But, we're determined to make it work.  Pictures!

Last year's yard

Classy, huh?

Our yard last Saturday

All the stuff we bought.  I thought that our budget of $300 was huge, but apparently it's not anything at all!  We went over that and will go even more over when we buy stuff for our vegetable garden in a few weeks...

Ugly gravel pathway we dragged our garbage cans through

This will be the vegetable garden, but we have to wait until after Mother's Day to make sure our plants don't freeze.

Our little gardener :)

Saturday after a long day of work!  

I actually took these today because it was dark then, but you get the idea :)

This is a Japanese cherry tree (pink flowers in spring)

A different Japanese cherry tree (more pink flowers!)

I planted a bunch of lilies and gladiolas here.  I hope they grow!

The great big shrub is new

That leafy shrub is new 

There will be more bulbs planted in that corner as soon as I get up the energy (kneeling bent over like that for a long time gives me braxton hicks contractions.  Lame!)

We had to beautify the play set too :)

Yay for a pretty path!  Corey measured wrong in his head and we need two more bricks, but we love the way it looks!  We were worried Savannah would be sad because she LOVED playing with the gravel that used to be there, but when she saw it she said, "Oh wow! Lots of beautiful rocks! I will walk on them!"  We were pleasantly surprised :)

So, that's our yard!  It's still a work in progress, but we're pretty excited about it :).  We definitely want to put more flowers in, but we'll see what our budget allows this year...  Oh, and Corey rocks for working his tail off doing most of this stuff (I planted the flowers...), our neighbors rock for letting us use their pointed shovel (we really need one) and giving us their extra mulch, and Bruce rocks for letting us use his tiller and truck.

My Garden

Today I planted my garden (well,  a few pots and some flowers).  Behold the evidence...

Flowers

Cherry Tomato

More Flowers

Strawberry

There are two of them.

I tried planting onions in water and it worked, but was moldy, so now I'm trying dirt.  Two of those pots are still empty, three have seeds.