Going for the record

I think this is a record-breaking lack of blogging time for me. Wow, has it really been almost 4 months? Let's just say that I went through the worst blogger fatigue I have ever had. I have no desire whatsoever to talk about anything political, so I am happy to share about our life in 4 months :).

Despite the worst drought I have ever seen, God blessed us with a great garden. We had some crazy zucchini, and lots and lots of peppers, tomatoes, cucumbers, beets, and beans. Evie had playdates and fun playing outside. She and SiSi went outside a lot together. This is what happens when I am not watching them play...

A little FYI...she sat there with the glasses on, just looking around like this was the most normal thing on earth, for about 15 minutes. I could not stop laughing.

Speaking of Miss Evie, she is getting quite talented at picture taking. I think she did a great self portrait. She looks so grown up!

 

My sister Julie and brother-in-law Steve flew in from Texas to visit us, and to surprise my parents for my Dad's 70th birthday. I hadn't seen my sister in 4 years, so there were a lot of tears when we first saw each other! My parents came over for what they thought was a dinner with just the 5 of us. They were so surprised when they saw Julie and Steve, that my Dad seemed dazed the rest of the night :).

 

 

We had such a nice time with Julie and Steve! They stayed a week with us, and we were so sad when they left. They are coming back into town tonight, and staying with us for 2 more weeks! I can't wait!!

 

A highlight of these past 4 months was a date weekend that Jeff surprised me with. We have very rarely gone somewhere without Evie, so it felt super foreign to me at first. We stayed at a really nice motel, then the next day we went to see my favorite comedian, Tim Hawkins! Jeff had gotten special tickets, so we were able to sit 3 rows from the stage. When he first came out on stage, he walked in the crowd and laid down in the laps of the people in front of us! It was pretty insane being that close to the stage, and so fun! 

 

 

There were 3 comedians total, so it was a night full of lots of laughs. It was awesome, and I laughed so hard that my face hurt afterwards!

 

 

Back on the home front. We have a new superhero. Wait! It's a bird! It's a plane! No it's...

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SuperZeke!!

 

 

He is trying to catch a toy in midair in this picture. My crazy cat has a jumping range of about 5 feet. It is insane how high he can jump! He is a little maniac cat. He runs around the house with his tail foofed, and he will run too fast and slide into the wall. He cracks us up on a daily basis. He and Daisy have become fast friends, and sometimes it is downright comical how they are with each other. One minute, they are fighting like crazy, and the next minute it is a kitty lovefest with them licking each other's faces. We find them laying together all the time. As you can tell, Zeke is far bigger than Daisy already. We think he may have some Norwegian Forest Cat in him. The breed gets to be about 20 pounds or more, so we think he is going to be a big guy!

 

We had quite a scare about a month ago, as Daisy got out of the house and was gone for 3 days during very cold nights with rain. Evie was crying hard every day, and we all missed Daisy so much. Zeke kept walking around the house yowling for her. We went to the shelter, and Jeff made flyers to pass out. She ended up showing up on our front porch late one night, and we were praising God for bringing her back safely! It ended up being a blessing in disguise. The night she came home, we kept her with us, and didn't put her and Zeke in the basement like we normally do. The following night, we put them both in the basement again, and in the morning Daisy was gone again. I went out back onto our deck and shook a can of food, and I heard Daisy crying under the deck! Daisy loves to go into the rafters of the basement, and she found a way out. Jeff found a huge gap between the basement wall and the house. It had had a flimsy board covering it, and the board had fallen off. We had a chipmunk in the basement a few weeks earlier, and I couldn't figure out how it got there. I'm so glad we found out! If a cat could get through the hole, so could a rat, possum, raccoon, etc. Jeff sealed the gap very securely. I had to laugh a few days later after I had put the cats to bed. Jeff was out of town on business, so I was staying up late (I don't sleep much when he is gone). I heard Daisy whamming her body against the board, trying to get out of the basement again. She quickly figured out that it wasn't going to happen :).

 

Evie went to one of our neighbors and picked out her pumpkin for Halloween, then carved it on the front porch.

 

For our church's Trunk or Treat, she went as Queen Esther. I thought she looked super beautiful.

 

Her new fun thing is tea parties...with SiSi. SiSi will just lay there and wait for her tea and crumpets :).

 

That is pretty much our 4 months in a nutshell, not counting going to the beach, Evie playing flag football, and canning season. Too much to write in one blog post!

 

How does your garden grow

I have that little poem in my mind. You know, the one that goes "Mary Mary quite contrary, how does your garden grow. With silver bells and cockle shells, and pretty maidens all in a row." Evie learned the poem, but didn't realize it was "cockle shells". I laughed so hard when she walked through the kitchen saying, "With silver bells and taco shells...." :). My garden is growing nicely. We have had such goofy weather, that some of my plants don't know what to do. One day it will be 90 degrees, and the next day it will be 75 degrees. My tomatoes are doing well. Here is a view from one end of the garden....

And here is a side view of my peas and beans growing up the fence. You can also see my celery, and part of my broccoli...

The broccoli and cabbage plants. My cucumbers are beside the broccoli, but you can't see them in the pictures very well.

The plant closest to the left is the Sweet Dumpling squash, surrounded by radishes. Next in line is the zucchini (Black Beauty), the next is Butternut Squash, then a variety of zucchini called Zucchini Rampicante. The only one that won't grow vertically is the Black Beauty. The rest we are going to grow up an 8 foot fence contraption that Jeff is putting together :).

Aside from the garden, our crazy Daisy has started to become an acrobat. I first noticed it when I walked in the living room, and she was in the window sill of our half moon window. I thought it was a toy Evie threw up there at first! It is about 7 feet up there, and that has become one of her new perches. I wish I had a picture of it! Last week, we walked into the dining room, and saw her sitting up on top of our plant shelf! I have to stand on a ladder just to get to it! This is her coming down from it...

Now she is just walking the tightrope of our super thin metal curtain rod. We still haven't totally figured out how she is getting up there. She is either climbing the curtains, or the screens. I trimmed her claws again, so we will see if she decides to do any more acrobatics!

Jeff's birthday was last week :). He didn't get to take the day off of work, which I was sad about. Evie and I decorated the house, and made him a cake. We went out to his favorite Mexican restaurant. I'm so thankful for my wonderful hubby!

April, I wanted to post this for you, since you are I are eating about the same way right now! It is a recipe for pita bread, and it is really good! Super easy too! I doubled the recipe, and it worked out well. I didn't use a big enough pan, and the dough overlapped a bit, but they still turned out. Here is the recipe:

Pita Bread
•1 egg
•1/4 cup of water
•1 tablespoon oil or melted butter – I used coconut oil
•1 tablespoon coconut flour, firmly packed – firmly packed is very important
•1/4 cup almond flour, firmly packed
•1/8 teaspoon baking soda
•1/8 teaspoon salt – use a good quality salt

1.Preheat oven to 350.
2.Whisk together egg, water and oil.
3.Add dry ingredients, whisk well to combine.
4.Pour into 2 equal portions onto a well greased sheet tray or even better lined with parchment
5.Spread each portion to a 5-6 inch round. – Don't spread out too thin or they can break when filling it, so make your first batch max 5 inches and go from there.
6.Bake for 18-20 minutes, it will be darker in color, and slightly crisp around the edges. – The person I got the recipe from cooked his for 25 min and they came out perfect.

Mine turned out great. A little funky shaped, but tasted great. Here they are stuffed with tuna and veggies:

Alpaca farm

We had a fun playdate/field trip this week. My friend Joyce and her family live across the street from an alpaca farm. Joyce has 5 kids, and homeschools, so we are able to get together in the morning for playdates. Her kids help over at the alpaca farm, so we got to go over there and see the alpacas and the goats. There was one baby alpaca, and two baby goats. They were so adorable! Here is the baby alpaca...

And the mama and baby...

Here are two adorable kids holding two adorable kids :).

I seriously wanted to take one of the baby goats home. They kept nibbling on my sweatshirt. Aren't they so sweet???

Two super sweet babies :).

We had so much fun!!

Jeff did a lot of work today, clearing out the old flower bed that was against the old fence. It really opened up the back yard. You can see by the dirt patches where the old fence line was. Jeff planted grass seed there, so it should look really nice in a few weeks. The old fence next to our new one it is our neighbors fence. Jeff put up a tire swing for Evie today, and the rope is about 40 feet up in our Sycamore tree. The tire swings super far, and Evie absolutely loves it!

I have been making a lot of fermented foods lately. I am trying new things to see what I like before the garden starts producing. I made sauerkraut today. We love it! I start with this...

Then I chop it up in a large bowl. I should have chopped it smaller. I had to do a lot more work because the pieces were bigger. I added celtic salt to the bowl. It is about 2 Tblsp. of salt to a head of cabbage. It does make the sauerkraut salty, but you eat it more like a condiment and not a side dish. Just a tablespoon or two is loaded with way more probiotics than the kind you can get in pill form! According to Dr. Mercola (who is a very popular natural doctor online), he says that fermented foods have 100 times more probiotics than the pill form!!!

After I chop the cabbage up in a bowl, I take my big wooden rolling pin and start smashing the cabbage. It usually takes about 10-15 minutes to get it to look like this....

Once that is done, I put the sauerkraut in a jar. If there isn't enough juice from the cabbage to cover it, I add a little water. Then I sit it on my counter for about 3 days to ferment. After that I refrigerate it. We love it on salads, and on sandwiches. Evie loves it plain, and will eat lots of it.

I have been making kefir for awhile now, and I want to try some other fermented foods. I have a recipe for gingered carrots that sounds interesting. I also want to try radishes, green beans and turnips, since I will have so many in my garden. It is fun trying new things!

Birthday, tree and goodies

It has been a busy last few weeks. Evie is doing much better, and got over the chickenpox pretty fast. The problem now is that she is covered with scars :(. She has at least 4 on her face, some on her chest, and some on her back and belly. I kept telling her not to scratch because she could scar, but she would dig at them at night. I'm trying some different scar remedies to see if I can get them to go away. Some of them are pretty good sized craters.

Our yearly tradition is to go cut a Christmas tree the day after Thanksgiving. Because Evie was feeling so terrible, we waited a week before going to get one. The only time we could go was after Jeff got off of work. By the time we got there, they had closed the area where you could go cut your own tree, so we had to pick one from off the lot. We still got a nice tree. We were all bundled up because we thought we would be out in the cold for awhile. It only took us 5 minutes to find our tree! We took SiSi with us, but she couldn't get out and run around like normal. It still worked out though.

My sweet girl turned 10 years old on the 6th. She had 2 parties. One was with her friends, and it was on the Saturday before her birthday. The girls were all homeschooled, so the creative, energetic, and super imaginative juice was really flowing when they were here :). It was really fun!  Here is Evie at her first party...

The Sunday before Evie's birthday, she asked me to do her hair special. I put it in braids, and she slept on them. Her hair turned out so pretty!

Evie also lost a top tooth on the day of her birthday party with the girls. I wanted to show off how cute she looked :).

On the morning of Evie's birthday, she woke up early and asked if she could open up her presents from us. We said that would be fine, since Jeff still hadn't gone to work yet. She had fun playing with her toys all day.

We homeschooled on her birthday, but had a relaxed, fun day and played lots of games. She had to do some computer work, so Daisy kept her company. Don't you just love how Daisy is sitting, with her legs on the computer??

At night, both sets of grandparents came to celebrate Evie's birthday. We had a lot of fun! We ate some great food, had cake, then played a fun game called Apples To Apples Jr. We had never played it before, and it was really fun!

I have been going a little crazy with making stuff lately. I have been on this homemade beauty products kick. I had been using a deodorant that was labeled "natural", but I found out had a lot of really bad chemicals in it. I have read a lot about women and breast cancer, and many naturopaths and even some doctors believe that deodorant/anti-persperant can be a cause of breast cancer because of all the chemicals. I found a recipe online for making my own deodorant. I LOVE it! It does an amazing job, is super cheap to make, and is good for me! I made 2 different scents. Here they are...

I also made some homemade face cream. This is actually a recipe from my friend April's website. It can be used on your face and body. I really like it so far! On my face it can be a little oily, so I need to tweak the oils to figure out how to make it less oily for my face. I'm using it on Evie's face too, along with therapeutic grade essential oils, to get rid of the scarring.

Today I made a homemade toothpaste, from a recipe I found online. It has baking soda, glycerine, salt, xylitol, and essential oils. I like it. I have only used it today, but it makes my teeth feel really clean.

We are slowly trying to start accumulating baby things. We are borrowing a crib from a couple at church, so that was a huge blessing! I also bought some of these....

Okay, I know it is a bottle, but isn't it the cutest thing ever?? I decided I wanted to do glass bottles this time around. I have read so much about plastic leaching into the food, especially when heated. I wish I had known that when Evie was a baby! Next on the list to buy is cloth diapers. Yep, I'm doing cloth. We did cloth with Evie, and it was great. I know people think it is awful, but it is SO great. No having to worry about running out of diapers! You just wash and dry some. Plus there aren't chemicals, and you aren't filling up the landfill. Plus, there is nothing more adorable than seeing a baby in a cloth diaper :).

Sorry this post is so enormous! I told you we have been busy these past few weeks!!

The healing power of home remedies

I have always loved home remedies. I have learned they are very effective, and have kept me out of the doctor's office many times. I'm not one who likes to frequent the doctor much. Maybe because I have had such bad experiences. In my experiences, most have not been able to help me. They either don't know how to treat me, or they just push some drug to treat the symptom. I'm not saying I'm anti-doctor, but I have had learned that with most things I have had to figure things out on my own. These are just a few of the many reasons why I seek out home remedies often.

I am so thankful for what God has created in natural to help us. There are so many remedies that are simple, inexpensive and helpful! Here are some of the home remedies we use....

Garlic oil for earaches--The stuff is amazing. Every time Evie has started getting an ear infection, we put this stuff in her ears. Within a few hours the pain stops. We keep doing it for a few days, 2-3 times a day. I bought the stuff from the health food store, but I have since learned that you can make your own. I'm going to try this.

Ear candling--You get these at a health food store. I was a complete skeptic on this at first. Evie was really plugged up in her ears from bad sinus problems, I was willing to try anything. I did the ear candling every day for 3 days. We got out some nasty junk, and Evie felt great. It worked wonders!

Vicks treatment--This isn't super natural, but works amazing. Whenever I have had a cold settle in my chest, I will do this and it will leave my chest area. It also works great for sinus pressure and clogged up noses. I put a glob of Vicks in a bowl, then pour boiling water over the glob. I stir it quickly, then make a tent with a towel over the bowl and my head. I breathe in the vapors, which can be really strong (close your eyes). Breathe alternately through your nose and mouth deeply. When I have had bad congestion in my chest, I do this 3-4 times a day. I was on my way to having bronchitis several times, and this home remedy really did the trick. Do it before things get really bad though. You don't want to wait until you already have bronchitis, or it probably won't work.

Emprizone--this isn't exactly a home remedy, but works wonders. It is a natural product from a company called Mannatech (you can google it). It is a gel, and it works wonders on poison ivy. Before we found this, every year my hubby would get poison ivy. From the time we first met, he got it every year. Every year it would get so bad that he would have to get a steroid shot and be on steroids for 2 weeks. We tried every natural remedy imaginable, but nothing worked. When I found this product, it was amazing. He put it on several times a day, and the poison ivy dried up. The tube is expensive. It is about $50.00 with shipping, but lasts a very long time. Plus, if we went the medical route, with our $20.00 co-pay, then having to pay for the steroid pills, it ends up being almost $50.00 anyways.

Chamomile tea--a strong cup works very well for stomach aches. It also works for anxiety, but from what I understand, you aren't supposed to use it daily because it can cause allergies.

Apple Cider Vinegar--For dandruff, this stuff works! And it is cheap! I used to have such trouble with an itchy scalp. Now, once a week, I pour about 1/2 cup of cider vinegar into a cup with 4 cups water. Then I pour it over my hair in the shower after I have gotten it wet. I will leave it on for about 5 minutes (this helps get rid of buildup too), then I will shampoo as normal.

Homemade Pedialyte--Whenever Evie got sick with the stomach flu, I was always concerned about dehydration. I would always go out and buy that yucky stuff from the store that costs a lot and was loaded with sugar and food coloring. I have since learned you can make it on your own for very cheap, and you can use raw honey in place of sugar. I have used this on my pets as well when they have gotten dehydrated (I use sugar though for them, as I'm not sure if honey is okay for pets). I remember doing this with both Dolly and Daisy, and pulled them through after they got sick.

Okay, today a new home remedy was tried. I woke up this morning with pink eye. Oh fun. I have had it before, so I know all the symptoms. Awhile back, I had gotten pink eye, and gotten on the drops from the doctor. It got so bad that I had to go back and get super strong steroid drops that felt like needles were being stuck in your eye every time you used the drops. I had to do that 3x a day. I have never been so miserable. Today I decided to try the honey trick. You put 1-2 drops of honey in your eye. Make sure it is raw, unpasterized honey. You don't want the heated stuff from the store. I get my honey locally anyways, so we always have it on hand. I put a small glob on my finger (which I washed really well first) and then put it in my lower eye lid and closed my eye. Boy oh boy did it burn. Evie watched as tears streamed down my face. I was completely amazed though. In 20 minutes, the redness and pain were gone! I had read that it was instantaneous, but I didn't believe it! I thought I was going to have to miss church this morning, but my eye ended up fine! I read that if it comes back, just do the trick again. Honey is full of antibiotic properties. That is why it works. You can also apply honey to wounds.

Well, I hope you all weren't bored to tears by this blog post. I find home remedies really fascinating, and a way to save lots of money and hassle.

Remodeling

It is going on 7 months since Jeff lost his job. He has had several interviews lately. Last week he had 2. We will find more out about them probably this week. One nice thing about him having all this "free time" is that he is getting lots of projects done. Before he lost his job, we had bought everything we needed to remodel both our bathrooms. The main bath needed some small remodeling, but our master bath was UGLY. This first picture is what it looked like before. Actually this first and second picture were pictures I took before we bought the house. The previous owners really liked pink and purple in the house. Not my thing. I hope I don't offend anyone who loves pink and purple in their house, but this just wasn't me. The floor was just plain gross, and the vanity was way too huge for the room. The mirror was huge, and way too big for the small room. The whole room was one of those rooms we hated. We had the bathroom like this for 3 years. I'm amazed we waited that long. I ripped the shower door off about a month after we moved here. It was horribly dirty, and the room was way too small for a door. Here are a few "before" pics of the bathroom...

And here are the "after" pictures. We did a lot of "design on a dime" type stuff. We got the tile floor from Jeff's parents. It was leftover from their kitchen. For the vanity, Jeff took an old dresser of mine from when I was a kid, and rebuilt it to be the vanity. I accidentally left one of the drawers cracked open, so it looks like it isn't perfect looking but it is :). He did such a great job with it. He built it a lot smaller than the other one, so it makes the room look so much bigger,. Plus with the drawers I have more room than I had before! We got the vanity top at a store on clearance for $20! We had planned to buy a new vanity, but he lost his job so we had to improvise. I'm so glad we didn't buy a new one. I love the one he made me! We had planned to buy a new light, but we didn't want to spend money on that either. So Jeff painted the gold one we had, and it looks really nice. He used old paint that we had, and mixed it to a color he and I liked. It is sortof a sage/tan mix. We already had the mirror and faucet, so we didn't have to buy that :). I love, love, LOVE my new bathroom!