Friday Funny, Childbirth Edition

A friend of mine posted this on Facebook, and I just had to pass this wonderful bit of wit and sarcasm along!

Should I have a baby after 35? No, 35 children is enough.

I'm two months pregnant now. When will my baby move? With any luck, right after he finishes college.

What is the most reliable method to determine a baby's sex? Childbirth.

My wife is five months pregnant and so moody that sometimes she's borderline irrational. So what's your question?

My childbirth instructor says it's not pain I'll feel during labor, but pressure. Is she right? Yes, in the same way that a tornado might be called an air current.

When is the best time to get an epidural? Right after you find out you're pregnant.

Is there any reason I have to be in the delivery room while my wife is in labor? Not unless the word "alimony" means anything to you.

Is there anything I should avoid while recovering from childbirth? Yes, pregnancy.

Do I have to have a baby shower? Not if you change the baby's diaper very quickly.

Our baby was born last week. When will my wife begin to feel and act normal again? When the kids are in college.

 And for all of my friends wondering...NO! I am not pregnant!

Homemade Insecticidal Soap

Growing vegetables without using pesticides can be quite difficult here in Central Florida. Our garden pests enjoy the great pleasure of multiplying all year long without enduring a killing frost or even a dormant time to slow down the population growth. Add in the wide variety of bugs that love Florida, and halfway through the growing season you’re searching for a local supplier of chemical pesticides, agent orange, napalm, anything you can find to rid your garden of these crop destroying pests!

No matter where you live, chemical-free gardening is challenging. No single product works on every kind of pest. Plus, most natural or safe products have to be reapplied regularly to be effective. Is it worth the extra work? You tell me. Is it worth it to know that you aren’t slowly poisoning your family, your pets and your environment with toxins? I think it’s worth it.

One of the most effective pest controls that I’ve ever used is insecticidal soap. According to the University of Florida Extension, insecticidal soap works well against aphids, thrips and whiteflies. According to my own personal experience, insecticidal soap rocks! Unfortunately, it can get a bit costly through the season. A 32-ounce bottle can run $3 or $4. If you have a good-sized garden, this can really add up over the season.

I recently finished my bottle of store-bought insecticidal soap, and something was nibbling at my new blackberry bushes, but I knew I needed a more economical answer to the problem. Homemade insecticidal soap to the rescue!

When I first started making my own laundry soap, I was amazed at the versatility of Fels Naptha Laundry soap. Pages and pages of different websites boasted its usefulness. I vaguely remembered something about using Fels Naptha in the garden. It took a bit of searching and a bit more time verifying the information, but I finally found a good recipe for making my own insecticidal soap out of Fels Naptha Laundry soap. And it really does work! I recently had something chewing holes in my young cucumber plants, leaving telltale black sprinkles behind. A good spritzing or three with my homemade insecticidal soap spaced three days apart seems to have eliminated my problem.

Remember, this recipe makes a quart of concentrate, and a little goes a long way. Share some with a neighbor or two. The bugs will disappear, and your neighborhood will stay chemical-free.

Insecticidal Soap Concentrate

¼ bar Fels Naptha Laundry Soap, grated

1 quart very hot water

Stir the grated soap into the hot water until dissolved. Store this insecticidal soap concentrate in a labeled covered jar.

Insecticidal Soap Spray - mix 1 teaspoon of the concentrate with 1 quart of water and pour into a sprayer. Make sure you label that spray bottle!

Insecticidal soap is a contact poison. Spray it directly on the bugs and leaves of the infested plants in your garden. Test on a single leaf first, checking for leaf burn, and do not use during very hot weather.

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Menu Plan Monday 9/26

It’s taken about a month, but I think we’ve finally adjusted to the routines of this new school year. Colleen is attending a local college and has a part-time job and a haphazard schedule. Tom and I are tag-teaming Jared’s education, so Jared is gone with my hubby several days a week. It’s been odd getting used to the hours of quiet. I’ve been getting a lot accomplished, that’s for sure, but it’s still been a very unusual school year so far.

By the way, even though we’ve added a little meat, eggs, and dairy back into our diet, we haven’t gained any of the weight back that we lost during that six-week challenge. In fact, my hubby lost a few more pounds this week!! Woohoo!!

I’m staying steady on the scale, but I am finally back to exercising regularly again. I kept up a regular exercise regimen for years. It wasn’t anything too intense—I’m no athlete—but it kept me healthy and kept my food indulgences from hanging around long. Unfortunately, life began squeezing out my exercise time. In the last couple of years, my exercise program consisted of walking the dog or walking or jogging on the treadmill a couple of times a week. Granted, this was better than doing nothing at all, but I dreaded picking up weights. Every time I did a strength training workout, no matter how light or intense, I was sore for days. I don’t have the muscle tone that I used to have. I definitely don’t have the tolerance for pain that I used to have. However, slowly but surely, my increased energy resulting from a vegetable-heavy diet has motivated me into a more active lifestyle which has started building a bit of muscle. Maybe this week, I’ll brave a few squats and lunges using weights.

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Don’t forget to stop by Organizing Junkie for more menu ideas! If you’re looking for some new recipe resources, check out this Recipe Index Round Up.

Menu Plan for Week of 09/26/2011

Breakfast 

Fruit, granola, yogurt, or smoothies.

Lunch

Lunch of the week – Salads, wraps or leftovers

Fruit of the week – Apples, bananas, and peaches

Dinner

Monday – Homemade pasta with sautéed veggies and marinara (aka spaghetti)

and a salad

Tuesday – Vegetable soup, tossed salad

Wednesday – Buffalo chicken wraps, sweet potato fries

Thursday – Roasted vegetable medley, tossed salad

Friday – Taco salad (lots of spicy beans, but no meat)

Saturday – Spinach and potato pie, tossed salad

Sunday – Grilled chicken, corn and black beans salad

Snacks – Crackers and peanut butter, fruit, yogurt, carrot and celery sticks, or popcorn.

Thank you for stopping by!

Grace and peace be yours in abundance,

Betty

Garden Update - September

This morning was the perfect morning to do a little planting in the garden. The sky was a bit overcast, the air was a bit cooler than usual, and the forecast promised a bit of rain this afternoon. My broccoli seedlings completely agreed that it was time to enjoy the great outdoors. Just look at those roots breaking through the bottom of the peat pot!

For those of you not living in Zones 9 and 10, you probably think I’m completely crazy for planting broccoli in late September. Well, here in Florida, we do things a little bit differently. Our growing season runs from about August to April instead of the other way around. After spending the summer drooling over everyone else's gardens, I get to have one! Yay!

This is the perfect time to get those broccoli plants in the ground. Their replacements are already popping up in the seedling trays in thehouse. As each plant matures and we devour the main head of broccoli and a few side shoots, it’ll be replaced by a fresh plant. Not ones for wasting anything, the spent plant will be fed to the chickens who will “compost” it for us in their digestive system.

The yellow wax beans that we planted a week or so ago are coming up nicely.

We had to replant the green beans. Old seeds. You really do have to watch those dates! Not one single bean seed germinated from an entire pack of 2 year old seeds. I think we need a better seed storage system.

Colleen, Jared and a couple of other kids from our 4-H club are using a little space in our garden for their 4-H Garden Project. So far, so good. Everyone has something coming up!

Colleen's Zucchini

Lacey's Corn

Jared's Green Beans

Josh's Cucumbers

Over the next couple of weeks, we’ll make seed tape for carrots and turnips and plant cauliflower, Brussels sprouts, beets, turnips, carrots, and greens. I do have a few lettuce plants already growing in a self-watering box.

As healthy and beautiful as that Romaine lettuce looks, I originally planted 8 healthy and beautiful seedlings and 4 of them died within 48 hours. I have no idea what happened. I suspect that it was still a little too warm outside for lettuce, and they succumbed to the heat. However, replacement lettuce seedlings are growing in the seed trays. We do like our salads!

The pickling cucumbers, zucchini, and squash are all doing well in their self-watering buckets. I found a little insect damage a couple of days ago, but attacked it right away with a little homemade insecticidal soap, which seemed to do the trick. I’ll keep a sharp eye on those cucurbits though. They are susceptible to a lot of problems, and I didn’t get to put up any pickles the last season because of buggies. Boy, was my family disappointed! This season, I’m armed and dangerous! I’ve got my neem oil for fungus control, insecticidal soap for bad buggies, and Bacillus thuringiensis (Bt) for caterpillar control.

Pickling Cucumbers

Now we just need a few pollinators!

Someone's been eating my cucumber leaves!

And leaving behind little black dots of poop!

Homemade insecticidal soap to the rescue! Kills the bad bugs but leaves the pollinators alone! My hero!

Let the growing season begin!

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Minstrone Soup

During our Six-Week Vegan Challenge, I took every vegan cookbook out of the library that I could and spent hours looking for recipes that we’d eat. Unfortunately, so many of the recipes used ingredients I knew I’d never buy so, in the end, I made up most of our recipes with only a few exceptions like this Minestrone Soup.

I was never a fan of Minestrone Soup growing up, but this recipe is a keeper! The recipe is very easy, and the soup is delicious.

I recommend that if you are making it ahead of time, do not add the pasta until you’re heating up the soup for serving. I made the soup early in the day yesterday, and the pasta got a bit mushy by the time we ate it. You can also make up the pasta separately and stir it in when serving.

Minestrone Soup

3 tablespoon olive oil

1 cup onion, diced

1 medium zucchini, diced

½ cup frozen or fresh cut Italian green beans

½ stalk celery, diced

4 cloves garlic, diced

4 cups vegetable broth

2 15-ounce cans red kidney beans, drained and rinsed

2 15-ounce cans small white beans, great northern beans or cannellini, drained and rinsed

1 15-ounce can diced tomatoes, drained

1 carrot, sliced

2 tablespoons fresh parsley, or 2 teaspoons dried parsley

1 teaspoon dried oregano

1 teaspoon salt

½ teaspoon ground black pepper

1 teaspoon dried basil

¼ teaspoon dried thyme

4 cups hot water

4 cups fresh spinach

1 cup small shell pasta, uncooked

Heat the olive oil over medium heat in a large soup pot.

Sauté onion, zucchini, green beans, celery, and garlic in hot oil until onion becomes translucent.

Add broth, beans, tomatoes, carrots, herbs and hot water. Bring to a boil. Reduce heat and simmer for 20 minutes.

Add spinach leaves and uncooked pasta. Simmer for 20 minutes or until pasta reaches desired consistency.

Serve immediately. Garnish with a sprinkling of grated Parmesan cheese, if desired. 

Notes:

Although you can use chicken broth, the vegetable broth blends with the other flavors much better than chicken broth.

Unless you are growing them in the backyard, cut Italian green beans may be a challenge to find fresh or frozen. Regular cut green beans, fresh or frozen, are a fine substitute. If you never make the soup with Italian green beans, no one will ever know the difference when you can’t find them.   

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Homemade Laudry Soap Tip

Several years ago, when our financial situation changed drastically, I learned how to make my own laundry soap for a fraction of cost of commercial soaps. Unfortunately, I really do not like grating the bar of soap that goes in the recipe. My youngest doesn’t mind and jumps at the chance to help me out, but he’s not always here anymore, and the task falls to me once more. I still hate it.

In walks brilliant 4-H leader Lisa with a genius solution: food processor. I don’t pull my food processor out for much. If cleaning the food processor is going to take longer than the job I need it to do, I don’t bother. However, Lisa let me in on a little secret. She grates about a year’s worth of bars, measure the shaving out into plastic bags and stores them until she need to make more soap. Brilliant! How in the world did I miss such a poetically simple solution?! See, it pays to surround yourself with geniuses!

Anyway, today I put Lisa’s great idea to work and filled 10 zipper-seal plastic bags with just the right amount of shredded soap, and the food processor cleaned up very easily.

Thanks, Lisa!! You rock!!

Grace and peace be yours in abundance,

Betty

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Menu Plan Monday 9/19

 

This past week flew by in a blur! Everyday had some meeting or event penciled in that we had to be at. I felt like I was running a marathon, and the finish line was never in view! When we did finally cross the finish line last night, I was so happy to see that this week’s calendar is a lot less full than last week’s. Praise God for a little relief!

You might recognize a few items on this week’s menu that were on last week’s menu. We ended up with no time to cook very much so we ate a lot of veggie wraps and veggie pitas on the go. So, I just add what I didn’t make last week to this week’s menu. Easy peasy!

Don’t forget to stop by Organizing Junkie for more menu ideas! If you’re looking for some new recipe resources, check out this Recipe Index Round Up.

Menu Plan for Week of 09/19/2011

Breakfast 

Fruit, granola, yogurt, or smoothies.

Lunch

Lunch of the week – Salads, wraps or leftovers

Fruit of the week – Apples, bananas, and peaches

Dinner

Monday – Minestrone Soup and a salad

Tuesday – Bean soup, tossed salad

Wednesday – Grilled chicken breast pita sandwiches

Thursday – Roasted veggies, tossed salad

Friday – Veggie wraps

Saturday – Homemade pasta with sautéed veggies covered in marinara (aka spaghetti)

Sunday – Grilled chicken, corn and black beans salad

Snacks – Crackers and peanut butter, fruit, yogurt, carrot and celery sticks, or popcorn.

Thank you for stopping by!

Grace and peace be yours in abundance,

Betty

Kitchen Fun

I haven't been posting very much lately, I know. Sorry about that. I've been a bit occupied with making messes in my kitchen. It is amazing just how big of a mess I can make when left alone in my kitchen.

By the way, my sad, out-of-date, cramped, and foolishly laid out kitchen looks messy quickly, mostly because it's a sad, out-of-date, cramped, and foolishly laid out kitchen. Someday, I'll have a modern, pretty kitchen. Until then, I'll just keep making messes. Come to think of it, I'd probably make a pretty good-sized mess in a nice kitchen, too. I'm the kind of person that is okay with messes. Miss Frizzle was my idol. Take chances. Make mistakes. Get messy! I should paint that on my kitchen walls. What do you think?

I think I've had too much coffee and not enough sleep.

Anyway, I have to show you what I've been up to. I've been canning like a crazy person.

Aren't filled canning jars just gorgeous? Beans never looked so good! From back to front, we have black beans, chili beans, pinto beans and chick peas. I still have some great northern and butter beans to put up, but this was just too pretty to pass up!

My hubby surprised me with about 70 pounds of peaches this week, too! I have been having a lot of fun. Yes, this is fun for me. I love providing healthy, yummy, good things to eat for my family.

From left to right, we have fruit ketchup, peach salsa, and honey-spiced peaches. About 16 pounds have made it to the freezer so far, too. The frozen peaches will be wonderful in our morning smoothies and will be handy if I come across an interesting recipe I want to try. I still have to put up a few pints of jam, and Colleen is joining the messy-kitchen team with an unusual peach recipe of her own. Then our personal peach festival will come to an end. Sigh.

Anyway, I can't wait to dig into those Honey-spiced peaches! They smelled amazing with their cinnamon stick, whole cloves and whole allspice, and look so pretty in that honey-kissed peach color!

It's the simple things.

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Bean Patties

During our six week stint as vegans, I had to find interesting things to eat that fit within the parameters of the diet and the boundaries of our budget. At first, finding suitable recipes was quite the challenge.

One thing we found we really liked and plan on keeping in the menu are bean patties. I absolutely will not call them a substitute for hamburgers, but these patties can definitely stand on their own merit.

The original recipe called for black beans, which we tried and enjoyed. However, when I changed to chick peas, we like these even more! With the chick peas, it’s like falafel after a cosmetic-counter-at-Macy’s-makeover. It’s still the basic idea of falafel but without the frying and with a little more kick. Kind of like you’re still you after that makeover but without blotchy skin and with a little more spring in your step. Okay, that was a bad analogy, but it would take too long to delete it. So, you’re stuck with it. Sorry.

The original recipe also called for way more ground cumin than my family likes. I cut it out and added more garlic, which we do like, and chili powder, which we also really like. Since we eat these in pita instead of on buns, I made the patties a little smaller and ended up with eight pita perfect patties. ( I am way better at alliterations than analogies.)

Anyway, I like to cook in cast iron. Beware! The black bean patties took on a bit of a metallic taste from the skillet. If you use black beans, cook in something other than cast iron. The chick peas version didn’t have any off flavors from the cast iron.

Bean Patties

1 jalapeno, seeded and diced

3 cloves garlic, minced

2 cans (15 Oz.) black beans or chick peas, drained and rinsed

2 teaspoons chili powder

1 teaspoon salt

1 tablespoon ground flax seed or cornmeal

1 tablespoons water

½ cups breadcrumbs

1 8-ounce can tomato sauce

½ cup corn, fresh or frozen, thawed

3 tablespoon olive oil

8 pita bread halves

Add the diced jalapeno and the minced garlic cloves to a food processor (or high speed blender). Yes, you can have the food processor to the chopping work if your food processor can actually chop such a small amount. Mine doesn’t even acknowledge its existence let alone touch it with a blade. I chop.


Add one can of beans to the jalapeno/garlic mixture and pulse to combine. Add chili powder and salt and pulse until mixture resembles chunky black bean dip.

In a small bowl, mix together the ground flax or cornmeal and water. Let the mixture sit for five minutes. The ground flax seed adds some good nutritional stuff, but if you don’t have it, cornmeal works just fine. Can you figure out how I found that out?

Add second can of beans, ground flaxseed mixture, tomato sauce, and corn. Pulse until well combined but very chunky. I tried to just stir the second can into the mixture like many other recipes suggested but the patties fell apart. Pulsing the mixture a couple more times in the food processor keep the patties together better during cooking.

Heat the olive oil in a skillet on medium high heat. Form the bean mixture into patties and fry for about 4 minutes per side, until golden and crusty brown. If the mixture seems to wet, stir in more bread crumbs, one tablespoon at a time, until the mixture is moist and stick together but isn’t sopping wet.

Serve one patty in half a pita with lettuce, tomato slice, green pepper slices, cucumber slices and onion slices. Do not add the onion slices if you plan on kissing your spouse who cannot stand onions the rest of the day. I’m just sayin’.

By the way, the corn is also optional if you happen to forget that you put it in the microwave to defrost. I’m not a fan of the microwave; therefore, I “occasionally” forget that I’ve even put anything in it. It’s a gift. 

Blessed by Grace: Tempt My Tummy Tuesday

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Menu Plan Monday 9/12 and Final Vegan Challenge Update

We finished the full six weeks of our Eat to Live challenge!! Woohoo!  At our final weigh-in, I lost 11 pounds and my husband lost a whopping 21 pounds!! Not bad!

We’re still in the process of deciding what food we want to bring back and what habits we want to keep. It’s funny how we both want to bring back different things. Tom wants a little more grain in his day and I want dairy. Have I mentioned how much I miss cheese?! So, he’s getting his daily cup of granola back, and I get cheese, for starters. We’ll just see how it goes before making too many more changes. We both are enjoying this weightloss and how good we feel. There’s no point in making any big changes when we haven’t made it to our goals yet.

If anyone is interested in making some serious changes to their diet, health and weight, I highly recommend reading Eat to Live. The strict vegan diet with its serious starch and calorie restrictions will seem quite harsh and extreme at first, but Wow! What a difference! Unfortunately, I learned that I can’t keep this up for the rest of my life. On the plus side, my husband and I learned a lot about portion control.

By the way, we ended our challenge with a bang and yes, we did go out to eat! And yes, my husband and I had a representative of every kind of meat we could. We had a bit of bacon on our salad, and we both ordered a mixed grill that had a small steak, a small piece of chicken and a couple of shrimp. And it was very good! And no, we didn’t “suffer” after eating it all. Like I’ve said before, we don’t have serious dietary issues. We just need to lose weight. However, we were very good about taking what we learned about portion control and applied to our special evening out. I’m certain that made a big difference in how our detoxed bodies reacted.

I mean no disrespect to vegans and vegetarians everywhere, but after these six weeks, I realize that I really am not cut out to spend the rest of my life as a vegan. About every three weeks, the craving for meat became unbearable. If I ate one small meal that contained a little meat, I was good for another three weeks without any problems or cravings.

                                                                                              

Don’t forget to stop by Organizing Junkie for more menu ideas! If you’re looking for some new recipe resources, check out this Recipe Index Round Up.

Menu Plan for Week of 09/12/2011

Breakfast 

Fruit, granola, yogurt, or smoothies.

Lunch

Lunch of the week – Salads, wraps or leftovers

Fruit of the week – Apples, bananas, melons, nectarines and peaches

Dinner

Monday – Homemade Pizza (Cheese, glorious cheese! What is there more handsome?! Sorry.) and a salad

Tuesday – Beans and cornbread, tossed salad

Wednesday – Veggie Pitas, steamed veggies (Dinner on the go)

Thursday – Minestrone, tossed salad

Friday – Baked potatoes, roasted veggies and salad

Saturday – Dinner at a friend’s home who has been patiently waiting for us to “come to our senses and be over this thing.”

Sunday – Letterboxing picnic to include something on the grill, I just haven’t decided what yet.

Snacks – Crackers and peanut butter, fruit, yogurt, carrot and celery sticks, or popcorn.

Thank you for stopping by!

Grace and peace be yours in abundance,

Betty

Just a Moment to Remember

Ten years ago today, I was driving to the gym in my old green van. We’d just started homeschooling, and I worked part time at that gym so I could have a free membership. My younger two children were buckled in the back seat and the radio was on.

I don’t remember what song was playing, but I do remember a newscaster breaking in, reporting on some emergency somewhere. I had the radio volume down low and turned it up to hear better.

While the rest of the world listened and watched in horror and disbelief over what was happening, I listened in horror and disbelief that some jerk at the radio station thought this War-of-the-Worlds-type broadcast was somehow amusing. The news of a plane crashing into the World Trade Center was just too unbelievable that my mind naturally assumed it wasn’t real. Inside the gym, however, I came face to face with reality splashed across 35 television screens.

I didn’t work out that day. I stayed at the gym, watching with my co-workers for another hour or so until I realized that I needed to be home. I gathered my children, drove home in a mental fog, and like the rest of America, stayed glued to the television for days, waiting for news of something worse headed our way.

A lot has happened since then.

America elected her first non-white president.

Technology and communication advanced exponentially with laptops replacing desktop computers and smartphones placing the world in the palm of your hand.

Being a “Fan” of being a “Fan of that on Facebook” became blasé and now we “like” everything instead.

Twittering and Tweeting are no longer reserved for excited and vocal birds.

My husband and I accepted Jesus Christ as our Lord and Savior and were baptized together.

We watched our children also embrace a life built on Jesus and get baptized, too. I cried.

My oldest child became an adult and moved out to figure out life according to him, as adult children are supposed to do.

My daughter graduated high school, got a job, enrolled in college, and broke at least four hearts while trying to figure out the whole dating thing.

My youngest discovered how to make beautiful music wherever he goes and turned into a pre-teen complete with deodorant.

We started growing vegetables and raising chickens and rabbits which seemed to lead to the logical step of joining 4-H.

We turned off the television for good.

We down-sized to one vehicle.

I graduated from college.

Obviously, a whole lot more happened in the last ten years, but the point is everything changes. Children grow and mature. Jobs come and go. Most of life’s changes come gradually so we have time to adjust. The Titanic doesn’t turn on a dime, you know. But every once in a while, something happens that changes everything instantly. And you never know when that will be.

Hug your spouse extra today. Hug your kids, too. Tell them you love them. Pray a little extra for your friends and family today, while you still can. Thank an emergency services worker today. Thank an armed forces service member, too. And finally, praise God for every single breath you still take.

 

 

Menu Plan Monday 9/4 and Vegan Challenge Update

We just wrapped up week 5 of our Eat to Live challenge! The scale moved a little more in the right direction! Yay!! I’m really happy with the progress we’ve made, but neither one of us is where we want to be. Since we really aren’t having any problems on the strict diet, we may continue it a little longer before re-introducing a few foods we really miss.

I have to say that I feel great even though I’m pretty much eating nothing more than fruits and vegetables with a little starch, a little soy milk, a multivitamin and a lot of water everyday. I really expected to feel a lot more run down than I do. My hubby is feeling the extra energy, too and loving it! It’s planting season and the beginning of the new school year and 4-H year. That extra energy is coming in handy!

Our challenges for the week:

I bored. I’m really bored with the limited menu. Ok, it’s really not that limited, but I’m kind of getting tired of salads. Did you know that salads really take a lot of work to eat? I think my face is getting slimmer just from all of the chewing!

Fitting in the extra trips to grocery store for fresh produce is getting more and more difficult as different activities for the kids start.

Soy milk is not an exact substitute for regular milk in recipes. Let’s just say that soy milk in a casserole is just odd. It wasn’t exactly the worst thing I’d ever tasted; but it was darn close.

I miss chocolate…and cheese…not together, mind you…but I miss them both.

This week’s observations:

Eating foods full of water like fruits and greens makes you pee a lot. I know, TMI. But my bladder must be squeaky clean.

Speaking of digestive stuff, I’ve had several people extol the virtues of a vegan diet because of how “free flowing” their digestive system becomes. Unless you’re talking about an over-active bladder, I’m not seeing it. Then again, I didn’t have any digestive issues before we made the change so I probably wouldn’t notice anything different. I now, TMI again.

My skin has seriously improved. I have always had bad skin. No moisturizer on the market made a difference. My skin just didn’t have any elasticity. My stomach looks like a road map from the stretch marks created by carrying three above average-sized babies. This is one area that I’ve definitely seen big changes.

It’s been an interesting five weeks, that’s for sure. School starts for Jared this week and so does co-op and 4-H. I miss the routine of the school year, but we have so much planned for the year that I’m not sure just how routine it’s going to be!

                                                                                              

Don’t forget to stop by Organizing Junkie for more menu ideas! If you’re looking for some new recipe resources, check out this Recipe Index Round Up.

Menu Plan for Week of 09/05/2011

Breakfast 

Fruit, granola, yogurt, or smoothies.

Lunch

Lunch of the week – Salads, wraps or leftovers

Fruit of the week – Apples, bananas, melons, nectarines and peaches

Dinner

Monday – Baked potatoes, sautéed veggies, tossed salad

Tuesday – Veggie fajitas, tossed salad

Wednesday – Vegetable soup, tossed salad

Thursday – Marinara over homemade pasta, tossed salad

Friday – Veggie wraps, roasted veggies

Saturday – Bean enchiladas, tossed salad

Sunday – Bean patty pitas, steamed veggies

Snacks – Crackers and peanut butter, fruit, yogurt, carrot and celery sticks, or popcorn.

Thank you for stopping by!

Grace and peace be yours in abundance,

Betty

What a Summer!

Wow! It’s already September! When did that happen?? I think I said that the first week of September last year, too. Isn’t it comforting to know that some things don’t ever change?

Anyway, this summer has been crazy and wonderful. We didn’t go zipping around, camping in different states in order to get Colleen to various speech competitions. This year, we stayed home. But it wasn’t really the lazy summer I had originally envisioned.

This was the summer of home and garden projects.

Tom and Jared removed the sad, struggling tree from the front yard.

I added a two-layered decorative block retaining wall as the edger to the landscaping in the front of the house. I also added a small raised herb garden to the front of the house. And we mulched the front gardens and the butterfly garden in the back. Oh, and added a couple of plants to the butterfly garden, too.

A thick layer of newspaper to keep the weeds away.

Now a little mulch...with style!

Jared gets the tough spots!

 

We need to plant a new, stronger and healthier tree in the front, but I haven’t decided on what kind yet. In the meantime, I’m devising a plan on how to landscape the front of my house with herbs and vegetables. Yes, I live in a city that I risk being fined if I put in an actual vegetable garden in front of my house. What are “suitable” landscaping plants, and why does someone other than me, the owner of the home, get to decide the answer? My neighbors have “ornamental” sweet potato vines as a ground cover. I think I need to plant some real, productive sweet potato vines. No one will know the difference, except my table when I serve up some yummy, home-grown sweet potatoes. But I digress.

We covered the garden in a 4-inch layer of composting manure. Nope, my neighbors never actually noticed.

We found an amazing deal on a very nice tiller at a yard sale. The new-to-us tiller cost less than the motor would have cost to fix the broken, freecycled tiller we received a couple of years ago. So, the manure is all tilled in and the garden is ready for the fall planting. God is so cool!

I think he likes it!

Attilla and Hon...Corny, I know.

Isn't she pretty?

 

I’ve been harvesting and freezing plenty of okra for gumbo over the winter. I only planted about 10 plants in self-watering bucket, but they’ve been producing plenty of perfect pods. Did you know that okra is related to hibiscus? The pale yellow flowers with their dark purple centers are absolutely gorgeous! Maybe I’ll landscape with okra next summer. Think anyone will notice?

Started about 100 seedlings for the fall garden. I’m not sure just how it’s all going to fit. The garden is only 20' by 30' after all. I guess we’ll be planting a few things in those buckets when the okra is done. Oh, and half of the pepper plants will be beautifying the front garden, too. Yeah, we should be able to squeeze it all in, right?

Jared’s and Colleen’s rooms got facelifts over the summer, too. For the most part, all we did was paint the rooms, but each room took about 3 weeks to paint. When it comes to certain things, I’m a Go-Bold-or-Go-Home kind of person. So, we had to cover up very bold paint jobs before replacing them with new, very bold paint jobs. Both rooms needed 3 coats of primer before any color touched those walls. 

Like I said, Go Bold or Go Home!

Left my hubby alone with a can of primer for just a minute. I love my silly hubby!

Primer and base coat applied and extra protection on the windows and doors for the next step.

She's soooo helpful *insert sarcasm here*

Jared throws the first pitch...er, I mean paint!

Everybody had their own color to throw.

It's kind of an updated version of camouflage

 

Like I said, Go Bold or Go Home!

Time to change Colleen's walls.

Primer covered Colleen's walls way better than Jared's.

Yep, the door has to go too!

Now that's how you dress up an Insane Asylum grey base coat!

Colleen did all of the black and pink painting herself!

I think she had fun!

Like I said, Go Bold or Go Home!

On the plus side, it’s been 10 years since these rooms were painted, and it’ll probably 10 more before they’re painted again.

In the middle of all of these ambitious projects, Colleen graduated from high school, worked a job, registered for college, went to 4-H Legislature for a week in Tallahassee, was a Senior Counselor at 4-H Camp in Ocala for a week, spent a week at 4-H State Congress in Gainesville, finished 3 4-H projects, and earned her Gold Clover Award for 4-H. Did I mention that she also did most of the work on her room? Over-Achievers Anonymous calls my house regularly looking for my daughter.

Jared, on the other hand, is a lot more laid back. He went fishing. 

Ok, maybe he did a little more than that. Jared completed 2 4-H projects, spent a week at 4-H camp in Ocala, earned his Silver Clover Award for 4-H, helped his mother tackle the crazy projects she foolishly crammed into the schedule, did a significant amount of the work on his room, and read about a million books. Alright, it wasn’t a million. It just seemed like it! Every time I turned around, he had his nose in a book. Boy, we’ve come a long way from the early days when he struggled with every single letter and word. Right now, he’s at the library shelving books. My children are weird.

Have I mentioned that I like that my children are weird? Weird is interesting. I like interesting.

We went letterboxing way more this summer than anyone should when the temperature and humidity are both at 98! We also traipsed around Busch Gardens a lot this summer, but at least we got to cool off on the water rides. Our Busch Gardens passes are one of those things we scrimp and pinch pennies in order to be able to keep. We really like Busch Gardens. Sometimes, we’ll go just to see the shows and free concerts and the looks on people’s faces when we picnic in the parking lot.

Colleen spoiled her little brother a bit this summer, too, with special outings to the mall, just the two of them, and long bike rides. They bicker and snipe at each other just like any other pair of siblings, but underneath it all, they really do love each other. I told you they were weird.

My hubby and I started a Six-Week Vegan Challenge in August and actually lost weight! Woohoo! Finally! You'll have to check out the August Menu Plan Mondays for the posts about the ups and downs of that journey and how much weight we've lost. We're still sticking to the strict challenge for a couple more weeks. Boy, have we learned a lot about healthy eating! 

Last but not least, Colleen turned 18! I won't tell you how I feel about this, but for those of you with small children, know that all those temper tantrums, scraped knees, soccer games, girl scout meetings, 4-H activities, homework, chores, groundings, pony tails, braids, mother/daughter manicures, bedtime stories and good night kisses do nothing to prepare you for the moment you realize that your baby is an adult. Cherish every moment. 

For her birthday, we gave Colleen her own laptop. Juggling computer time with her brother when she started college was going to be a bit difficult. So, we combined her graduation and birthday gift, and she has her own computer. And after she turned 18, she was actually allowed to have the computer in her room. We don't allow computers, televisions or video games in the kids' bedrooms. These thing stay in public areas of the house. So, for her to be allowed the computer in her room is a huge deal. 

Like our classy wrapping? It's what's inside that counts, right?

See that writing? It doesn't actually tell her what's in the box.

She's just a little excited.

Facebook here I come!

This is Squeak...her new jump stick. I got the cow.

Thanks for stopping by! That’s about it for the summer highlights this year. We probably did a few more things, but I’m drawing a blank right now. How was your summer? Are you ready for fall and school and a regular routine? I am so ready for a routine. However, I’m afraid this school year will be anything but routine.

Grace and peace be yours in abundance,

Betty


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