When I was eight, my mom remarried, and I gained another set of grandparents. Grandma Mitchell was a phenomenal baker. There was always a variety of homemade desserts and treats when we would go to visit. I didn't know it was possible to make so many things from scratch before I met her. While her kitchen was her space, she always welcomed us in and shared her recipes, often hand written many years earlier. One of my father's favorite desserts was my ...
5 Tips for Shopping Your Local Farmers’ Market
Even though I firmly believe in growing some of your own food, and our family does that with our extensive gardens, when we can't grow it ourselves the next best thing is to support the local farmers who grow it for us! One of my favorite Saturday pass-times is to visit the local farmers' market early in the day, with a cup of tea, and an open mind about meals for the week. Farmers' market season will be here before we know it! 5 Tips for Shopping Your Local Farmers' ...
Day 39: All Flat Surfaces
The 40 Bags in 40 Days Combat Clutter Challenge is almost over. If you have been following along since the beginning, we have tackled just about every room in our home, as well as the outdoors. Today, I want you to set the timer for 10 minutes and tidy all flat surfaces. Go room to room, and clean up! Not sure where to begin: Discard all junk mail, shredding anything that has sensitive information on it. Put all books and magazines away or add them to the recycle ...
Setting Up Your Square Foot Beds
Setting Up Your Square Foot Beds The whole idea behind Square Foot Gardening (SFG) is to grow more in less space. This saves you time, money, and resources while producing an abundance of produce! The traditional square foot gardening bed is a 4’x4′ square, but you can apply this technique to any raised garden beds. I have beds of various sizes – 3’x8, 2’x8′, 3’x6, 3’x12′, 1'x10' and soon 6'x4' – it just depends on where they are in my yard. When planning your ...
Day 37: Yard Work
With the nice weather comes the desire to be outdoors, and then you start looking around ... sticks and pinecones all over the yard, leaves that fell after the last time you raked, garden beds to be cleaned out, trees to be pruned, even the lawn needs to be mowed right about now! We are going to go a little out of order and will hold this one back until the weekend since during the week we are busy getting school work and real work taken care of. I plan to spend 2 hours ...