How to Make a Sunflower Playhouse

Quite a few years ago now I remember I read a brief something about sunflower playhouses on a seed website. At the time a didn't have children so I kind of filed that idea away in my brain. Well, now I do! and they are the perfect ages to appreciate a playhouse made of plants. My daughter's favorite color is yellow and she loves to hide in small spaces so I have a feeling I will need to drag her in the house for dinner at the end of the summer!


The first thing you need to do is find an area in your yard or garden that gets at least 6 hours of full sun if not 8-10. Ideally this spot would also be in a place that is convenient for kids to play safely (right next to the driveway or road might not be a good idea in case your little angels decide to *pop!* out of their house to surprise you!). Next, decide how you would like to prepare your soil. This is completely personal and there are tons of different ways but my current favorite way is to lay down some cardboard or paper, a few inches of my horse/chicken/barn waste compost and then a mulch. This time I will be using hay that I raked of the barn floor (multi-tasking, cleaning the barn and mulching!). I like this way of soil prep for several reasons but the most important is that I can do it all by myself with a wheelbarrow and shovel. Oh, and it's free. With your chosen method, make a horseshoe shape ring.

Ok, so it is a simple method but it is hard work!

Remember to put soil on the paper as you go! Wind can be sneaky.
After you have prepped for planting, um, plant! I am using Mammoth Sunflowers which grow 8-12 feet high but you can mix and match your types as you please. Be sure to stagger the seeds in at least 2 rows so that the "walls" don't have gaping holes in them. Another nice method would be to not only stagger the seeds but to use varied heights (tallest on the inside row, shortest on the outside). When the plants are a couple inches high pull your mulch around them to prevent weeds and moisture loss.

Ready for seeds! I will mulch when the plants are a few inches high.
A note about sunflowers: they are heavier feeders and drinkers. I know I tend to forget that flowers need to be fed like vegetables do! Make sure to use a good amount of rich compost to produce hearty stalks and large blooms. If you mulch fairly heavy not only will that help with watering frequency but it will provide a bit of extra support to an extent.

Clearly this is what needs to happen with the extra newspaper... if you are 3.
Now all that is left to do is to wait for it to grow! By the end of the summer not only will the kids have a super awesome living fort but I will have lots of sunflower heads to keep the chickens happy all winter. Well, as long as the cat keeps the birds away.

If you have kids, this is an awesome way to spoil them for (in my case) about $2 and an hour of my time. Involve them in the process and then they will be able to show it off to their friends and be so proud of being a homestead kid! Homesteading with children can be rather challenging at times but with a bit of creativity both of you will have memories that can't be made any other way.

This post was shared on Green Thumb Thursday Blog Hop.

Make It Do or Do Without : Being Creative in the Garden

Clear Dawn onions
I love me a good challenge of the mind. It takes me until I put seeds in the ground until I have a final garden plan and even then I have been known to rip those poor little plants out and move them if I change my mind. I am also no stranger to unrealized dreams and my Back to Eden garden is one of them this year... again. It just wasn't going to work out. So, instead of whining and giving up I was determined to make a garden happen despite having no garden. But, what makes it a garden? Is it the dirt? Plants? Little rows and sickly manicured edges? I think the world is a garden so shall we not be so narrow minded on the guidelines?

The new yet temporary garden next to the barn

I am a fan of raised beds. I just like them. In my last post I had said I was going to use Bagsters to make instant raised beds and while that was a great idea it meant $60 was going just to a container. I wanted to spend that money of some awesome compost instead (more on that in a sec). So, I had remembered reading about raised beds and how some of the most simple ones were just dirt piled up into a garden bed. As in no box. Just dirt. Sounds messy doesn't it? How does the dirt not wash off with rain and watering? That is what I thought to myself when I first conceived the idea. Now I have made one of these beds and while it is neither perfect nor ideal, it will do.

New raised bed, 16'x 4'(ish)

It's uneven and it bugs me, but I am letting that go. It is 2 feet shorter than I intended, but I am letting that go too. It will grow food and that is the point! This is for one year I have the rest of my life to have perfect little boxes and my Back to Eden garden (which I may reconsider... what to do!). For now I have a free form raised bed planted with popcorn, cucumbers, onions, kale, chard, and lettuce.



Over here we have a potato bed made of mulch hay bales! Aren't I cleaver?

Rednecking it!

And, once again my tomatoes are in pots. Peppers too. Such is life.

Amish Paste tomato plant... does any one know if curled leaves are normal?

I will elaborate a bit on my soil. I have a horse and chickens and every year we pile up what is left from the winter and it sits and turns to compost which is turned at the end of the summer as we clean up the paddock. By the next spring it looks like dark rich dirt. We have sand in the paddock to help with dust, mud and it gives the horse a nice rolling area so quite a bit of sand gets worked into the piles as well. Therefore my compost is sand infused which is a stellar combination of light and rich, water retaining and free draining. While I believe that this soil has plenty of nutrition to see my plants through, there is no harm in adding a bit more right? So, after eyeing the bags and wondering for the last year or more I am giving Coast of Maine organic composts a try! I am using the Quoddy Blend Lobster Compost as a top dressing for the large bed and the soon to be smaller 12' bed which will have beans and squash/pumpkins. I'm using the Penobscot Blend Compost and Peat as a top dressing for the potato bed and I put a good 2-3 inches in the top of the tomato and pepper pots. I have read a lot of good things and I seriously doubt that it will be a waste. I will be excited to see if it makes a difference. If I had a very large garden and needed to amend them every year with these products it would become expensive. But, if they are able to be added every few years with good success than I would see it a worth while investment in addition to my own manure compost. Diversity in soil is the key! To learn more about the composts just hit up Coast of Maine's website.

New pile is on the left, the old on the right.

What the finished compost looks like


I'm not meaning to sound like a commercial, but I love to support Maine products! Most of our state is sustained by small businesses and how can I not get behind one like this? It's recycling, organics and it nurtures one of my very favorite things... gardens!

Chickens dust bathing and enjoying the sun

The little farm girl in her Carhartt overalls
I'll be trying to keep this updated during the growing season! I love reading everyone else's garden blogs so I will try to contribute regularly too.


Til next time!


This post was shared on Green Thumb Thursday blog hop.

Garden Record Keeping and Why it is Important

Glacier tomatoes bloomed on June 16th!
If you are like most gardeners with a few years under your belt, every winter after the holidays you probably curl up on the couch with your seed catalog or laptop and start making a list for the upcoming growing season. While this is fun and can take hours, this really is serious business if you are growing for any reason other than pure fun. As a young homesteader I look at these first five to ten years as my learning curve, a time to single out varieties that can become tried and true residents in my garden every year. While I do have a fairly good memory, I also am pretty busy and have small children who take up 95% of my brain power daily. I want to remember details about what I am growing, not just whether I liked it and if it produced well. This is why I have started working on a garden record spread sheet. If I can rope my hubby into helping me I would gladly make it available as a print out in the few weeks!

Northeaster pole beans starting to climb.

Now, what is worth recording and what is being a little too detailed? Well, I believe in two different methods of record keeping: a journal and actual record sheets. The journal is where I tend to bring in more detail such as rain fall or watering frequency, growth patterns, when I fertilized, what kind of fertilizer I used, if I needed to replant any seeds, what I liked the taste of, etc. With a record sheet I record things like the planting date, did I start indoors or direct seed, first harvest date, average weight of harvest, last harvest date, etc. Many gardeners only use a journal (truthfully, I have been using this blog as my "garden journal" for two years now!), but I feel a record sheet makes things a bit more black and white for planning the next years seed nominees. For someone with limited garden space, forgetting which variety out preformed the other could cost me, literally! I would feel really silly if I ordered a vegetable that took up too much space and produced either small quantities or poor quality food. This doesn't mean I won't try new varieties once I find my basic stock for reliable yearly produce, but I will be able to more freely try these new varieties knowing we have back up if it's a disappointment.

Pea pods starting to plump.

In this generation of hybrid seeds, I can see why we are forced to keep records! There are so many out there and all claim to be terrific. Heirlooms are what I gravitate towards for many reasons but the most is that you have to know that it was good enough that someone painstakingly saved the seeds from their own plants. Think about this! At the end of the season gardeners weren't filling out charts to remember what they wanted to order next year, they already knew exactly what they were planting next year because they saved the seeds. Poetic, I think!

Go figure my wire potting tables just happened to be the perfect height for pole beans stood up on their ends! I love multi-taskers.

This year I ended up with more hybrids than I usually choose, mostly because I didn't choose them! I bought in a co-op with friends and while I enjoy the expectant nature of trying something new, I will be choosing all heirlooms next year so that I may start saving seeds. I will likely still order some seeds every year but I do think seed saving is an art worth sustaining for many reasons.

I am so impressed by how well the peppers are doing in this planter.

Another thing I will be keeping track of is what and how much I can grow in what sized raised bed. I had mentioned wanting to try the Back to Eden gardening method, but I am really in love with raised beds right now! The BTE method is not what I would call space saving and I have to say I love my tall raised bed we added this year, much easier on my back and needs far less water than my shallower beds. My intention is to make all the raised beds about 20"-24" tall. Likely we will make them 12' x 4' (48 square feet) and install 4-8 of them this fall depending on our funds and time. I would like to make a matching deep bed for the greenhouse to grow our cold weather crops in during early spring and late fall. Right now I am just amazed by how much just a 2' x 3' bed has been producing! So, I think it worth while to keep track of how much each bed size and depth produced and also with what spacing.

After about a week of settling in the perpetual spinach has taken off!

After learning a little more each year and investing in some quality materials I am thrilled with how well things are growing this year. I have learned that eight Swiss chard plants are enough for one weekly cutting but 12-16 would provide us with at least two and possibly some to freeze. Peas are easy to grow but you need a lot of plants to get a good crop! And, Russian kale has a stronger flavor than curly kale but with more tender stems. All these things will be going on the books!

Another few weeks and the greenhouse will be in jungle status!

One of our greens harvest from last week. They are giving us 1-2 cuttings a week and I am no longer buying greens from the store!
Start those records while the season is still young! Til next time.


This post was share on Green Thumb Thursday Bloghop.

Memorial Day Weekend

Despite the patriotic meaning of Memorial Day, here in Maine this weekend marks the beginning of summer. Memorial Day weekend is planting time. We can safely say there will be no more frosts and most days get into the 70's or above by now. Tomatoes start shooting up like rockets, the cool weather crops are at their height and it's time to plant squash and cucumber seeds. That is exactly what I have done this weekend.

Saturday:

In my last post I had mentioned not gardening this weekend because Montana Man was home. I seemed to have forgotten he had a house and truck to work on! So, not wanting to waste the reasonably good weather I decide to scoot across the street to the farm store and grab some potting mix to get going. I looked online first to see how much this was going to run me (that's a Maine term... things don't cost you, they 'run yah') and I determined that the price of potting soil is dumb. Instead I got two 23# bags of organic compost and one 30# bag of organic garden soil as well as some organic slow release fertilizer. Back home I filled my wheel barrow about 2/3 full of our sand infused well rotted horse manure and proceeded to mix in batches about 4 parts sandy manure, 2 parts compost and 1 part garden soil. I mixed this all by hand and trowel... which took forever. My poor belly and arm muscles got a workout!

With my new soil all ready to be put to use, I first potted up some flowers I had gotten for my mom's birthday. Then I organized what needed to be potted up right now and what could wait and selected my sizes. Tomatoes were first in the five gallon pots. I filled each about 2/3 full of soil and then added two tablespoons of fertilizer and worked it in. I then took the tomato starts out of their little pots after striping off most of the lower leaves and placed the plant in the center. I then just filled in soil around it until only the top leaves were above the soil. All of the buried stem will sprout new roots and thus will have a much stronger root system.

Four bell pepper plants, two Jalapeno and one cayenne pepper plants all got planted in my hot pepper Topsy Turvy I got for a deal on Amazon. I will enjoy seeing how they grow upside down hanging from the framing in the greenhouse. It also elates me to have more raised bed and pot space to play with!

After mixing another batch of soil, more five gallon pots got filled (same as for tomatoes: 2/3 full, work in fertilizer, fill to top with more soil) and I planted two types of pumpkins, Delicata squash and Butternut squash. In two gallon pots I planted zucchini (1 tablespoon of fertilizer for this size).

Unsure of where I want my cucumbers to be quite yet, I planted seeds in the small 4" pots. Hopefully once they are a couple weeks old I will know where to put them!

I seem to have run low on soil again... time to call it a day!

Sunday:

My morning started in what is called the "grey hour". That mystical hour before the sun peeks up over the horizon but is hovering just high enough below it to light the world into a eerie grayness. I have always loved the grey hour. Normally I sleep right through it, after all I am no early bird. But, my precious little two year old finally decided at 4:45 am she was hungry after refusing to eat supper last night. I knew there would be no hope of her falling back asleep. Rather than being upset about the few more hours of sleep I was forfeiting, I just listened for a moment before getting up to get her. It was so... noisy! The Cardinal was singing his good morning song in a chorus with the other birds, my rooster roused and crowed a few times, the horses feet scuffling by his water. After I got little girl settled quietly in the living room and started my coffee, I was reminded that the world starts its day hours before I do. Nature's day dwellers awaken with the sun's rising and happily goes to rest at dusk. It has a lovely balance to it. In summer there is much to do and less sleep is prudent to make the most of the season. In winter there is nothing but to stay warm and fed and more sleep is welcomed to conserve energy and pass the days quicker. With having chickens, it's hard not to observe when they go to roost and when the rooster calls his girls to wake, no one tells them what to do! They don't fret over how many hours they get or the latest research, to them it is simple and not thought of. Not likely to happen, but it makes me wonder if rising and resting with the sun as generations before us did, would solve our tricky body clock issues. Just a thought.

After I put Mini down for a much needed early nap, I resumed my planting from the day before. I mixed another wheel barrow full of soil ( I had run for more compost and garden soil earlier) and proceeded in filling the rest of the pots I needed. I had four rainbow chard in small 4" pots that got replanted into one five gallon and then I started digging up the kale out of my deep raised bed. I put four in their own two gallon pots and the rest in two larger pots (5 in each). The chard and kale in individual pots are going to a friend.

The kale is sulking a little from being dug up.

Next I moved my prep table outside putting the newly planted cucumber seeds on it. I then worked some of the fertilizer into the now empty part of the deep raised bed and planted my two Rutgers tomato plants in opposite ends. Sixty of my Copra onions were planted in front of and between the Rutgers. So now the deep bed has two tomatoes, sixty onions and about 100 Yaya carrots. The remaining twelve onions went in between the rainbow chard in one of the smaller raised beds. I could have gotten all the onions into the large bed but I am hoping they will mature into large bulbs so I didn't want to crowd them.

I planted two five gallon pots with Kentucky Wonder pole beans and one five gallon with Northeaster pole beans, planting four seeds around temporary poles. I need to scavenge some tall saplings to make a four pole teepee in each pot once they sprout. And, finally I worked some compost into one of the empty raised beds to get it ready for the perpetual spinach that will be ready to plant in there in a few more days.

So except for a few more seedling transplants I am done with planting! Now it will be a summer of tending and watching everything grow.

Ok, I may have some plant pot organizing to do too...
I hope everyone had a great holiday weekend! I'm going to go nurse my sciatic nerves that are on fire now.


This post was shared on Green Thumb Thursday Bloghop.

5 Tips to Eating On a Budget

I'm not going to give you a bunch of useless common sense tips that you could deduce on your own (like don't eat out every meal). But rather things I have just figured out for myself or have learned from my mother.

Buy whole ingredients. Sure you can get a really cheap box of something-or-other, but are you really getting a good deal? Realistically can you feed your whole family with one package or box? Let's take a seasoned rice for example. For $1 you get 3 servings of rice (6oz package, $2.32/lb). Or you could buy rice in a 10 pound bulk amount for $5.79 (57 cents/pound) and you get 116 servings and you get to make it whatever flavor you stinkin' want!

Don't buy your chicken cut up. When you look at the per pound price of chicken you will see there is a 2-3 dollar jump from a whole chicken to pieces whether boneless/skinless or bone in/skin on. This is because you are paying for labor. Same chicken but cut up buy some big guy in an bloody apron holding a cleaver. Get a good knife, watch a video on how to cut up a chicken and don't look back. Also, learn how to roast a chicken properly. Buying a fully cooked rotisserie chicken may save time but if you plan ahead, making your own roast chicken on the weekend and stashing it in the fridge doesn't take more than 15 minutes of actual working time.

Learn to like what's on sale. So, you like grapefruit. But, it's July. Grapefruit is wicked expensive right now because it's not in season. But, look! There is watermelon on sale! Dirt cheap. You just don't "feel" like watermelon. Get over it.

Bake. No, not get baked. Bake! Put wet stuff in dry stuff and mix up some magic! Like, today, I made two loaves of GF sandwich bread, one loaf GF cinnamon raisin bread and GF english muffins. For a few hours work I saved about $20. Not even kidding. Gluten free has a bit better return on making it yourself because it is a grossly overpriced specialty food, but you can see a pretty good return on the regular stuff too. If not in cost than at least in better quality!

And, shop with a list and a calculator. There are so many times I go in the store with only so much money and I can not go over! So, as I put things in the cart I add them up on my phone calculator. If I go over I pick something I don't 'need' and either don't grab or put it back. Yes, it's annoying to have to deny yourself, but less embarrassing than coming up short at the register (been there).

There are tons of other ways I make our tiny budget work. Feel free to ask me!

Til next time.

A Call to Simpler Living? Or is it Expected of Us All?

When Montana Man and I first started out together we expected to be "poor". And we also expected to be miserable about it! Ugh, talk about making lemons rot. Over the last few years I began to appreciate just having "enough". I still hated the months we fell short and sacrificed or went without, but I am now beginning to appreciate those days too. The Lord has never let us go hungry, naked or homeless. No, we have not always had all we want but we have been provided for, and well at that. To Him, I give great thanks! Here is what I have felt called to carefully examine as we prepare to build our house in the next few months: What is enough? Truly? This a question few people will answer honestly, I believe. I know I haven't always and will not always. The Lord has nothing against "happiness" but He does say it is fleeting and to find joy in Him. I have recently been reading a book of my mom's written in the 70's called Living on Less & Liking it More by Maxine Hancock. She uses her families own experience of hardship and also Biblical reference to show what kind of life style is pleasing to God. I have enjoyed it greatly. Lets explore this a bit shall we?

First a verse:

"Do not lay up for yourselves treasures on earth, where moth and rust destroy and where thieves break in and steal, but lay up for yourselves treasures in heaven, where neither moth nor rust destroys and where thieves do not break in and steal. For where treasure is, there your heart will be also." - Matthew 6:19-21
Who/ what has your heart? Does it change daily or even hourly? It does for me! But He is a jealous God and wants our hearts! And He constantly steers me back to Him and shows me that He is what I need most. Yes, most. And He wants me to serve Him through being a good steward of the life, land and love he has given to me. And money.

As for the rich in this present age, charge them not to be haughty, nor to set their hopes on the uncertainty of riches, but on God, who richly provides us with everything to enjoy. They are to do good, to be rich in good works, to be generous and ready to share, thus storing up treasure for themselves as a good foundation for the future, so that they may take hold of that which is truly life. - 1 Timothy 6:17-19
Simple of it is... money buys stuff! Stuff. The only thing you are going to care about (hopefully!) on your death bed is where your soul is going, not your stuff. Your kids will squabble over that! Well hopefully they won't if they heed to the Lord first ;-)

In the book, Maxine goes through every aspect of living and how to apply principles that are of good stewardship. At the root of taking on this lifestyle is a strong, Jesus centered marriage where the husband and wife are united in oneness. Money, in my mind is not worth fighting about. But Montana Man and I do. We just see differently, I am a saver, he a spender. We are working on it! But we both know we don't want debt, big bills or financial insecurity. It is a goal, not an overnight fix to all problems with money to declare the Lord our focus. But He will and does bless us for our diligence and attitude.

So, then what do you spend and on what??

Food. Bit obvious but it deems further explaining. Food is first and foremost for nutrition and Maxine explains this at length. I will briefly. Don't buy expensive CRAP. Buy whole food and cook. Can't cook? LEARN! Buying ready made dinners and takeout is not being a good steward of money or your body. There are some exceptions to this, like if you are traveling or you just had a baby and need a faster dinner solution. But even then there are creative ways to get around spending a bunch of money and also for others to bless you!

Clothing. I'm going to get in trouble for this one... Clothes are for covering your nakedness and warmth. Yes, they also can be pretty and "fashionable" but at the end of the day they end up in a heap in the hamper or on the floor. If you personally know me you will already know I HATE clothes shopping. It might be because I have body image issues (which is a whole 'nother can o' worms), but I also hate how much they cost! It's ridiculous, $20 for a shirt? $75 or more for jeans? No thanks. The majority of clothing I have worn in my life time have been hand-me-down, thrift or a gift. And I wear them until they are unwearable (sometimes longer hahaha!) Then there is the question of modesty. Told you this was going to get me in trouble. Ladies I'm going to be harsh. COVER UP. Not even joking. Not just Sunday, everyday. Boobs? Cover. Butt? Cover. Belly? Cover. Thighs where they connect to your crotch? COVER. Personally, I don't go above my knees much. Now, I am not saying be matronly. You can still be pretty but "sexy" should not be your focus (I sense another blog post on this one). Besides, beauty should be form within, and yes that really does show. Save sexy for your husband and a locked door ;-)

Housing. This is where being financially conservative people fail big time. No matter how you slice it, bigger here is not better. I will post more on this soon as there is a lot I have to say as we build, so don't start hating me yet. By the way, our new (and final) house plan is a log cabin with a comfy total of 665 square feet with options to grow. Keep your pants on! I know you must be so excited to hear how we will make that work with kids!

Giving. I will not go crazy here. Maxine outlines tithing, giving within a budget and giving with the right motives. Everyone who is a Christian is required to give. We tend to give our time and food because we don't have a ton of money but that will be re-evaluated soon and changed. Then I will feel more comfortable writing about it.

Transportation. The last area I will address today. This can be so broad and hard to manage perfectly. Most of us need a loan to buy a car. Personally we just traded my car for an SUV but I bought a used one with over 100K on it. It is not my ideal color or model, it does not get super gas mileage, but it fits our needs. I don't drive a lot so the greater gas mileage is not a huge problem for us. Our other vehicle is a 1996 truck. It has been fixed a zillion times but it still runs great and my husband loves it. We are grateful... most of the time! When they need fixing we could push them off a cliff. My basic point is, you don't need an SUV if you are single and live in the city, unless you own a bunch of dogs ;-) Buy only what you need!

I would encourage you to track down a copy of the book. Maxine says it so much better than me! But I feel strongly that the homesteading lifestyle demands these principles and felt inclined to share a little. Obviously this is a faith based concept and therefore not all will catch my drift but I would pray they be curious!

Want to share your thoughts? Go for it!

Going Back to Gluten Free... This Time Me Too.

So after nearly a year off gluten we tested Puzzle Boy to see if he could handle it again. After about 3 weeks the answers was very clear... nope. He needs to be gluten free for his own well being and ours as his caretakers! But this time I am going to be joining him! Recently I have just been feeling "blah". You know, sluggish, tired, gross and well... fat. Attractive, huh? Yeah, I don't think so either. So I am back to being diligent on myfitnesspal.com and I have done a bit of research on Blood Type Diets. I was vegetarian for a period when I was younger as well as attended a yoga class weekly and felt amazing. Granted I wasn't a mom at the time and I had the time to really focus on my well being. But, now it is imperative that I get this figured out. I need energy! I am going to be doing a loose-ish version of the diet for my blood type (A positive). This includes a mostly vegetarian diet with limited fish, chicken and turkey, no processed foods, no wheat except sprouted wheat, limited dairy (mostly cultured). I am not going to be restricting veggies and fruits at all, except ones that clearly bother me. Life without any tomatoes? Uh, no thanks. So while I will not be super strict GF, I will be mostly GF.

Luckily, we have quite a bit of gluten free baking mixes and flours left. When those are gone I will be trying out making my own flour mix using aramanth, brown rice, millet, oat, soy and sorghum flours and sweet rice, tapioca and arrowroot starches. Mixing my own will result in about $1.55 per 1000 grams of finished flour which will save me about $5.64 per batch compared to buying Bob's Red Mill AP gluten free Baking Flour. See! I can still save money even on GF! May not be as cheap as regular flour but healthy is worth it for me and my little man. I am sure I will play with different flours and such for different baked goods but that combo will be my starting point. I will share the recipe for it when I make it :-)


Have a good week!

January 2013 Pantry Challenge

Happy New Year readers! Last year was a year of trials for my family, time to start the year off right. So lets eat the pantry! No, not the actual pantry, that would be silly and full of splinters. Lets eat the majority of the contents starting today, January 1, 2013. If you would like a detailed description of this challenge please scoot over to GoodCheapEats.com. This mama is a frugal one and she has been doing this challenge for years. I first saw this challenge last year on TammysRecipes.com and thought it would be fun to do. If I hadn't been massively pregnant and had just moved, I totally would have! But now I am not, so here we go.

I have taken inventory, I have thought of meals, and I have made a menu for the month.

What's on the menu this week:

Tuesday: Baked ham, baked potatoes, peas, carrots and cream style corn.

Wednesday: Lentil soup with ham and vegetables, cheddar bacon cornbread.

Thursday: BBQ chicken sandwiches, oven fries, coleslaw.

Friday: Chicken divan with broccoli, cranberry sauce.

Saturday: Homemade pizza.



Pantry used:

ham
potatoes
peas and carrots
cream style corn
ham bone
lentils
bacon
cheddar
cornmeal
flour, etc.
whole chicken
BBQ sauce
fries
coleslaw dressing
broccoli
bread crumbs
cranberry sauce
pizza sauce
sausage crumbles
mozzerella cheese
misc. veggies from fridge

Grocery List:

whole wheat buns
coleslaw
cream of chicken soup

Laundry (Soap) Day

This is another one of those 'I'm a cheapy' things. Nearly two years ago we were just moved into our new house as a married couple and when I went to buy a new bottle of laundry detergent I just shook my head at the gastly price. Geez! Nearly $20 for a bottle to last us a month. I had seen homemade laundry detergent recipes here and there on the web but I just never thought it would be worth it. But I changed my mind. The next time I was low on detergent I went out and invested a whole $10 on supplies to make soap. A four pack of Ivory soap bars (on sale), a box of washing soda, and a box of Borax. Then I made my first batch and here goes nothing. Well, I was a changed girl. Two years later I am only on my third bar of soap from my supplies and have 2/3 full boxes of soda and Borax. I have spent less than $5 a year on laundry soap. YOU can too. It takes 10 minutes. Can you say no brainer?

I use just a very generic recipe you will find pretty much everywhere on the internet. A little tip though, if you have really hard water add more washing soda to your mix and it will help the soap rinse out better (it softens the water), reverse that if you have really soft water.

1 bar of Ivory soap, finely grated
1/2 cup washing soda
1/2 cup Borax
2 gallons of water
3-5 gallon bucket, whatever you have.

First, grate your soap... like this:

Then measure 8 cups of the water and microwave until VERY hot. You can do it on the stove top in a pot but it's a pain, this is easier!

Add grated soap to the water... like this:

After you have added all the soap, do it slowly to avoid lumps, and it is dissolved you can add the borax and washing soda. The mixture will get thick very quickly but just keep stiring!

Pour the mixture into your bucket and make your first addition of water warm. Mix well, then, to speed up the process and make the soap not separate as bad, make the rest cold water for a total of 2 gallon (or 32 cups) of water used. I put a fill line on my bucket to take out the measuring step. Whisk (yes, with a whisk, silly) the final mixture for about a minute and then let it finish cooling, whisking it now and a again until completely cool. When it is, pour it in your bottle of choice and use about 1/2 cup per load, more if you are washing boy/man clothes, about half that for cloth diapers.

This is unscented soap. If you love scent, essential or fragrance oils can be added.

Please give this a try, let me know how you like it!