Happy Gardening Day!

At least it was for us. Ah, sunshine and dirt and water and mud and seeds and... what could be better?!

Today little Abe and I planted carrots seeds (I did actually plant purple carrots this year) and spinach seeds. Spinach is one of this year's new additions. When I decided to give gardening a try two years ago I chose to start out with just tomatoes and strawberries. Last year I added carrots, beans, and watermelon. Oh, and the giant sunflower. Last year was also the first year I grew all of the plants from seed.

This year I've added spinach, will possibly add pumpkin and switched from watermelon to the Bidwell Casaba melon. Getting the seeds outside and getting the tomato and bean bed ready to go was such a great way to spend mother's day. Okay, I did snap at little Abe a few times when he flung mud at me, almost hit me with the shovel, and started to flood the backyard with the hose. BUT we did enjoy ourselves and got a lot accomplished. I also put up a little fence (that we have had in the garage for YEARS) to keep the dogs away from the tomatoes and strawberries this year.

The tomatoes and pole beans will go in the ground but there are rabbits galore around here so I've found that strawberries, carrots and I'm anticipating the spinach in pots works so much better for me.

I had set this year's gardening budget at $25 and I'm considerably over that. Here's the rundown of my garden spending thus far: $17.52 for Peat and Garden soil and $20 for seeds. The bin that I have carrots in this year was given to me by my sister in law as she no longer needed it. I've been composting in the purple bin that I grew carrots in last year. I had the other three pots and the fencing on hand. I know, I spent a ridiculous amount on seeds. The problem was that I ordered them online, had to pay shipping and I went and did a second order when I found the Bidwell Casaba seeds. I spent $6.25 on the melon seeds alone. With the exception of the two year old strawberries, everything I'm growing is from heirloom seeds.

If this year's gardening endevour turns out half as well as last year then I'm more than happy with the $42.52 that I spent on the garden this year. Teaching little Abe about growing food while watching all the beautiful plants grow and fruit and then getting to eat food from our own backyard is worth SOOOOO much more than $42.52 to me anyhow.

Hooray for Spring!!!!!!!!!

Stew

It's been pretty cold and gloomy around here lately.
But I'm feeling warm, contented, and happy.
Our little gardens are freshly tilled (waiting for warmth).
There are blooms now in our strawberry bins.
Hooray for backyard strawberries!
I have a large pot of homemade beef stew (my first ever (yes, I've made goose stew but I've never made beef stew)) bubbling away on the stove right now.
Tomorrow is Friday, which means the weekend is fast approaching.
No matter the rain and the cold and the gloom,
we've a lot to be happy about and much to look forward to.

Strawberries: April 28, 2016

Spending time in the yard today

There are four tiny watermelon on the first watermelon plant now. I still have no idea how they will turn out but at least we've got a start. Yay!

I thought the strawberry buckets were done several weeks ago but we've still been getting one or two great berries every day for the past several weeks. Yum, yum, yum!

Some of the tomatoes are FINALLY turning red. I had honestly started to think they were not going to ripen. I feel like I've had plants filled with green tomatoes for months. I'm afraid patience is not my strong point.

We're heading back outside now. It's kind of a gloomy cooler day here and in truth I'm happy about that. It hasn't been a super hot summer but I do like cooler days where you can spend lots of time in the yard without sweating up a storm. (It's very humid in Michigan... especially a mile from the lake)

Spending rundown today: I made an executive decision to buy two cups for little Abe and a set of three bath squirters for $7.71 today. I needed to spend another $7.45 in the baby department to earn a $10 store reward. I will have $10 to spend on my next purchase at the store since I bought the cups and squirters today. The way I look at it, I basically got the cups and squirters for free.

I spent $41.97 on groceries today which included $9 worth of organic yogurt, 5 boxes of the tube yogurt (like go-gurt). We like to freeze it and little Abe eats it as popsicles. Normally a box is $3.09 so I saved $6.45 today just on yogurt. I bought a strange assortment of stuff (lots of cheese and yogurt) but between sales and coupons today was a good trip. I saved 45% on my total bill. I'm thrilled whenever I'm at the 50% savings mark and that 45% is close enough for me. That doesn't include the $15 worth of rewards I earned and $4 worth of good Catalina coupons that spit out on this trip. Yep, good shopping day here.

My budget for the month is $436 which leaves $321.24.

Average daily spending for 2015: $18.34

Fresh Strawberry Pie Recipe

We went Strawberry picking today with some friends (in case you hadn't seen the last post).  Now THIS is summer!!! Juicy fresh picked berries. I left with 11.5 pounds of the red beauties. MMMMmmm! I feel like I've been washing, slicing the top off of, and flash freezing strawberries on cookie sheets all evening. But I did manage to make an awesome pie too. I combined several recipes and came up with this one. There wasn't enough fruit in any of the ones I saw and too much sugar in most of them. I did not want to use a box of strawberry jello as some of them called for, but wanted to use a gelatin envelope instead. This is what I came up with and it's a keeper!

Fresh Strawberry Pie Recipe

1 c. water

2 tbsp. cornstarch

2/3 c. sugar

1 c. fresh strawberries, sliced

1 env. Knox gelatin

1 pie shell, cooked

3 cups of fresh strawberries, sliced

(that makes 4 cups total)

Whipped cream (optional)

Bring water, cornstarch, sugar and one cup of chopped strawberries to a boil on med or med high heat. Boil until thickened, stirring regularly. I cooked mine on medium heat with a very mild boil. It took about 15 minutes to thicken. Cool and then stir in the Knox gelatin.

Place two cups of chopped strawberries into the cooled cooked pie crust. Pour cooked strawberry mixture over top of the fresh strawberries in the pie crust. Top off the pie with the remaining one cup of fresh chopped strawberries. Cool for 2 or 3 hours until set.

Top with whipped cream for an extra special treat. But this pie is awesome all by itself too.

I think I use a different pie crust recipe every time I make a pie and I still always end up with pretty slopping looking crusts (I don't think I'm patient enough to perfect a pie crust) but this pie turned out awesome (despite the ugly crust). It's such a deliciously juicy fresh summer pie. It's absolutely not too sweet so that the strawberries are really the star. If you wanted it a little sweeter absolutely go with a cup of sugar instead of the 2/3 or top with whipped cream for a bit more sweet. Please don't get me wrong though I don't think this pie recipe needs any more sugar. It turned out perfect!

Guess what we did today

Yummy outings are my favorite!

Now That's a Garden Salad!

The carrots will need to be thinned once they're big enough but seeing as they're buried under ground and seeing as I've never grown carrots before I have no idea if they're big enough to be needing thinning yet so I've pulled up one carrot each week for the past three weeks. We've eaten the small white root and it's gorgeous green top each time we've "checked" how big the carrots are getting but today I turned the little orange fellow into a tiny garden salad. (yep, they're starting to turn orange now) 

One perfectly adorable baby carrot and one juicy ripe strawberry from our garden along with a little bit of balsamic vinegar, grape seed oil, and a sprinkle of blue cheese made for a splendid little backyard garden salad.

Perfection!

Saturday Pie and Produce

This is a Saturday!

Other than a minor struggle with my child while trying to get him to fall asleep for his nap (for over an hour (because his schedule was WAY thrown off yesterday from a graduation open house)) today has been what every Saturday should be. We've chilled at home. Gone for a nice long morning walk. Made the Saturday run to the grocery store. I stuck to my list and saved a ton of money on my cart full. I feel like I've been baking ALL day and that I've used every dish in my kitchen to do so but I haven't done either really. I now have my very first, from scratch, homemade, hot chicken pot pie to show for all the hard work. Ahhh! I love food and considering I used organic veggies, organic chicken and organic flour to make the handsome fellow I am pretty much on cloud nine right now.

First I made the chicken stock from a large chicken breast that's been in my freezer for seemingly forever, carrots, a large onion, a few fresh basil leaves (from that plant I bought awhile back), some old garlic cloves, and salt and pepper. Then I baked a few chicken breasts for the pie filling. I had to make the filling next; carrots and butter, flour, chicken stock, skim milk, salt and pepper, corn, peas, broccoli, and chicken. The filling was supposed to cool before being put into the pie crust so I made the pie crust while the filling cooled. I pretty much used THIS recipe but didn't have any onion or celery for the filling and used corn and broccoli instead.

I mentioned our backyard produce in my last post so I really felt the need to run out back and snap some photos of my happy plants (they make me very happy at least and I like to thing they're happy too). Yes, I need to mow the lawn.

Tomatoes, Carrots, and Strawberries all in a row

Those are tiny baby tomatoes in the middle there

I think I'm way more proud of these carrots then I should be

And our awesome strawberry pots; Deliciousness!

We're almost done munching on our pot pie dinner. I think we'll be heading into the steamy outdoors to play in the sprinkler in a few minutes. I hope everyone's been enjoying this splendid June Saturday!

Weekend To-dos

1. Plant watermelon seeds out back.
2. Tidy up the yard. DONE
3. Really clean up the kitchen.
4. Mail out one friendly hello.
5. Start starfish pillow. DONE
6. Finish starfish pillow. DONE
7. Bake something... bread, pretzels, something fun and yummy but maybe not super sugary. DONE
8. Catch up and keep up on daily Bible reading (trying to read through the Chronological Bible in six months).
9. Clear off the buffet and dining room table (much bigger job then it sounds, sadly).
10. Weather permitting, GET OUTSIDE BUNCHES! We spent a TON of time outside during April, not so much in May however and we need to get out there more again. DONE
11. Look through June's budget and set spending goals. DONE

Bonus
   12.  Tackle my bedroom closet; ooh, scaaaary!

7. Bake something

I finished number seven tonight. I was thinking of baking bread or pretzels but I strayed from the plan and started looking up donut recipes. I settled on THIS ONE for baked strawberry donuts BUT I don't have a donut pan so I ended up making mini strawberry glazed muffins in my mini muffin tin with the donut recipe.

I think this recipe turned out really well but I tweaked it quite a bit and I don't see how this mini muffin is anything like a donut at all. Maybe the non-resemblance is just because of the muffin shape but I tried to convince myself this was a donut hole and still no, totally muffin. It's a rather moist yet airy muffin and again I really liked the way they turned out but no resemblance to a donut.

In case anyone cares my tweaks were: coconut oil in place of the butter, apple butter syrup in place of the maple syrup, also apple butter syrup in place of the vanilla in the glaze and I added a little cinnamon to the glaze. I also halved the glaze portion of the recipe because 3 cups of powdered sugar seemed absurd to me for the amount of mini muffins I ended up with (one full mini muffin pan worth). Also, these glazed strawberry mini muffins are perfection topped with a fresh raspberry. 

5. & 6. Start and Finish starfish pillow

I'm not totally happy with how my almost entire days worth of work Saturday (or half a day at least) turned out BUT it's FINALLY done! I am happy about that. Side note: I can't use a sewing machine. Apparently I don't know how. Every time I've ever tried I end up spending more time monkeying with the machine then what I do actually sewing so I always sew by hand. I like sewing by hand anyhow but it sure takes more time.

I made a plain white insert for this so that the cover could be more easily washed/ thrown into a washing machine (instead of just making a solid decorative pillow) and this little project is the first time I've ever made a pattern or used a pattern for anything (except for a pair of pants I started to make for my sister once and never finished). But the insert is just a bit too small or the cover is just a bit too big so that the finished work of art is a bit more wrinkly than I'd envisioned. I purposefully made the cover just the tiniest big bigger because I thought if the cover and insert were the exact same size then it would be too snug. Sigh.

Well, I marked 6 out of 11 things off my weekend to-do list. I'll wrap up a few more tomorrow. Over half done isn't bad for me.

Strawberry Bucket

There are a ton of strawberries on their way.

I look out the kitchen window several times a day and smile each and every time at the sight of our beautiful strawberry bucket in the back yard. What a simple thing, what a truly grand thing. Little Abe and I are excited for bright red backyard strawberries! (I'm enjoying them just as they are in the meantime)

Average daily spending for 2015: $18.15

Our 2015 Strawberries

Last year I spent $11.31 on my lovely strawberry container garden. Here's our strawberry plants on May 18th last year. There are six plants in that metal tub.

This year I spent zero dollars on my strawberry garden and here it is today, four plants in the tub. These plants are huge compared to where I started last year. I moved two into a different container that I already had, and that already had dirt in it. Gardening is seriously fun stuff.

Average daily spending for 2015: $18.09

Using what you've got; Fingers crossed

It has begun!

I've just finished planting a few seeds for the very first time EVER. With the exception of elementary school experiments of course. I'm rather excited!!! Should I have probably purchased the little seed starter greenhouses? Probably so. Should I not be having my very first go at starting seeds in an egg carton tucked inside a juice bottle? Probably not. Even so I've done it and I'm excited and we shall see what happens. I do honestly get the hugest sense of satisfaction out of avoiding a purchase and being able to make due with things around the house (things that would have gone to recycle sooner than later too).

Today I've only started a few lavender seeds, two juice bottles worth; if I'm lucky I'll get eight plants out of that. But I'll soon be starting roma tomatoes, pole beans, and watermelon. Yep, I've officially decided on my garden this year and I am so happy (this will only be my second go at a vegetable garden). I have purchased seeds for carrots too but those apparently can go directly into the ground so I won't be starting those in egg cartons and juice bottles.

My strawberry plants from last year look incredible, such a hearty beautiful green and growing and growing by the day. I put too many plants into that one container last year so I've moved one plant to a different pot and intend to move one or two more shortly. Maybe I shouldn't mess with success but there really were far too many plants in that little pot.

I'll keep you updated, because I'm sure everyone is so interested to find out how my juice bottle seeds end up.

:)

Strawberries and Hair cuts

I've seen several photos of "spring's first flowers" on many other blogs. And while I LOVE these happy thoughts and sights of spring I'd yet to see any of my own. So far we've just had snow and snow and more snow. The snow is no where near gone but it's definitely warmed up around here. The snow is melting quite rapidly and the warmer temps leave all of use frozen Michiganders really believing that spring will actually arrive this year (we were doubtful).

Today I found the most amazing thing ever in my yard. OUR STRAWBERRIES!!!

Last year little Abe and I had our first go at food in the yard. We grew a pot of strawberries and a row of tomatoes, both of which we adored every minute of and grew completely and totally in love with. I took a big risk and left the strawberries out during the winter. I kinda sorta threw out my back moving the pot while mowing the yard one day last summer and I wasn't about to re-injure myself or injure my husband by trying to move it to the garage or the basement. This evening while little Abe and I were playing in the snow in the backyard I cleared the mulch away from my beloved berry plants and they look awesome. The very first signs of life I've seen outdoors this year are my strawberry plants! Oh I could not be more happy. It's supposed to stay pretty warm and they are apparently VERY hardy plants so hopefully I have not harmed them by clearing away the mulch.

Now that spring is officially on its way its once again time to groom the puppies. It costs us $100 to groom the two of them at the groomers. Needless to say I quite taking them to the groomers many hair cuts ago. It's totally worth it to save the money by grooming them myself but boy oh boy is it work! One dog now has her spring trim, her toe nails cut, and has been freshly bathed. One more dog to go. I left the easier one for last. Our boy Boz actually really likes being groomed. We borrowed a trimmer once to cut their hair and it was a total disaster. They were like  little doggy jumping beans the whole time. Ever since that one try I've trimmed them both with scissors. It usually takes me a week to get the two of them done. I'm on a roll this time. I got our girl all groomed in two days. Tomorrow I'll start on Bozzy boy.

Sorry about he spitty dog face.
He just came in from eating snow outside and just at a dog treat.
It certainly is not a very flattering look for him.

They are both miniature schnauzers. Bozzy is Maggie's dad. Almost hard to tell that they are the same kind of dog, right? We always cut the hair on their legs short and do a shorter beard. Last time was the first time I trimmed their beards all the way off. Now, trimming the beard all the way off leaves them looking kind of rat-ish BUT it's so much cleaner and doesn't begin to mat before the next trim so we prefer no beard. Sorry, I know, it's like schnauzer blasphemy.

Today was NO SPEND day 24 of 2015.

The strawberries survived the winter!

And the dogs are half groomed.

What a fabulous day!!!

Average daily spending for 2015: $17.59
$245.97 left to spend in March

Strawberry Frost

This bucket of berries brought us such joy through out the summer.
It still continues to inspire awe.

Winter is on it's way.
What a lovely morning!

Produce

I haven't been near the computer much recently. For lack of recent blog posts I decided that before vacuuming this evening I would quick post a backyard produce update. Even though it's such a common normal event, my backyard produce is tremendously exciting to me!

There are some nice looking rose hips ripening on the wild rose bush right now.

The tomato plants are doing splendidly!

I absolutely love going out and checking on them everyday. It's one of my very favorite things.
And they smell so wonderful.

We've gotten 64 really great strawberries from the strawberry garden. I've stopped tallying them as of late because there have mostly been really small ones recently. But right now there are some new fairly large berries ripening so I think we'll safely make it to 70 berries this year. I haven't counted the berries my dogs ate either.

Now onto vacuuming!

What's the daily spending average you might ask... I do not know right now. I'm hoping to tally tonight after my son goes to bed.

Strawberries and Matos

We got a Siamese twin berry today

We've picked 36 strawberries from our container garden so far. They all were yummy. They mostly all were beautiful. The count would be higher but my little Maggie girl discovered the neat little pot in the backyard had edible stuff in it a week or so ago and started scarfing up the ripe berries. I watch the dogs when I let them out so I've stopped her since but we lost a few berries in the interim. It's practically bursting with berries right now.

This is insanely exciting to me as well. Look at that darling little guy!!!

I spent $4.03 today after deposit bottles; mission accomplished.

Average daily spending for July: $14.99

Strawberry Yum

Average daily spending for June: $17.64

Yikes! At this point I think I'm going to be happy to have the average daily spending for the year under $20 a day. Sigh. My goodness I'm not doing well this year... but trying still!

Another yikes: the cheap eggs at the grocery stores I shop in just went up to $1.99 a dozen. I now feel like I'm robbing my new egg lady. She's selling her free range, GMO free brown eggs for $2 a dozen and the grocery store is charging only a penny less for their bottom of the line factory farm eggs. That seems crazy! Want to talk about inflation? The cost of everything just keeps going up, up, up! And I haven't gotten a raise in just about forever. I feel SOOOOO blessed to have my husband working close (we're talking 3 minutes away) to home again!

It's probably super lame but I'm keeping count on the strawberry garden. We've picked 14 beautiful strawberries out of it thus far. The little garden cost $11.31 and it's been a source of gorgeous fruit, incredibly good learning for Abe, daily fun (checking on it and watering it), and is covered, just covered in berries right now. TOTALLY worth every penny and so much more! Even if you have virtually no yard you could plant a little strawberry garden like ours.

(the yellow flowers are behind the container not in it)

Strawberry Rhubarb Freezer Jam

3 c. Rhubarb cut 1/4 to 1/2" wide
2 c. strawberries, crushed
2 c. Sugar
1 envelope of Knox gelatin

Put strawberries in pot over low heat (this is how I crushed them because I was feeling lazy).
Once they begin simmering add the rhubarb and sugar.
Simmer until thick, about 30-45 minutes stirring occasionally.
Remove from heat, stir in gelatin, and let stand for 30 minutes.
Ladle into 12-16 oz jars leaving about 3/4 inches at top for expansion.
Let stand until at room temperature.
Then place sealed containers in the freezer.
Thaw individual containers in the refrigerate when ready to use.

Some friends of ours just gave me a bunch of rhubarb that they picked from their Grandmother's garden (she can't use it all... and neither can they). I made jam for the very first time tonight and I think I might be in love with it!!! I looked at a few recipes and altered them so that there would be considerably less sugar. All the recipes that I looked at called for 3 cups of sugar and a box of strawberry jello. I used Knox unflavored (or you could use generic unflavored) gelatin instead of strawberry jello which has additional sugar, artificial color, a few different preservatives, a few different acids and flavoring in it.

Strawberries Have Never Been So Tasty

Sunday Stroll

Our little family went for a nice long walk today with my husband's sister and her little family. We walked to a playground with a huge wooden structure for the three boys to run around and climb on. They had a blast. Us old folks tired ourselves out chasing the two 2 year olds around (my other nephew is 8). After plenty of time at the playground we walked down the board walk and got ice cream. The three of us spent $10.28 on ours. My little guy had his very own kiddie cup of chocolate vanilla twist. The ice cream place put tiny candy eyes on top where a cherry might normally be. It was adorable watching him eat his big boy ice cream with his big boy spoon. It's the first time he's had his own dish at an ice cream place so it was memorable for at least me.

My husband is at a movie with a buddy now. The total spending for today is the $10.28 for the ice cream. (My husbands movie spending does not come out of my daily budget) My hubby had talked about wanting to go to the zoo today, or we may have driven out of town to a touristy shopping beach town not too far away. They have a really huge sand dune there that's "fun" to climb up. The walk around town, playground, and ice cream were plenty fun family time. I'm quite thrilled with the spending total for this planned no spend day. I had imagined it would come in much closer to $30, $40, or $50. Whoo! (and I got my flurry too) It's practically a miracle that we didn't eat a meal out. We always eat out on a "family" day. And none of us are feeling the lesser for it. Now I'm left wondering if I need to make an enormously filling breakfast every time the two of us have a day off together (we virtually never have a day off together). That might be why we didn't dine out though... hm

In other news I'm absolutely in love with our tiny strawberry garden and my kiddo loves checking it out with me everyday to see how many berries there are; are any red yet, and so on. I love it!!!

Average daily spending for June: $14.90

Our First Strawberry

I'm going to call today NO SPEND day 33 of the year. But I'm only about 1/3 through the day and my resolve is incredibly low because my frustration is incredibly high. Things are chaotic with scheduling at work and every bit of my frustration is screaming at me that if I just buy a donut, or a cupcake (or like 6), or a brownie, or... you get the idea; then I'll feel so much better. At times like these working in a supermarket can be a very VERY bad thing.

I figure declaring a no spend day now will make it easier to stick to. Who wants to retract a no spend right?

In other news (which is kind of lame but super exciting to me and little Abe) we have our first strawberry! I think it'll be perfect to pick today. This photo is from yesterday. If you look closely you can see a finger nail gash in the side of the berry. My little guy has been attempting to pick it for a week and he scuffed it a few days ago. Isn't it gorgeous :)

Average daily spending for June: $12.55
The above average factors in no spends for the next two days.