3 Ideas for Good cheap summer fun

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The simplest items can entertain kids for hours. They don’t have to cost a lot, but it helps if the item is something they haven’t used for awhile. It’s the “newness” that gives it the biggest appeal.

1. Sidewalk chalk is something I haven’t had for several years (one bad messy memory ruined it for me.) But I broke down and bought a huge bucket for $5. The kids were so excited and I was impressed with their huge murals.

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Then I noticed that their art extended all the way to our covered entry where rain would never wash it off.

2. So I offered them the opportunity to paint 🙂 An icecream bucket of water and a $1 set of paintbrushes were all we needed for fun, fun, fun.

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Plus, I got my porch cleaned off 🙂

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3. Now that the weather is warmer, the kids can make forts from old vinyl table cloths, twine or rope and clothespins–outside. Your house stays neat and they are happy away from the TV.

My Newest Student and a Tip

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I have the flu :(. It started when I was at the emergency clinic with Dub Saturday having a two week old toothpick removed from his foot. By the time I got home I had a high fever, chills, and couldn’t stand without the room spinning. I called my mommy :). It seems like no matter how old I am when I’m sick I want Mommy. So when Dub insisted that I drive him to the ER instead of Darren, I totally understood.

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As painful as the experience was for him, he loved the wheelchair.

Today Darren is super excited about getting the patches on Caleb’s new scout shirt. He kept asking me if I felt better as the day went on, and when I didn’t have an instant recovery from his great care, he carried my sewing machine down from my studio and set it up inches from my bed. That way HE could do the work and ask questions if he needed. What an amazing guy!

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Changing the subject… Here’s a money saving tip. I saw on pinterest that if you put the roots of purchased green onions in water they will grow. You’ll always have fresh onion tops to use as needed. I tried it and it works! The outer edges don’t grow so I plan to peel those off and see what happens. This is great for my Plus menu subscribers since they can eliminate green onions from their shopping list!

Homemade Baby Food

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Heidi made a huge Hoagie sandwich and Grant decided it was for him.  He ate quite a bit of it, lol.  I had to find her something else to eat.

The Best News!

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The following is not the best news…..that comes at the end, lol. Grant has the chicken pox…I think.  Fever for 2 days, spots starting in the diaper area, spreading all over….  He was pretty miserable before the spots broke out yesterday evening.  But feels a lot better now. This is perfect timing for us.  I hope this doesn’t sound mean, but it would be nice if Brandon and W.D. come down with it soon.  Then the whole family would have life time immunity.

Eating Mulberries from our trees

My Green Beans and Okra are up.

The sweet bell peppers have blossomed–the chili peppers have not.  Maybe they won’t cross-pollinate?

Our house in Kansas City is listed for sale!  4 bedroom 2 full 2 half baths.  All new inside…..you’d love it.  And it’s priced to sell.

And the best news of all:

Mark is coming to build out my office shelves tomorrow.  We’ve been busy all weekend priming and painting the cut boards.

I ordered 200 of these last night to organize all my fabric with. It saved me more than $380 to do it this way than to buy the boards manufactured for organizing fabric. I found the idea from pinterest which took me to Smashed Peas and Carrots.  Check out the inspiring photo below.  Click on the blog title to find out more.

Green and Growing

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I planted my garden a few days ago and little green shoots are coming up. The garden is more shaded than it appeared to be in winter before the tree leaves appeared. So it is a great experiment if anything will grow.

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This bed has sprouts of green beans and okra popping up their heads. In the center is a spaghetti squash plant that I plan to train to a tomato cage.

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The left side of this bed is red chili peppers and sweet bell peppers on the right. In the center I have 6 squares of lettuce and spinach, one eggplant, one cilantro, and one rosemary.

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This bed has 4 tomato plants and a zucchini right in the middle of it all.  I hinted to the children that tomato cages would make a great mother’s day gift.

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The fourth and final bed is all sweet potatoes–one start in each square. I love sweet potatoes!

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When I got home yesterday my good friend, Janelle had left these marigolds as a surprise. I plan to put them in the bed with the lettuce and peppers for a pretty pop of color.

Mulberries

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The kiddoes are picking mulberries off our tree in the back garden. They got about a quart with more to ripen soon. I’m trying to post a photo from my phone. Crossing my fingers that the wordpress app will work this time.

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Garden Update :)

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Here’s a reminder of what my old garden spot looked like:

Two weeks ago we had a garage sale and while I sat in the garage helping customers, Darren cleared my garden spot!  What a relief.  I didn’t know how I was going to find time to do that.

Then he built the beds for me too!  (I bought kits from Aldi and totally expected to do it myself..so what a great surprise!)

I drove to a local greenhouse and filled my minivan with bags of stuff.

Part 1: Compost

To save money I used the modified Mel’s mix talked about here. It uses twice as much compost since that is the least expensive and most nutritive part of the mix.  If I had my own compost, it would have saved $13 a box or $52 total.  I had to buy it and it was unusal.  More like fine mulch.  They called it cotton something compost.  I had never heard of it before.  I want to start a compost bin now to get the cost of filling the next year’s bins down. We will need to clear some land to build them…it feels a little overwhelming.

Part 2: Vermiculite

Each bed ended up with 2 cubic feet each of compost and 1 cubic feet each of vermiculite and peat moss.

Part 3: Peat Moss

 It cost $35 to fill each bed, which sounds decent until you multiply that by 4.  And I have 4 more beds that we didn’t build this year!  I hope to clear more land for them next year, but went ahead and bought them now so they would all match.  When they told me the total for all the stuff, I couldn’t help but think about all the FOOD I could buy for that much money.  But I reminded myself that this was an investment that I wouldn’t have to redo for 10+ years.  Plus, I like the idea of having a garden :).

Mixing by hand

My plan was to mix everything in the bins with a shovel.  But that was tricky to mix it well and not spill it out everywhere.  That dirt was like gold gravel to me and I didn’t want to lose a speck of it.  I resorted to just digging in with my arms and stirring it up by hand.  It was fun in a “I hope my Mama doesn’t catch me doing this” kind of way.   And then I remembered, I am the mama :).

Ready to Plant

I finished the bins just before dark.  Planting will have to wait for another day.

 

Low Carb Burger

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My In-laws came down several weeks ago to help us work on the back garden of the house we are trying to sell.  Dad offered to go and get low-carb burgers for everyone from Hardees because I had no food or dishes to cook with in the vacant house.  It was delicious!  It was basically a large beef burger between huge stacks of lettuce instead of a bun.  I didn’t miss the bun at all!  When I got home, I looked up the calorie content to record in my journal and was floored!  It may have been low carb, but it stil had 36 g of fat and 470 calories!  They had so much mayo on it to more than make up for the lack of bun.

A few weeks later I decided to try my own version of the low-carb burger and see if I could get the calories under control. Every bit as tasty…with about 200 fewer calories.

I started with a lean  Jennie-O Turkey burger pattie, cooked with garlic salt on the Foreman grill. I lighted spread it with reduce fat mayo.  Then topped with 3/4 oz of thin sliced cheese, ketchup, red onion, mustard, and pickles.  Then wrapped the whole thing in huge romaine lettuce leaves.  It was less than 300 calories and sooo good.  Definitely will be doing this again!

 

Darren’s New Toy

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Don’t forget to enter our giveaway here. The winner will be chosen Friday, May 4th.

How many times can I say no before giving into His handsome face? I started to think about all the things I plan to ask for this year and felt myself softening up.  His little boy pleading eyes were too much for me this time as he anounced that he found his dream bike.  So I said, “Yes.  But please don’t die. There aren’t a lot of men standing in line for your job of daddy to 6 ready made babies. We need you.”

He said, “I’ll be safe.  I promise.  Think about all the money we’ll save on gas.  Think about how much fun we’ll have riding together.  The weather is so nice right now.  I’ll take a safety class.”

Now I pray a little more than I did before.