Busy Day: Hair cuts, pickles, and VBS

   It's been a busy week, mainly just because my schedule is thrown off a bit because of VBS being this week.  It's from 7-9 p.m.  Kinda a weird time.  I get the kids cleaned up after dinner then it's off to church, leaving no time to clean up the toys before bed because when the kids get home them are tired (and trying to get them to clean up could cause a major meltdown,) so we just clean up at some point the next day.

   Yesterday on a trip to the store I finally got a canner with a jar rack, (not a pressure canner, more or less just a big pot.)  So now I can start canning my cucumber pickles up, yay! But I also now have to find a place to put my pickles after they are canned.  Canning pickles is supposed to be a good way to ease into water bath canning, so here's hoping it will all go smoothly.  But for now, I have to run to the store because they didn't have any canning salt at the store, and I knew I'd need it for the pickles, and I only have some coarse kosher sea salt in my cabinet, which I hear you can use I just don't have enough.  So I may have to leave a little early tonight for church and see if I can find a store that has it.  Or, I could just text my husband and see if he can pick me up some, that would work out much better :).

   So I guess today is hair cut day as well.  The kids got a hair cut at the beginning of summer but were in need of another one now and before school starts :/.  I cut their hair at home, as well as my husbands so it saves us money that way, but takes longer.  It probably takes about an hour and a half maybe to get the three boys done.  Mainly because they have to take a shower afterwards because they get itchy because of the other reason it takes so long.  They never stand still.  Even my 6 year old cannot get through a haircut with out squirming and fussing.

 

   TBT

   This was taken in April of 2010.  I don't know why he was posing like that but he's just so darn cute.  I do remember he had just finished lunch and had peanut butter on his face.  This is my oldest when he was about 20 or so months old.  Such a sweetheart.  I love that boy!

It's Fair time

   Well, technically it was last week, but still.  It's the time of year when county fairs are happening around the country.  Our local fair is on the smaller side, but still fun to go to.  On Monday they have family day where the price is reduced to $5, it's normally $9, or you can buy a weekend long pass, but I'm not sure how much that is.  I didn't get any pictures of the animals that are shown at the fair because my camera was in the stroller, and the stroller was with my husband and oldest and youngest.  Gabe, my 4 1/2 year old was the only one who was really interested in seeing the show animals (he loves all animals,) so we had some fun mommy/son time while the other boys went back to the area where the rides where.  As Gabe and I were walking through the farm animals he keep telling me all the pets he wanted to have, from the goats and sheep to the little horses, lol.  I can't wait till we can buy a farm and I can give him all the animals he wants, (momma wants those animals too :).)  So here are some pictures from our time at the fair.  I did take pictures of the kids at the petting zoo.

Things are starting to calm down

   Today is a little bit of a normal day.  Nothing out of the ordinary happened with the kids, just more poison spots popping up.  I am itchy on my arms and legs, what fun.  I feel really bad when I have to tell Dino Boy, my cuddle bug, that I can't snuggle with him because he makes me itchy and I don't want to give him my poison.  He has very sensitive skin and he catches it quick and it spreads pretty fast since he doesn't quite understand what is going on.

   In other news I have made a few more batches of pickles.  They all seem to be a little different.  I don't know if it's the amount of brine as compared to how much seasonings there are in it or what.  Oh well, now I'm looking for a recipe for canned dill pickles because I'm overwhelmed with pickling cucumbers.  Also I would like to have enough canned that I don't have to buy any till next summer.  Isn't it great to be able to have enough of something, that you grew yourself, that barely cost you anything to make, to be able to last you a whole year.  I hope that makes sense, it's hard to get the words right when you know what you want to say in your brain but won't come out of your mouth right. 

   Throw back Thursday, my two oldest sitting with daddy at the computer before bed.  Probably watching him play some kind of game.

   And next time on Organized Chaos, the county fair!

It's always something

  So yesterday was a whirlwind kind of day.  I went downstairs to get the laundry out of the washer to hang outside and while doing so my older two kids went outside "looking for momma."  They will use any excuse to go outside.  When the door opened the dog, Murphy, also went outside and then as I was hanging up the laundry ran off.  So, my clothes are half up on the clothesline and I'm running around yelling for the dog.  I made the kids go inside and told them not to go back outside I would be back.  Found Murphy because I heard him barking.  He had somehow managed to get in under a cement slab that was in a little stretch of woods between out house and the neighbors, and he had something cornered under it.  It took me an hour and the help of a neighbor to get him out, finally.  Then the neighbor told me I better go wash my arms and legs because there was poison in that patch of woods, great.  Went back to the house and my youngest had emptied out my canister of bread crumbs, all over my kitchen.  I guess I was asking for that one, but I didn't want anything to happen to my dog either.

  So after cleaning up myself and the kitchen, then making lunch for the kids it was already 1:30.  The usually eat around 11:30, but luckily for me, I guess, they had woken up late that day and didn't eat breakfast early so they were not hungry then anyway.

  My husband texted me sometime when I was outside and asked me how my day was going.  Needless to say he got a long text in return.  He called me not to long later and told me he knew I had busy days but that was pretty interesting.

  This morning the hits just keep on coming.  Even after washing my legs and arms, I still woke up with poison in a couple spots, ugh.  Then I took my youngest into the pediatrician because he has some kind of rash or something on his legs and butt that I couldn't get rid of after trying for a week and using everything I had here at the house on it.  So he got a prescription and we headed to the store to get it and a few other things.  While in the store my youngest started getting fussy, and of course today had to be the day my kids are more ornery than usual.  So I held my youngest, while pushing the cart through the store (and got many more than normal, "you've got your hands full.)  As I was getting my youngest out of his seat I noticed he was not using his right arm and that it was hurting him.  well crap.  So I gave him something for the pain and started watching him more closely.  This isn't the first time this has happened, and I believe it is nursemaids elbow.  He's had it twice before, maybe three times.  So for now he has his arm in a little sling and if it is still bothering him in a few hours when my husband gets home I will take him to the ER to get it looked at, but there isn't a lot you can do for it.  I didn't notice any trauma to his arm while we were out today and I am always careful to not really hold his hand but more his arm instead.  So it's always something and the hits just keep coming.  Hopefully this weekend will be nice and calm.

    Poor little guy!

Couch day for me today.

  So I'm going to do throw back Thursday in a minute but first.  It's going to be a couch day for me today, with a heating pad on my back.  Yesterday while taking laundry downstairs my foot slipped on the carpet somehow and I fell down the stairs.  Luckily I went down on my back and didn't go forward.  And I'm ok, I just have a sore back today.  My neck was out yesterday but today seems to be back in place, thankfully.  But I had a hard time sleeping last night and this morning I woke up really stiff and sore.  Got out the heating pad and I feel a little better, But will probably not be doing much today.  So on to throw back Thursday.

   This was taken last May after a long afternoon of playing outside.  Even Murphy (furbaby) was wore out from playing outside!

   Oh, and my husband surprised me yesterday by bringing home almost a full truckload of manure fertilizer for my garden!  Doesn't take a lot to get this girl excited, lol.  Even though I already had grass clippings and straw on most of my garden we didn't think it would hurt anything to still put the fertilizer on over top of that stuff.  And I was really excited when I found five (!) pickling cucumbers that were ready to be pickled.  So I picked them, brought them to the house, cut them up and put them in the left over brine from my last batch of pickled.  Today I will check them out and see if them last as good as the cucumbers that I bought from the market.  I'm also just so happy to finally have some fruit for all my labor that I put into the garden, yay!

Beaty after the rain

   I like the rain during summer.  It helps to cool things off a bit when it is hot out.  It refreshes the garden and means I get to water the garden less.  When I walked outside this morning and looked at the flowers on the side of the house half of them had bloomed.  But there are many more buds yet to open, but they really seemed to like the rain from yesterday and this morning.  These flowers and the landscaping around the side of the house that wraps around to the back where the patio is was already done when we moved into the house.  It needs a lot of upkeep to keep it pretty, but its worth it for it to look when when all the flowers are in bloom.

   I am pretty sure that these are Lily but I am not sure what kind they are.  I was very surprised when they came up our first summer at this house.  I have never seen Lilies with colors like these.  I have purple ones, peach ones, white, yellow, red, and maybe even an orange one.  I don't think any of the flower bunches are the same color, nor do they bloom at the same time, kinda weird.  But they do have an extended blooming season it seems, because only a few buds bloom at a time, then as they die other buds open up.

   When we moved in the hillside had been landscaped and I changed it up a little bit by putting the pond that was out front that got leaves in it over winter so I decided to move it out back where I thought it would get less leaves in it.  I was right but wrong at the same time.  it still got leaves in it, just not as much.  Last year after I moved it I put some fish and plants in it.  It looked beautiful.  Then the water Lilies completely covered the pond which was ok, but it didn't leave much room for the Lily pads to come up.  Then over the winter my pump stopped working and I couldn't fix it.  So, my fish and plants died.  The as it got warmed this spring and my kids started playing outside my youngest started throwing every rock that he could find in the pond, including the decorative rocks that lined the pond.  Now my pond is in disarray since I havn't figured out what I am going to do with the pond now.  It's kinda an eyesore now, but it will look better by next year hopefully.  Next spring I want ducks so I may just rip the pond out to let it be for the ducks.  We will have to see.

  Needless to say it does not look like that anymore.  But it was beautiful while it lasted.  But it will be beautiful again.  For now, there is a family of frogs living in there.  Every time I walk past it, I heard them jumping into the water.  I havn't managed to get a picture of the baby frogs, I just catch a glimpse of them out of the corner of my eye as they jump into the water.  But I did catch a picture of the adult frog.

 
   And on a parting note, it does not look like I will be getting any broccoli from my garden this year.  My fence did not work so I believe it was a deer getting in there rather than something smaller.  All my broccoli plants are without leaves.  I don't know yet if I am going to just pull them all up or just wait, see, and pray that they may come back.  I will look into it, and hope that whatever it is that is getting into my garden leave my green bean leaves alone too so I won't be down two crops already this year.  


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Huston, we have a problem.

Ah, Huston, we have a problem.  Something is eating my broccoli plants.  I went out and checked on them yesterday and there were a few plants with some missing leaves.  I told my husband about it and he said it is probably a rabbit.  I'm hoping it's not a deer.  So today I went out to look how they were doing, ( I've had issues with cabbage worms,) and THIS is what I found.

So I tried to put up a makeshift fence with what I had laying around the house.  I had three pieces of lattice that I actually used last year as a trellis for my cucumbers in the container. Since I only had three pieces of lattice I had to use something else for the other side.  Which turned out to be something else I had laying around the house, which I had used as a trellis for my pole beans in the container last year.   I think it was some kinda bird netting, but I found it in the garage last year when I needed it.  So I used it and it worked rather well.

Yes, so country.  I used sticks to put the leftover trellis in the ground and hopefully keep the broccoli from getting all eaten again.

Oh, and I tasted some of the pickles that I made yesterday.  They are very different from store bought pickles, but I like them!  I guess it's a good thing that I have so many canning cucumbers.  They are way more crunchier than store bought pickles and have more of a cucumber taste to them.  But like I said, I like 'em.

Oh, and this is what happens when you wash your little guys blankets and put them on the clothesline to dry :).

Mommy! I can't quite reach it!  Cutie, Patootie.

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Pickles, and a TBT

So, I made pickles today!!  I'm so excited to try them.  But I did cheat a little bit, I bought the cucumbers that I used at the fruit market.  But only because I was so excited to try out making my own, (and our pickle loving family has been without pickles for a little while.)  There are so many different recipes to choose from when looking to make pickles.  Hopefully tomorrow I will get good results.  The recipe said they should be good for a month in the refrigerator but I know they won't last that long, especially if they are good.

Getting all my stuff together.

The finished product!  Can't wait for a taste test tomorrow, I've got a lot of testers that have been asking for pickles recently.

And here is a throw back Thursday for ya.  It's not too far back, it's from last May sometime, but he still looks so different from how he does today.  He was only about 21 months old.

Garden Tour

So, today some pictures of my garden.  It's doing rather well this year, and I am very proud of it, and hopefully it will produce enough to be considered a good garden year.  My goals for the year for the garden are to produce enough green beans, broccoli, and hopefully corn.  This year, since my garden has failed to do well in the past, is more of a test run to see how well I can garden, and to see how much I need to grow to be able to feed my family.  Last year I bought corn from a local farmer, I believe I bought 7 dozen ears of corn and that was almost enough to last us all year.  I didn't quite have enough corn to make it as often as I like, corn is yummy :).  I bought broccoli at a grocery store when it was on sale, but I didn't really keep very good track of how much I bought, but like the corn, it wasn't enough to last a whole year.  But those two experiences taught me a lot about food storage and blanching and freezing food.  Any now, pictures of my garden. (Don't mind the weeds, I do what I can, when I can.)

This is the container part of my garden.  It has some of my strawberry plants in the front two blue containers.  They are doing much better than the strawberries in my garden which keep getting eaten by bunnies, I'm guessing.  But the potato plants in the container behind them are doing very well.  There is another container sitting off on the right, it just didn't make it in the picture.

Below is my corn on the right and in the middle.  Planted at two difference times, of course.  All of my corn didn't come up with the first batch. Hence, planting the second batch.  I will have to do a little more research to see if i can figure out why my corn didn't come up.  On the left of the photo is my pole beans.  The are on stick trellis's of four sticks each, four trellis's.  They are doing very well and winding there way up the sticks.  I love fresh green beans.  And with the pole variety they will produce over and over again till the end of summer.  No planting, ripping out, and planting more beans.

These are my cucumber plants, the top half of the picture is regular cucumbers.  The bottom half is pickling cucumbers.  I am very excited to make pickles this year.  Pickles go fast in this house, so I'm excited about making my own this year.

Top half on the right is some potatoes that I had left over that would not fit in the containers by the house.  The left side is my watermelon which is doing rather well.  I just have to make sure the vines stay in check and don't grow over the potatoes.  The Bottom half of the picture on the right is four brussel sprouts and three cauliflower.   I had four but one got ripped out when a deer went through my garden.  On the left side is twenty-four broccoli plants.  I love broccoli and hope they do well this year.

These are my strawberries in the garden that are not doing all that well.  They are all new plants this year, but they keep getting ripped out and eaten.  So we havn't gotten many strawberries this year, but I am hopeful for next year, and I will need to put up some kind of fence around them so they stay safe.

This is my sorry excuse for a grape arbor, lol.  There were two posts in the ground here already so I ran some twine between them and it has done well so far.  But now the grape vine is too heavy for the twine so I need to fix that, but I have some grapes on there this year.  It's the third summer for this grape vine so it's starting to produce more, yay!  I also have a blueberry bush in front of the grape vines, and one off to the right of the picture.  I need to make a blueberry patch and get more blueberry bushes next year.

These are my tomato bushes, I have twelve in all.  All Roma tomatoes.  I have plans of salsa, pizza sauce, and spaghetti sauce.  But I don't think I will get all of that out of 12 tomato plants.  Maybe I'll try one recipe of each so that I can find one that I like.  I'm kinda picky when it come to pasta and pizza sauce.

And last but not least, the pumpkins.  I have never grow pumpkins (or watermelons) before, but since my husband made my garden super big this year I had to fill it up with something.  

Hopefully my garden will keep doing well over the summer and produce wonderful amounts of food for my family.  And I will be able to spend less time in the grocery store over the fall, winter, and spring months :).


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Momma, there's a honey badger outside!

So it appears that there is a new little furry guy (or girl) that has been hanging out on our front porch steps.  It seems he may be living under the porch.  My 4 1/2 yr old (Dino Boy,) looked out the window in our living room and yelled, "Momma, there's a honey badger out there!"  My kids watch the PBS show Wild Kratts a lot, Dino Boy especially loves the show and I even like it, it's very informative while still holding their attention.  But anyway, So being curious, I look out the window (the last time I didn't look when he said something was outside I missed a bear walking through our front yard, but that's a story for another time,) and what do I see but a little groundhog, lol.  It was a cute little guy and the kids loved watching it hang out on the steps and nibble on the weeds around the driveway.  He's been back a few times, that we have noticed.  The only bad part is that once my dog, Murphy, saw him he sat in the window and barked, for like ten minutes.  When i couldn't stand it any longer I had to put him outside so he would stop barking.  All the while, through all the barking, the groundhog just sat there, lounging on the steps.  Silly groundhog.