Gardening is good for your health

Yep!
Gardening is good for your health! Not just the vegetables and fruit you get out of it, but the actual process of gardening- getting your hands dirty, pulling weeds, picking your vegetables, it's healthy for you! Ever since we started the process of gardening we have just enjoyed it so much. I thought maybe it was just a nice new hobby, getting back to the way God created things to be, but it's obviously been so much more! Anyways, I'm not good at explaining all the technical stuff, so here's an article that does a better job!


Why Gardening is healthy for you


Every morning I walk through my garden and then every evening right before dark. I find that it calms me, and puts me in awe of how God created everything to work and to grow. I just love it so much. I want to invite everyone over to come see my garden but I doubt they'll have the excitement I do about it lol


Lately I've been training my cucumbers to climb up tomato cages instead of spreading out on the ground and taking up so much space. They were stubborn at first, but now they're catching on, climbing up on their own, wrapping the vines around the poles and back to the stem. It's like they have a mind of their own!

I'm going to take this in a slightly different direction for a moment. Yesterday in church we sang "He Loves Us". The verse goes:
"He is jealous for me
Love's like a hurricane
I am a tree
Bending beneath the weight of
His wind and mercy
When all of a sudden, I am unaware of these afflictions eclipsed by glory
and I realize just how beautiful You are and how great your affections are for me."

To be honest, I've heard that song so much that it was on my "overplayed" list, but this sunday is really spoke to my heart. This past week the Lord has really been showing me how He'll meet me where I am. I'm pregnant, and when I'm pregnant I'm grumpy, tired and irritable. All I want to do is rest. I don't want to get up and read the Bible. I don't want to get up and do anything. When we sang this song the Lord brought to my mind my garden blowing with the breeze. I often times will let the kids play outside and I'll just sit back and admire the garden. How the leaves sway in the breeze, how the bee's jump blossom to blossom, and I just take delight in it. Well with the image of the garden in my mind, that was me...I was swaying to the wind of his mercy and just like I take such delight in my garden, even more so He delights in me, His child.


This big big powerful mighty God delights in me. He sets His affections on ME, this grumpy mean pregnant woman. I don't even like myself half the time.....but He still does. He loves me so much that He'll meet me where I am, He'll speak to me through the garden, He speaks "my language" because He delights in me. 

He'll meet you where you are too, just take a step out. 

Garden Update

I don't really have much to talk about today. Life seems to the be same most days, and I'm good with that! We get a little variety of change from time to time like this week we're dealing with a yucky stomach virus.

The biggest news around here, well, at least for me, is to see the garden growing! Being that it's my first "real" garden I'm anxious to see it start producing fruit and veggies! We have a few things growing!

We had our first strawberry not long ago, infact, we had a second one shortly after that the kids were excited to share with their Mimi.

We have a few tomato's growing as well. Not sure how they're going to do though since the plant doesn't seem to be doing very well. These are from two of my potted tomato plants and I just don't think they were getting what they needed from the pot. I transplanted them to the ground. I'm hoping it's not too late to save them.

We also have a cute little roma tomato growing. The squash look like they're going to blossom with flower any day now! Just waiting!

Just because I love to see progression pictures, here's what the garden looked like when we planted everything at first:

and now 3 weeks later:

It's not the BEST picture in the world, but you can see how much bigger the plants are. I should go through row by row and take pictures. Yeah, I'm pretty nerdy and into my garden like that lol.

Well, that's all I have for now! Happy gardening!

Hello blog world that I've completely neglected!

I decided that our progress of gardening may be a good place to start up again!

For the longest time I've felt a need to be more self sufficient. We're not anywhere near "tin foil hat" people, or doomsday, but we think it's wise and even healthy to be able to grow our own food.

 
We recently had gotten our yard fenced in and I (had my husband) immediately went right to work tilling the ground. That evening after tilling a good friend told us about this place called Back to Eden. They have a video about how he gardens and how he brings it back to the natural way of doing things. Google it, it's really an amazing watch! It totally changed our perspective on how we were going to garden. It was a God-send!

Anyways, here are some picture of our progress:

Right after the land was tilled:

We raked out the grass (this used to be completely filled with grass) and then tilled a second time and raked out the grass again. It was really a lot of work getting all the grass out, and to be honest, there's still some there that we're removing as we plant.


We then went on our quest of fresh mulch around our town. No one mulchs their stuff! They just send it to the dump! I was able to call a place about 45 minutes from us and they had a compost/mulch/fertilizer/top soil mixture that was only $15 a truck load. So we recruited our neighbor to drive up there with my husband to pick some up.

Here's my smokin-hot husband shoveling the smelly stuff off the truck:

Next we spread it out over the garden and raked it in just a little (this is a crappy cell picture, sorry, but you get the idea):

We then put up a fence to keep the kids and puppies out and started planting our garden. We are SO far from being finished, however, this is where we are at this current moment:

These 3 mini rows are watermelon. We would have made longer rows but found out that particular part is clay and clay is like solid rock to dig through, so we have called that part our "dead zone" and have figured that putting our potted plants there is a good alternative since the kids and puppies have loved messing with them.

Our tomato's, and there's a dirt row right next to it where hopefully green beans will start growing (seeds):

On the other side of the tomato's and green beans is our row of strawberries:

I'm out of mulch (the redish stuff around the plants), so I'll plant more stuff tonight once we get more mulch. 


I'll update more as we go. Let me know what you think. Be easy on us, it's our first garden.

Little tid bits of random thoughts

Last night while straightening up the house (around 10:00pm) I was thinking of previous blogs I had read. I was weighing what they do to what we do, what I WANT to do, etc. and the Lord showed me an area of my heart that needed adjusting. So many times people will say "You're such a good mom! What a great job you're doing" or something similar (not trying to gloat, just show an area of my heart) and I'll say thank you, but my heart is thinking "but I have SUCH a long way to go! I want to be like...**insert susie homemaker-perfect mom/never looses temper/clean house/organic healthy meals cooked each day for all 3 meals, no laundry piles**"
The Lord showed me that the attitude behind that isn't glorifying to Him, or healthy for me. He created me as Heather, not as Susie. I'm trying to fit into this specific mold that wasn't made or designed for me. Don't get me wrong- all of those things up above are good to have, but I wasn't allowing myself the grace to have a messy house without guilt so I could spend time with the kids. I was feeling down on myself for all the imperfections I thought I saw in myself. 
The Lord has a mold for me and my family and slowly He is revealing it to me. A lot of times though, I think we learn just by living. How else am I going to learn how to homeschool my children, have a clean house, meals prepared, laundry not in huge mountains? It's not by reading a blog. I won't find an answer there (although it's always nice to see others ideas). There's no step-by-step tutorial how to raise your children, keep a clean house, etc. These are things that you have to learn by experience, by the grace of God.
Ok, so I rambled a bit, forgive me. I guess long story short- I'm learning that I need to live more in the Grace of God and cut myself some slack for not living up to what *I* think I should be, but seek God's heart for who HE wants me to be. Maybe He doesn't expect my house to be perfect. There's grace for that, and I want to learn to rest more in that grace.


Onto a lighter topic :) While I was cleaning up from breakfast this morning, the kids were working hard on something in my sons room. After I was finished with the dishes I went in with the baby to see what they were doing and here's what I saw:

The Rainforest Cafe- in lego blocks! ;)

I just love how creative they are!!


As I was cleaning up the house last night, I stumbled upon this and had to laugh at how much my oldest daughter is like me (enjoys things being organized):

Recently while searching homeschooling sites, I found one that allowed us to print off customized Bingo cards. i figured this would be a GREAT way to help the kids with their numbers and it really is! They were having problems remembering the 20-30 numbers and they're catching on much quicker now! I printed them out and laminated them to have them last a bit longer!

Oh! Since I'm on such a great roll of being random today, I have one more thing to share with you!!

I made homemade butter today!!!!! It's SO easy and the first time I've ever made it! I saw on a blog where you can stick creamer in a plastic container and lid and shake it up for 20 minutes and it would form into butter. Well, I thought the kids would have a blast with it, but each child only lasted about 30 seconds- no lie lol. So I ended up finishing it myself. I didn't find the container shaking to work too well. The creamer definitely got thicker, but not butter like. I ended up putting it in the kitchen-aid mixer for less than 5 minutes and we got butter!! It's so yummy too!


Welp, that's all for today! I better go do something productive! Thanks for reading!

In my kitchen :)

I really need to start pulling out my camera more instead of using my cell phone, but hopefully you get the idea!

We had some company coming over tonight so I made some homemade cinnamon rolls. They were DELICIOUS! YUM!

This was after the first yeast rising, added the butter, cinnamon, and brown sugar, and rolled up and cut.

About to go in for the "second" yeast rising. Notice the spaces on the pan in between the rolls.


I love how yeast works!! It's so awesome! This is after the rolls rose for about an hour:


and here they are in their glory after they baked for 10 minutes and have icing on them


A little off topic, but this was last nights dinner: Creamy Chicken Enchiladas (SOOOOOOOOOOOO good!)




Cinnamon Roll recipe


Creamy Chicken Enchiladas recipe

...and the things on earth grow strangely dim...

Lately, we've had a lot of things going on. A few things have knocked me emotionally but the Lords grace has restored me and lately I've just been stressed about things. The kind of stress that makes your heart beat fast, you're not sure how you're going to get everything done, you feel like there's so much to do and not enough time to accomplish it, etc. As I was doing the dishes this evening, the Lord brought this song to my heart.

Turn your eyes upon Jesus,
Look full in His wonderful face,
And the things of earth will grow strangely dim,
In the light of His glory and grace.

I've never heard the verses before until I looked them up tonight, but the song is so right! When you turn your eyes to Jesus and His glory and holiness all my earthy worries and stresses seem SO small, not worth worrying about. I'm so grateful for my time with God while doing dishes. It really helps bring focus on things. I ended up getting so much more done than I expected because focusing on Him helped calm my heart!


Here are the verses, which are just as powerful. I love old songs like this, they have such powerful words....

O soul, are you weary and troubled?
No light in the darkness you see?
There’s a light for a look at the Savior,
And life more abundant and free!

Turn your eyes upon Jesus,
Look full in His wonderful face,
And the things of earth will grow strangely dim,
In the light of His glory and grace.

Through death into life everlasting
He passed, and we follow Him there;
Over us sin no more hath dominion—
For more than conquerors we are!

His Word shall not fail you—He promised;
Believe Him, and all will be well:
Then go to a world that is dying,
His perfect salvation to tell!

Thank you Jesus for doing the dishes with me! <3

Mama Pad Giveaway Winner!

Good morning everyone!

The winner of the Mama Pad giveaway is......drum roll please....

Simply Merry!

I just sent you an email! Congrats!!