What I do instead of clean......

Actually that's a VERY LONG list! Lol! But lately....I've been gardening!!!

If you would have talked to me a year ago, I would have told you that you couldn't pay me enough money to put on a pair of gloves and dig in the dirt. I hated gardening. I didn't like weeding, planting, watering, squatting or kneeling, all of it.

Things have changed. I don't think I've ever been able to make something grow. Never. But since we have this new house, and it has a huge (unkempt) garden and greenhouse (overrun with weeds, and raspberry plants) I figured I'd give it a try.

IT'S SO FUN! Not only have I been able to grow everything from seeds myself, except the tomato plant which I bought yesterday, but I've nurtured and preened them and the little plants have all become like my little babies! I feed and water them, check on them throughout the day and at night (yes really) clean up their areas (weeding), and cheer them on as they start to grow!! See, like babies. :-)

In the interest of getting this post up quickly, I'm not bothering to edit any of these photos, so sorry if the light or colors are off, I have a really old, sucky camera. But the weather is beautiful today and I couldn't have asked for a better day!

Oh, and in case you're wondering or get confused, I do my captions backwards. Above the photos instead of below since you're going to read the words before looking at the photo it seems like it would make more sense. Right? Or maybe I'm just backwards all around. :-)

Here's my garden.

The last row is empty so I don't have a photo with that in it, but my peas are in the second row and they are growing so big!! Some have even reached up to the second string which is about 10-11 inches high!

Next row is my lettuce. They're still really small, but I have high hopes for them! :-)

Then my carrots (below). Which I have labored over for DAYS now, spending at least 3-4 hours a day in the garden with them. Our garden was a crazy mess of weeds and we ended up having no choice but to till it all into the soil, so needless to say I've been picking weeds out of these rows for hours on end and there's still no end in sight. Lol! There was just so many weeds growing under and around them that when it was time to thin the carrots, I decided to save them all and just transplant them to a weed free area. I have 124 carrots planted. Yup! Good thing I love carrots! Ha!

Next two rows are Squash and Zucchini.

Last row is my corn. People have told me that it probably wont grow here, but so far it's done amazing! I'm so proud! I guess we'll see if it continues, but with the kind of wind that we get out here I'm not sure how it will do when it starts getting really tall.

Oops, almost forgot my cucumber, and broccoli!

And I've got some chives that I transplanted to the garden after finding them growing wild alongside the greenhouse in the grass. They have such pretty purple flowers on them (which apparently you're not supposed to let grow, see I know nothing).

I've already had the chance to eat some of my crops! It's so fun saying that! We made a 7-layer dip when my sister came to visit over last weekend and we used fresh chives from the yard! Yummy!

And here's a little view of what kind of crap I'm dealing with. This is just a tiny section of walkway that didn't get covered with weed mat.

We've got wild grass up the wazoo! Haha!


Here's a look at the greenhouse. Don't judge k. It's not our fault it looks like this and we can't afford to fix it this year.

We moved last year's weeds to the side until we could get a burn barrel to dispose of them, and meanwhile... more weeds grew in and took over!!!

The kids have a play area, which has been wonderful, that is also weed ridden, despite our continued efforts to kill them. When we can afford it, we'll just end up ripping all the crap out of there and laying down new weed mat and new gravel.

See that one swing that's an inch lower than the other? They fight over "the lower swing" every time we're out here! Arrgh. Some super complicated boy scout knots prevent me from lowering the left one to match. :-)

Here's a view of the back of the house and a few of the front.

I love this big tree! It's probably the largest/oldest tree on our whole block!

And.... our new truck!

So did you notice that ugly dead tree in front of the house? Turns out we HAD a cherry tree. It apparently died because it decided not to bloom this year and we were talking about ripping it out. UNTIL, one of my new friends out here gave me some advice to try watering it. Actually, purposely, water the tree. Have you ever heard of that? Well, I know NOTHING about anything green so I tried it. It's coming back to life! I can't believe it! And to think we were going to do away with it! I just hope it's not too late in the season for it to bear fruit this year! (We have an unbelievably short season here).

I'm almost done, I promise. Just a few more pictures to show you!!!
The tomato plant I got yesterday already has a tiny tomato growing!! I'm so excited!

I can't wait to try out my home grown parsley too! Um, question.... how do I use fresh parsley? Do you have to dry it first, or do you just chop it up and add it to stuff?

One more question.... Since I was a little overzealous with my seed starts, things got a little mixed up and now I have NO CLUE what these are. Can someone help me out? They don't even look like the things I have planted so it's probably one of the few I tried that didn't make it... *embarrassingly admitted* I tried some watermelon, cantaloupe and pumpkin seeds (among other things) :-) lol! Obviously Alaska isn't the right environment for those. Does anyone know what these are?

Well friends, it's been fun. But I need to go water my garden now, and make lunch for my "real" kids too! :-)

My "Daddy" issues.... and reflecting on Father's Day

Hi peoples! Sorry for the sporadic posting lately.

If you usually come here just for the crafts and parties, you might want to skip today's post, as it will be mostly a deeper look into......... me.

First of all, I hope everyone had an enjoyable Father's Day Weekend and got the chance to spend time with your family.

I wasn't able to get a hold of my dad on Father's day. I don't even know if he still reads my blog or checks up on what I'm doing (we're facebook friends also). But truth be told, we don't have the greatest of relationships. There's no bad blood between us or anything like that. We're both just kinda awkward around each other and calling him makes me nervous. Leaving him messages makes me even more nervous, although I did manage to spurt out some kind of heartfelt message to his voicemail. I guess living in Alaska most my life and only seeing him a few times a year growing up, and even less since I've been married, has left an emotional gap between us.

But..... since I wasn't able to tell him, I'm gonna tell you, what I love about my dad.

He's smart.
Honestly he's the smartest person I know, including all the educators I've had over the years. He just knows so much about EVERYTHING! Sometimes it's intimidating talking to him because I'm afraid I'll say something totally stupid, thinking the whole time that I know what I'm talking about. But he's always the person I think of when I wish I knew how to do something and there was someone around I could ask besides google.

He's Honest.
When I was a teenager and going through all that rebellion stuff, (I lived with him for a few years during that time), his biggest rule was that I should never lie. In return, he never lied to me. If I got into trouble for something, I had to be honest about what I did. If I lied about it, I was punished even worse.

He's Master of the Guilt Trip.
That might not sound like a compliment, but it is. As I child of course I didn't appreciate it like I do now as a parent, but I truly believe that "The Guilt Trip" is one of the most effective forms of teaching/punishment. As long as you deserve it. It makes you reflect on what you did wrong, makes you feel regret, remorse, and inspires growth. Of course this is just my opinion. And "The Guilt Trip" should not be used on young children who can't fully understand the consequences of their actions, but otherwise it proved to be a very useful teaching tactic in my youth. Unfortunately for those around me, I've inherited the gift of "The Guilt Trip". Lol! :-)

He's Active and Outdoorsy.
Except for fishing and hunting. (Probably why he has never visited me in Alaska). He loves whitewater rafting, and bicycling across mountains to name a few. He's into water-skiing, wakeboarding, and even used to do the "air chair" (if you know what that is). I have some of the GREATEST childhood memories of our boating/camping trips to "Hyrum", a little lake in Utah.

Once, I had a mishap with a knee-board and almost drowned (at least that's how I remember it), the strap was too tight and instead of slipping off when I let go of the rope my legs ended up pinned under it while the knee-board flipped over and held me under the water. My dad was driving the boat so "Uncle Jack" jumped out of the boat and swam out to untangle me and bring me back to the boat. Instead of allowing me to develop a huge fear of water and all things boat related, my dad made me get back into the water and try it again. I remember I was crying and scared, but he got in the water with me. He explained what I did wrong and how to do it correctly so it didn't happen again. Then we knee-boarded side by side with a double rope 'til I was comfortable with it again. Which leads me to the next.....

He's a great parent.
It's those kind of teaching/parenting things I respect the most. Instead of coddling me, he made me deal with my fear. It's kind of a harsh style of parenting, (especially these days when people are so worried about screwing their kids up that they let them do whatever they want) but I think I turned out alright and so far my kids are turning out good. I've employed lots of his parenting methods over the years and I've been told that my kids are "the most well-behaved" and "most polite" kids they've seen, by more than a few people. I'll give my dad partial credit for that. :-)

He's my role model.
I wish I was more like him. He's Successful. Skilled. Smart. Precise. Technical. Creative. Punctual. Funny. Generous.

So dad, if you read this, I love you and I'm sorry I haven't tried to call you again. I hope you had a great Father's Day, you have been a great dad.

Everyone else, if you made it through this post,

Thanks for the outlet.

My blog may be "public", but it's still a personal outlet for me, so allowing me to take a load off, and get down to a personal level is stress-relieving for me. Thanks. :-)

Mobile Prices are going UP!!

Hi guys and gals! Sorry I've been away for so long.... I know I say this ALL the time, but I've been super busy. Again. Really, I do it to myself. I take on way more projects than I really have time for, what can I say, I guess I love the stress! ;)

For any of you out there who may have been on the fence about buying a mobile from me, I just want to give you a heads up that I am going to raise the price of them. Soon. I haven't decided on a date yet. In fact I have already bumped the price once recently, but I'm thinking of doing more. It's just for the custom mobiles, they take SOOOOO much time and extra resources that I can't afford.

Don't get me wrong, I have really enjoyed taking custom orders, and I still welcome them, but I am going to try to stock up my ETSY shop with mobiles that are ready to sell. It's been looking pretty sad with only two things available to purchase...lol!

I would love some input and suggestions from YOU out there about what kind of mobile themes would be cute and popular right now! I have been wanting really bad to make an Owl mobile with branches and leaves for example, and I really want to try making a mobile fit for a boy's room! So any ideas you might have would be really helpful.

Thank you friends, for your support and understanding. :)