Easter Wheatgrass

I remember seeing in a magazine one time these Easter baskets with live grass in them. And I thought, "Oh that's cute and folksy and eco-friendly and old-fashioned. And I'd probably love to do that but who knows if I ever will." In other words, I filed it away in my mind. I don't even think I had kids then. And Easter has never really been a very "big" holiday in our family, so I had no need to use it right away.

A couple of years ago my mother-in-law gave my older son a basket with real grass and I told her how much I loved it. The mental file was brought to the front of my mind.

This year, we are going to be visiting some of my nieces and nephews for Easter. So my basket tally went from maybe 2 to a possible 6. Obviously I started thinking about what kinds of things I would want to include in these baskets, the first I have ever made, by the way: healthy treats and small books are a nice alternative to too much candy. Maybe a toy or two but I like to keep things simple in the baskets so that it doesn't distract too much from the meaning we find in the holiday. 

Then there was the grass! I finally had a reason to attempt it, but I wasn't sure where to begin. A quick call to my mother-in-law revealed that she had bought a whole bag (albeit the smallest one available) of actual lawn grass from the home improvement store. She figured she could always use the extra in their landscaping. Well... I would've been down for that. Except the smallest bag I could find was $15 and I knew I could figure something else out. Also, I wasn't in the market for leftover lawn grass at the moment.

I researched other grasses, and I finally decided on wheatgrass. If you are interested in doing something like this, you can easily buy wheatgrass at your health food store already grown and just pop it in. Easy peasy! But it was gonna cost me about $5 a pop so maybe $30 for all. Plus, you know I like doing things the hard way. Haha. So anyway, I decided I could probably grow my own. I walked around the corner to the next aisle over in the health food store and found hard wheat berries or wheatgrass berries in their bulk food section. Grabbed a few scoops full, up the the register and bam - 65 cents! That's more like it...

I found several versions of how to grow wheatgrass, but I went with the instructions I found here.

Here's how we did it:

Soak berries overnight. I read to make sure you don't soak longer than 24 hours as they may go rancid after that.

Line a basket. You can use an old plastic grocery bag or saran wrap. Or anything else that's water proof. If your basket is somewhat loosley woven, you can lay some fabric down first to hide the plastic. Add a layer of soil to about 1/3 the height of the basket. You don't want too much dirt, because it will make the basket heavy.

Spread seeds (or "berries") in a single layer across the top of the basket. I found a handsome helper to assist me with this step.

Then we soaked the seeds with a water bottle and left them in a sunny spot with a little saran lid to keep the moisture in. I'm told the trick the first few days is to keep the seeds moist.


Boy, you know what? If anyone ever feels like they have a black thumb or gets discouraged in their gardening endeavors, growing something quick like wheatgrass sure is encouraging. :)

We were very excited to see this is what we had on day 3:

And only one week from when we planted the seeds:

Ten days old here:

 

Wow, that grew faster than I thought! At this rate, my problem is too much grass! I will have to trim it before Easter and I hope it will still keep growing in green and lush and not turn yellow on me or something! That would figure. If I do it again next year, I will wait a bit later, like 2 weeks before Easter instead of 4 weeks.

But, that also means that you still have plenty of time to try this out if you want to. ;)

Baby Update

This was taken about 2 weeks ago. Everything checked out OK. Saw the heart beating and baby kicking. And we found out we're having another boy! :)

And here is a 'bump' photo,  for those who are interested. :P

I was 20 weeks along here (about a week ago).

Can't believe we're already half way there!

Cleaning the whole house in 30 Days... give or take a year.

I've been meaning to work on this for a few months now. Some recent developments in life have inspired me to finally finish it.

Thanks to Our Adventure for sharing this article by Apartment Therapy called How to clean your house in 20 minutes. I thought it was a good place to start. But a) I don't think anything on that list could be done in 20 minutes! Especially if one has small children and b) I thought it would be more efficient to tweak it a little to suit my personal needs and to include my semi-yearly and yearly checklists as well.

After I did that, I decided to consult good old Martha to compare her checklists (because surely she had some) to mine and made a few more updates. Here is the result. I thought I would share it with you, in case you might find it useful. :)

I should preface this by saying that I do not consider it all-inclusive, so feel free to comment if you have anything else to add. You can take it and tweak it yourself for your own tastes as well. And I will also note that I do the dishes and check the laundry and the garbage on a daily basis, so those things are not included here. If any of these items don't apply to your home, take the opportunity for a day off, as Jennie suggested on her blog! Sometimes I call it off anyway if I'm having a chaotic day - I know the list will bring me around to it again eventually. :)

30 Day Cleaning Schedule

1. Sweep/mop and vacuum all indoor floors

2. Clean bathrooms (toilets, showers, mirrors, sink)

3. Surface clean bedrooms (put away toys, clothes, clutter, straighten nightstands) Change sheets. Dust around the house.

4. Wipe down "extra" rooms (basement, office, play room)

5. Clean small floor mats.

6. Clean bathrooms (toilets, showers, mirrors, sink)

7. Clean all interior windows

8. Sweep/mop and vacuum all floors

9. Surface clean bedrooms (put away toys, clothes, clutter, straighten nightstands) Change sheets. Dust around the house.

10. Deep clean living room (mirrors, baseboards, dust artwork)

11. Clean bathrooms (toilets, showers, mirrors, sink)

12. Clean out/straighten clothes closets

13. Flush out all drains with vinegar and baking soda or use boiling water

14. Deep clean bedrooms (organize drawers, check under bed, tidy closet, dust artwork, launder duvet / other bedding)

15. Sweep/mop and vacuum all floors

16. Surface clean bedrooms (put away toys, clothes, clutter, straighten nightstands) Change sheets. Dust around the house.

17. Clean all door knobs, phones, entertainment equipment (remote controls), switch plates, banisters and other things that are repeatedly touched. Disinfect all baby toys that were used this month.

18. Clean out the refrigerator, take stock of food, organize pantry

19. Wipe down "extra" rooms (basement, office, play room)

20. Sweep/mop and vacuum all floors

21. Clean bathrooms (toilets, showers, mirrors, sink)

22. Surface clean bedrooms (put away toys, clothes, clutter, straighten nightstands) Change sheets. Dust around the house.

23. Clean entryway, sweep porch (if you have one), clean out car (because they're often our home away from home)

24. Clean and straighten linen and coat closets

25. Sweep/mop and vacuum all floors

26. Deep clean kitchen (scrub appliances: dishwasher, microwave, fridge, oven, coffee maker, crumbs out of the toaster, wash trash cans, wipe down kitchen cabinets, drip pans and hood over stove)

27. Clean bathrooms (toilets, showers, mirrors, sink)

28. Surface clean bedrooms (put away toys, clothes, clutter, straighten nightstands) Change sheets. Dust around the house.

29. (Wild card day: catch up on what you haven’t done yet this month)

30. Deep clean bathrooms (clean inside drawers, inside of trash cans, tops of mirrors and all ledge surfaces, check tile and grout and clean as needed)

Spring Cleaning (add throughout the month of April)

Wipe down all walls in the house
Vacuum under couch cushions, clean surface of couch
Cobwebs on ceiling, in corners
Clean out light fixtures and wipe fans
Outside of windows, glass sliding door
Clean out gutters

Vacuum, launder or otherwise clean curtains
Wash blinds
Launder bed pillows
Vacuum beds, turn mattresses
Replace cold-weather bedding with warm-weather bedding.
Reorganize closets, giving away unwanted items
Sweep out fireplace, if applicable.

Autumn Cleaning (add throughout the month of October)
Wipe down all walls in the house
Vacuum under couch cushions, clean surface of couch
Cobwebs on ceiling, in corners
Clean out light fixtures and wipe fans
Outside of windows, window screens, glass sliding door
Clean out gutters

Wipe down inside of fridge, clean out fridge drawers
Change air filters in heater/AC
Shampoo carpets/area rugs
Clean Oven
Replace warm-weather bedding with cold-weather bedding
Vacuum refrigerator grill and coil.

Ox-Cart Man

All the inspiration I've been getting lately to want to be more homegrown has reminded me of a book I used to read as a little girl. It was one of my favorites.

Ox-Cart Man follows an early American farmer through the calender year, as he and his family use the resources around them to create their livelihood and income. It's a very easy read - for younger kids really, but I think it's very charming. And it has wonderful illustrations. It shows some aspects of early American life and homesteading, speaks to the idea of being sustainable and not being wasteful, and challenges me to be creative with what I have.

Because I am a sentimental fool (and hang on to things) I was able to dig out of the closet today the same copy I read as a girl, and I read it to my son for the first time. :) He liked it too.

Anyway, thought I would share it with you. Have you read it before? What are some of your favorite books from when you were young?

She's so granola

The other day I made my first berry salad, inspired by my son.

We were at the store a couple weeks ago in the sandwich bag aisle. He was looking around and suddenly pointed to one of the boxes of zip bags. "Can we bring this one home?" I stood there for a few seconds trying to figure out what my 3 year old thought was so appealing about a box of zip bags.

...Then I realized that there was a photo on the box of the zip bags being used to hold a bunch of berries. Ha! Apparently my child was under the impression that the berries came with the zip lock bags and were in the box, waiting for us to bring them home and eat them. I gave him a diluted lesson in marketing, and explained that, unfortunately, sometimes the photo of what you get doesn't always match what you really get....

But I agreed that the berries looked good and made him a promise that on the next grocery trip we would pick up what we needed to make a berry salad. Together, we studied to zip lock box to determine the ingredients: blueberries, blackberries, raspberries. We decided strawberries might be a nice addition.

Here is what we came up with later that week:

Yummmmm...

I've made lots of fruit salads before, of course. But never just berries. It's actually perfect for my little one, because every time I make a fruit salad, he ends up eating around the melons anyway. :) I sliced up some melon and I just mix it in with the berries for me and daddy.

Another fun recipe I just got around to last night was homemade granola. It was my second attempt at the recipe from my friend Christina found here. It is a very versatile recipe and customizable. The first time I made it, I used agave sweetener and added craisins. I liked it, but knew I could do better. I forgot until after I made it that I don't really care for dried fruit in my cereal. heehee. So anyway, I decided this time to use honey and to add sliced almonds. It was de.li.cious. You can go to Christina's site to find the original recipe (hers is Gluten Free!) and more detailed instructions. Here is how I made my version this time:

2 1/2 cups rolled oats

1 cup sliced almonds

1/2 cup sweetened coconut

1/4 cup honey (added a little extra, actually)

1 Tbsp oil

sprinkle cinnamon

Basically, I just mix it up, throw it on a cookie sheet (you can use a baking dish, but I like mine pretty toasty, so I like to spread it out more), put it in the oven - 325 degrees for 30 minutes until golden brown. Every 10 minutes, check and toss to toast evenly.

She suggests it over yogurt, which I agree is really good! I just had some with vanilla yogurt for breakfast this morning. Might go nicely with some of that berry salad. :)

Enjoy

Charity

9/6/11: I think it might need a little more honey, actually. I tried it with milk this morning and it wasn't as good as yesterday with the yogurt. A bit too bland.

I also forogot that the first time I made it, I added a splash of pure vanilla extract, and that was good. I'll try it with the vanilla and a little more honey next time. :)

Patching together the random pieces

Awhile ago I talked about reducing waste, and how I thought it might be better to eliminate scraps altogether than to save all my scraps for later use. So, I have successfully redesigned several Lil Hipsters projects to have almost no waste.

Well, that was great. But... I still had a large pile of scrap fabric that I had accumulated over the past two years. It was getting large enough to become its own entity. And it was kind of an annoying one at that. So I was pretty anxious to get rid of it. Even though I had much more exciting ideas on my to-do list, I decided to tackle this one to reclaim some space. I toyed with several ideas on how to use them, but in the end the simplest and most effective idea seemed to be to make patchwork quilts. So, for the past three months, I have been chipping away at this pile of scrap fabric.

Have you ever had a large project that, halfway through you start to wonder "Why did I ever start this?" or "Will I EVER finish?" That was me with these quilts. But I'm kinda like that about life in general. I always have more than enough on my plate and always seem to be behind or at least not as far along as I'd like to be. Always something, several things, on my To-Do. I'm an avid list-maker. Sometimes Joel teases me about my lists. I've even been known to have a list of lists! But when I have so much to keep track of, it's more of a survival thing for me. I wouldn't know how else to be productive. Actually, this quilt project has an interesting parallel. I have all these random pieces to sew together into a comprehensive whole. I take one bold fabric, that might be my mommy to-dos. I pull it in with my homemaker stuff and family stuff and business owner stuff... Sew it all together. Viola. The quilt of My Life.

...I wonder if I'll ever catch up with myself. Wouldn't that be great! Or maybe I'll still have lists when I'm old and grey. Sometimes I jokingly think, 'I'll probably have a to-do list when Jesus comes back' :) Or when I'm gone- what will be left undone? Not that I'll really care at that point. Just a matter of pure curiosity... it seems a silly thing to ponder, but it might also help me keep some perspective...

Back to the quilts:

This is the pile of scraps I had. I laid them out on the kitchen table to get an idea of how to arrange them, coordinate them, who should marry whom and so forth.

Most of the scraps were about 3 to 5 inches wide.The biggest problem was that there was quite a wide variety of patterns and colors that didn't necessarily go together. So I had to get kind of creative with color schemes and quilt sizes.

It was like a huge, cruel puzzle. Ahh, c'est la vie. I guess it's a good thing I like puzzles. :)

Maybe in a future post, I'll share one of my quilt patterns in detail. For now, I will just show you a few of the finished products. All these are backed with uber-soft minky, which was acquired specifically for this project. But the patchwork tops are made with 100% salvaged fabric which most people throw away.

 My auntie owns a business and sews patient gowns. These quilts have some of her scraps, too:

You can find more info about these in the new Eco Quilt section of my etsy shop!

That's all for now. Today is Sunday, so I plan to relax and take a break from all this quilting. Actual and metaphorical. ;) Thanks for letting me share with you!

Country Chic

A couple of my friends (in two different circles thereof) linked to the Pioneer Woman on Facebook yesterday, so I decided to check her out. The first thing I noticed was how well-designed her site is, and also the sheer amount of content is a bit mind-boggling. She's got alot going on... but it's good. Alot of it is really good. Cheerful. Humorous. Well photographed. Shabby chic. Maybe just chic. Actually, we'll call it "country chic." Honest. That's a good one. Did I say humorous?

So, over the course of the last 24 hours, I've been wandering in and out of her many posts. I think I might have developed kind of a girl crush. She's pretty much who I want to be when I grow up (never mind the fact that I'm almost 30). What's really funny is I've never really been attracted to the cowboy kind of lifestyle. But she's got kind of an modern woman twist on it that really hooks me.

But let's just discuss time management for a moment. For if I am to emulate my new-found mentor, I must analyze her ways. How does any one person run a household, raise 4 kids, homeschool them, cook amazing food, take amazing photos, garden, and still somehow have time to write bestselling books and update her blog, twitter and facebook several times a day? Oh, and make the occasional TV appearance and book tour. All while looking absolutely fabulous. What am I missing here?! I barely have time to feed everyone and do laundry in the same day. And I usually forget to brush my hair if both of those get done. Maybe she has little gnomes, like Martha, that help her out with stuff. Maybe as a mom of a toddler I can't imagine it, but having older kids probably helps... Maybe country living gives her more time for these things. Or maybe she's just amazing...

I think I'm also a bit jealous of her acreage. I've always wanted to garden and have goats and sheeps and chickens and things. OK, the animals might not be realistic, but I would love some room to play and plant stuff. Being cooped up in the apartment with a 2 year old is exhausting most days. "Mama, wanna play cars? Wanna play cars? Wanna play cars?"  Just the thought of having those words in my mouth, "Let's go play outside,"  makes my saliva glands tingle. Give me the open spaces! The big sky, the prairies, the ponds, the grass, the sunshine!  Yes, I am trying very hard not be jealous of the acreage.


Anyhoo.

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For every action...

So, I just figured out how to add "reactions" to the bottom of my posts. Man, I wish I had seen that option before - I think it's kinda cool. Hopefully this will be a user-friendly way for others to leave some different kinds of feedback. Teehee! I just love hearing from you all. ;)

If you are interested in adding reactions to your blog, simply go to > Blogger dashboard >design and under the main box entitled "blog posts" click "edit." Then check the "reactions" box. You can even edit the reactions to say whatever you want! If you have any trouble, help can be found here.
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I have a hunch my son will be much more computer-savvy than I when he gets older. First of all, he's been playing in MSpaint a little bit lately, and has been doing surprisingly well. Here is an example of his work (#4):

I think it's pretty great. Of course, I am slightly biased. :)

Also, this morning, when we were parking downtown, he called from the backseat, "I see a website," which of course I thought was some kind of 2 year old gibberish. "It's dot com," he added, which made me cock my head a bit. But the real shocker was when I finally got him out of the car seat, he walked straight up to the store-front window we had parked in front of, pointed to where it said "monkswinelounge.com" and said again "It's a website mommy - it's dot com"

Pretty sure I had to pick my jaw up off the sidewalk.

That was my "reaction." haha.

Snowy Surprise

I knit my son a hat sometime last year. It turned out pretty cute, green military style. Daddy calls it his Radar O'Reilly cap. But he lost it recently at his grandma's house. So I had to knit up a replacement. Here it is:

I'd barely got the yarn off the needles before he was able to put it to good use. We had some snowy weather on Friday, which is very unusual for Chico. It snows maybe once every couple of years and rarely sticks. But our city is situated right at the foot of the Sierra Nevada, so a short drive up the ridge to a town called Paradise and we were able to find several inches to play in. :)

It was my son's first time in the snow, which was a lot of fun to see - the way he was experiencing it for the first time. I haven't been in it much myself. But I showed him how to throw a snowball by making an example and chucking it at daddy. He thought that was pretty hilarious.

We didn't go too far up the mountains, so there wasn't quite enough snow to make a decent snowman, but I gave it the old college try, just for the heck of it. Here is my boy with his new little snow buddy.

...Don't let that smile fool you. About 30 seconds after this photo was taken, he was karate kicking his new ridiculously small "buddy" back into powder. We went out for a nice cocoa afterwards, of course. :)

<3

Well worth the effort

The other day, I noticed that the conversation between my son's monster trucks involved them discussing which one was going to be Mater and which one was going to be McQueen. And it made me realize that I hadn't seen Mater and McQueen for a few days and they were probably lost. Here was my sweet little boy trying to make the best of the situation by substituting boring old monster trucks.

So I decided I was gonna save the day by finding the lost souls. I looked in all the normal hiding spots, all the places a 2-year-old would usually keep his treasure: in his toy lunch pail, in the seat of his ride-on firetruck, in the back of the reclining chair, in his cart and toy box. Even under all the furniture in the house. Then I had a sudden memory of the last time I saw them, and ended up finding them under the couch cushions.

"Look who I found!" I said excitedly as I handed them to him. He looked up, his face lit with a smile, and he welcomed them back to the group. He put them down just long enough to say "You are the best best mommy," and wrap his arms around me in a hug.

I think my heart melted into a puddle on the floor...

You know you're a mommy when...

...every little thing you eat becomes a meal for two.

I had this delicious streusel blueberry muffin that I got at the Starbuck's drive thru . I had pretty high hopes for this muffin. I purposefully did not devour it in the car, even though I was really hungry, because I wanted to save it for later, when I could take A Moment and savor it... alone... without those blue puppy-dog eyes staring up at me and that syrupy sweet "please" sign.

No no no. He was in the car. Awake. I couldn't let him know what treasure I had in my possession.

So...(surprisingly) everything went according to plan. I took the loooooong way home, he fell asleep in the car listening to Swell Season, I carried him upstairs to his crib, and ever-so-quietly unloaded the car-load of groceries. Then, on the other side of all this glorious accomplishment, I pulled up a kitchen chair to Sit and Eat. Muffin - check. Iced americano perfectly sweetened - check. Peace and quiet - double check.

Then, as I began to unwrap the beautiful pastry paper from the moist delicious muffin, with the gooeyish (but not too gooey!)  blueberries, a funny thought came to me. "My son would love this muffin. What a treat it would be for him. Which part should I save to give him later." I struggled with whether to save the muffin top or the muffin bottom. I ate the bottom first, deciding to be nice and save him some of the top. But then I started eating the top. And it was so yummy and so strueselly... that it became quite apparent half-way through the muffin - my son was not. getting. any.

How funny it is that everything I eat, I assume I'll be sharing. Well, momma's gotta have something all to herself sometimes... and that's ok. =)

What the fiber?

I've been thinking about and shopping for yarn for the last two weeks. It's tough to shop in craft stores lately, because my little boy is usually with me and he really loves them. I made the mistake ONCE of putting him down in JoAnn's while I tried to grab something from a tall shelf. Of course he took off for the Frames and All Things Delicate, so I pulled out my mommy voice and told him to come back. He just stood there smiling... until I picked him up and then he made sure that I (and everyone else there) knew that he really wanted to go frame shopping, and mommy was being unreasonable. I've tried to go back a few times since, but the boy is too bright for me - he remembers things. I'm not sure what it is in his mind he thinks he needs a frame for - perhaps he wants to decorate his room with original photography....

Anyway. I'm trying to find a yarn for this sweater project I'm working on (the Lion Brand KAL). It calls for Fisherman's Wool, which looks good and seems very quaint and folksy. I dig it. Really. But wool is always so scratchy, and my skin can be sensitive to things like that. So I thought about doing an acrylic, but I really have never liked the feeling of most matte-finished acrylics at ALL - they just feel so cheap and yucky. The Simply Soft is one of my favorite yarns, but it really just seems too "sheeny" (might have just made that up). I definitely wanted something more natural looking, with natural fibers.

I thought about cotton. The Lion Cotton was OK looking but a little too... dishtowelly. Yeah, that's right. So I got myself pretty hooked on the idea of using Lion Cotton-Ease. It's 50% cotton / 50% acrylic, another one of my favorite yarns and it feels totally YUMMY.

Problem #1 Cotton Ease is expensive - about $6 for 3.5 oz AND I was gonna need about 6 or 7 skeins of this stuff.

Problem #2 Can't seem to match dye lots, especially with the amount of yarn I need to buy.

Problem #3 The color I really had my heart set on was Hazelnut, which of course they don't carry anywhere in Chico.
http://www.lionbrand.com/6030/PictPage/1922242133.html

 Soooo... after a week of thinking and debating and trying to shop for yarn while the baby fussed, and sifting through yarns that were too yucky, too sheeny, or too dishtowelly... guess what? I finally deceided just to get the Fisherman's Wool, which was the yarn the pattern originally called for in the first place. HA! Oh the vanity!

I chose this wool because (A) it comes in nice large balls of 8 oz. (B) the less I have to purchase, the easier it is to use coupons and match dye lots, (C) it's a nice natural fiber that I'm hoping will make the cables in the sweater really come through, and (D) the clencher was when I found it in Nature's Brown, which is a beautiful color that I hadn't seen anywhere else.

I ended up paying about $10 for $18 worth of yarn (coupons), which is way better than $42 for cotton-ease. YAY! They only had two in stock, so I still have one more ball to buy. I can already tell it's going to be a lovely yarn to work with...

"One years old"

My baby will be turning One Year Old on Thursday. I have a son. Have I told you? He's pretty great. Funny. Really smart. Cute as a button. I am excited about this milestone, but more profound is the feeling I can't believe it's been a whole year already. He was a very "wakeful" baby, and quite possibly "colicky," so the first few months were pretty rough. Being a new parent, I had NO idea what I was getting into, so I had also failed to enlist reinforcements. My husband was very supportive, but there was only so much he could do since he was working full-time. I was basically alone, and I can't remember a time I was more overwhelmed and frustrated. Prayer, deep breathing, and lots of treats =) were the only things that got me through.

But time carries on. And carries us with it, right? By the time my baby was 6 months old, he was able to sit up and occupy himself a little better. Mommy slowly started getting some normalcy back and life was much better. By about 8 months, he was crawling around, exploring the apartment, and he and I had finally reached the "buddy" stage, where we could just hang out and enjoy each others' company without holding anything against each other... Haha. It's been a blur since then. It's just interesting to me how the hard months seem to drag by so slowly, but once it got easier, suddenly time flies by...

Nowadays, his favorite things to do are chucking toys across the room, talking to himself, going for walks in the park or a drive though the city, snatching anything that lights up and pressing its buttons (ipod, cell phone, remote?), and eating. I am so thankful we are past the stage where he was eating 14 times a day. But it seems to me that when he does sit down to eat now, he eats alot! And  he is always up for a snack. Boy after my own heart...

Anyway. Thursday. We plan on having a small something here and then the Big Party will be on Saturday. The whole family is coming to that one. *stress* But, I'm looking forward to honoring my baby's first year. Looking forward to his First Ice Cream. Looking forward to seeing his family members celebrate his life.

Mommy loves you, Baby! =*