What's Your Garden Plan?

The days have been gorgeous and my garden beds were calling out to me.  So I got to work.  HandyMan turned the ones that I will plant in first and it is still a little early in our zone but I'm working on my cold weather plants.  I put in my broccoli starts and pea seeds into the ground and have plans to put my spinach and lettuce in around the 15th.

Our garden beds are about 4 feet wide by 8-10 feet long.  After the first couple years of gardening, I got smart and planned out my plants in such a way that the crops that are easily picked (carrots, peppers, squash) get planted in the squares in the center of the beds.  Around these squares are the crops that are a bit more intensive to pick: leaf lettuce, spinach, basil, cilantro, broccoli (I pick shoots as far into the summer as I can), and green beans.  This saved me a lot of back ache last summer and I plan to do it again this year.

Once we get past the last frost date we will be adding peppers and tomatoes from starts and basil, cilantro, yellow squash, zucchini, acorn squash, pumpkins and green beans from seeds.

We also have established asparagus that we will be picking in May.  Strawberries and rhubarb are both showing new growth and should be ready in June and July.

What are your garden plans? Link up below!

Sunday Sunshine

Practicing contentment by remembering the graces of the week and practicing gratitude by giving.

We have had such a full week.  It has been marked by birthdays for which I am truly thankful to be celebrating another birthday in good health for each year is a gift.   We celebrated Good Friday and Easter and remembered the reason for our faith and the hope that comes with it.

We basked in the first really warm days and used the wind and sunshine provided instead of the propane and electricity to dry a lot of clean laundry.  Our bedroom is taking shape as more of a finished space as we plan out photos and paint the new closet.

GBaby is growing and taking in the world around her in every detail.  She loves being outside.  She has moved on from walking to running as fast as her little feet will take her.  Her affirmative response to any question is a huge scrunchy faced grin.   "Are you hungry (with the sign for hungry)?"  Big Grin!  And if she's really hungry - she'll take off in the direction of her high chair.   She loves bubbles and grass and a high pitched "Gaaa" is her calling to the dog. I had a mom's helper on Friday who was fantastic and freed me up to get some of my

This week was full of blessings.  I'm looking forward to what next week holds.

Every desirable and beneficial gift comes out of heaven. The gifts are rivers of light cascading down from the Father of Light.” (James 1:16) May the light of the Father brighten your week!

Print Your Own Money

What would you say if I told you that you could print your own money?  It is perfectly legal and there are no poor consequences.

After this week's grocery shopping trip, I've decided that printing coupons is like printing my own money.  There are a few different groups of thought on coupons.  Some folks make their grocery list based on what is on sale and what they have for coupons.  That doesn't work for me.  I make my list, know what I keep stocked in the house and when I find coupons to match my shopping habits, it print them.    I spend about 15 minutes a week clicking the print button to get coupons.

Want to find coupons?  There are a  number of sources for the coupons that are available on the web.   I subscribe to MoneySavingMom.com in my blog reader-each of her posts comes through like an e-mail with the subject line reading the deal she found coupons for.  I skim through the headers and if her deals aren't stuff I usually buy, I delete.  Then every couple of days I'll click through and get the coupons.  Coupons.com and SmartSource.com are two of the main websites where I go to print coupons.  Most allow you to print a coupon twice and photocopying the coupons is a no-no.  These websites re-set the print counters at the beginning of the month and add new coupons on a regular basis.

This week when we went shopping, I had craft store coupons, grocery coupons, and birthday coupons ...

We are working on redecorating parts of our house.  I took a minute to print the ACMoore coupons - one from my computer, one from HandyMans - and we saved $30 on picture frames that we wanted to get.

Then came the grocery coupons.  Like I said before, I print coupons for things I'm going to buy anyway and will give me the best deal: pasta, coffee, olive oil, contact solution.  For example, this month I needed pasta, Ronzoini has great gobs of coupons out there and my store happened to have it on sale, making my pasta $0.25 a box.  All told: $12 in grocery coupons.

Finally the birthday coupons.  Certain places give you deals on your birthday - Cold Stone is one of them.  Their coupons are good for a week around your birthday.  So, we got free ice cream.  This was a treat because we probably wouldn't have gone to Cold Stone otherwise.  ($8.)

At the end of the day, doing my normal shopping I managed to spend $50 of money I printed myself.  Not bad for a little bit of time, ink and recycled paper (coupons get printed on the back of paper to reuse in our house)!

Birthday Feast - Part 2

I've always shared the time surrounding my birthday since my Dad's birthday falls two days prior.  What I remember most about birthdays growing up, was the rule was that you couldn't talk about your birthday until the family member's birthday before you had passed.  I think they made that one up just to bug me! But I had one day.  Then I married Handman and that lost that day - for his birthday is the day between my dad's and mine.  Now, the last week of March is usually declared a family holiday and we spend the week celebrating.  We did that early this year and called it February vacation.

My birthday was yesterday.  HandMan got some super cool garden tools.  I'm waiting for the fog to lift so I can go play in the dirt!  Since it was my birthday, there was no cooking by my hands yesterday.  HandyMan made me biscuits and scrambled eggs for breakfast and steak, asparagus and a warm, rosemary bruchetta type creation that was very yummy!  It was a good day.  Now, back to the "normal" routine...