Eeenie meenie miney moe...

I wasted over an hour this morning trying to decide what to do today.  On one hand, seeds are IN, they need to be started.  On the other hand, it's 73º outside and I'm dying to get out there and get started on the spring cleanup!

What I should have been doing...

Definitely no show stopping garden photos here, look at this mess!  Above, I have about 15 stands of this fountain grass that needs to be cut down, as the new stuff is already growing at the base!  Below, you think I might be slacking in pruning my mums???  The base is already a couple inches of new green foliage!  Blech...

What I decided to do instead...





The seeds are all in!





 I'm gonna need a bigger boat!  I think the binder has reached its limit.

After spending some time gathering all my supplies and cutting old miniblind slats for this year's labels, I was ready to get started.  I ended up with 3 flats.  Every year I do a spectacular job of "forgetting" that those little flats of 72 plants each morph into larger pots :)  Yeah- don't you laugh, you know EXACTLY what I'm talking about!  I'll do a separate post soon detailing what was started and what will be new for us this year.

Here's the result, looking all neat and orderly for the time being.  I didn't have it in me to battle the attic so hubby will have to get my heat mat and lights down later this evening so I can string cords and chains all over the place and transform this area into a complete mess.

The only part of the garden outside that's not a mess...

Lettuce!

I desperately need more though, this is it right now.  I am waiting on a nice day where hubby is off work so we can go get a couple of trailer loads of amendments for the beds.  Not only do they need topping off, but they need some good compost this year as well.  Can't plant my peas either until this happens, so we may have a very busy weekend if it doesn't rain!

If it does rain this weekend, I promise I am going to update my blog look!  I see my header still states that I am cleaning up fall canning supplies, and looking forward to ALL THAT QUILTING I was going to do!

Now on to the really important stuff... who can tell me where to get the special goggles I obviously am supposed to be wearing as I attempt to comment on your blogs and make it through the "word verification" battle?  Holy cows what is THAT all about?!!!

Weekend Wrap Up

We had a very productive weekend, in spite of terrible weather.  We had a mini-nor'easter come through Saturday through today and it brought lots of miserable wind, cold temps and rain with just a bit of sleet last night.  Good thing I hadn't started any seeds outside!

Still waiting on seeds to arrive, should be today I think, so nothing to post plant-wise until they show up.  We did however, have a good ol' redneck weekend.

The older Subaru has been curbside for the past 6-8 months.  Mostly because it wasn't a priority since hubby rides his bike to work every day, rain or shine.  It didn't need much, just for him to put some belts on, reattach a fan and fluids and working on an exhaust leak.  And fuel... LOL it hasn't had fuel in it for a long, long time :)

Loch didn't show much interest in helping, but Finn was all about it.

Note the hammer... can you tell my husband is an F-18 jet mechanic?  They aren't known for their gentle touch, instead they are known for working fast, fun with J.B. Weld type compounds and making things work with whatever is around.  Make you feel safe?  LOL...MacGuyver Mechanic :)  One cool thing is that he changes jet tires all day long so he can rotate tires in like 5 seconds LOL!  Good thing Subarus are such hardy machines, they can take whatever is thrown at them, even if it's a hammer.

One last step of getting the battery charged and it's road-worthy again ...

Next up was my healthier version of redneck comfort food.  Baked chicken with Panko, our own garden's green beans with wild rice.  

Not satisfied with ending our Saturday night there, we headed out for some shopping...

For a fun Saturday night we headed to... where else?  Northern Tool & Equipment!

Finn covering daddy while he checks out log splitters that are completely unnecessary where we live :)

On to hubby's favorite aisle... he's been trying to come up with a convincing reason he needs one of these for over 3 years now.  Someday...!

Crummy weather outside Sunday meant more comfort food.  This time I was cooking from jars and was able to use up some of the canned stewed tomatoes...

 in a Spicy Chicken Sausage & Bean Soup!

Today hubby is off work so he and Finn are outside in 30 mph winds and 38º temps power washing the house!  We haven't done it in about a year and the siding was green, yuck!  Not good when you are trying to sell the house, so I'm excited to get that chore checked off the list.

I'm inside for the rest of the day catching up on lots of little things that have been building up around here.  I will also be looking for a place to set up my seed starting rack and lights today.  I will have to wait until Wednesday to lug out the lights and chains and stuff, we are showing the house tomorrow evening and I don't want the potential buyers to think it's a grow house from the light emanating out of the shutters as they pull up!  We don't have too many lookers in this market, so after this showing the paraphernalia is coming out!

I just checked on hubby and Finnegan - it's a good thing there is a lot of that Chicken & Bean soup leftover because they are wet and frigid looking!

Random Stuff

Yet another super creative post title :)

It sums it up well though, we are getting really close to seed starting time, so I haven't started any big projects around here since my hands (and house) will be full by this time next week hopefully.

I splurged this year on a rolling cart for my lights and seed flats.  I used one for a few years but it was icky and rusty from the shed so I have officially declared that it's not allowed in the house anymore.  Last year I couldn't bring myself to spend the money and limped the operation along with some folding card tables I had and suspended the lights from the ceiling, it was pretty hideous.  This year I got a great deal on a sale cart plus a $15 coupon so I took the plunge.

Finn insisted on putting it together.  He did pretty well with daddy only helping when it got tall :)

There were 2 sizes available for the same price, one was nice and wide at 48" but no wheels and gosh, where the heck would I put it afterwards?  The one I got is a manageable 24" wide, thicker gauge, has baskets and hooks, and wheels.  No brainer for me, everyone knows my love of furniture on wheels!  With this one the lights will hang over the sides a bit but it's only for 6-8 weeks, and afterwards this can become a nice canning or craft storage area that I will actually be able to park somewhere around here without being too cumbersome.

I'm not sure what got into my kids the other night, but they did a spectacular job of cleaning their room!  I wish I had taken a "before" pic, there were legos everywhere... they are obviously fixin' to ask me for something of gargantuan proportion :)

Random:  it's cold in this house!  It's not that bad outside, high 40's - low 50's, but it's been damp and windy and I guess the crawlspace is really cold because I had to break out the Minnesota Girl Getup:

Random:  in case you wondered, this is what a Free Ride looks like:

(I have tried photographing Sprocket the Rocket from every possible angle and the result is the same - you can't tell what you are looking at.  Trust me, she's a dog.)

***

Random:  Loch made the Honor Roll and Principal's List again, so we are very proud of him.  (He's the one in the gray shirt with his hands in his pocket after I told him to not do that!)

You know what that means... more bumper stickers, just what I need!  

Aren't they cute?  He is going to get mad at me for posting that one :)

Not completely "craft-less"

It occurred to me after I posted about the quilt that I haven't been a total failure on the wintertime crafty-stuff, there's been "things"....

Like one really big sock.  Here's a size comparison to one of my normal socks LOL...

I will store this with our backpacking supplies.  If we ever run into a really cold one legged Sasquatch, we are ready.

My first sweater - okay this was like 4 months ago but it counts.

The mittens I made for myself that barely fit Finnegan, and he doesn't even like them because "they're itchy"... I can hang them on the Christmas tree next year!

I wanted something mid-century-ish that would match my thrift store mid-cen-mod starburst clock on the wall so hubby made a plywood headboard for me and I cut out and stained balsa wood diamond shapes and glued them on.  Nope, you can't see them behind the pillows, but trust me it's cool :)

And who could forget Susan's Apron Challenge?  Sewing Craft, check.

Anyone remember when I said I was going to start scrapbooking?  Hahaha, of course I have amassed a bunch of scrapping paraphernalia, had a grand old time organizing it all, because that's what I love to do, then never made even one page.

Well, I made my first one last week, I'm no longer a poser!  

It's actually for the Scouts' bulletin board, so I made 2 pages I can just pull apart from each other as I add photos to it.

Now the horrifying part - I feel so overwhelmed by all the stuff I said I was going to do/finish and never did, that I made it all disappear...

yes, I frogged like 5 knitting projects!  A sweater, some socks, a shawl and something I don't even know what it was.  It feels oddly freeing, like the blank slate now has me motivated!

I'm working on a scarf and hat now, and that's the ONLY knitting I have going.  

Other stuff is starting to come together - I finally got my dry-erase board up and in a place where I will see and use it - the front door.  I have different colors for the boys' activities, church, school, chores...haha all those different color markers satisfies my type A/OCD brain, so far it's working pretty well.  The big difference now is that I used to work on one thing until it was finished, but that was starting to make me really stressed about other stuff so now I work on several different things for a limited amount of time each.  I wonder if that's the reason I am finding it harder to have subjects to blog about?  I used to devote entire posts to one thing or do "tutorials" but now I feel really scattered...

Scattering over to the weather, here's a couple of photos from our snow "event" the other night:

It's all gone now.

One last thing... I FINALLY GOT MY SEED ORDER DONE, WOOHOO!!!  Cutting it right down to the wire this year :)

The late quilt!

I have been saying how I haven't gotten any of the sewing and quilting I wanted to accomplish done this winter, but I did make one quilt ...  I had forgotten to post it!  I made it for my new nephew in Minnesota, this past Christmas was his very first and I never posted the project on the blog because it was a Christmas surprise for my brother's family, and this was a new technique I was learning and I wasn't sure it would even work out!

Can you tell what it's going to be?

It's a VW Bus!

There is no binding on the quilt, so it involved quilting the batting onto the top first, then sewing the backing on backwards and flipping the whole thing inside out kind of like a pillow cover.  Then the backing is just tacked on in places throughout the quilt to hold it all together.  I used a simple star embroidery machine stitch in places, I guess the machine equivalent of a tied quilt.  I had never done applique either, so I was pretty nervous about those wheels, bumpers, headlight and door handle!  It was hard to pick colors for a little boy, but once I picked out the yellow, my inner Marsha Brady took over, as she often does :)

The bonus of waiting to post?  I now have a photo of the little guy on his quilt!

I wouldn't be surprised a bit if my brother actually sleeps with this quilt, the back story here is that their family are total VW junkies.  (Actually my whole family is!).  Bugs, Beetles, Micro Buses, Camper Buses, Things, you name it, I think he even has one of those VW pickups now.  He restores them and shows them at the VW shows.  

I happen to have a cool photo - below is the VW my parents bought when I was born - it has traveled several times cross-country, endured countless frigid Minnesota winters and road salt, my mom drove it with all us kids in it for many, many years.  I'm not sure if the odometer even kept working but my brother fished it out of my parents' garage a few years back and restored it and they used it on their wedding day as their getaway car and it now spends its winters in the safety of his garage.

That's one loved car.  Not too shabby for being 42 years old, eh?  (I meant the car)... :)

what is THIS?

Just when I thought I should probably get out there and plant something...

It's coming down hard, too!

Just finished loading the video and in the 4 minutes that took, the dog's tracks are already covered up out there.  I'm sure it will be gone by sunrise- for tonight though, it feels perfect for reading a good book!  

Not really an excuse...

...but a reason that I haven't had as much time to blog and do crafty things so far this winter -

Cub Scouts!

(faces are blurred out, but trust me they were all laughing as hard as Loch!)

Now wait, it gets better.... ok now you can laugh...

Yes, that's two Den Leader uniforms, one for me, one for hubby!  Are we crazy?  Maybe, but we are having fun, learning a lot, the boys are fantastic and let's face it, it was going to happen sooner or later.

I am finding out however, that it's really like a part time job, planning the Den Meetings so that those hungry minds and busy hands don't fall idle!  There is no end to their energy, I'm hoping I can soak up some of their excess.  Our den has 4 boys, 5 if you count Finn, since he always tags along and he's our honorary Cub this year.  He will be in the den with the other boys in less than a year.  He's kind of our mascot!

Here is Finn getting a feel for one of the squad cars when we toured one of the police precincts here.  He couldn't contain his excitement :)

Dinner after... and haha I'm not in this photo!

We just spent the past few weeks preparing for the Pinewood Derby.  This was the first time I had ever experienced a derby and it was a lot of fun watching the boys create their cars, they learned many skills and were so proud!  I think every one of our Cubs won at least one heat of the race, and they really did put their own work into the cars.

The lineup from many different packs... some were obviously made by 30 or 40-something "Cub Scouts"...

Like the Army Jeep, maybe - did the dad really think that would pass for something an 8 year old made?

The Cubs voting for "Best in Show"

Here's one of the races Loch won, his car is the green one -

Sorry for those of you who only have girls or lack interest in this subject, but I know grandma wants to see photos, we have to keep her happy!

This brings me to my next dilemma.  With all the talk I do of being over scheduled and having no time for the things I love to do, I have been entertaining the idea of scrapping the Master Gardener thing.  I know it sounds crazy, since I'm a GARDENER, but honestly over the past year it has really put a lot of pressure on me with all the different projects and has actually drastically decreased the amount of time I get to spend in my own garden!  Maybe the time has come for my community service to center around my own little 1/4 acre "family-community"!  Growing food and growing boys is what we do in this house, so it would make sense to toss the Master Gardener stuff in favor of spending more time with my boys taking an active part in their lives and being able to have a little more breathing room for the things I'd love to do, like expanding the garden.  For those unfamiliar with the Master Gardener gig, it involves a lot of community service, working in the University trial gardens testing seed, visiting schools, growing plants for plant sales, etc.  All really awesome stuff, but when there are only so many hours in a day and you are attempting to grow and preserve the majority of your family's vegetable needs, there just isn't any time to work in your own garden!  So whaddaya think, am I crazy?  No one ever accused me of sanity before so I can take it...