Budgeting for Organic Foods-Menu Planning

The key to a successful budget is planning. My biggest problem is waste and overbuying and you can combat both of these with a great plan. The other thing I notice is that when I plan I am more inspired to make more new and interesting foods.
My first step to planning is taking stock of what I have in the fridge/pantry that needs to be used up. This week I have some leftover beef stock from making crock pot roast beef sandwiches, zucchini and ham that I want to use up.

So lets start from there with the leftover beef broth, I'd like to make Risotto. I found a great recipe online that sounds delicious! Now I'm not using tenderloin for this, I'm using leftover chuck roast. That's another one of my big ways of saving money, really stretching our meat and using cheaper cuts. We really just use meat to add flavor and see it as a side not the main component. Pinterest has been a great source of inspiration and I saw these healthy Zucchini chips that I'd love to try. The ham is just begging to be made into Spit Pea Soup, YUM!!

Saturday-
Beef Risotto-I'll be using some mushrooms we have in the fridge for this, so we have everything in house to make this except for the wine. I'm also using Aborrio rice instead of the carnaroli rice the recipe calls for (Aborrio is also a great Risotto rice). As a side I want to make Zucchini chips because I think that would brighten up the heaviness of the meal, Also I'd like to bring them to the Superbowl party we are going to Sunday but want to try out the recipe beforehand.

Sunday-
SUPERBOWL!! We were invited to a friends house so I just wanted to bring a couple things, the first being the Zucchini chips and the second is Chocolate Chip Cookie Dough Dip. These look delicious! For the Cookie Dough Dip I'll bring some apples as well as Graham Crackers to dip.

Monday-
Monday I'll be babysitting so its a great day to use my crockpot for some Split Pea Soup. We have some Ezekiel bread that will hold up nicely toasted with this soup! Another meal we don't need to buy anything for.

Tuesday-
Spicy Honey Chicken, Brown Rice and Broccoli. For this we buy our Chicken from Trader Joes and get Organic Cage Free thighs for 4.99 lb. It is a bit pricy but this will be the only meal this week that is featuring meat and using more than a lb.

Wednesday-
Another Pinterest find is Coconut, Shrimp and Corn Chowder. This looks delicious and we happen to have some wild caught shrimp in the freezer and all the ingredients in the pantry.

Thursday-
Dahl with Spinach served with brown rice. One of the hubs favorite foods is Dahl, which is awesome because its cheap and nutritious! We often do vegetarian nights to save cash. Thankfully the hubs will eat everything! If your family isn't big on the vegetarian bandwagon try to cook foods from other cultures, they might be so fooled by the new flavors that they will not even realize that they are eating vegetarian!

Friday-
Pizza! Pizza crust is cheap and easy to make yourself. Pizza is also a great fridge emptier; take your veggies, leftover meats, cheese ends and use them up! One of my friends parents instituted pizza night at their house when we were younger. Everyone was invited and they just made pizza after pizza. It was so fun and delicious and everyone ended up there on Friday nights! Something I definitely want to start doing in our house!

So as far as our menu plan goes here is what I need to buy: Garbonzo Beans, Graham Crackers, Onions, Garlic, Broccoli, Spinach, Chicken Thighs and Corn. As you can see I'm relying heavily on what is in my pantry so I really only need to pick up a few things to make our dinners. Now I go through and add in some of the other things we'll need this week: fruit, yogurt, milk, eggs. For our breakfasts we either eat eggs, oatmeal or smoothies so I try to have those things in the house at all times. Lunches generally are leftovers. Now that I'm all done figuring what we are eating this week I go through my house and see what needs to be re-filled. I like to keep a well stocked pantry (flour, sugar, oatmeal, beans, coffee, butter, peanut butter, tuna, jelly, baking needs, tomato sauce, diced tomatoes, chicken broth, olive oil, etc). Once I see what I need to replenish I check the sales and see if there is anything there that I can buy in bulk. This week my groceries I need will probably only cost $40-45 so I have about $30-35 to restock my pantry or stock up on sales items. Sometimes I'll use this extra if I see good sales and sometimes I will roll it into the next weeks budget to save up in case there is a good sale on meat or I'm close to needing a high priced item (maple syrup, oils, etc). I'll also use the surplus to sometimes treat us to takeout.

What are you making this week?

Grocery List
Garbonzo Beans-3 cans (1 for the dip and 2 for pantry as I used mine up this week on hummus)
Graham Crackers
chicken thighs
Onions
Garlic
Broccoli
Spinach
Corn
Apples
Bananas
Oranges/Clementines
Yogurt
milk
eggs
tuna


Extra
Red Wine

Budgeting for Organic Foods-Step 1 Taking Stock and Prioritizing

A few of my friends have been asking me how we afford to eat organic foods after they watched Food Inc. After some discussion I was a little shocked to know that we had almost the same grocery budget (mine was $5 more a week). I was asked to tell how to eat clean foods on a budget. Let me give you a little background on this, I started on this lifestyle shortly after we got married and have gradually gotten "crunchier". We make some choices that have been viewed as extreme in order to be able to fit this into our budget. I view our budget as a game of "Would You Rather", lets dive in a bit.

In our home we:
cloth diaper
use rags for cleaning
use cloth napkins for food
clean with vinegar and baking soda
line dry whatever clothes that we can
change our own oil and do car repairs that we can (well the hubby does these)
mend our own clothes
try to learn new skills rather than paying someone to do them for us (plumbing, electrical, etc)
buy used "beater" cars with cash
stockpile food either by buying in bulk for better prices or by buying the max amount of a sale price
shop at multiple stores for best prices
buy used clothing for the whole family if possible
bake from scratch instead of buying convenience foods
turn off lights like freaks
I cut my husbands hair
we don't have premium channels (and our cable is free)
we don't watch tv until the evening
we drink water for beverages
we don't have netflix or hulu plus

This is not an exhaustive list but it gives you an idea of the types of ways we cut back on our budget in other ways to accommodate the things that we find most important. What's most important to our family right now is for me to be home with our son and for all of us to eat nutritious REAL foods. Now don't think we are complete misers here. We do allow some luxuries into our life. My husband and I have a slight Starbucks addiction, we both have smartphones (his company pays for his and because we don't have to pay for a cell phone for him we use that savings for the data plan for me) and other things. We live a rich full life that we enjoy by taking stock of what's important to us and cutting things out that we don't care about. I would rather do these things and eat well than have some more conveniences and not be able to eat this way.

So I challenge you to take a look at your spending and write every single blessed thing down that you spend your money on. Once you have a month of that take a look at what you are spending your money on and figure out if there are things you can do to reduce that number. Remember that Rome wasn't built in a day and you don't need to make complete and drastic changes overnight but just little steps in the right direction. Figure out what the most important change to you is (for me it was buying organic milk and cage free organic eggs) and make that change this month. If you have questions or scenarios that you want to know more about let me know and we can address them in future posts. I'm not the authority on this but whatever knowledge I have I'd be happy to pass on.

Cloth Diapering so far

pic of my Bug's cute little cloth diapered tush!

Some of our parenting decisions were made automatically for us; cloth diapering and breastfeeding being the biggest. It was VERY important to both of us for me to stay home to raise the bug and for that to happen we had to lessen the cost of having a child. Diapering a child comes with an obscene cost, cloth diapering seemed like the best way to cut that and it has been. Thankfully we had purchased some cloth when we took care of my nieces twins and one of my friends handed me down some of her cloth diapers as her kids outgrew them; so even the cloth diapers didn't really have a significant impact on our budget. Even if we did have to purchase them it really just does make sense financially to go cloth. There are other bloggers who have gone into the cost analysis so I'm not going to do the math, I'll just link up a few here, here and here. I also like the environmental aspect of cloth diapering and appreciate how my frugal choices also tend to be green.

What we didn't realize is that when we left the hospital they would give us TONS of disposable diapers, we literally left with 5 packages. These 5 packages proved to be a great incentive to start with the cloth, we both HATED them. The bug some how leaked so bad that every time we changed him at night we were changing the sheets and his clothes too (some times ours as well).

It was so irritating, and both brands that they gave us let to the same effect. The hubs and I were so happy when we started using cloth because they really held the business in. We honestly haven't even noticed the laundry part of it too much, it works out to be an extra load every 2-3 days and you don't have to fold them!

So yeah, we cloth diaper and it isn't at all horrible like everyone insisted it would be when we were pregnant (all while giving us knowing looks and saying "we'll see how long that lasts"). It just works for us and for the boy, although I could see how if you were working full time or didn't have a washing machine cloth diapering would be hard. Also breastfeeding has its own advantages on cloth diapering so if I was formula feeding I might be singing a different tune.

The one thing that bothers me when people talk about cloth diapering is that they believe you have to buy the fancy expensive diapers. You can go crazy with cloth there are many many different options and some of them cost over $20 a diaper but you can go way cheaper than that. We opted to purchase prefolds, cheap prorap covers
and snappis to secure. Diapering with those options it costs about $50 per size and you can reuse for subsequent children, super cheap!

So what do you do? What made your decision for you?

Cloth Diapering Amazingness!

So this little lobster is getting cloth diapers, way more for frugal reasons than for any other but the environmental issues did weigh in in our decision making. The hubs is totally on board with it, I think it made it easier that he learned how to do cloth with the twins and realized its not that difficult. Thankfully I have some IRL friends that use cloth on their tots that have totally helped me decide what I do and don't need. When we had the twins we purchased about 2 dozen prefolds and about 6 covers in medium size; which is awesome now cause that money was long ago spent and doesn't impact our current budget. In the past week or so I've gotten awesome gifts and loans of more cloth diapers. One of my former doula clients and friends gave us on loan 32 Swaddlebees with a bunch of newborn covers, woolies and fleece. Another friend who is on her last babe passed along a bunch of prefolds. My dear friend, Mama K, has said she would help me organize my stash and see if there are any holes (as well as pass along on loan some of her small ones). I also won the most adorable medium cover from Deb at Made By Mama by being her fan on Facebook.

As it looks now we pretty much are set for diapering our babe in October. I'm just so incredibly thankful that this is working out so early in my pregnancy and I don't need to worry about it later on. I'm also so thankful that I have friends and family that already do alot of the things that the hubs and I would like to do with our child. What a wonderful support network already in place.

I am blessed.

Frugal Holidays

So one thing the hubs and I do for holidays is make our own cards for each other. The hubs will make a lovely card with what he wants to say in it. I know that he took time to make it and it says what he wants it to so I treasure it. Just a little thing that saves you $8(two cards) a holiday that to me is way way more special than the store bought version. His cards usually are made with some photoshop elements while mine are drawn with each of us using our strengths to show the other one how much we care. I love these cards because he usually will work in some inside joke into it so I'll be laughing out loud while reading.

Just Thinkin

In 5th grade we had this contest at school.  It was a fundraiser to sell a ridiculous amount of magazine subscriptions or something.  For every subscription you sold you got points towards a prize catelog.  Well I got the most points and picked a chemisty set, yes I was/am a nerd.  One of my first experiments was to take whatever was in the fridge (some new england clam chowder) and make it do something.  Well I found a way to turn that chowder pink and I was so excited, I went down the road to show our neighbors.  I'm sure they were thrilled.   I was thinking this week that this was kinda like what has happened to the farming industry in the past 50 years.  They have found that adding a little bit of this or that deters pests, yeilds bigger harvests, etc. But just like that pink chowder, I'm not eating that stuff either.  Go organic :)

Raw Smoothie Week

So I've been catching up on some books that I've wanted to read lately.  I just finished Green for Life and I'm about midway through Gorgeously Green. Between those two books and some conversations with Mama K I'm inspired to try going Raw for up until dinner this week.  Being the ridiculously supportive husband that he is the hubs is jumping on the bandwagon to help me.  I just spent about an hour blending all the smoothies for us for tomorrow.  We have a Chia Seed, Apple, Lemon, Kale blend; a Blueberry, Banana, Celery Blend and a simple Banana, Spinach blend.  I tasted them all and they are pretty good.  We'll see how filling they are as the week goes on but I'm excited to try it at least.  

Its been pretty interesting reading in depth in Green for Life on some of the points brought up in the book about PH levels in your stomach and stomach acid in regards to how you absorb nutrients.  Also the comparison to a typical American diet to that of the closest animal to us in genetic composition the Chimpanzee, was pretty intriguing.  Gorgeously Green has some great tips on finding health and beauty items that are good for you, some great tips on getting my body moving and I'm sure alot more but I'm only halfway through that one.  Being a part of a local coop has really helped me switch most of our bath and body products over to healthy choices but there are some holdouts (deodorant is the big one) that we just haven't found a good alternative for.  Its been inspiring me to examine that a bit more. 

As far as getting moving I got my butt kicked by Leslie Sansone's Walk and Fit which tells me that I need to do it some more. I threw in some pilates beforehand but only got ten minutes in before I had to call it quits on that.  The hubs and I have made a promise to each other to do some type of workout three times a week together as I realize I'm less likely to quit doing it if he's doing it with me and he feels the same. 

I literally feel like a page is turning in my life and there is a gorgeously blank slate set before me.  Everything in my life has changed recently but for the first time in weeks I'm kind of seeing some good come out of it.  

Christmas Time

I have been slowly moving away from the whole buy buy buy of Christmas these past couple of years. My friends and I have a gift exchange in which we have to give something that was either made or re-used that you got for $5 or less. How many "things" can one person have. The hubs and I are incredibly blessed and have more than we need, and its true we don't need anymore. We're branching out and I'm going to be making even more gifts this year for family and friends. I've been practicing with my sewing machine and have been getting decent with it. I love this idea of not trying to show your love by buying things but doing it by actually giving your time to show it, then giving your money to the people who really need it. Hmm a Wii or a new well for a village, its not a hard choice.

Life Got In The Way

So this summer it feels like I lost it and went into survival mode for a couple of months. I lost a good bit of frugalness and by just surviving we saved a good deal less than we could have. I didn't cook nearly as much as I should have, we skated by not going grocery shopping more weeks than I can count, we ordered pizza or went out to eat more than normal. Honestly I don't feel too bad about it, we were busy enjoying life and having so much fun we didn't have time for the normal stuff. Now that the summer is over and things are slowing down and the house is getting back in order I feel like I can tackle this and get back on track with our savings and also prepare more healthy meals for me and the hubs.
This past week we did eat healthy meals that I prepared myself and I'm going shopping today to make sure that we do the same next week. I'm keeping a tighter reign on us as far as spending goes and making sure we're not going too crazy. Any ideas for quick, easy, healthy meals for this week? I love a challenge so leave me a recipe :)

btw as far as weight loss goes I lost another 2 lbs this past week! Yeah!!

Interesting Article on BPA's

Click here to read. Article links plastic bottles to Diabetes and Heart Disease, two things that run in my family already! There are also some other scary things linked to it in the article.
This is why I always use my Klean Kanteen from Non Toxic Tots.
I recently renewed my dedication to not use plastic bottles its amazing that I don't generally get drinks while I'm out but I still accumulate a good amount of plastic bottles. I just have to remember to ALWAYS bring my Klean Kanteen!

Vacinations

New Jersey recently passed legislation to make vaccines mandatory for those attending schools or day care. One of the mandatory vaccinations is for the flu. Personally I have never had a flu vaccine and probably will never. There is a good amount of debate flying around on vaccines and the links to autism and also just some of the questionable ingredients found in some. The legislation and debate troubles me, I feel like I'm forced to do something that I'm not sure is right. Without having researched to heavily on the subject I feel I would probably space out the vaccines with my own children and I would probably delay them until my children are a little older and there systems more able to handle outside stimuli. I know that a vaccine is basically introducing a small amount of the disease so that your body makes antibodies to fight off future attacks. It just doesn't seem right to do this to infants, but thats just my opinion.

So anyway there is an exemption that has made its way to New Jersey Legislation and I want to put the link up that if you feel so inclined you would sign the petition in favor of Conscientious Objection.
Link to Petition
No, you don't have to live in New Jersey to sign.

My hair, my crown of glory

So yeah, Dirkey's got her some thick old hair. Hair that hairdressers constantly comment on (oh when I say constant I'm talking about the two times a year that I go to a salon to get it cut). When Mama K told me that she washed her hair with a bar of soap I was skeptical. My brain was kind of exploding thinking that a bar of soap could never replace the ever changing amount of products that I put in my hair to make my ponytail look that much better. For one, I had never in my life, gone without conditioner. How does one do that, can you comb your hair afterwards? I've never even gotten it wet without putting conditioner in it before I attempted to comb it afterwards. So despite of my skepticism at how well this Shampoo Bar does, I decided to try it out. Now I stepped in gradually and used the bar in conjunction with a good natural conditioner but the more I read about it the more I saw that the websites said you don't need conditioner if you do this. I took the scary step last week and stopped using conditioner and you know what, I don't miss it. My hair looks and feels great (even though its still not out of its elastic jail of a ponytail).
I normally get mine at Chagrin Valley.

Garden Bounty or as Beyonce would say Bountyliscious!

Mmmmmm we're still harvesting the goodness, below is some freaking awesome tomatoes we have going on at Casa de Dirkey.
I think I've said before I'm totally digging on this whole gardening thing! I love having the freshest best tasting veggies at my hand for dinner. I don't know if I've divulged this yet, but I'm kind of a veggie snob (shocker I know). I will not buy canned veggies and it causes great pain to buy frozen veggies but I will do it (rarely).
One of my favorite things that I've been making this summer has been Zucchini Parm. Mmm just typing it makes me drool...

Here's the recipe:
need
3-4 good size Zucchini's
Olive Oil
Diced Tomatoes (preferably fresh)
Mozzarella
Parmesan
2 white onions
7-8 cloves of garlic
Lots of spices (parsley, basil, oregano, etc)

I slice the Zuch's up into disks then lay out a layer of them in a Lasagna Pan. I then will spread 2-3 crushed garlic cloves over them and sprinkle with olive oil. Then I'll put a thin layer of diced tomatoes, diced onions, spices and cheese on. I repeat this all 3-4 times and bake at 350 for about an hour or until Zucchini is tender when you pierce with a fork. You might want to cover with aluminum foil until the last ten minutes of cooking time so your cheese on top doesn't get too brown.

Seriously-SO GOOD!

Frugal Friday-My guide to online shopping

Today's frugal friday involves online shopping. Being the stereotypical American, I'm a busy person. By the time I get home from work, make dinner, throw a load of laundry in the washer; I don't want or have time to run out to the mall. Online shopping has wrapped me in its warm blanket of simplicity and ease. I love the fact that I can shop for gifts in the comfort of my own home, bargain shopping easily between sites. I also love being able to find gifts that I can feel good about giving; as I'm becoming more environmentally aware I'm able to find organic cotton, sustainable and fair trade products with great ease right on the internet. When I first started online shopping I wasn't quite the bargain hunter that I am today; I made a few blunders and paid for things that weren't quite what they seemed. So this is a little guide to tell you my tricks to online shopping.

1.)Find the item you want-If I'm completely blank on what to get someone I check out some of the standard gift giving websites (Mighty Goods, Red Envelope, Non Toxic Tots). If I really don't have any idea I just start googling away, when shopping for my wedding invitations I google "cheap wedding invitations" my husbands wedding band was purchased on eweddingbands.com. There are so many online retailers that it really is simple to find ANYTHING YOU NEED. Be careful once you find the item; read the small print, check the measurements, read the reviews of the product.

2.)Figure out what site you will use to purchase-Once I find the item I will google the item and look at the different sites that sell it. Its here that I try to put my money where my mouth is. I try not to purchase on big mega giants like Walmart, Target, Macy's; but put my money to something I feel good about supporting (WAHM shops, Environmentally Sound Companies, Companies supporting Fair Trade). Within these sites I do a bit of bargain shopping to see where the cheapest place to purchase is.

3.)Google for Coupon Codes-I then google to see if I can find a coupon code for free shipping or a percentage off of my order. Its like the old saying goes-You never know until you ask.

I know its not rocket science but these are the things that I've learned from online shopping, hope it helps you!

<a href="http://www.dirkey.blogspot.com" target="_blank"><img alt="Dirkey" src="http://farm3.static.flickr.com/2306/2422433079_00cdb91b63_m.jpg" border="0" /></a>

I found out that Frugal Friday didn't start here-the original is at Biblical Womanhood, go check out the original!

The Frugal Friday that wasn't

So I'm still recovering and have been sick all week. So I'm going to rest today instead of doing a frugal friday. I've been having a hard time sleeping the past few days and my throat is killing me. I'm doing some natural remedies which inlcude sucking on a lemon and gargling with salt water, so thats frugal! Hopefully I won't need to go to the doctors but I'm thinking I might need to this weekend if my throat continues to stay swollen and hurtie. Please keep me in your prayers!

Garden Update

While I was away my garden exploded... Literally

If you want to see what my garden looked like just a short month ago check here.

I have to say the hubs was a champ for watering. As I get a little further into this gardening gig I'm starting to learn a few things. I know for next year I want to build another box the same size as the one we already have. I know that I also want to build a box that is 1 foot long and 4 feet wide for my zucchini and also for my cucumbers as they are kind of taking over the garden right now. I also want to build a separate box for my herbs and completely rip out everything in our boxes and plant flowers in there. So you can see I want to expand this little enterprise we have going here. I am enjoying this little hobby I started and I can't wait for it to bear some fruit!! (and vegetables)!!!!!

Creation Recap and Detox

So you all know that last week I went away for work and it was an amazing week. There were alot of highlights for me. The most noteable probably was Melody Green talking about her and her husband Keith's ministry. I had read No Compromise about 10 years ago, which is a book Keith Green had written that made a tremendous impact on me and on my faith. Other highlights were seeing friends that I only get to see once or twice a year (boo geography for keeping our states so far away!), seeing new to me artists (I now love Skillet and Flyleaf), and also just seeing a years worth of work come to fruition and see God use what we put our hands to for His glory. For all the fun involved it was also was a tremendous amount of work with most of us pulling at least 17 hrs a day (my boss was easily doing 20+). We all drove home on Sunday and thankfully the hubs had met me up there on Thursday night and was able to drive our car home. I literally slept 80% of the car ride home then promptly fell asleep on the couch and slept until 10 am Monday morning. The no sleeping came with a side of crappy eating (lots and lots of coffee and free access to fair type foods). I did try to grab veggies when I could but it was maybe a handful a day. Needless to say my body is not too happy with me, it feels as if I have a sinus infection, and I think I could sleep for another 3 days easily. So I've decided that I'm doing the whole Vegan thing again for at least the next two weeks until west. Hopefully it will clear out of my system a good amount of the junk that has accumulated there and kind of get me back on track with my eating. I feel like I've been treading water with my weight for the past year despite working at it and following weight watchers most of the time. I'm going to use this time to really focus on this and changing habits. I know its going to take awhile but I also know it can be done. I just pray that I would have the strength and endurance needed to finish this race.
I went on my lunch break to Whole Foods and picked up about $80 worth of veggies for my veggie/juicing blitz. I'll be breaking out my Christina Pirello books and my imagination to cook up some yummie treats for us. As a change from last years Vegan August I will not be incorporating any soy into our diets as soy and I are not friends. I will be relying heavily on my friends, the Legumes. I'm going to try to cut out any processed Vegan foods (except whatever I bring for west if I decide to do it while I'm there). I'm also going to add in the juicing as I've discovered that I love me some beet juice in the morning. Hopefully in the next couple of weeks I'll start harvesting my garden as well.

Frugal Friday-Staying Hydrated

I don't know about you but I'm a thirsty girl. I used to wet my whistle by stopping at WAWA or another convenience store to buy soda's, juices or waters. Besides being bad for me (the soda's and the juices that is) it was killing my pocket book. Generally drinks go for a little over a dollar a bottle and I was definitely getting more than one a day.
Enter my Klean Kanteen:
Now I fill up before I leave the house, pretty much every day so while I'm searching yard sales, grocery shopping, driving to the shore, going to work; there is always some good old healthy water next to me. Its saved me countless dollars. Of course you can use any water bottle and don't need to buy some name brand jobbie. I choose my Klean Kanteen because of the materials used and also the manufacturing methods the company uses; if you would like one you can purchase yours here.
I've found that my most frugal changes haven't been the big ones, but have been my small changes. Looking around at my lifestyle and changing the things that don't seem to matter; I find out that they really do and the money adds up!
What are you guys up to?
Join in the fun, grab the code below and post your own frugal ideas!

Don't forget to leave a comment so I know to link you up :)

<a href="http://www.dirkey.blogspot.com" target="_blank"><img alt="Dirkey" src="http://farm3.static.flickr.com/2306/2422433079_00cdb91b63_m.jpg" border="0" /></a>

I found out that Frugal Friday didn't start here-the original is at Biblical Womanhood, go check out the original!

Wordless Wednesday-What I've been doing instead of blogging

My version of a "Square Foot Garden", we'll see what happens here but if you need tomatoes in a few months you know who to call. The hubs built the box out of recycled wood from a border of a dog run we just took out. I laid out the squares with old embroidery thread and thumbtacks. Lots of good stuff planted; tomatoes, cukes, peppers, beets, onions, squash, eggplant, spinach, jalapeno's and tons of other stuff.

This is a planter box that is built into our deck, I was very excited when we moved in to find tons of mint growing here. Then I realized that mint take over everything so I decided to "plant" planters into the soil so that I could grow some flowers and other herbs. I'm hoping that the mint will continue to grow around them but my herbs and flowers will flourish in thier pots. I have growing here: mint, oregano, basil, parsley, chives, rosemary, bachelor's buttons, dahlia's(I think, I don't remember).

My Meyer Lemon Tree that I just got in the mail from Spring Hill Nursery. Supposedly these can be container tree's as its a dwarf.
The other planter box on my deck that I haven't done anything too yet.

The Shift

It started a long time ago in my heart but gained perspective and vision in the past year. Moving beyond what is expected and towards the beautiful. My hands relish the time spent kneading dough, scrubbing floors and digging in my garden. My nose enjoys the smells of fresh baked bread, roses and Fells Naptha. My skin enjoys the feeling of a soft breeze on my arms. My pocket book is full of gratitude with the fruits of our budgeting, having money where it is needed and not wasting. My eyes drink in the things that we have taken part in creating; the beauty in a soft flower, a neatly planted vegetable garden, a nicely laid table, fresh scrubbed bathroom, a clean sink, a full pantry. Its amazing what a little simplicity will do for your outlook in life.
June and July are the busy times for me for Work, sometimes its harder to focus on how satisfying these things are when you feel like you're running around like a chicken with your head cut off. I'm trying to focus on slowing down when I do get home and finding joy in the things that I set my hands to doing and also making some quality time with my dear hubs.