Alot in a little post!

Well, as you may very well have guessed...quite a bit is changing in my little neck of the woods!  In today's post, I have lots of details to catch everyone up on (as well as a name change and new goals for the blog) and I have a review!  So, lets get to the review first, shall we?  :)

Recently through Bzzagent, I was given the opportunity to try this new brand of wine at a discounted price!  Be. Wine is a group of four different wines that are designed to be a "girl's night in" drink.  My initial understanding was that they were going to be really fruity (sort of like an Abor Mist type of drink). 

The bottles we tried.

The two flavors we tried were the Bright and Fresh.  We started with the bright, so that's the one I'll review first.  The website describes the bright flavor as follows:
 Snagging the spotlight is simply effortless with this Pinot Grigio that breezes in with its sun-ripened fruit flavors, shines with carefree cues of the tropics, and finishes with an exquisite ending that welcomes you to your place in the sun. 
 To me this sounded like I would taste a sweeter drink with hints of mango.  I have to admit that I was taken very much by surprise.  These were more wine than wine cooler (my best way of phrasing it).  After the initial shock was over, the general conscientious was that it was enjoyable.  This is definitely a wine that you want to let air out though!  I personally didn't really taste much of the "tropical" taste I had expected, but the wine did have a very nice texture and it was smooth (if not as sweet as I would have liked....yea...I know I have a sweet tooth).  The general vote I received is that this is a wine that would most likely be bought again.

Aren't my drinking glasses fancy?  :P

The second flavor we sampled was the Fresh.  The website describes the fresh flavor as follows:
Each sip starts with a politely pleasant murmur that unfolds into an invigorating, crisp green apple splash that awakens your senses and revives your spirit.
This fortuitous flavor is perfectly complemented by hints of citrus reminding you of the delicious magic of a budding romance, new adventure or simple twist of fate.
This was a MUCH stronger wine.  Well, at least we all felt like we could taste the alcohol (several folks claimed that their sinus cavities were cleaned out :P).  After we all started drinking "the proper way" (we were experimenting for all those who would probably just pop open the bottle and try a drink) we could taste the hints of apple.  This was a good drink, but not as widely enjoyed.    We had been trying our drinks warm (we were excited and couldn't wait to open them) so we put them in the fridge and tried this one again cold only to find we didn't enjoy the flavor any more than we had warm.

The moth that stole the last little bit of my drink :(

However, we had a moth suicide as it drank to it's own death (of course it had to be my glass).  All in all, the wines were enjoyable as long as you are excpecting something more of a wine and less of a fruity wine drink.  I'm really excited to try out the Radiant (the flavor that I voted for but that ended up losing the flavor choice war).  Upon his trying some, my husband suspects that the very gentle flavors will also lend themselves well to cooking, so I'll let you all know how that goes once we try it :)  (it's been too hot to really cook in the house here lately).

So now that we've started off on a good note, I'm going to explain the name change.  This blog has gone from being called Adventures of a Michigan Housewife to Adventures in True Love.  One of the biggest things that changes with this is that my husband will be joining me in writing post (and it should be more regular!).  There's been quite a bit of conversation going on in my home this past week (the hubby had a good chunk of time off for the fourth and that really gave us some time to talk like we haven't talked in a while).  We've decided that we are ready (and really want to) begin getting things in our lives cleaned up so we can eventually pursue fertility treatments again.  We suffered a miscarriage a few years ago and just couldn't get up the nerve or the desire to try again.  Now, we're finally ready to tackle this beast.  We also have reached the point where we want to go back and fix the mistakes we made as a not thinking young couple and work on managing our finances better.  Our last goal is to get in better shape so that when we do have a kiddo, we can chase them to their hearts content ;) and so they will never have to worry about mommy or daddy dying too young for them to get to know us.  In our talks, we decided that there are probably a lot of people out there who are just as scared and confused  as to how to start tackling these things as we are.  Not only are we going to share this journey with anyone out there who needs help getting motivated or who feels like it's too much to tackle, but we're going to use sharing this as a motivation tool for ourselves (people write blogs about sillier things every day, right?).  We'll be doing a post soon with more details on the different aspects of these changes soon, but for now I'm going to leave this an over view!

Mike holding his honey mead in it's brewing pail.

Over the weekend, we finally tried our hand at brewing.  The honey mead was very easy.  You mix up your ingredients and let them all sit.  So they'll be sitting for a few more months then we'll bottle it.  We also did a batch of beer (our first beer!).  The recipe we're using is called Orange Citra Wheat and it was one recommended to us by the wonderful staff at Adventures in home brewing.  It was pretty scary to try and do our first batch.  Mike had visited with a local brewer's guild and I had no experience with this.  To start we made a tea with the grains (well after everything was sanitized of course).

Me holding the grains after we were through using them.  I turned them into bread later and it was amazing.

Then we boiled the mixture and added our hops.  After this we were suppost to add our malt extract, but we forgot and poured it into our carboy.

The "tea" before hops

The "tea" after hops

We then had to empty the carboy back into our pot and boil it again so that our malt extract would be pasteurized.  It was very frustrating at the time, but now it seems kind of a fun experience.  (not that we goofed but the solving the problem together).

Mike playing with the grain bag after we were done using it.

We then quickly cooled the beer down by placing a wet towel around it and setting it in front of the air conditioner.  (It took alot of research online to figure out what to do and we were so worried about ruining the drink!)  Once it was cool enough, we added the yeast and put the airlock on and took it downstairs to bubble.  I over simplified the process, but it was an enjoyable experience for the two of us and hopefully this first brew will turn out good enough to keep our spirits up to try another!

I'll give a quick update about the state of the garden before I finish this off for the night.  Very suddenly, quite a few of our tomato plants started wilting and dying.  After a bit of experimentation and google searching, we discovered that our villain at hand was the Black Walnut Tree in the yard.  We have since moved the plants to a wading pool container garden (as well as replanted some seeds there that died from the same thing) and they are much happier.  Learning how to keep plants alive in doors has been much more tricky and (I hate to admit this) I have killed many a seedling I started in this process :(.  I'll post pictures of the plants soon :) and I'll do a more detailed update on them soon!

Well, if that wasn't enough random topics in one post, I'm not sure what is!  I've been reading an awesome book on my kindle and once I finish I'll try my hardest to do a spoiler free review of them ;).  I'll leave you all with a picture of my adorable pups :)

The two of them tuckered out from causing trouble all day.

A "bonus" picture of Kyo being daddy's baby.  :P

Quite the Catch Up!

I know, I know.  Life is always crazy around here.  I really should just get used to it!  Happy Memorial Day Weekend to everyone out there!  Okay, now that my random holiday wishes are completed, I'll get started.

The wooden stakes are there to mark where we wanted to put the garden.

Over the last month, I've experienced my "good knee" getting injured over Cinco de Mayo (my doctor suspects the injury is of the "runner's knee" variety and has me doing all sorts of exercises to help) as well as caught a terrible cold.  (Okay, there's been much more going on than that, a KOV event, rescuing an injured baby goose, and such, but these are the things that really kept me from being active out and around).

Me putting in one of  the flower gardens over Cinco de Mayo

The only form of a covered porch we have.  Storage ATM

I was beginning to worry that I was NEVER going to get my garden started (not to mention update my blog!)  Well this picture heavy post will serve as a memorial to those days being past!  First, I want to show everyone what it is we are starting this summer out with in our yard.  Thankfully, our rental home has a really nice, large yard, but it needs lots of work!  With all the craziness going on in our lives, we just haven't had the time to really dedicate to making it the nice haven we really love having our yard be!

Yes...this is the same pile of sticks from March.  Just smaller.

You'll remember me mentioning (if not see my March post) that when we first moved in, there were so many trees (junk and quite a few dead) surrounding our yard that grass didn't even really grow!  Thankfully, that pruning paid off and the grass is evening out (even if we still have some "bald" spots).  Now is at least the fun part of the process!  Making it beautiful!  So far I have two flower gardens!  There was already one in front of the house, but it was filled with some kind of ground cover plant that smells awful! 

Our little table looking sad and not set up for a party yet.

The ladder I use to hang the small wind chime and squirrel feeder.

Kyokin in the other back corner of the yard.

So I've been working on clearing that out (boy is it stubborn!) and replacing it with flowers.  I completely forgot to take pictures of this (I have a feeling there will be more than enough pictures in this post!) garden (or the growing other flower one for that matter), but so far I've replaced the ick weed as I like to call it with pansies, snap dragons, and some gorgeous orange/yellow/red flowers.  My husband thinks they are a variety of marigolds (which they may be) but I don't recognize them as such yet :).  The snapdragons and pansies were clearance flowers (I got them the Saturday before Easter at Home Depo for $1.00 for six because of frost damage) that I brought home and nursed back to health.  Looking at them now though, you'd never guess it!  The other flowers are recent additions from Joe Randazzo's (if you live in Michigan, you definitely need to visit them!) where they were $.89 for a set of four.  The other flower garden is in the backyard near my bird feeder so that I'll take prettier pictures.  Most of these flowers we either $2.00 flower sets or clearance as well.  I know.  I'm cheap.  It's part of how I save money as a housewife!  I have a picture of me working on getting the flower garden put in, but not pictures of it now that the flowers are growing and blooming like happy little plants!  I'll have to work on that!  I have pictures of different individual plants on my smugmug, but not of the whole garden.  I have also planted two rose bushes (as well as transplanted a third that was placed on the side of our house in a terrible spot!) and the blueberry bush (after having the leaves eaten off by a puppy we had rescued and were holding temporarily) has moved outside as well.  My lilies I planted outgrew their pot (big surprise!  Those are the ones I felt sorry for when they were outgrowing their bag at Meijer) so I moved them into the flower garden out back.  As far as potted plants go, I have some onions I'm growing out front (they were starting to go bad so I figured I'd try learning how to collect onion seeds) as well as flowers my wonderful friend Amber gave me.  Out back, I have four five gallon buckets growing potatoes as well as a potato growing sack growing them, three herb/indoor flower pots I'm working on getting started, and one outdoor flower pot I'm trying to get to bloom.  Oh, I still have my giant ivy my mother in law gave me.  I had to move it since it outgrew my kitchen window! 

The biggest news I have today is that we finally got our garden put in!  I'm so ridiculously excited about this!  This garden is probably double what we put in last year!  (Thankfully we left walking room in it!)  We learned quite a bit last year from our gardening blunders and are excited to start again.  For goodness sake, we even made an actual chart depicting what was planted where (some of last year was guessing game until the plants came up!). 

The view of the garden from our bathroom window.

Four of the potato planters in front of my herb pots.

Bare rows.  Mostly for seeing the change in the coming weeks.

Today was the first day I was actually physically up to going outside for a long period of time and doing any work (remember that cold...I'm still coughing :( ).  We were outside working at 10:30 in the morning and didn't finish until around six in the evening.  We did take a roughly 45 minute break for lunch when a sudden thunderstorm hit and drowned us with rain!  My husband started by "peeling" the grass off of our selected ground while I tried desperately to save the tomato cage we converted last year into a cucumber trellis.  It almost didn't make it.  To be honest, I don't think it'll make it next year.  At least it's surviving this year!  About the time I finally got new yarn on the trellis and it was standing steady, DH (how I'll refer to my husband from now on) had finished uncovering about 5/6 of the grass.  This was when everything suddenly got dark and we heard thunder.  We just made it in the house with the dogs as the rain started!  It made for a perfect lunch time.  After we had eaten (the rain had stopped as well) we returned to work.  He continued with his task of uncovering the garden and I took my trusty hoe and began to carve out rows and plant with the lettuce!  I didn't make it very far (the third row) before I realized I was going to need another trellis of sorts for the sugar snap peas and honey dew.  I quickly tossed one together (we'll see how it holds) and continued on.  When he got the dirt uncovered for me, DH took a break and played with the pups. 

The baby cucumbers and their revived trellis.

After I put in the "squash" row (which I left extra spacing for!), I switched and began working on the other side.  We have a down spout on our gutter that will drain into the garden and I wanted to make sure my cucumbers and tomatoes were near it.  I put in my cucumber plantings, put up their trellis, and went to grab the first of the tomatoes, at which time I discovered I missed a whole set of baby cucumber plants!  I quickly added the extra cucumbers to my cucumber line and began my tomato planting with the cherry tomatoes.  The reason I started my tomato planting with the cherry and roma tomatoes is because I knew I only had a limited number of cages (we really expanded our garden this year) and I also knew that Beefsteak tomatoes can be staked up instead of caged.  I wanted to make sure all my plant babies were taken care of! 

The corner of the garden with the cucumbers and tomatoes.

 Since I mentioned, Randazzo's market earlier, I want to point out the good deal they gave me on baby plants.  DH and I have started going there once ever two weeks to pick up fresh veggies (they have such good prices and variety) and the last time we visited, we looked at their plants too.  (We always go to the location at Newburgh and Warren.)  Both of my rosebushes I bought there were only $3.00 (not on clearance) and I got flowers as well as my plantlings.  Now, for plantlings I got the following:  8 sugar snap peas, all of those cucumbers in the picture minus one, 4 Kale plantlings (something DH wanted to try), and 24 (yes I really mean 24) tomato plants all for $9.00.  I don't know how you'd beat that.  Especially since they seem to be really great plants.  I feel like I won this year!  (This should be taken with consideration of the dying of my own starters.  This is the first year I'd try to grow starters indoors.  I didn't realize they needed wind agitation to help strengthen them.  Next year, we'll keep a fan on them!)

The corner opposite the tomatoes.  Peas and Kale can be seen.

While planting my tomatoes, I discovered something.  I HATE cages.  Last year DH put them all in for me.  This year, I tried to do it on my own.  Not only did I fail miserably at this, but DH has made me promise to share my predicament with you all because he thought it was far too funny for me to keep to myself.  I'm still weak from being sick and since this was later in the day, my body was quickly getting fed up with being pushed to it's limits.

Baby Kale plants.

 Each time I went to push a cage down, it would become stuck.  In an effort to finagle with the cage, I would shift and focus on pushing the suck leg down with all my might.  Each and every time this led to the ground suddenly giving way under the leg and me wailing myself in the face with the rest of the cage which had in turn become "stuck".  I feel really bad about the language my poor neighbor's experienced during this ordeal before DH took over the caging.  I'm not normally one to cuss, but the shock of being smacked in the face repeatedly can do some pretty surprising things to a girl.  I finished up my tomatoes with just enough room for a row of carrots!  I was really worried that even though we tried really hard not to over plan this year we had and I wasn't going to be able to fit them in!  Now, I'm sure by now you've all noticed the newspaper scattered in the garden.  I've read online that putting newspaper down can help lower the amount of weeding that is going to be necessary for the garden.  We put this in a "walking" space to try and hopefully it'll save me lots of work later.  So far however, the initial watering of it was a pain.  If I moved my hose too quickly, the breeze it created would blow it around.  In the end, we may have wasted some time and newspaper, but even if we end up picking it up and throwing it away it was worth it. 

Baby Peas.

The garden aside, T moved out (thus why I won't be mentioning him in further posts).  I've also rearranged the living room furniture again (I'll have pictures soon don't worry ;) ).  We have a rental home inspection at the end of June (it was originally suppost to be last week, but God was watching out for us and let it be rescheduled!).  In preparation for this, we're going to just rearrange everything to the way we now want it.  For example, T's old room is going to be fully transformed into an office/crafting room.  (This way my ladies aren't all forced into a "Sweat shop" to hang out and sew together).  What I was trying to turn into a garden room is going to instead change into the guest bedroom.  We are also finally putting the time into our basement.  DH is going to have a tavern/bar area again.  He's also going to finish out the pantry/root storage area down there as well.  Something new we've added to our basement plans is we want to put together a spot down there to grown plants in during winter.  Our goal is to try and have some fresh veggies all winter long.  I don't know how well it's all going to work yet, but we're excited to try!  We're thinking of putting it somewhere near the studio (yes I said studio.  The boys put in a youtube/basic photography studio over the winter for KOV).  All in all, I think this will be a good summer and I'm excited to get my house arranged and share it with you all!  Now, to finish this all off on a nice note, I'm going to share a recipe that many folks have been asking me for lately!  I found this apple tea cake recipe on a british forum, but I had to translate all of the measurements for us "lame" Americans ;) .  Tomorrow I'm  going to the Wonderful Miss Amber's home to enjoy some BBQ with her family and I'm going to make this with peaches instead of Apples (I'll let you know how it turns out!)

British Apple Tea Cake

2 Apples

2 TBS lemon juice

2 TSP cinnamon

1 C sugar

1 C butter

1 C flour

4  eggs

Topping:

4 TBS butter

4 TBS sugar

4 TBS flour

1. Preheat oven to 350 degrees Fahrenheit.  Grease and line pan.  (I just greased mine and it worked lovely.)

2. Peel and core apples.  Cut into segments and toss the apples in lemon juice and 1 TSP of cinnamon.  Set aside.

3.  Take 4 TBS of butter, flour, and sugar  along with 1 TSP of cinnamon and rub together to make a crumb mixture.  Set aside.

4.  Place the eggs and remaining sugar in a bowl.  Beat until light and fluffy.  Melt 1 C. of butter and pour into the egg mixture.  Sift in the 1 C. flour and fold carefully until mixed.

5.  Pour your batter into the pan.  Carefully lay the apple pieces on top of the batter.  Top with the crumb mixture and bake for 50 minutes or until a toothpick comes out clean.

6.  Cool for 10 minutes before moving to a ire rack to cool completely.  (Or serve out of the pan if you are leaving it in the pan like I did.)

Science Diet Review

Well, some of you may know that I am a bzzagent (meaning that through bzzagent I sample products and review them).  A while back I posted on a testing I did for some awesome mascara!

Today I'm going to review the new Hill's (R) Science Diet Ideal Balance Grain Free food for dogs.
I was given a 3.5 lb bag of the dog food through  Pet Food Direct to try out with my dogs.  Let me get the review for them first.  They seem to be on par pricing (a little more expensive when you add in shipping) but the delivery was extremely quick and the website's interface was amazingly easy to navigate!  If I could ever think ahead with enough foresight to order dog food online (or if our dogs didn't seem to vary their consumption as much as they do) I would actually think about ordering through them on a regular basis.

Look at how nicely they packaged the food for me!

A closer view of the food bag so that you know exactly which bag to look for in the stores.

Now on to the actual food :) .  Harclave, my older and smaller dog, is super picky.  One of our favorite stories of him, yes I'm going to carry on for a few moments, is from when he was a puppy and we moved into our first place.  We did what every excited newly married and new puppy parent couple does when it was time to transition him off of puppy food, ask the folks at Petco what food they recommend and inform them that money is no object when it comes to our puppy's nutrition.  (A word for the wise, my dogs are still and will always be puppies to me.  I just can't accept that they're growing up ;) )  Okay, maybe not every couple does this, but we did.  We figured that he was our practice child (and we have always wanted children) and as such we should be ready to make sacrifices for him!  The folks at the store walked us over to Eukenuba (we now jokingly refer to this as pukanuba in our house now...) and sang it's praises to us.  Excitedly, we bought the big bag (did I mention this was our first puppy?) and ran home with it.  We spent hours doing online research on how best to mix the two foods (is it one part to one part or two parts old to one part new) and finally began trying to help him move to a "big boy" food.  At first we thought him separating the old food out of the bowl, eating it, and leaving the new food was just part of the process.  Eventually he ran out of the old food to do this to.  He was also going through an attitude phase at this point (he pooped on the couch in protest of guest leaving one weekend.  I don't think he was finished with  their visit) so we were already a little stressed at his lack of cooperation.  As he started the hunger protest, we started the digging in our heels response.  "He'll eat it when he's hungry enough. "  "Some of the forums said that the transfer to adult food from puppy food can be really hard for stubborn puppies so we should just wait it out."  This went on for a few days.  Finally, one night when we were sitting watching tv, Harclave drug his food bowl out of his room (we kept all of his stuff in the laundry room so he'd have "his place") looked at us, flipped the bowl over knocking the food out, did his puppy huff (it's his trademark) and stormed into the laundry room closing the door behind himself.  We weren't sure if we should laugh or cry at this defiance.  We threw in the towel and went back to Petco and got a different food for him.  He's been stubborn about his food since.  (His favorite tends to be Kibbles 'n bits with the little fake green beans)

Harclave was our worry from day one.  Kyokin, our newer larger puppy, will eat anything.  (and I mean ANYTHING...puppy training was hard with him)  So, I bit the bullet and did one of the worst things a pet owner can do when introducing their pets to a new food.  I didn't mix them, but set two bowls side by side with the different foods.  (Please ignore my messy floors.  They needed a good sweeping the day I did this)

On the left, Kibbles 'N Bits (not his favorite one though) on the right, the Science Diet.

The dogs were too busy playing at first, so it took some time to get their attention.  My younger kitten (kitten follows the same rule as puppy), however, was exited to get a nibble.

Shoo Fana!  Not for kitties!

Finally, I got them to settle down enough to come and see the "surprise".  Harclave, the alpha dog, walked up and sniffed both bowls.  He then proceeded to eat from both.  He didn't seem overly excited about the Science Diet, but he also didn't hate it. 

Harclave doesn't like having his picture taken while eating.

Kyokin took it as a treat.  He was really excited and after each bite he tried to do a trick for more.  I don't think he quite got it.  (He's also never experienced a new food since coming to live with us.) 

Kyokin eating.

The only two down sides that I found in this food was that it seemed to make the dogs thirsty and their poop very stinky (weird thing to complain about I'm sure, but I'm the one cleaning it up outside!).  (Since there were no upset tummies with this feeding method, I kept to it so I could monitor a preference if they showed one.)  After each meal, they would race to the water dish and chug down water (something new for them.)  Kyokin eventually figured out it wasn't a treat and his eating became balanced like Harclave's.

All in all, they liked it (didn't seem to love it) and it is definitely better for them then the Kibbles 'N Bits.  Science Diet has a really cool food comparison tool on their site if you click here.  The fact that Kibbles 'N Bits isn't even listed doesn't seem like a good sign.  After talking about it and reviewing our budget, my husband I decided that maybe we should upgrade their food.  We had been talking about it for a while, but Harclave's stubbornness had kept it from really progressing pass the talking stage into an action stage.  That's when the sticker shock hit us.  The cost is only slightly less than our specialty at the vet only cat food we have to buy (our older kitten has problems with urinary tract crystals).  We had already discussed that we would be alright with paying up to 1.5 times more (meaning what we pay now in addition to half of what we pay now) for food for them, but this price would more than double. 

We are a single income family (*points up to the michigan housewife title*) and we do very well for ourselves, but I just couldn't justify to myself spending that much on dog food if there wasn't a medical reason to make it necessary.  I don't have anything against the Science Diet food, it is just too expensive for our taste (maybe if our dogs had fawned over it more and made a choice of it over their previous food instead of eating a balance of the two we would have felt more obligated).  I know there are several folks out there who will accuse me of not loving my dogs sufficiently, but when I looked at the market, there are several "healthy" options that are priced better suiting our finances.  We are still planning on "upgrading" their food, we just have to find the right option for us!

Overall, my final review is this:

The food seemed good.  My dogs didn't love it, but they did like it.  It did lead to thirst and stinkier poo, but it wasn't terrible, just something that I noticed.  For us, this food it out of budget. 

Busy as a Bee

Well, things have been hectic around here!  I think things are going to slow down a bit (at least a little) soon.

The plants are coming along (slowly but surely), but today I do not have pictures of them :(.  I haven't had a chance to take any and to get them ready, so we're going to have to suffice with two slideshows with pictures from other events I've been to recently!

The first is the hockey game I attended last Friday.  Talk about a good time!  I grew up in the South (yes, there are hockey teams where I grew up...they just aren't amazing) so I'd only been to one hockey game previous to this.  Some of our dear friends are on a hockey team and it was their final home game of last season!

 

 This was also the first time I've been able to try my hand at hockey photography.  I had to resort to a 1600 ISO to cope with using a zoom lens (I was sitting in the stands cheering them on), the speed of the game, and the lighting.  I had a total blast.  My husband painted himself up with a friend and I sprayed silver glitter in my hair (one of their team colors).  It was a good way to begin the weekend!

On Saturday, we headed out to the NERO Detroit Larp.  They needed some NPC help (which my husband was able to provide) and I took some pictures for them.  We stayed there for about six hours.  It was pretty nifty.

Sunday was Game of Thrones of course! I also (on Saturday) finished Dance with Dragons.  My hubby (who hasn't read the books yet) was kind of sad that the season opener was more set up than action, but I'm not sure what he expected :D.  My only complaint about Game of Thrones and such is that they air during spring and summer.  I wish I could find a good show for us to watch during winter.  It seems like all the good tv comes on when it's nice outside and the shows during winter are bland (which doesn't help keep you distracted from bland winters).

Monday, we attended a memorial service for the mother of one of our closest friends.  Even though I'd only met her a few times, she was such a kind and amazing woman.  I'm really sad I didn't get to know her more.  It's strange to think about how people come into our lives and how they leave.  Think of how many people you have a short conversation with on the bus, at the store.  We are such social creatures.  I'm not exactly sure where I'm going with this, but I think I'll leave it there.  It's been both an amazing and sad week so far.  I think I'm pooped. 

Getting Ready for Warm Weather

The weather here has been simply amazing!  Warm days, chill nights, and we even had a thunderstorm last night!

Miss Fana approves of both the extra bird feeder outside the window and of the warm weather.

 With this warm weather has come a bee that found it's way into my bonnet.  My house must be perfect now!  (well not really perfect but clean and tidy).  There nothing to chase away the winter blues than to rearrange furniture and tidy things up a bit.  So, my little family has been working both inside and outside to get things ready for the hosting (because we host quite a bit during the summer) that is soon to come!

The fire ring we put in outside is very nice!

As far as the outside goes, we've put in the feeders (squirrel/bird/and a humming bird one new this year) and filled them.  We also have started to move the patio furniture out.  I've got my sitting spot for pictures early in the morning :)  Below are the first fruits of my morning picture taking :D

My first squirrel friend.

My first bird friend.

A word of advise, if you are having problems with squirrels in your bird feeders, try hanging the bird feeder up on one of those smooth hook poles.  I watched, in dismay, as the one I had was too high for Mr. Squirrel and his climbing attempts led to him sliding down the pole multiple times.  (I feel bad because he was trying to get into the squirrel swing).

My husband standing in front of the pruned stick pile.

The biggest thing of work we've been doing (well the boys have been doing) is trimming trees.  See, our back yard was lined with junk/dead trees that kept pretty much all light out.  What little "grass" there is out there is mostly mold and moss.  In preparation for my garden though, these sweet boys have been thinning and cutting down some of these trees (with the landlord's permission of course!)  Turns out that fire pit is going to get used a lot!

The spring wreath I made to replace the fall one.

I finally made a new wreath for my door.  I think it turned out amazing!  If anyone is interested, maybe I'll do a wreath tutorial some time :)  I think they are a lot of fun to make and the one above cost $10.00 when I had finished buying all the supplies (versus the $50 I've seen nice big ones go for).

The painting I bought as a kid at a garage sale.

Inside, we've started room by room with the spring cleaning.  This started with my bedroom (which is in the very front of the house creepily enough).  I finally got around to hanging wall art up on the walls.  In the process of this, I realized how blank they still look so I guess I'm going to have to get more prints up in there.

A view from the bedroom door.

 

The plant stand in the corner of the room.

The view from in front of the plant stand.  I'm hoping to put a real nightstand there.

As you can see, I moved my plant stand (that poor fellow moves all the time..and to think I garbage picked him!) into the room so I could have plants in there.  I also rotated my bed so our feet are facing the window instead of one of our sides.  I think I like the new layout and flipping the mattress made it feel springy again (since the arrangement is still so new it feels slightly like a hotel room).  All in all, I think we'll be really happy with these changes.

The door way and beginning of the living room.

The next room we've perfected has been the living room.  We put my magazine holder by the couch (previously another of my "floater" furniture pieces) and I think it really fits there nicely.

The end of one of the couches.

The end of the other couch.

Kyokin and Harclave each have to have opposite ends of the couch.














The Sailor Moon posters were birthday presents from
my Sailor Moon themed birthday party!

The table in front of and the tv.

Not too much has changed in the living room overall.  It was really more of a straightening and moving some stuff down stairs (I am not looking forward to getting to there with the cleaning).  The animals seem to like the new layouts quite a bit though.  I also finally remembered that I was given Easter decorations a few years back!  This is the first year since I was given them that they have made their way out and about the house!

The plants are doing well (I'm planning on updating about them on Friday so they have the chance to grow a bit more!).  I can see the beginnings of flowers peeking up in the lilies.  I also discovered that the front garden bed has a bit of a mystery plant peeking up.  I feel like my weekend was very productive!  I hope everyone else had a good (and warm) weekend :)  I'll see you folks again soon with my plant baby updates (and some pictures of coasters too!).

Spring is coming!

And I can feel it.  I am sooo ready for the nice warm weather (and to get my garden back up and running!)  I think I really miss the greens around me when winter's here.  Snow can be amazingly beautiful, but this winter has stunk in that regard :(   It's felt like just mud and cold :(

Our indoor "garden center"  so far we're just using the top two shelves of this shelf for plants, but we hope to have two shelves full of plants growing soon!

In anticipation of the wonderful weather that I'm excited for, we've started seedlings (and potted plants) indoors!  We took our extra room (that doubles as a sewing/craft room for me) and have started setting up shelves (well one shelf but now that we know it will work well, there will be more in there) in front of the window and are growing our own baby plants!  I think this weekend we'll be adding another plant tray to the group of plants in front of the window.

Our seed starters!  We have baby plants starting to come up.

A close up of some of the baby seedlings.

This year will be exciting because not only are we doing raised bed gardens, but I'll be teaching T.  He's really excited to learn about gardening and to help me :)  (no more weeding by myself!).  I think it's going to be run.  Our big obstacle right now, minus building the raised beds, is figuring out where and actually doing the pruning of the trees.  I'll post before and (hopefully soon) after pictures of the backyard.  It's HUGE, but it does need a lot of work as far as being pretty goes.  I'm excited because in addition to increasing our garden size this year, we're planning on two flower beds!  One in the front of the house and one in the back.  I LOVE flowers (well truth be told I really love all plants). 

The lily plants I felt sorry for at Meijer.

When we were at Meijer, I (like always) had to browse the garden stuff.  I found some blue berry bushes that looked just amazing.  I had to buy one.  I just had to have one.  My addiction to blue berries doesn't play into this at all *shifts eyes from side to side*.  Right next to them (yes a picture of the blue berry bush will be in the post soon...just wait will ya ;) ) were some bags full of lily bulbs.  These poor bulbs were trying their hardest to grow.  Look at how curved they are from growing in that little bag :( .  I had to liberate them.  My husband is a very understanding and very doting man.  He let me buy them, the blueberry bush, two pots, and potting soil!  (Of course, it was all around 20 bucks...big spender me ;) )  So these pretty babies are going to grow in my bedroom and brighten it up more!  One of the coolest things about our new house are the windows (they stink in winter though).  They are everywhere! 

My baby blue berry bush.  See I told you I had a picture!

Well, now that I'm starting to garden again, I WILL (I'm not allowing myself to flake out anymore) be more regular with my posts.  Also, BzzAgent presented an opportunity for me to test out the new Science Diet dog food, so I'm sure I'll be sharing those stories/feelings/findings with you all soon as well.  I'm excited for spring.  I think maybe this weekend I'll get my squirrel feeder (I haven't set it up since we moved) and bird feeder (if I can find a reasonably priced one I like) up and filled.  See you soon folks!

Winter Blues

Well, it's been a while since I've posted >.>.  There's been a move and a very hectic life!  Merry belated Christmas and Happy belated New Years!  (as well as all the rest of the holidays in there I may have missed)  I've been working on helping the kiddo staying with us prepare for his G.E.D. and helping to finish a rulebook for my husband's game. 

All that aside, the Knitting Ninjas (find us on facebook :) )  have moved to trying our hands at quilting!  My husband and my birthdays are close together (January and February) so that's put a slight damper on us all meeting more, but soon it should become regular once again :)


I haven't been taking many pictures since the weather has all but decided it has no idea what it would like to be.  (We've been having spring one day, fall the next, spring again, then winter for a few days)  The ones above are from the Cedar Lake Outdoor Center in Chelsea, Mi.  Such a beautiful place!  Once upon a time, winter used to be my "free" time.  It was the time for family, friends, and relaxing.  I have to admit that this has been one of the busiest winters I can remember!  I'm ready for spring, even if only for the change to (hopefully) constant weather.  I'm going to work on once again, making my goal a post a week (maybe every other) so you should be reading me soon ;).

Now, I mentioned that I had been helping T (what I will call the kiddo) and in the process we've been reading Great Expectations and I've made some quizzes!  (Feel free to use them for refreshers/home schooling just if you use them in a public place please give me credit :D)

Chapters 1-7

Chapters 8-14


(We skipped chapters 15-20 on the quiz.  I have the notes and can type up the quiz if it is so desired :D)

Chapters 21-25

These quizzes were designed to help with remembering and reading comprehension.  Now, don't take offense, I'm offering these free of charge since, to be quite literal, I have no formal education.  This is this Michigan Housewife's attempt at helping to educate :).  If these are a hit, I'll provide more.  Please comment and let me know what you folks think!

All in all, I hope to be here more often!  Good luck and see you all soon!