Christmas Break Recap

Hey All,

Its been a while. Between getting ready for a wedding and then getting back into the grove of school and work, things just got busy. A few of the blogs I follow will occasionally do a recap of their week or a life lately post of sorts. These are always my favourite to read so I thought I would do one occasionally here and seeing as it was just Christmas what better time to start.


We started out our Christmas festivities with Ava's school concert. She was the cutest little cowgirl.

Every year we make a trip out to Rustico to see this awesome house. Really the whole little town goes above and beyond but this house is AWESOME! All the money they raise goes to the Children's Wish Foundation.

 My cute little reindeer with his hot chocolate :)

Ava's school had spirit days the last week of school. 1) Christmas sweater day

2) Crazy hair day

.....and then this mom slacked off and have no more pictures ;) #momfail

This year I had booked Christmas pictures with our photographer but an unexpected trip to Ontario happened around the same time our pictures were scheduled. Needless to say, life took over and we didn't get them rescheduled so I snapped a few of the kids in front of our tree.

We baked a few lots of cookies

Seen Santa and Mrs. Claus

And had a very fun, family filled Christmas with lots of memories.

Normally I wouldn't do a post like this but they are fun on occasion and I enjoy looking back on them down the road. One of my resolutions is to blog more frequently in  2017 so, if I can keep up with my resolutions ;) you should see more frequent posts.

Merry Christmas and Happy New Year from our family to yours

Starting our seeds

Hey ya'll

While today is a yucky day out, (Whats up Mother Nature)

yesterday was a beautiful day. The weather was just right for cleaning the car (inside and out) riding our bikes, going for a nice long walk AND planting our little seeds :)

Before I started  our seeds I did a little reading. I found a great site about tips for starting seeds. here you really have to check it out. It has some great info and is a great resource.

Now not all of our seeds will be started indoors but we did start a few and in a few more weeks I will start some more. Adam found this great idea on pinterest to use old juice jugs to start your seeds. It is a genius idea. So with the help of a neighbour I was able to round up some extra juice jugs that I will use when I plant the rest of our seeds in a few weeks. Stay tuned for that and how well it works. By then I should have some sprouts from the jug I planted in yesterday.

 These are most of our seeds we are planting this year (minus our beans, house tomatoes and bell peppers)

I found this box down stairs and it fit all our little cups perfect and the one juice jug that I could find here ;) ( The orange juice we drink comes in a big plastic jug not a carton )

The kids took a break from riding their bikes to help me plant some seeds. Here they are planting some beans but Ava was most excited about planting the watermelon ;)

I found these markers that I had for marking sunflower seeds from last summer and they worked great for marking our seeds this year. I marked what the seeds were and then how many cups I planted.

( Example: Beans (10) )

That way when they start to come up I will know which plant is which and I didn't have to mark them all. I also marked on our calendar which day we started our seeds. Each seed as a different time to sprout but they are all in the 5-9 day range when we should start seeing some green :D

Right now I just have our seeds on the counter in our kitchen until we have an area set up in the sun room. The kids have kind of destroyed taken over that room with their toys ;) 

We have settled on doing two basic raised bed gardens this year and I couldn't be more excited about it. We will be making them mid May so we can get the soil all set and ready in them to plant our seed babies end of May beginning of June. I will keep you posted.

Thanks for dropping by,

Brianna

Whats In Your Garden?

Well the time has come for me to plan out our garden! YAY! This is easily one of my favorite things to do. I love to sit with a nice cup of tea and plan and hope PRAY that everything grows as planned. So I thought I would share it with you and maybe get some ideas for our garden from all of you sweet people.

We have put in a tiny garden for the past few years and honestly, it sucked. I think there were a few things that played a role in our unsuccessful gardens. 1) Not enough sunlight 2) crappy seeds and 3) bugs. This year we are going at this with a new approach and hoping for the best.

We are planning to put in raised bed garden. Has anyone ever done one before? In the past we had just tilled a plot of land for our veggies but this time we would like to step up our garden game. This is a few of the Pinterest ideas I found that I liked.

                      I love the chicken wire material around the top to keep any pests away ;)

               
                    This is very simple yet very doable. Probably what I am leaning towards most.

I like the idea behind the U shaped boxes. It makes for much easier access when weeding the garden. What do you think?

When I plan out my garden I always make a list of what we want and then I plot it out by what plants are compatible and which are not.

Here is some of what we plan to plant:

• beans
• cucumbers
• tomatoes
• peppers
• lettuce
• squash
• radish
• turnip
• onion

Another thing we are excited to do this year is start our seeds in doors. We have been blessed with a beautiful sun room that will be perfect for all our seed babies.This will be a great educational idea to do with your kids at home. I have been saving toilet paper rolls to plant seeds in. (stay tuned for that one) Here is a list of when seeds should be started indoors

I will post as soon as we start our seeds and keep you updated on how that is going.  Let me know any tips you have for starting our raised bed gardens. I am so excited to start this out and I hope for a better return then we have had in the past. I am hoping to get into a schedule of posting more regularly but for now, check back next week for a new post :)

Thanks for stopping by,

Brianna

Welcome

Welcome!!!


 Blogging has always been something that has interested me. While I don't consider myself a "good" writer, I do think that this will be a good way to document little special moments of our family to be able to look back at in a few years time.

Over the past year or so, Adam (my fiance) and I, have discussed dreamed about the simpler life we would like to lead and how we can incorporate that into our lives now. Currently we are renting a four bedroom home in little Mount Stewart. While we cant go out and buy a cow or sheep or any livestock really there are plenty of ways we as a family can slow down. I have created a "TO DO" list of things that we would like to accomplish. Some can be done right now, while others will we will have to work towards.

Some of the things on our list are:

• start a herb garden 
• start seeds early for our garden this summer
• get some laying hens
• save up for the perfect spot to build our little homestead
• buy local
• compost
• can/preserve as much as we can so we can buy less groceries next winter

I grew up in a large family. (13 kids) We lived on a farm close to where I live now in Prince Edward Island. Being that we were such a large family, my parents had to come up with some very creative ways to feed all of us and try to keep costs down. Most everything we ate was home made. Everything from fresh ground wheat to home made butter to fresh made cheese. I think at the time I thought it was ridiculous but now, that I have my own little family, I see the value in having those skills to use and pass on to my children.

I hope to share some of these ideas and experiences with all of you and I am so excited to be able to look back and see where we are 6 month or even one year from now.

Thanks for stopping by :)

Brianna