Oh beautiful seedlings!

Can you believe I already have multiple seedlings sprouting up? I'm sure most of you are laughing at me, but I really had no idea that 3 days after I planted that a few sprouts would have popped through! So exciting :)

It's been almost a week since I planted the seedlings and this is what I have!




About 1/3 of the seeds sprouting. I can't wait to put them in the ground or pots! I did buy a basil plant the other day because I needed some basil for a recipe and I could not bring myself to pay $3.50 for a few leaves when I could buy an entire plant for the same price. I cannot wait until my other herbs mature!

I've been reading as much as I can on small space gardening and we got our plot downtown to put more veggies. It's nice because the water is on a timer so we don't have to go every single day. There is a shared herb garden (which will be awesome until mine get mature), a shared salad garden and a children's pizza garden! I have absolutely no idea what we'll plant there, but it's in full sun, which is nice since the majority of our backyard is shaded by our huge pecan tree. We have such a limited space where the sun shines for about 6 hours/day, so we're going to try to be creative!

I'll share our successes and failures. I'm hoping for more successes!

First seeds planted!

I told you I was excited! I've already planted a lot of my seeds.



I also got a few more varieties to plant now because about half from the Dinner Garden are fall veggies for this area. And because I wasn't prepared this year to plant vegetables, I actually had to go buy something to start my seeds in. But, I didn't get the ridiculously over-priced greenhouses for seed starting. I found some little pots that you can plant right with your seedlings and I got 50 for just under $2. Which is still too much, in my opinion. Next year I'll be prepared and will be saving my egg cartons!

Now, I have no idea if this will work. I know I'm extremely late for starting seeds indoors, but considering we will be moving in 2-3 weeks and it will be at least a week or two before we are somewhat settled with the unpacking, I figured by starting them indoors, it'll give us a good month or so head start than if we were just to sow the seeds directly in the ground. I guess we'll see soon enough, right? :)

My son got in on the action. Yes, we are inside. It was very chilly outside but I couldn't wait!






Here is a list of the seeds I started indoors.

Cauliflower
Red Cabbage
Wando Peas
Fenugreek
Onions (not sure what kind, but no matter because I love all onions!)
Swiss Chard
Arugula (afraid it may be too hot for it to grow by the time I get it in the ground, but I'll keep my fingers crossed!)
Daikon Radishes
Eggplant
Tomatoes
Peas (not sure what kind, I'm assuming regular garden peas)
Rosemary

I'm super excited. I cannot WAIT to see the fresh sprouts of green pop through the soil. I can't wait to prepare our garden area in Savannah to transplant them. I'm excited to see our son pick his own fresh veggies to eat. I have a feeling we'll be giving a lot away as well because I'm optimistic and think I've already planted too much. :)

I know that this year is an experimental year for us, but I'm ok with that. We have to start somewhere, right? I'm kicking myself for not paying more attention when I was younger and we always had a huge garden. I wish now I would have had a greater appreciation at the time for it. But I guess I just took it for granted because I always had a huge garden growing up and just thought that's the way it was for everyone. It's not been until the past few years when my husband and I have become more aware of our nutrition (or lack of) and have been wanting to start our own garden. Well, now is the time. Why keep wishing for it? Just do it, right?

Free vegetable seeds

I'm going to plant a garden.

I'm very excited.

I'm especially excited now that I received these seeds in the mail today....for FREE!

I received them after writing to the Dinner Garden people about 2 weeks ago. I'd honestly forgotten all about it until I received my wonderful package today! The Dinner Garden is a fantastic organization that has an awesome mission:

The Dinner Garden provides seeds, gardening supplies, and gardening advice free of charge to all people in the United States of America. We assist those in need in establishing food security for their families. Our goal is for people to plant home, neighborhood, and container gardens so they can use the vegetables they grow for food and income.

They only began this program in 2009 and have already provided seeds for more than 40,000 families and 100 community gardens! How awesome is that?

This is what I received:

• Fordhook Giant Swiss Chard
• Arugula
• Blue Curled Scotch Kale
• Fenugreek
• Mustard Greens
• Onions
• Snowball Cauliflower
• Harris Early Model Parsnips
• Wando Peas
• Organic Bloomdale Spinach
• Red Cabbage
• Daikon Radish

How exciting are those names? I love them. I love the little packages and the little labels. I love that I got the variety that I did. I would have never been so courageous in a store to pick these out! I'm especially excited about the arugula. Giada always uses arugula and when I try to make her recipes I can never find good, fresh arugula. The fenugreek is a complete surprise. I know when I was concerned with my supply when I was exclusively nursing my son, fenugreek was an herb that came up again and again as a supplement to encourage breastmilk production. Not sure what I'll do with it now, but I'm going to grow it anyway!

So, where am I growing all of this? Those of you who have been to our house in Savannah know that we have a tiny yard. Our entire lot is only .13 of an acre. Yep, not even a quarter acre!

Well, I plan on trying a variety of things.

Things such as vertical gardening. This link has several gardens we'll try. The first picture is so beautiful that I must try it at least! What a great way to fill blank fence space! The gutter system is also a must for me. I'll probably do this to grow herbs.

We'll also do container gardening. I found this blog and tutorial on making your own self-watering container. I know we can get the 5-gallon buckets for free, so the cost should be pretty similar to the ones the guy builds in the video.

Another thing I'm super excited about is the possibility of having a plot in a community garden in downtown Savannah! I've heard about community gardens in other cities and decided to search for one in Savannah and found one! We've applied for a plot and hope to be lucky enough to be granted one!

Hopefully between my container gardening in our yard and our small plot (hopefully!) in the community garden, we'll be able to provide fresh, organic produce for our family to eat all summer and fall! We will also donate some of our excess to the local food bank as thanks to the Dinner Garden for supplying us with our starter set of seeds!

Absent

I'm sorry I've been absent. The travel we did in February seemed to put us behind and I feel like we're not close to being caught up! Trying to coordinate our move is a bit challenging since we've got to get into our house to do a little painting and other things before moving all of our furniture in.

So, I'll probably be mostly gone over the next couple weeks or so, but once we're settled back in Savannah, I'll get back into it!

Oh, and I've lost 10 pounds in the past 6 weeks! :) It's all from just cleaning up my eating a little. I wasn't super strict with my diet, so I can imagine what weight I'll shed once I get into CrossFit and eat even better once moving home!

No TV

We will not be taking our TV back home with us in April.

We're trading it for a closet! It works out for all involved actually. It's one of those flat-screen tv's that I know nothing about. I just happened to win it in a raffle a couple years ago. I'd never won anything until that point and then I win a $1600 gift card to Best Buy for a big flat screen TV!!!

So when we moved to my mom's, of course the TV came with us and fits perfectly in their entertainment center in the living room. When we told them that we were moving out, they joked that we had to leave the TV. Haha, yeah right!

Well....then I saw a friend's closet system from IKEA. She lives in a small, older home like we are moving back to. I knew I wanted one, but didn't have $1000 in the budget to purchase one anytime soon. After I made my first trip to IKEA at the beginning of February, I realized that I indeed really, really wanted a closet system.

So, after some conversation, we negotiated a trade with my mom and step-dad! We are leaving our TV, video camera, and my Pottery Barn dishes. They are in turn giving us cash to purchase the closet system!

And the BEST part is that we got part of the closet system for a STEAL! We were back in Atlanta last weekend and I spent hours at IKEA getting ideas for when we move back home to maximize space in our small home. Well, in the closet area, I saw these huge sliding doors for the closet systems on super duper clearance. Seriously, they are the largest doors they have and are usually $800....we bought them for $249!!!! We totally didn't expect to buy part of our closet this trip, but at a savings of $550, we couldn't pass it up. It's also not my favorite color, but again, $550 savings would have probably convinced me to take anything that was on sale!

So, we'll have no TV when we move back home. Not a problem since I'd honestly already begun a blog about no TV for 30 days once we moved back home! I am so busy with my son during the day and my husband and I have a ton of projects we want to do when we move back. We have more than enough projects to keep us busy! We want to enjoy more time outdoors and more reading. We've both not been reading as much as we'd like.

Now, this doesn't mean that we disagree with TV's in the home. It's just something we're going to try for a while. Plus, I really, really, really want more storage space in our home! Seriously, if you saw the limited space we have, you'd understand too!

We're going to really work on non-TV entertainment in our home. We want to continue developing our relationships in our family and spend more time with our friends that we've missed since moving away from Savannah.

I'll miss HGTV and Food Network. I'll also miss my re-runs of the Golden Girls, Will & Grace and Sex and the City! But, I'll enjoy my new time to spend helping my family grow!

Week 3 check - in Food Challenge

I suck. I have eaten HORRIBLY for the past two weeks. The first week was awesome. I felt so great and loved that I was making the proper choices. This week I did even worse than last week. And I feel awful....and bloated....ugh.

I did find a jar to start my starter. I tried to look up the starters you can buy, but there were too many choices and I couldn't follow. So, I am attempting to make my own starter. I will wait until after this weekend because we'll be gone over the weekend back up to the Atlanta area - Stone Mountain for my husband's sectionals competition, one of the preliminaries for the World CrossFit Games. I don't want to have to worry about my starter on the trip up!

I was in Atlanta this past weekend and was able to visit Whole Foods. I love that place. I expected it to be pricey, but it wasn't at all. I wish we had that type of selection available to us here.

This challenge is a great challenge, but I'm afraid we'll have to put it into full effect in April, when we move back to our house and have complete control of what is in the house.

Online organization

Don't you just love the internet? I am addicted to it. Seriously. I love reading blogs and just information in general. I love that I can google anything!

After my recent post about needing to get organized, I went on a search for some kind of organization template online. What I found was so much better! It is an online schedule for your chores (or anything for that matter). It EMAILS you a reminder each day for the chores you are supposed to do!!! How cool is that? Okay, now my nerd side is really coming out. I really do think this will work for me. I check my email a lot, so to have the reminder come in my inbox is awesome. You can also choose to have the weekly schedule emailed to you at the beginning of the week if you'd like!

Basically you add the people in that will be doing any chores. Then, you add in the chores and you can categorize them (difficult, easy, etc.). You can assign certain chores to certain people or you can make the program choose randomly. You can also choose whether each person gets the same amount of chores or less. You can color code it! You can also decide how often each chore needs to be done. For example, you can even put a chore on there that you only do annually! You can also assign a dollar amount to each chore - I'm guessing that's if you have children that are paid an allowance based on chores.

It's awesome. It's free. It's what I need...I think. I'll give it a good go at least!

Chore Buster - http://www.chorebuster.net/