Raised Gardens

We have lived in South Carolina for almost three years now.  For two summers, we have tried to have a backyard garden.  For two summers, whatever we planted has been overrun by weeds or killed by a combination of nutrient-less soil and the HOT SC summer sun.  Seriously, we have YET to eat anything that we've tried to grow in our yard.  So this year, we are doing a lot more planning and preparing for the gardening season. 

I will still be working full time and we will have a newborn baby in the house, so I don't expect to have hours to spend on ANYthing, much less gardening.  With the time constraint in mind, we decided to build raised garden beds to cut down on the weeding we'll inevitably have to do.  We first drew out what we wanted on a piece of paper and then made the decision to go with half cinder blocks for the walls.  The half blocks are only 4" wide versus 8" wide for a regular cinder block.  We went with the half blocks because it would still give us enough strength, especially after filling them with wooden stakes and sand, but also give us more planting room inside the beds than a full cinder block would give. 

The area in the yard was already cleared out from last year's feeble garden attempt, so we just covered the section of ground with clear plastic to keep the weeds out of our beds and started the first row of blocks.  Marcus build three beds so that we would have room to walk in between them to make weeding and harvesting easier.  We also used left over fencing stakes and fence wire to fashion homemade trellises next to the fence. 

After making sure everything was secure and stable, we filled the three beds with organic topsoil that will (hopefully!) be much more suited to growing vegetables than the sandy soil that we are blessed with here on the beautiful coast. 

To make everything more visually appealing, we painted the blocks a light green.  We wanted to add the lattice to cover up the cinder blocks, but it is turning out to be more of a pain than we originally anticipated, so we may just leave them alone.  We filled the pathways between the beds with river rocks and trimmed everything out with metal edging to keep the lawnmower from shooting rocks everywhere. :)

The three small planter boxes on top of each bed are the kids' gardens (we even have one for Mason!).  We think it's important that they know where food comes from, so they (especially Taylor) will have a hand in everything that grows in those planters, from picking out what to plant, to weeding, watering, and harvesting. 

We are still in the process of deciding what to plant where, so my OCD/nerd self created a diagram on Excel that we can fill in and change around depending on what we want to grow.  The goal is to get the seeds in the ground before Mason arrives, so we'll probably be planting around the end of February. 

I can't wait to see what we are able to harvest this year!  I'm looking forward to (hopefully!) making homemade baby food for Mason and exploring how to can and freeze what we are able to harvest!

Easter!

This year the kids were actually old enough to take part in some of the traditional Easter activities like dyeing eggs, Easter egg hunts, and helping me make Easter-themed cupcakes.  Saturday our church had an Easter carnival with puppet shows, bouncy houses, a hot dog lunch, and an egg hunt.  Which turned out to be more like an egg stampede, haha.  There wasn't a whole lotta huntin' goin on. :)

After the kids naps on Saturday, I boiled a dozen eggs and we bravely decided to let the kids help dye them.  Although, we realized that they, especially Hunter, were probably going to make a mess, so we took all our supplies out to the driveway and dyed the eggs there.  They had a blast, until they realized there were no more eggs, so they took to re-dyeing the ones they had already done. :)

Notice there are only 10 "finished" eggs.  I'm sure you can imagine how we managed to have a couple casualties along the way. :)

Once the eggs dried, Marcus took them upstairs to the playroom and we hid them and let the kids hunt them four different times.  Don't worry, we made sure to count the eggs each time so we didn't wind up with a stink bomb in a few days!

After dinner Saturday night, Taylor helped me bake cupcakes and I made a big batch of butter frosting that I  colored four different colors.  

I put the frosting in Ziploc bags and snipped the corner to do the base color.  Then I used alternating colors to draw designs and Easter eggs.  I think they turned out pretty cute (and yummy!).

On Easter Sunday, we got up and the Easter bunny had come to our house to visit!

After breakfast, we got dressed and went to church. 

Don't they look so precious? Little blondies  :)  Here's Marcus with the kids:

So handsome! :)  And here's me with the munchkins:

I hope ya'lls Easter was as fun-filled and blessed as ours! He is risen!

Sidewalk chalk

Last Saturday, Marcus had duty and was gone all day, so I figured I'd get a chance to "practice" what it would be like as a stay at home mom. :)  So I planned our day out, bought some sidewalk chalk, and prayed the weather was nice. 

Once the kids got up and had breakfast, we went outside on the driveway to color up the sidewalk.  I hoped that the drawings would stay there overnight so that Daddy would be able to see them in the mornning when he got home from duty.  (No such luck, it ended up raining that evening.) 

We started out with some Easter decorations:

Then we moved on to our initials and a message for Daddy:  

It says T  H  L  (heart)  M :

Then Taylor decided that she wanted to trace Hunter while he was laying on the ground:

Then it was Tay's turn:

She almost laid still for the whole thing.  Tay then decided that she wanted to draw my outline, so I humored her.  However, the shirt I was wearing was about 10 sizes too big, so I had to draw in my "real" waistline.  Realistic, don't you think?

If only it were that easy in real life... :)