Six Little Hands' Giveaway

Six Little Hands - having a giveaway on Sampler Village. The details are here - Sampler Village.

The giveaway consists of Lavender and Honey Milk Bath Salts and Mom's Shea Lotion Bar. I have personally used all of my Lavender and Honey Milk Bath Salts. I loved them. They were the best salts I had ever tried.

Go enter this giveaway or go directly to her Etsy shop.

Vegetable Warrior - printout

I created this document to print out and put on our fridge for my kids. I think the fridge is a good place for the kids to read "good stuff." I home-school so this will be handy. It is just fun facts for fruits and vegetables. I have a problem with getting my 13 year old boy to eat anything that is healthy. Knowledge is Power.

You can download the pdf from here. It is a better quality for printing than this jpg used for viewing.

Go Steve Martin Go

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Spring Cleaning Outdoor Spaces

Saturday, I enlisted the help of my older kids to help me clean and watch my littlest one. Our back porch is almost as long as the house and has three distinct areas because of the odd shape. It has been the catch all for quite some time. Last summer I could hardly put the baby down to go outside and water or clean the porch. This summer, we are ready to enjoy the outdoors since it is Baby D's favorite place to be.

It took us over 5 hours to remove everything and clean it to a sparkly shine. One of our hunter cats tends to deliver dead animals at our doorstep and then by a few hours all you find are the yucky organs that even the cat won't eat. I felt the need to disinfect the porch. Yuck!

Baby D looks dangerous with brother's iPhone and the water.

Instead of buying some new patio furniture, I decided it was best to save money and clean up and oil my old wood furniture. I spent the money instead on a water fountain. Woohoo! Way better investment.

Quiche on the Fly

I am still using many great organic vegetables since I received my awesome biweekly combo box from Papa's Organic. I had to look up how to use Swiss Chard because I had never cooked it or ate it, that I know of. I received a bunch of red chard and a bunch of green chard.

Sauteed Veggies

I found this recipe on Food.com. It is for Crustless Swiss Chard Quiche. (I did not use the stems of the Chard) I changed it up a bit when it came to the vegetables because I have a ton to use right now. I sauteed 2 cups of Red Chard, handful of spinach, 1/2 small onion, 1/4 red bell pepper, 4 mushrooms, 1/2 yellow crooked neck squash, 1 clove of garlic, and about 12-15 little smokies cut in small pieces. I sauteed the veggies and smokies in olive oil and seasoned it with salt and pepper. I just used the kind of cheeses I had: Cheddar and Parmesan. I followed the rest of the directions.

Raw mixture ready to go in oven.

I popped it in the oven for 40 minutes, and it was super yummy to me. I am the only quiche lover in the house so I got plenty. :)

Garden Quiche - all browned!

Organic Delivery and Zuppa Toscana

I was so happy when I woke up. My bi-monthly delivery from Papa's Organic came in by FedEx on my doorstep. It was everything I hoped for and more. It was packed nicely with shredded paper and cold packs and sealed in an insulated foil bubble wrap.

This amount shown was a Medium sized box of Veggie and Fruit Combo. It contained: zucchini squash, 1 bunch kale, 1 bunch spinach, 1 bunch Red Chard, 1 bunch Green Chard, 4 bell peppers (3 red & 1 green), avocado, sack of new potatoes, 2 apples, 1 yellow grapefruit, 2 yellow onions, 3 red onions, bag of mushrooms, bananas, and pack of blueberries. Awesome! 40 Dollars and worth it to me.

This called for a cleaning of my fridge. I started gathering all of my old produce that needed to go. I even added the shredded paper that was with my veggie shipment in there. I got it ready for my compost tumbler. Today was the day I emptied my compost from last season in my garden bed and started a new batch. You can put almost anything in compost except for plastic, meat, and dairy. We have put everything in ours from food, hair, junk mail, paper from our shredder, dryer lint, and grass clippings. I also start mine with a little compost starter.

Here is what my dirt looked like when I removed it from the tumbler. Yep, I made that dirt.

Hard to believe it came from all of that junk I kept throwing in there. Tea bags and Coffee grounds and so much more!

Here is a picture of my tumbler I ordered from Amazon. It is called an Envirocycle Composter. It's pretty slick. The bottom can catch compost tea. It comes totally put together. It has rollers where it sits on so you can roll the tumbler to mix it. Sit it in the sun and it will make some dirt. I am going to get another one this year so I can have two batches during the summer time.

I added my compost to my little above ground planter that Danny and friends built for me. You can see in the background that Danny's office is coming along nicely.

I decided to make some of my favorite soup with some of my great organic veggies that came in. I made Zuppa Toscana. It is the one they sell at Olive Garden. You can get the recipe here.

This was a shot of my last ingredients to put in. The Kale was already chopped and the cream was waiting. I love that Pink Himalayan Salt. After it was all done, here is what my bowl of soup looked like. Hope yall enjoy!

Recreate Yourself

I have been listening to an audio book, "Throw Out Fifty Things, Clear the Clutter, Find Your Life" - Gail Blanke. The best surprise message from this book is Recreate Yourself. We tend to hold onto old ideas we have of ourselves because we need a kick in the pants. If you ever say to yourself that you wish you were more like another person because of their qualities then you need to make it so. Start becoming that person you want to be. It is just that easy. Throw out the old clothes that you don't like and start over. Isn't that a concept? It's just that easy.

The most important part of this book is to get rid of all of the stuff that you have latched onto that is weighing you down. It is a great motivational book to get you going. Sometimes that is all we need. Someone to say it out loud.

To go along with the book, you can download a workbook from her site. Even if you don't get this book, her site has some help.

Peppermint Hiccups

 My friend, Michelle, told me that Peppermint Essential Oil would cure hiccups because it stops spasms. I hope I said that right.

Anyway, the other day I had hiccups, I turned the bottle up and dropped a drop of oil on my tongue. In a few seconds, my tongue felt funny and my throat started feeling cold. ha ha It worked. My hiccups stopped immediately. Tonight, I got hiccups again and thought I would give it another try. It worked immediately. Not only do the hiccups stop, you get extra minty breath.

Thanks Michelle!

ALO Awaken with a side of Ginger

My friend, Michelle, told me about the health food store in Texarkana called Granary Street Discount Store. It is pretty awesome! I grabbed a few different drinks while I was there and popped them in the fridge.

My favorite so far is a drink called ALO Awaken. ALO's official website here. It has chunks of aloe in it with wheatgrass. It is surprisingly good to me. I already juice and have been drinking aloe juice almost daily so the flavor was not weird for me. My normal aloe juice does not have a taste. It can be put beside water, and I couldn't tell it apart. This drink has 2 servings in it. One serving is supposed to be equivalent to a cup of coffee, naturally.

A review of the ALO drink here: BEVNET. The user reviews outweigh the site's review. :)

The other night while I was working out, I tried another drink called Ginger enerGizer. It is put out by the Ginger People. It really is an energizing drink. It has triple the Ginger with a splash of apple. You can feel your body start to heat up when drinking it. It is said to improve digestion and metabolism. Woohoo! I usually add ginger to my juices when juicing, but I had never had this much at one time. It did its job. The taste was a little strong for me, but I would probably grow used to it quickly. It can be served hot or cold.