7 Quick Takes {17} - Fall decor, Nascar, and other ramblings

Linking up with Jen at Conversion Diary. Check it out. 

1. How do my weekends end up so jam packed? Somehow I'm supposed to fit in my high schools homecoming game, an oil change, the Octoberfest type event in my hometown, go with Seth to help out at my parents house, maybe visit a blog friend in real life at First Fridays and then Sunday we have tickets to a Nascar race. Which brings me to my next point...

2. What does one wear to a Nascar race? I've never been and let's just say I don't want to stand out, but I'm pretty sure I don't want to look like everyone else. Especially if it's anything like how my brain has imagined it to be (read mullets and beer belly's). Seth insists this is something I need to do at least once in my life and since we got free tickets how can I say no? Wish me luck?!

3. There has been some amazingness floating around the interwebz this week and I love it. Try this or this. If you're not having a better day after those two videos you might need to visit a doctor cause you probably need meds. 

4. Finally got some spaghetti sauce canned this week before the tomatoes rotted all over my counters. Yay me. Maybe I'll get around to posting some deets next week. 

5. On my quest to be healthier I have been continuing with my pop only once a week rule. I've actually decided to make it two though, (I know, I have no self control) but here me out. I have one pop every Sunday. It's the sugar loaded caffeine fix I look forward to all week but sometimes you just need a second one. Ya know? For example, you're at the movies and you really need a big gulp to go with that popcorn or you're having a slice of pizza which goes great with Pepsi. So, I've decided I get the one extra that I can have anytime I want throughout the week. Then I still get to look forward to my one on Sunday and don't fall off the wagon if I "cheat" and have that one extra. Make sense? It might be pathetic how much I have thought this through, but so far it's working so don't knock it til ya try it! 

6. I've been putting up some fall decor this week. Isn't it cute?

7. Slowly but surely I've been chipping away at my to-do list this week which makes me happy happy happy. I think I deserve a vacation. To bad I don't get paid to accomplish my to-do list because then I could for sure afford one. I guess I will just have to settle for a weekend. 

Happy Fall Friday Ya'll! (P.S. free fall printable here)

7 Quick Takes {11}

Zippety-do-da it's F-F-F-Friday again!

Which means, you can find me linking up over at Jens. 

1. I always get so ridiculously excited for Friday's and I don't even care. It's also August which just happens to mean it's my Birthday month!! Hopefully I don't get too annoying because my Birthday isn't until the 31st so I get to drag it out for the whole month. Seth just loves it when I do that:)

2.You know what else this lovely little month happens to bring? A vacation! And boy do I need it. Seriously, it has been way too long. I'm considering trying to talk Seth into moving to Europe so we can get 6 weeks of vacay like they do over there. Somehow I don't think this will be quite as easy as the DVR was. Anyway, one week in the beautiful Caribbean should tide me over for a couple months. 

3. I'm making pickles this weekend! Canning them that is. I've been stockpiling all of my little pickling cucumbers for the past week and I'm hoping they turn out okay. Canning just makes me feel like a little Betty Crocker. 

4. I have what I like to call a Love-Hate relationship with paying bills. I hate paying bills like water and electric because I know they are never going to go away. Ever. I do love that they are relatively small bills though in the grand scheme of things. I hate paying bills like my car payment, Seth's student loans and the house payment because these are much larger bills to pay. However, I do love knowing that someday these bills will be paid off and we won't have to pay them again. Plus what's not to love about transportation, education and home sweet home? #AmericanDream

5. Every year, since graduating, I can't help but suppress the smothering feeling of wanting to go back to school every time the back to school supplies hits the shelves. I seriously love and always loved school. Those beautifully sharpened pencils, stark white notebook pages and un-chewed pen caps get me Every. Single. Time. Maybe someday I'll go back for a teaching degree so I can stay in school the rest of my life while bringing home a paycheck. Enjoy it while you can kids. Before you know it you will be wishing for nap times and dreaming of the day when your biggest decision was the slide or swing-set. 

Stay in school, you fool.

6. I think I've previously mentioned that my mom is a nanny for a little one year old girl named Charlotte. She is pretty much adorable as can be and my mom texts me a photo just about every day of Charlotte's OOTD. Let's just say this girl has some seriously cute clothes. Since she's not mine I don't want to post photos of her but trust me. Anyways... here's part of the text convo from my mom that makes me smile:)

7. I stopped by my Grandma's yesterday during lunch. Her garden tomatoes haven't turned red yet so I dropped off some of mine for her with some additional produce. Conveniently enough she had just finished baking bread and gave me a loaf. Warm-out-of-the-oven to-die-for homemade bread. I guarantee Grandma has given out thousands of loaves of bread in her life and I have had many of them. However, a lot of them are frozen (cause it freezes beautifully) and I have to wait for them to thaw. I forgot how amazing it is straight out of the oven though. Grandmas are the best!

Some of my haul for the week.

Carb gold!

Growing a Garden

Remember when my garden looked like this? All sweet and innocent in nice pretty rows?

Barely sprouting out of the ground?

Well, it's been a month and we have had lots of rain. Which means, my garden grows right along with the weeds. So, it turned into a jungle. 

Literally, a jungle. 

Monday, I busted out the tiller, my garden gloves and an empty wheelbarrow and went to work. After about two hours I had a pile of weeds, muddy knees and some satisfaction.

This picture doesn't even do the amount of weeds justice. It was A LOT.

My jungle is starting to resemble a garden again.

Thank goodness. I was about to spray it all with roundup and say, "let's try again next year."

So far, I have been able to pick, and eat, some lettuce, spinach, onions and my husband had a few Serrano peppers. It's coming along slowly but surely. Not that slow really but it sure seems like it.

We have lots of tomatoes that are waiting to turn red and I'm pretty sure I planted too many green beans. Oh well, I guess I will have some to share since Seth doesn't seem too excited about them. 

Fresh food from your own garden is by far the best. I guarantee it!

Three Day Weekends

Hello Wednesday!

Man, I love a three day weekend and getting to skip right over Monday (the work part of it anyway). I got to hang out with the husband this weekend which is always nice. I wish I could say we had a long relaxing weekend at the lake, or something like that, but we pretty much worked our butts off. 

Since we (I use that term loosely) finished building the shop, aka a 40'x60' "man cave" metal building for my husband and his hobbies (hunting, golfing, woodworking, fourwheeling, lawn mowing, etc.) we needed to run electricity and water down to it from the house. So, we spent all day Saturday and Sunday digging a 400 ft trench from the house down to the shop. Fortunately they make a "trencher" that does the actual digging for you, but it does not dig out around water lines or electric lines or anything like that so all of that was done by hand. Mostly my husbands hands (and back). 

While digging by hand we were never able to find the phone line and we accidentally cut through it with the trencher. We don't have a home phone so we figured no big deal. It was several hours later when I realized the wi-fi on my phone wasn't working and duh! our internet comes through our phone line. Awesome. Since we were so busy we didn't have much need for internet anyway so I just waited until Monday to call and they came out yesterday and hooked it back up. 

After spending Saturday digging, literally from dawn til dark, my husband finally came inside for some dinner and we were both passed out by 10:30. Don't be jealous of how exciting our lives are now. I got a break on Sunday when I got to sleep in before getting up to go to church. On my way home I swung by Home Depot, our home away from home, to pick up some plumbing pieces to be used inside the trench. We spent the rest of the day threading 4 electrical wires through 2" wide pieces of pvc. Only about 400 feet's worth or so. 

Once the electric was threaded down to the shop we got to work glueing the piping together for the water. I'm pretty excited about the water part because Seth also trenched a hole to put piping and a water hook up right next to my garden. This will make it super easy for me to water and rinse off some of the dirt before bringing my veggies inside. I would say we got about half way done with the water pipes before deciding to call it quits around 6pm. Hallelujah!

After showering off all the dirt only to realize some of it wasn't dirt but a nice farmers tan (lovely) it was time for date night! My favorite part of the week:) 

It was getting a little late by the time we got to the city and I was wanting to see a movie so we just went to the theatre and ordered food from the restaurant inside. I scarfed down my bacon cheeseburger like I hadn't eaten in weeks and we settled in to enjoy The Hangover 3. I honestly thought the movie was pretty good. Not as good as the first but better than the second. I'm easily amused. 

On the way home I managed to talk Seth into swinging through Wendy's to try out the new Frosty Waffle Cones...umm...delish. Good thing I usually only drive by Wendy's on my way home from working out or I would probably be eating these all the time. 

I think God decided we needed a day of rest, since we didn't take one Sunday, so we slept in Monday while it was storming out. Seth finally talked me into getting out of bed around 10:30 and I finished up his laundry while making some blueberry pancakes and bacon. Mmmmm bacon! By 1:30 he was packed up and back on the road to Texas, for work:( I sure do hate when he has to leave. 

Monday afternoon my mom and I went to the mall to check out the sales and I managed to only buy myself a cute new dress and shirt. Plus a handful of shirts for Seth. 

All in all a good weekend with lots, but not nearly enough, accomplished. Anybody else think every weekend should be a three day weekend? 

If I get a chance I will try and take some photos of our lovely trenched yard to post. Beautiful, I tell ya!

Gardening 2013

It's garden season folks! Finally, I might add. 

After what I like to refer to as "the longest winter known to man" it's time to enjoy those beautiful spring days.

Last Tuesday I was able to get my garden planted after a couple days without rain. I've got a feeling I may have timed my planting perfectly again this year. Want to know why?

This is why...

...everything is sprouting!! 

Literally, everything I planted is popping through the dirt. The photos are from planting last week and when I checked it all out last night. Only 6 days after putting it in the ground! In case you can't tell I'm totally fascinated and amazed that this can happen in under a week. I'm also super excited for the produce to come. 

Gunnar "helping" me plant corn last week. That's potatoes to the left. May 14th.

Planting the Peaches and Cream sweet corn. Last Tuesday, May 14th. 

Onions on the left followed by 3 rows of potatoes. Next to the potatoes are two rows of corn.
Photo taken last Tuesday right after the corn was planted. May 14th

The corn sprouting last night! May 20th.

Strawberries that were planted last year and will produce this year. You need to pick the blooms off the first year so that they will grow and produce a lot the second year. May 20th.

The onions have more than doubled in size since last week.  May 20th.

Cant' remember what this is...cantaloupe maybe? 

Potatoes last night after doubling in size since last week.
These are the same ones Gunnar was sitting next to in the photo above. May 20th. 

Please ignore the weeds, it's been to wet the last couple days to weed and they sort of multiply when they get rain. 

There is lots of other stuff I have planted but haven't posted photos of yet. Including 10 tomato plants, 2 pepper plants, a jalepeno plant and a serrano pepper plant, lettuce, spinach, zucchini, squash, and pumpkins. Plus a few herbs like cilantro which is great for salsa. 

My husband loves spicy and so I hope to be making him lots of spicy salsa, with all those peppers, later on this summer. 

If you have any gardening questions feel free to let me know. This is only my second year with my "own" garden but my mom has had one my whole life. I have/had grandparents with Green Thumbs on both sides of the family so I'm hoping I got lucky and got the thumb and not just beginners luck last year.