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Outside my window… the crickets are singing my babies a lullabye… the town is hushed.
I am thinking… that I really should be sewing instead of doing this.
From the learning rooms… I have learned that I dont like to teach and I am not a consistent person.
I am thankful for… Chiropractic care.
From the kitchen… I made yogurt per Chas’ tutorial
I am wearing … My favorite denim skirt from the thrift store and a white GAP tank, also from the thrift store (gotta share that frugality in me. 
)
I am reading… Beverly Lewis’ The Covenant… I have such a hard time reading her. But I still enjoy her. Weird.
I am hoping… That my fingers will be swift to finish all these orders soon.
I am creating… tons of aprons, nightgowns and dresses galore from my etsy store.
I am praying… Wisdom beyond measure, patience for every moment, and peace that only God can bring.
Around the house… I just finished picking up all the children’s toys. (hey shouldnt they have done that?) and I am cleaning up my sewing mess.
One of my favorite things… A flower given with a smile. A baby’s giggle. A son that takes his first steps and claps at himself.
A few plans for the rest of the week… I get to take care of M this whole week. 
I also hope to finish up a couple orders.
A picture to share… Our little sodbuster on the Prairie
For two days now its has been gloriously raining. I love the smell of fresh air after a rain. Our valley here has so much dust in the air that at night, if you take a flash light and shine it up to the sky, you can see all the dust your breathing day by day. Its scary. But rain dampens all that. We now have such fresh air to breath. OUr plants are so happy with the water and our land is rich in soil.
I love the sky after a rain. This picture was taken this morning-
It was hard to take a picture of the majestic sky. The sunrise brought a glorious color to our valley. The kind you only can read about or see in a movie. I love today’s weather.
We also harvested some green beans. We have a WONDERFUL crop this year. Last year we would save our daily pickin’s til we had enough for a meal. This year, we pick as needed for a meal. Its so wonderful and they are sooo delicious!
And then Emma and Daddy enjoyed their corn on the cob. I thought this was sucha cute picture.
Have a wonderful weekend!
A Little Gardening update-
What’s left of our fall/winter garden.
Parsely, Basil, and what’s left of the tomato plants. We have had some serious eating tomato worms this fall. 
What’s left of the radish row (right), Green beans (center), and lettuce with a few weeds (right)
Thriving pomegrante bush.
One lone African daisy.
Alyssum, the marigold finally gave up the ghost. Alysum do so well out here.
This was probably our best flower investment. We have had it three years and it keeps coming back year after year. I can’t even remember the name of it now. It’s one of dh favorites… Emma loves it too. She plays, “He loves me, he loves me not” with its dainty petals.
Our little Tumblina is growing too. As much as she dare tries anyway. LOL. She’s still a little peanut. But it makes carrying her easy.
I hope to have that long promised blog contest soon! I am still finishing up the item that will be contested off. Do I have you in suspense now? 
Stay tuned. I’m trying to be more on the ball about this. Life just happens, you know?
Emma will be one on Monday. EEK! Where did the year go? Anyway, I have been very busy planning a simple birthday party. HA HA! No seriously. I have been busy but Emma’s birthday party is not the reason… her dress is!
This is a sample of what she is getting…
Her actual birthday dress has blue, red, yellow, and black. I know, sounds UGLY, but its gonna be cutimous! I promise! I made this one first so I could work with making up my own pattern to fit my lil petite thing. There is also a white pettiblouse/dress that will go with them. I just need to figure out how to make it better. Right now I think I am on my third try. I eat all my words when I said sewing was easy… Well, sewing IS easy…its the making up patterns that’s difficult!
Saturday we went out of town to gather apples. I know, with the cost of gas being as it is wouldn’t it be rather expensive to go out of town just to pick some apples? Well, we don’t do theme parks or fairs or anything like that. We love the experiance of choosing fresh apples from an orchard. We love the fresh crisp taste of them and love the picking experiance. Emma had a wonderful time. Remember last year?
http://sodbusters.wordpress.com/2007/10/07/saturdays-rasberry-tea/
I guess I never did upload those pictures… hmm… Well here is 2 of them.
One very pregnant woman- (remember it was Emma’s due date when we went)
And one Papa-
This year the weather was nippy and rainy. Emma was bundled up in her new outfit (made by me…) and a new coat and still had appled cheeks! Poor lil thing but she had so much fun picking and playing with all the windfalls.
I do have pictures for this year but I am waiting for my sister to send them to me since I used her camera. (Thank you, Braelyn!)
Ok, off to play with the peasant dress again.
What a busy time it has been. The days seem to grow shorter and the “to-do” list longer. We have about 2 months or less for Jr. Muffin’s arrival. So much to acomplish! So little time.
We still plan and pray to have a homebirth. The hospital bag is packed just in case though. Today I “rummaged” through some old photo’s and found the ones we took soon after Euphemia was born. Hard to believe it was only a year ago. The time flew by so quickly. Can you believe she will be one in less than two weeks? That thud you heard was me… fainting.
Baby update. Baby is well. I have been more couch confined or using a walker when the going gets rough. The baby is sitting on some nerves or something like that so its painful to walk and it doesn’t steady me enough. God is good though and through His stregnth this last stretch shall be over soon.
The garden has been doing fairly well. We are experiancing some bad tomato worm problems. Grrr. Emma has gladly taken on the task of torturing them before death. We have had to explain a few time though that these aren’t the gummy worms or sour worms that you find in the store. Non edible dearie. *shudder*
Harvesting the radishes has been fun! We still have plenty and have been sharing our bounty with family and friends.
It’s hard to believe that this is only after three weeks from planting! They do SO well out here.
Emma has been learning to cook. See how well she helps me with the hand-beater?
I absolutley LOVE my hand beater. I have decided to make cookies when I go into labor. I am not joking here. I am going to put on, Pride and Prejudice (nice long humourous movie) and make gingersnaps. All that muscle work will feel good! Of course I also have an idea to scrub the carpets as well. Whatever the plan is, its not to lay down. Work with gravity this time! Woo hoo!
I got to thinking as I was making these cookies how wonderful it is that the Word of God is NOt like a cookie. Cookies are wonderful treats. They are not meant to be eaten daily otherwise they just loose their sense of speicalness and well being a treat. All that sugar daily. You’d get sick of them very fast. God’s Word, the Bible, is our Daily Bread. We NEED it for that daily substance of something more filling, more satisfying, more needed. How wonderful it is that we have this book right at our fingertips! Even web-based sites have all versions of the Bible listed on them. Free access anywhere/everywhere. So why do we sometime use the Bible as the occasional cookie treat? I am very guilty of this. It been a constant reminder to me as I treat on the cookies, or when I make the dinner meal (which is usually the Big meal of the day for us). Have I found the nourishment in the Spiritual feeding as well? There is so many articles and devotion books out there that stress the importance of daily reading of teh Bible. Encouragment. Etc. So why in this day and age do we find it so hard to just sit down and meditate on God’s Word?
Updated Garden pics!
Pomegrante bushes
Basil and what’s left of the tomatoes and parsley
And the beautiful pommie tree by my front door. It’s in the neighbors yard of course but its still so pretty!
I can tell fall is coming. Allergies are here and I don’t have to keep the fan on us all night! YAY! Well, about the fan anyways.
I have had a very busy weekend. We started our fall garden. YAY!
David cut some pomegrante and tried planting a hedge of them over the weekend. Two lived but two have died and we transplanted the volunteers from our garden into the dead ones bowl and they are looking very healthy. This is day 5 so we’ll see. I love pomegrante season. My neighbor has a bush that she always lets us pick from. It will be so nice to have my own though.
They are more heavily mulched now of course.
Here is the first row we planted. In that row there is two rows of radishes. Its a little over a ft wide so its easily fits two rows of radishes. We also planted two rows of green beans, pole and bush type but I haven’t gotten a picture of it yet.
They are already starting to come up. Its sooo exciting. Now here is alittle rant. PET owners. PLEASE keep your dogs and cats inside YOUR yard. We woke up this morning to find pot holes in our rows. Our neighbors dog came and trambled the row. Its VERY discouraging to spend hours preping the soil, planting and using a lot of TLC only to have it trampled to death within minutes. It is not a little mishap. It’s one that could have been avoided. This happens every season. Also, our garden is NOT a liter box for your cats. Please keep your cats liter box cleaned or something. We have tried to be friendly and neighborly about this but it has come to the point where if we find your animal in our yard we will take it to the pound. I know we are not the only ones that have had trouble with this. So if you own pets, please concider what their roaming around can cause. Thank you.
So, this weekend we also pulled out a closet in the bedroom. This was a very hard task to do. A) because the previous owners built the closet into the ceiling. Smart on their part because they wanted a sturdy closet but very bad for us that wanted it out. Don’t worry we still have 2 closets in the bedroom
So this is before.
and this is after (but before my sprucing up)
I’ll have to update you on what that now looks like. I have a couple homemade quilts hangin up. So pretty and more baby-room looking without having to have a baby room! She still sleeps with us in the “master” bedroom. Its so nice to not have that crib blocking the clothes closet and having to move it everytime you need to get in. Especially for the preggo mom here. I can’t tell you what a relief it has been to have it and a more organized room.
Another yard sale this weekend!
I am also pulling a plug for my used items blog that also has the homemade dresses on it. My friend is also going to use my blog to sell some of her gently used second hand clothes. Two stay-at-home moms bloggin’ away goods for your sweeties. It does help us pay the bills so before you go to the thrift store or second hand store, see if there is anything you could use. Save the ebay hassle too! For all my stuff if you buy six items or lots you recieve free shipping!
Ok, its almost dinner time and I should actually make something. EEK! Where has the day gone?
I am actually going to combine Tuesday and Wednesday and do a gardening book. I have a yard sale planned for Friday so I have found this week rather hectic.
I would like to write about my most useful Gardening book called,
Extreme Gardening
We use this book for our gardening like we use the Bible. Although the Bible is perfect, I do say that this book is not quite perfect in regards to being able to plant the perfect garden but it’s the most useful book ever! David (the author) plants and has simular weather and soil conditions we do.
It is more like a dictionary with information on bugs, soil condition, planting conditions, weather condition and all that. Its MOSt useful for knowing what to plant together. For example he tells us what not to plant next to Leeks. “Protect it: Avoid putting Leeks with Broccoli and Broad Beans”.
We have had most sucess with using this book as our gardening guide. I would recommend the investment in the book. I know most reading this blog do not have such hard soil and weather that we do but it is also good for organic fertilizers, pestides (natural of course) and so on. It tells you how to harvest, how to work with the soil, etc. You may need to ajust the planting seasons but I would say that this book is still good for beginners.
Enjoy!
Well this is very late in the day. So sorry. Its been a hectic day.
Today we did a little gardening. I am planning my fall garden and so far the vegetable plot will consist of,
~1 row of carrots (mini carrots are better for out here since it will either get to hot before they get long enough and will be biter or the frost will come and nip em again before they are long enough)
~ 2 rows of green beans
2 rows of peas (sugar snap and “normal”)
~ 1/2 row of spinach
~1/2 row of lettuce
~ 1/2 row of green onion with beets
1/2 row of squash
This is what has been planned so far for the veggies. List subject to change.
Today I concentrated on a small plot for some herbs and cosmos. It’s near the mailbox and I have been dying to work the soil there. At 7:30am this morning the temp. was already 92f and it was hard digging in the soil with a belly out to there and a child to watch, but we managed and here is the process;
1. First I had to pull the Bermuda or crab grass out. I didn’t get a before shot but this is what the plot next to it looks like. Just to give you an idea. Now, this took 1/2 hour to do because a) I am very allergic to the weed. I break out in hives. I hate wearing gloves. I love the feel of dirt and soil beneath my fingers so I don’t own a pair of gloves and find them a nuisance anyways when you are trying to work. THey are constantly falling off or doing something naughty. So It was all done by shovel and a spade and a small size rake.
2. I bought (yes I did! :O ) some top soil. Organic. I knew we would need our compost for the veggie plot and since that seemed more useful to me than a small hobby area I spent a whole $1.50 on some top soil. So here you have the weeded area and the top soil ready to go on.
3. This is now the soil worked in and wetted down. I wet my soil down before I do any plantin’. The reason for this is to get my soil even. Once the ground is wet and soaked down I will again work the soil to a more even setting. I like evenness.
Now I really can’t do much at this point and I have been outside an hour and the sweat is pouring all over me and babykins is ready for her morning nap. So I snap a few pics of my gardening/sodbustering partner and in we go;
Actually, we first went on a small 20 minute walk THEN she went to bed. I brought the camera with me and did manage to snap a few pictures for your pleasure;
Whats left of our flood. I think it makes our desert area look more authentic. LOL.
Wild Mint. I am going to figure out how to get some of that home!
Our street is famous for its flock of quail. I love it when the babies are out but never manage to get a picture before they leave the coop so to speak. I managed to snap this picture using our zoom feature but it still was dissapointing to be about 100 feet away and them already rushing away. But it made such a cute lil picture.
Our house at a first glance…
Once inside the gate…
And to the left… our famous garden.
You know, I have only been here about 2 years. My husband bought the house about 1-2 years before we were married. He got a job and bought a house when we became very serious in our courtin’ stage. And even then it was still 2 years before we got married… no it wasn’t exactly planned that way so we could have a nest egg. My dear husband wanted so badly to have the perfect home to bring his bride too. It was so sweet of him and he stressed about it so much that I reminded him that he needed to leave me a job for the home. I cant spend all day cleaning up after a meal we share in the morning and spend the rest of the day working on dinner. LOL. Poor guy wasn’t totally convinced that he shouldn’t ready the house. I felt like saying with Charlotte Lucas from Pride and Prejudice;
“I ask only a comfortable home…”
We came here to a deserted yard. We have made a compost bin and area. We have worked hard soil into a garden plot. We planted two peach tree’s that died. 1 ash tree that still lives and a sycamore tree that died. We are working on a drive way for the cars by lining the way with Michaelmas Daisies. All in all, we really have come very far! I could have done more during the 8 months of being a newly wed I totally admit. But once the children started coming while the process slowed, we ended up in the long run getting more done! It is amazing the way God works out even the small details in our life.
So, this has been your Tuesday report.
