Tag: Garden 2024

The Eye of the Senior Year Storm

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It’s been a couple of weeks since I wrote up a beginning of the week homemaking post! The amount of time that is needed to make ballgowns is surprising, even to me. With that being said, home management fell by the wayside in order to free up time to sew, so I’ll be swinging the scales back towards cleanliness and order for the next couple of weeks, and then it will be time to start prepping for Renaissance’s high school graduation festivities!

Cooking

This week’s meal plan:

  • Monday: Tacos
  • Tuesday: CP Picadillo Tostadas, Lemony Quinoa Salad with Radishes, Avocado & Basil, Veggie Slaw
  • Wednesday: Rhubarb-glazed Pork, Crushed Red Potatoes, Spring Beans, Peas & Zucchini Ribbons, Rice Pilaf
  • Thursday: IP BBQ Shredded Chicken Burgers, Broccoli Slaw, Lemon-roasted potatoes with oregano
  • Friday: Spaghetti, Normandy Vegetables, Caesar Salad, French Bread
  • Saturday: Barbecue
  • Sunday: Thai Spicy Chicken Enchiladas, Peas, Green Bean Salad with Mustard Seeds, Herbs & Baby Chard

Clothing

  • Laundry will be a priority this week, along with folding and putting away everything (It’s pretty bad in here)
  • Wardrobe rotation from cold weather clothes to warm weather clothes
  • Wash Rachel’s choir dress
  • Nathaniel needs new clothes, especially for church

Cleaning

*silent screaming* There’s so much to do that I can’t even pick a place to start. I might just work on whatever the Tody app tells me is the most overdue and work forward from there. Oh! I do want to spend some time cleaning up the prom dress sewing leftovers, just for the sake of closure. Feels like that’d be a nice thing to do.

Caring

  • Get Nathaniel signed up for summer school so he can free up space in his regular school year schedule
  • Driving practice with Emily & Rachel
  • Help the girls start looking for summer jobs
  • Replace batteries in smoke detectors
  • Make checkup appointments for everyone
  • Create FHE schedule
  • The girls need haircuts
  • Decide if Nathaniel is going to YM camp

Creativity

I will be taking a break for at least a week, if not two. The craft room definitely needs a good cleaning and decluttering, but that might have to wait until after graduation festivities.

Gardening

  • Direct sow 4th Week of April seeds:
    • Cosmos
    • Sunflower: Autumn Beauty
    • Impatiens
    • Zinnia
    • Cucumber
    • Summer Squash
    • Viola
  • Direct sow 1st Week of May seeds:
    • Alyssum
    • Marigolds
    • Sunflower: Jua Maya
    • Cabbage
    • Green Beans (Bush)
    • Lettuce
  • Direct sow 2nd Week of May seeds:
    • Zucchini
    • Sunflower: Sunshine
    • Melons
    • Carrots
  • Plant petunias
  • Assemble hanging baskets
  • Research lawn feeding and weed killing and make a plan
  • WEEDING
  • Ramp up slug killing endeavors because the little demons are eating everything

Celebrating

  • Breathe a sigh of relief that prom season is over, clean up the mess, and engage in some well-deserved recovery activities
  • Clean up the errant Christmas items that I’ve noticed but told myself to ignore while working on the prom dresses
  • Do a wrapping paper/gift bag bin purge
  • Renaissance’s Graduation Party:
    • Address & mail out invitations
    • Check that everyone has appropriate clothing
    • Decide decorations
    • Decide menu
    • Decide activities
    • Decide party favors
    • Purchase serving items

Community

  • Church:
    • Check in with this week’s upcoming special musical number
    • Check sacrament meeting topics for June and pick hymns
    • Enter hymns into Gospel Library app
    • Set up/confirm special musical numbers for June
    • Check in with newly-assigned ministering companions
    • Reach out to newly-assigned ministering sisters
    • Taskify ministering reminders
  • Band Parent Committee:
    • Prepare agenda for meeting, print
    • Print mailing list signup flyers
    • Parade logistics

Top priorities this week:

  • Summer School Registration
  • Garden
  • Laundry
  • Cleaning
  • Graduation party planning

Hopefully I’ll get the blog posts written for each of the prom dresses, too. The weather is going to be really great this week, so I’m looking forward to spending time outdoors after so many weeks toiling away in the craft room. Happy homemaking to you all!

Gathering Steam

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Welcome to the end of my first week back after the Big Spring Sickness of 2024!  Whew, it was a nasty bug—I’ve heard that multiple people in our area required medical intervention due to it.  Ugh, so much exhaustion experienced by all.  All in all, though, it was a good week full of good weather and a lot of productivity.

Top priorities this past week:

  • Prom Dressses
  • Garden tasks
  • Driver’s licenses tasks

Creativity

Ren’s Prom Dress:  I was still quite weak at the beginning of the week, so progress on Ren’s prom dress didn’t happen until Wednesday, but I put in about four hours of work and all of the basic elements of the dress (Bodice, lining, underskirt) are assembled in their basic forms and I can now move forward with attaching them to each other and doing finishing work.  The end is in sight!

Rachel’s Prom Dress:  I’ve not made any progress on this, which is extremely unfortunate because I was supposed to begin working on it in earnest this week.  We’ll get there when we get there.

Garden

I actually used some of the rhubarb this week, which was good because it’s starting to become a behemoth of a plant! We had a lovely rhubarb/mixed fruit crumble for dessert one night. Soooo good.

I got caught up on starting seeds and direct sowing seeds!  Renaissance helped me plant four different varieties of marigolds in one starting tray, and I planted sweet peppers, hot peppers, pepperoncini peppers, Big Daddy tomatoes, Roma tomatoes, slicing cucumbers, pickling cucumbers, zucchini, crookneck squash, broccoli, and cilantro in the other tray.  I still have a few spots open for some more seeds in the second tray, which I might use for some herbs. 

I transplanted my started pansies and delphiniums into the garden, but they’ve been struggling for weeks in their trays and I do not know what to expect from them in the future. 

I direct sowed the last bit of peas, and some Bells of Ireland and Four O’ Clocks.  I also went back and fortified the trellises with better staples to hold them to the ground for the peas and sweet peas.

Caring

Driver’s Licenses: Renaissance is officially a licensed driver!  WOO HOO!  We finally did it!  I took her to the DOL on Tuesday and she’s got the paper!  We are waiting for our insurance company to get back to us on adding her to our policy, and once we have that confirmation she’ll be good to go.  She can’t park on campus until she has proof of insurance, so we’re waiting on that task as well.  Michael is also replacing the brakes on the kids’ car this weekend so they can be extra safe.

Rachel has been studying every afternoon for her Driver’s Knowledge test this weekend.  It’s a good thing I made a note to make sure she was doing this—every afternoon has found her completely forgetful of the task AND I had to intervene at one point because she was playing video games while listening to a YouTube video about driving rules and considered it as studying.  Uh, no.  I’ve not been her favorite person this week because I keep insisting on nitty gritty studying tactics.  You’ll thank me when you pass the test, girlie.

Emily hasn’t done any practice driving because I’ve been too busy with getting caught up with life this week, but I’ve scheduled daily drives for the next six weeks to get her back up to snuff.

Regarding the bridal shower and wedding gifts, I think I’ll just return them to Amazon and then re-order them and have them delivered to the couple’s new address.  I still need to text the mom and get that figured out.

Renaissance and I sat down to talk about her post-high school plans and run the numbers.  She qualified for every merit and music scholarship available at the colleges, but we are just middle-class enough to not warrant any financial assistance via the FAFSA, so she was going to be on the line for $17,000-30,000 per year to attend the four-year universities she was thinking about attending.  That is simply not feasible for her, so she’s going to go with her alternate plan of attending technical college and earning an associate degree in culinary & pastry arts so that she can have a marketable skill that can then help her finance her future plans.  She was really torn between studying music or studying pastry, so either option was fine with her.  The pastry program is good in that she can then transfer to a four-year school and earn some sort of business and/or food science degree, if she desires.  I think she wants to eventually open a bakery of her own, and that she wants to work with local high school students and the community to offer educational opportunities and/or internships in culinary areas.

I’m disappointed that the money couldn’t work out for a four-year option.  I entered the financials into a copy of the spreadsheet that I had made when we did this for Emily two years ago, and I was appalled to find out that one of the schools they both applied to increased their tuition by $17,000 in just two years!  It’s bonkers out there, and it led to some very serious conversations with Emily this week in order to adjust her expectations for the future as well.  You just can’t expect an 18-22 year old and their family to cough out or sign up for loans in the amount of $120,000 for a college education at a Division 3 school!  That’s almost the cost of our first house!  Gross.  The technical school option will end up costing just $8,000 a year, which is a sum we can work with.  And HELLO…a pastry chef in the family?  That’s just cool.  Ren was also wise and applied to start in January so she can spend a few more months working to save up money to pay for it all.  If you know of any bakeries hiring, she’s looking!

It was a really busy week, with a lot of important things happening, and I think it’s turned out well.  Hopefully this weekend sees a lot of time for sewing, weeding, and driving practice!  

Spring Break Plans

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Woo hoo, it’s April! Smooth sailing ahead as winter releases its hold and we get to head into the lovely weather part of the year! Yay! This week is spring break for my kids, so we’re chilling at home with no plans to do much of anything, which is good because Nathaniel woke up on Monday morning with a 103 degree fever and he’s been camped out on the coach ever since, hacking out his lungs. This poor kid gets sick on every single school break. Sigh.

I’m late in publishing my plans for the week because Easter Sunday is a very busy day, Monday had me feeling rather poorly, and yesterday was our last good weather day in the forecast for this week so I spent it outside working on the yard. (Oh my goodness, that felt nice!)

We got all the trellises put up, planted some more veggies and flowers, and got the lawn weed-whacked and mowed so we could set up the badminton net. There’s still so much to do out there, but this big burst of work took care of the most pressing tasks. Whew!

But the weather is supposed to take a turn for the wet today, so I’m back inside focusing on the prom dresses, which sums up my plans for the rest of the week: SEW THE DRESSES.

So please excuse me for the shortness of this planning post, but I need to use my time on these dresses. I wish you all a lovely week!

I Forgot that I Finished the Quilt Top

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Another week of March complete!  There were a few reminders and calendar dates that came out this week that really drove the point home that we’re heading into the last bit of this school year.  Renaissance received her cap and gown on Monday, so that big reminder that graduation is approaching is now sitting on my dining room table and I get a little hit to the emotions every time I walk by and see it.  Bittersweet.

Top priorities this week:

  1. Finish the Latte Layer Cake quilt, photograph it, and write up the various posts
  2. PROM DRESSES
  3. Rachel choir stuff
  4. Garden
  5. Office/Ward Music/Band Parents

Creativity

  • Layer Cake Latte Quilt: The top, as needed for the pattern debut, is complete!  I still need to photograph it and write up its various social media posts for the release date.
  • Prom Dresses: Worthy of their own blog post because we are not off to a great start.

Caring

  • Renaissance and I helped Rachel out this week with her rehearsing and she says it helped.  The choir concert went really well, you could hear the improvements from the last time her group performed these pieces.  They’ll be leaving in a few weeks for an out-of-state competition, so it is crunch time for these kids.  A little stressful for everyone right now.
  • Band Parents: We have a board meeting set up for tonight to deal with some overdue stuff.
  • Ward Music: My predecessor has it set up pretty well and pretty far out.  This should be easy to jump into.

Gardening

  • I don’t think I got out there this week.  Blame the prom dresses.

March(ing) Along

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Halfway through this banger of a month! This week technically has quite a few things going on, but as I look at the calendar I don’t feel overwhelmed by any of them.

Cooking

This week’s meal plan:

  • Saturday: Potstickers, stir fry veggies, rice
  • Sunday: Corned Beef, potatoes, cabbage
  • Monday: Tacos, taco veggies, rice, tortillas
  • Tuesday: Honey Garlic Chicken Sheet Pan Dinner, carrots & broccoli, rice
  • Wednesday: Taco Pasta, creamy green salad
  • Thursday: Thai Chicken Stiry Fry, stir fry veggies, rice
  • Friday: Irish Beef & Root Vegetable Stew, rolls

Clothing

  • It’s all about the prom dresses, baby

Cleaning

  • I repeat: It’s all about the prom dresses, baby

Caring

  • Rachel needs help with rehearsing for her choir concert this week. She’s singing the mezzo line in a very difficult song and it’s hard to sing the middle part on anything, let alone this whopper. Time has been scheduled to work with her.
  • I feel like I need to find some time to spend with Nathaniel. But Cross Country starts up next week and I’ll be spending a lot of time at his meets for the next many weeks, so maybe I can just allow it to happen then?
  • A lot of office stuff needs to happen. We’ve just been really busy and it’s been hard to find the time to do that.

Creativity

  • At Home:
    • Fat Quarter Shop upcoming quilt: It’s called the “Layer Cake Latte” quilt, and it’s coming along. All the blocks are completed and I am in the midst of joining them. All that’s left is adding the skinny border around it and then the top will be done. I had hoped to get it completely quilted before the due date, but that’s not going to happen because I FORGOT ABOUT THE PROM DRESSES and need to sew like the wind on those.
    • Prom Dresses: Yeah, they’re all I can think about at the moment. Ren’s fabric is here and it’s gorgeous. The pattern for her dress was only available as a PDF (boo!) and it’s printed but not yet taped together. Not looking forward to the taping. Once the Layer Cake Latte quilt is assembled I’ll hop right on over to sewing up Ren’s muslin. Rachel has picked out a dress pattern that I crazy, crazy love and cannot wait to tell you about because it’s so cool—it almost shouldn’t even exist—but I have to focus on Ren’s dress first because she’s a senior and that’s how that works.
  • Van Crafting Sessions™: I’ll keep chipping away at designing wedding shawls for my girls. A lot of the kids’ music lessons are cancelled this week, so I might not have a whole lot of van crafting time.

Gardening

  • Set up trellises for peas, reattach trellis netting on France for eventual sweet pea climbers
  • Something with the Delphiniums
  • Sow pansies, violas
  • Put plant markers in by sown seeds
  • Start marigold seeds

Celebrating

  • Easter’s on the horizon, but I don’t think we’re doing anything in particular for it.
  • Nathaniel’s birthday is next month, so I’ll start slowly getting organized for that. Time to pull up the “gift ideas” note to myself that I add to throughout the year and start watching for sales.

Community

  • Choir concert
  • Need to do things for Ward Music
  • Help Ren with her intention to volunteer for the craft show
  • Band is doing their monthly performance at the local assisted living home

Top priorities this week:

  1. Finish the Latte Layer Cake quilt, photograph it, and write up the various posts
  2. PROM DRESSES
  3. Rachel choir stuff
  4. Garden
  5. Office/Ward Music/Band Parents

Cake, Silks & Pi(es)

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I feel like it was a really productive week, which is always nice. My little routine of writing these goals vs. outcomes weekly posts is helping me stay on-track with what I want to accomplish each week. I’m really glad I’ve reinstituted these. Not only are they keeping me focused, but I really enjoy writing them and re-reading them, like a journal. I rarely re-read my handwritten journals, so I don’t learn as much from my writing in those. Blog posts can actually be searched by keyword, for cryin’ out loud. Wonderful.

Top priorities this last week:

  1. Michael’s birthday
  2. Garden
  3. WREF Scholarship application
  4. Prom dresses
  5. Resurrecting music practice time

Celebrating

  • Michael’s birthday went well, there was an adorable “Among Us wedding cake” made by Renaissance, and each of the kids remembered to get him a gift this year. We did not have steak and potatoes for dinner, as I predicted; he requested fajitas.
  • The potentially brewing project died a sure death this past week. I’m bummed because it would have been a cool thing to do, but I’m also relieved because it was going to take a lot of time and effort to pull off. Many lessons were learned from this experience that I can apply in the future when such a situation inevitably pops up again.

Gardening

  • Trellises are in my house, as are some other gardening items.
  • All seeds needed through the month of April have been secured.
  • Rhubarb is still small.
  • I did sow the cabbages, some alyssum, but nothing else.
  • My sweet peas are just barely starting to sprout! You really have to look for them, but tiny little tendrils are pushing out of the soil!

Community

  • Renaissance did indeed submit her application for the WREF scholarship! Oh gosh, the arrhythmias…she submitted it yesterday at 2:15pm or so, and the pop-up that came up to confirm submission stated that it was due by 4pm that day. We had planned to work on it that evening, but something came up and we moved the time to earlier, THANK GOODNESS.
  • Band Parent meeting went well and many things have been scheduled for this last push of the school year. I still have a few office-y things to do for that.

Creativity

  • At Home:
    • Fat Quarter Shop upcoming quilt: Sneak peek video was posted on Friday on Instagram and I’m aware that my videography skills/software need an upgrade. I had planned to finish piecing the top on Saturday and even cleared my whole schedule for it, but some of my children decided to mutiny against their Saturday chores and much time was lost on this quilt because it went towards dialoguing and disciplining. I’m still confused as to why that day went so sideways. As it stands, I’m about 2/3 of the way done with assembling the blocks.
    • Prom Dresses: The fabric for Ren’s dress has arrived and I am so in love with it. It’s GORGEOUS. The contrast fabric isn’t as flowy as I would have liked, but we’ll just have to make do because it was the only kind of silk they had that came in the color we wanted. FYI, Shantung silk is not flowy. Tell your friends.
  • Van Crafting Sessions™: Designing wedding shawls: Newsflash: I’ve not done this before and I’m not good at it. Yet. (#growthmindset) Time was spent wrapping my head around how to actually do this.
  • Resurrecting music practice sessions: Did not happen because I’ve had them scheduled for the evenings, but now that it’s light outside again we’re actually outside during that time as a family. I’ll need to figure out a different time of day for this.

It was a really, really busy week with a concert on Thursday, which was also Pi Day, so Emily made three pies and because we had three pies chilling at our house I invited Ren’s band friends over after the concert and we all ate pie until 11:15pm. Ha ha. I’m generally an introvert who really appreciates a solid sleep schedule and bedtime, but sometimes you just gotta spend some time with friends. It was a good choice, despite how tired it made me the next day.

Much Music and Considerable Clothing Commissions

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It was a week of excess; a week that seemed overwhelming in the beginning and then ended with a smorgasbord of new opportunities on top of an overfilled plate.

Community

All the music went well. The All-District Choir Concert was really, really good; it was the first time they’ve done that concert since 2016 and it really is a special event to see every single choir student in the district performing together in one space.

Wind Ensemble (High School Band) performed at the PLU Invitational on Friday and I went along as a chaperone. They did so good! It was a really enjoyable day hanging out with some of my favorite people.

Jazz Bands (both middle and high school) performed at a swing dance last night. I wasn’t feeling well, so I didn’t go. Michael took good videos and everyone sounded really good.

Clothing

There was a lot of laundry folding, but I’m still not caught up.

I thought a lot about spring, Easter and choir trip wardrobes.

But then Prom was announced and I remembered that it really is a big deal to me to make the girls’ dresses for the high school dances, so everything else has kind of gone out of the window. I almost get my wish of making 1950s spring formal dresses—Rachel is eyeing a vintage Vogue pattern from the 1940s, so close enough. Renaissance’s pattern choice is a gamble that I think is going to work out. I am really excited about both dresses. Since it’s Ren’s senior year, I’ll be making hers from really nice fabrics, and Rachel will have to make do with Casa Collection satin from JoAnn Fabric. I cannot wait for the patterns to arrive in the mail so I can start cranking out the muslins.

Creativity

The Baking Doodle Cowl pattern was finally released on Friday, and there were many nice comments about my particular test knit. Always feels good to receive a compliment.

My knitting queue has been a whirlwind of indecision this week! I spent a lot of time narrowing down a new project and decided to go with finally using a gorgeous skein of spring green laceweight yarn to make a pretty spring shawl. Then I decided it’d look great if I carried a strand of self-striping green mohair with it. I was so excited, and then, after knitting the set-up chart, decided it did not look great.

Which is fine because then I realized that we are in the years where my girls can start getting married, which was brought on by receiving an invitation to the wedding of one of Emily’s friends, which led to some deep discussions about weddings, heirlooms, and traditions, and now I feel like I need to get working on wedding shawls so I can have them already made because LDS engagements are really, really short and I know that I will not have enough time to make their wedding shawls when the time comes.

So I sat down to figure out what patterns I want to use for their shawls and inevitably came to the conclusion that I really just want to design an individual shawl for each girl that weaves together meaningful stitch patterns and symbolism that will carry special meaning for them. SO…I’m going to spend the next few Van Crafting Sessions™ researching and drafting shawl patterns. Which is pretty cool.

Gardening

I accomplished nothing, NOTHING in the garden this last week. Michael and I have started watching the series “Homegrown,” which is about transforming people’s backyards into sustainable gardening spaces, so I’m technically doing research. I learned about mushroom logs! I could grow something in the shady parts of the yard! Except that my family despises mushrooms!

Celebrating

There’s potentially a new project brewing. I won’t say more because I honestly do not know if it’s going to materialize. It would be amazing if it does, but also a ton of work. So I won’t be heartbroken if it doesn’t happen. I would regret the missed opportunity, though. More on that if it gets the green light.

Caring

After months of discussing the possibility, we finally have officially started playing a weekly campaign of Dungeons & Dragons on Monday nights. Michael and I are NOT D&Ders, but somehow all four of our kids love the game. We’ve been struggling to have Family Home Evenings for years, but suddenly it’s not difficult to gather everyone. Hopefully the trend continues.

I was subbing one day last week and one of the teachers actually asked me how our family’s new game night was going. Apparently my kids are really talking about it to anyone who will listen. Whatever works, right? Turns out it’s figuring out how to battle fantasy monsters in Steampunk Victorian England. Feel free to tell your friends.

The Beginning of the Craziness that is MARCH

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It’s just one month, it’s just one month, it’s just one month…

OK, it is MARCH. Michael’s birthday is coming up, the sun is finally coming out and garden and lawn stuff is starting to happen, AND it’s Music in Our Schools Month, which means so many choir and band events. *whispers* So. Many. Concerts. This week has three huge events: An all-day all-district choir thing, finishing off with a concert that evening; an all-day band festival that won’t have us getting back to campus until 7pm or so, and a big jazz band thing that both Nathaniel’s and Renaissance’s jazz bands will be performing at that will probably not have us getting home until 10pm or so. That’s just one week. There’s so many more weeks like this.

My tendency is to get a little a lot wound up about logistics and time away from home and all that stuff, but at the beginning of this school year I had an epiphany that I could choose to worry about the stuff coming up or I could decide that I was just going to enjoy it. It’s a subtle shift, but it makes a big difference. When I find myself dreading some upcoming event, I try to remember that I’m smack dab in the middle of the years that I was really looking forward to as a parent—I looked forward to the music getting better when they were in high school, and how much easier it would be to be out in public with them because I wouldn’t have to worry about them running into traffic—and I force myself to just simmer down and enjoy this chapter. No extra worrying needed. This is the good stuff.

As far as plans go for the week…

Cooking

This Week’s Meal Plan:

  • Saturday: Meatloaf
  • Sunday: Chicken Drumsticks
  • Monday: Leftovers
  • Tuesday: Crock Pot: Pineapple Bacon Sausage Soup
  • Wednesday: Quesadillas
  • Thursday: Crock Pot: Spaghetti
  • Friday: Michael’s Choice

As always, it’d be good to bake some bread and/or desserts to throw in there, but with how busy this week is, I don’t think it will happen YET AGAIN.

Clothing

  • Laundry catch-up after last week’s full stop.
  • I need to start thinking about spring wardrobe rotations.
  • Need to start thinking about Easter outfits.
  • Start planning for Rachel’s choir trip to California in April.
  • I so badly want to sew up a closet full of 1950s spring formal dresses. There’s no reason for this, other than I want to be making pretty things.

Cleaning

  • Trying to reset the house after the full stop/basic cleanliness because it’s a busy week

Caring

  • There’s a handful of doctor appointments that need to be scheduled for various family members. It’s quite the production to make appointments with our local medical facilities, so time needs to be set aside for that sort of thing.
  • I had a nice visit with a friend last week when she drove me to the ER. (That’s a weird sentence to write.) We debriefed when I was feeling better and decided we should hang out more. So I’m going to follow up on that this week.

Creativity

  • I need to figure out my new portable project now that I’ve finished the Baking Doodle Cowl test knit. (Post coming soon!)
  • I don’t think I’ll get time to work on creative projects beyond “In the Van Crafting” this week
  • I’m thinking about abandoning the Chatsworth BOM quilt. I am just really not enjoying how the pattern designer writes his instructions and I don’t want to extend the mental effort to manipulate his instructions into techniques that work better for me.
  • I need to decide if I’m going to do a special musical performance near Easter. I kind of set a goal at the beginning of the year that I’d try to do a musical number every six weeks, and I did one in January, so the next one’s deadline is coming up. I have not been good at practicing music at all lately, so I need to tighten that up ASAP.

Gardening

  • This will be a Year of Resurrection for the garden. It’s been largely ignored for the past two years while I worked on my master’s degree. I have a grand vision of an English Cottage/Potager Garden that takes up my entire backyard someday, but this year we’ll just work with what we’ve got back there and really talk about and start fleshing out extension plans on paper.
  • I’m still working on taskifying all the various reminders and due dates of stuff for the garden, so I need to be ok with having to purchase some of my plants this year because I’ll remember that I like them and then realize I should have started them six weeks ago—like petunias. Whoops.
  • I need to inventory my trellises and poles and order more if they’re needed. It’s my hope to get them set up this coming weekend.
  • I need to do a second round of pea planting.
  • I need to check and see what seeds I need for April planting and order more if needed. (This is a great list idea that I came up with and very handy!)
  • Keep an eye on the rhubarb and start working it into our meals as soon as it start producing stalks.
  • Start more delphinium because there’s only two growing right now.
  • Use more of the countertop herb garden because it only takes two days for it to become a countertop JUNGLE.

Celebrating

  • Michael’s birthday is next week, so preparations for that
  • Easter is at the end of the month, so I’ll need to find out if I’m hosting anything and prep for that.

Community

  • Our community has a scholarship they give out and the application is due on March 17th, so I need to nag Renaissance about that.
  • Setup signup questions or something like that for the Band Booster Facebook group because I’m tired of dealing with the spam
  • Setup an embarrassingly overdue thank you note writing session for Evening of Jazz
  • Make significant progress on the Trivia Night fundraiser so I don’t look like a lazy loaf at next week’s meeting
  • Same re: Popcorn fundraiser
  • Because we have our monthly meeting next week, I need to do a lot of prep work over the weekend for that—agenda, send out reminders, etc.

It’s good to sit down and figure out priorities for the upcoming week. When I first sat down to write this post, I was overwhelmed by what I saw on the calendar, but once I sit and think about what really needs to be done, it feels much more manageable. Bonus: It also helps me realize how important it is right now to SAY NO to requests. Remember, this is an enjoyable time in parenting, so ENJOY IT. All the beautiful, all the fun, all the exciting stuff—All of that only happens if you’re willing to put in the behind-the-scenes work. I thought about this really hard last spring and came up with a great motto that I use when the work starts feeling like a little too much: I welcome the work that makes my life beautiful.

Because, darn it, I want a gloriously beautiful life for me and my family. So I’ll show up and I’ll do the work.

Have a great week!

Flare-ups Happen, It’s OK

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There’s not a lot to report for this week because I had to deal with a pain flare-up that required a visit to the emergency room early in the week and had me focused on pain management for a couple of days beyond that.  The good news is that I started feeling better yesterday and even managed to tough it out and go to Renaissance and Nathaniel’s band concert, and I was even able to go into work today.  Sigh.  Take care of your backs, people.  So many difficulties start to stem from an injury to your back.

Creativity

I always think I’m going to be able to make great strides in crafting when I’m down and out with a flare-up, but when I have to add pain meds to the mix I can’t craft at all, as crafting + pain meds never ends well.  Seeing that I’m pattern testing for other people, I didn’t want to touch those projects and potentially derail them beyond repair.  It’s something else when it’s only my time and materials on the line; I won’t risk others’ resources.

So I’m behind on my test knit for the Baking Doodle Cowl.  It’s about 50% done.  I’m planning to spend a chunk of time working on it some more over the weekend.

I haven’t touched anything else in the craft room, which is a major sad.  I did receive some packages of new materials for some projects, but haven’t even opened them.  Frustrating week!

Gardening

My little herb garden is now a jungle that will need some pruning over the weekend.  I can’t believe how fast these plants are growing!  Friendly note:  Don’t be afraid to use dill.  I cut the dill plant back to almost nothing last Sunday, it had replaced all that growth by Tuesday, and now on Friday it looks to be about three times larger than it was a week ago.  I’ve always been so afraid to use my herb plants, but this little countertop experiment is teaching me a lot about the hardiness of these plants!  The kids have been given total access to the herbs and are encouraged to decimate the plants for cooking.  I’m almost to the point of wondering if we even could kill these plants through culinary usage?  Could be a weird goal to set…ha ha ha.

The rhubarb is starting to unfurl legitimate leaves, so I believe I can start using it in a few weeks.  I’ll make rhubarb crumbles, make some rhubarb marmalade, freeze some rhubarb for making Blubarb Jam during the summer, and I also saw a recipe on Pinterest for a vanilla rhubarb jelly that looks enticing.  Which reminds me that I desperately need to clean out the pantry if I want to have any sort of room for canned goods this year.  The pantry is a complete disaster.  Oooh, I think I also have some sort of recipe for rhubarb-glazed pork medallions in a cookbook somewhere.  I like cooking with rhubarb because it has the added bonus of deep cleaning any pot it’s cooked in.  (Did you know it’s the secret ingredient in Bar Keeper’s Friend?)  I started a Pinterest board for rhubarb recipes a couple of years ago if you’re looking for some rhubarb options in the coming months!

No sprouting from the sweet peas or peas that I’ve planted.  I was supposed to plant another section of peas this week, so hopefully I’ll get to it over the weekend.  I’m doing a big experiment with planting times and starting seeds this year, so we’re going to just keep our minds open and remain curious about how things work out with these seeds.  I’d really like to establish a planting calendar that works specifically for our property, and the only way to do that is to start and experiment.

The started pansies and delphinium are doing…OK.  I need to thin them out and they’re going through water really fast, which is tough to stay on top of.  I had five delphinium sprouts two weeks ago, and now I only have two.  I struggle to get this type of plant started.  I’m going to start some more seeds over the weekend because I adore delphinium plants for their beautiful blue color and their unmatched ability to lend an “English cottage” vibe to the garden.  I think I spend about $15-20 for each plant when I buy them from the nursery, so starting my own will save me a lot of money.  AND they’re a perennial, so they come back every year!  The last ones I had were back in Utah; I haven’t wanted to spend a chunk of cash on them here in Washington.  They make me happy, so I’m reestablishing them in the garden this year.

My little delphinium twins

Celebrating

I had to drop one of the parties the kids and I were thinking about doing because I really needed this last week to make progress on it, and that didn’t happen.  I’ve made note of everything we were thinking of doing, and I’ll revisit it in the future.  The girls still want to throw a spring tea party sometime in April or May, and that is still doable with our remaining time frame, so maybe I’ll just shift focus to that.  Plans also need to be made regarding Renaissance’s graduation party, which will take place in June or July.  I still have time to get going on that; I just need to remember that it’s out there so I don’t commit to anything that will conflict.

And that’s what happened this week.  Some weeks don’t see a lot of forward progress, and that’s ok.  The nice thing about a flare-up is that they tend to occur many weeks apart from each other, so I’m looking forward to a handful of really productive weeks!

And congratulations!  We made it to March!  It only gets better from here!  More and more sunlight, we’ll just ignore Daylight Savings Time coming up in a bit, and more and more opportunities to be outside and enjoy the shift from cold to only slightly chilly!  I hope you have a great weekend and wish you all the best as you embark upon a new, hopefully sunshine-filled month.

CROCUSES!!!

Baking Doodle Progress & Too Many Other Projects

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Happy Friday, everyone!  So many people joked throughout this week about how long it seemed, even after it was a shorter week with the holiday on Monday!  Our week was busy with lots of school and band things—I may have practically lived at my kids’ schools most evenings this week!

Baking Doodle Cowl Test Knit:  I’ve made a dedicated effort to put in some serious time on the Baking Doodle Cowl test knit because I was pretty far behind at the beginning of the week due to losing most of my regularly-scheduled knitting time (ie. Sitting in the van during kids’ music lessons and rehearsals) to my kids being sick the past couple weeks and not leaving the house.  I’m now about 25% done with it, which is great, except for the part where I was supposed to be 50% done with it by yesterday.  There will be much knitting over the weekend.

New FQS Pattern:  I put in an amazing day of work on Monday and I can now boast that all my half-square triangles are sewn and trimmed!  I have another big sewing day scheduled for this upcoming Monday, which I’m hoping boasts some reality-bending wormhole capabilities that will allow me to progress on this at a phenomenal rate, hitherto unknown to mankind.

I am using the “French Quarter” fabric collection from Maywood Studios, and it’s going to be a lovely blue-and-white quilt. I can’t wait for this to come together!

Super Secret Project:  I have another project on my plate that didn’t materialize until just this week, even though it’s genius and I’m really annoyed that it didn’t occur to me until one random day during a random conversation with a few of my children.  I don’t even want to commit to it because I know I don’t have the time AT ALL—but it’s too perfect an opportunity to pass up, so I’m launching myself into the future, laughing hysterically and hoping I can pull this off.

Spring Tea Party:  The girls want to throw one, so we’re talking about it in loose terms at this point.

Garden:  The seedlings are coming along.  I had five Delphinium sprouts at the beginning of the week, but now I think I only have two.  I’ve rarely been successful in nurturing Delphiniums to maturity, so it’s not surprising.  Annoying and frustrating, but not surprising.

My little countertop herb garden is out of control and the plants are cramming into the light source every other day, despite my dedicated efforts to pruning them back almost every day.  There has been a lot of dill in a lot of recipes lately.  Michael’s not the biggest fan of dill, but thankfully, it’s not terribly strong when it’s fresh.  Perhaps he’ll acquire a taste for it with the insane amount he’s eating now.  Also, this experience is helping me to lose my fear of over-harvesting herbs.  I cut these plants back to practical baldness and you cannot tell in two days’ time.  It’s good to gain firsthand experience with that because I’ve always been scared to use the herbs in my garden in truly meaningful ways because I’m afraid I’ll kill them with each reaping.  I’m learning that that is absolutely not true!

Renaissance College Plans: We’ve received notification from two of the schools she applied to that she’s been accepted! She goes in this weekend to audition for a music scholarship, so fingers crossed that it goes well! She’s torn between continuing her study of music or going to a technical college in pursuit of a degree in Culinary Arts/Pastry Baking. We’re pushing her to just prepare for both, see which one will be most financially viable, and then make a decision from there. (And seriously, I wish I had known about the pastry baking option when I was young! What a cool career idea!)