I’ve been neglecting my blog. 

I’ve been busy.

I’ve been writing more in the last 4 weeks then I have ever written in my whole life.

Just not on my blog. 

Wanna know where?

Courageous Homekeeping.

Most, if not all of you who have read my blog have probably already figured this out…but I have a new website!  Several months ago, I was hit with some stark realizations.  1. Women in our generation seem to want to get back to a “simple” life.  2. They are beginning to value (again) staying home with their kids instead of getting a j.o.b.  3. They are wanting to learn things like gardening, sewing, knitting, canning and how to live frugally.  4. Most of us were raised in a two-income family.  Our moms didn’t teach us how to do these things…so we need some help learning these skills.  And 5. An important aspect of our femininity is beauty..and almost no one talks about this.  It has become a secular subject.  But it is a Biblical subject and it needs to be talked about.

So…I decided to make a website.  I value marriage.  I value motherhood.  I value being a stay at home mom.  I value being a keeper of my house.  And it “just so happens” that I am married to a man who builds websites for a living.  Imagine that.  Iwant to help other women understand the value of these things as well.  They are important and often overlooked Biblical values.  And I have become passionate about these values and wanting to teach them to other women– so that they will understand better the value that God places on them and the jobs He wants them to do.  We will be talking about marriage, sex, parenthood, friendship, our roles, our value, as well as doing how-to posts and videos on subjects like canning and cooking and other homemaking skills.

I asked a couple friends of mine to help me with the project…help me come up with ideas and help contribute posts.  Along the way, I have also asked several other women to contribute posts about being a wife, being a mother, etc etc.  Very soon, we are looking at a very large, very strong community of women who share where they are weak and where they are strong, what God has taught them along the way, and help encourage and inspire other women to keep moving forward.  I am thrilled and excited to see where God is going to take this!  Because, really, this is God’s project and not mine.  This idea would have never occured to me, if not for Him.  Even if it had occured to me, I would have never tried to accomplish it, if not for all the things He’s brought me through in this last year.  Everything about my life is different than it was a year ago– and I am ready.  I am ready to swim in the River of God’s plan and will for my life like we heard in the sermon last Sunday.  (Ezekiel 47)  I am ready to let Him have complete control over my life so that He can accomplish whatever it is that He wants to use me for.  I am ready.

‘SPLASH’

Courageous Homekeeping- “Inspiring women towards Biblical and breathtaking femininity.”

So…there was about 2 of you I think that read my blog post a week or so ago…but at the end, I mentioned that I had a couple of announcements to make.  Well…this is one of them!  I have been asked to be a part of the Women’s Conference called Selahwhich is held at George Fox University as a breakout speaker.  I will be giving 2- 45 minute classes on how to do extreme couponing.  Crazy, right?  I know.  The conference will be held on September 25th and if you would like more information, you can go HERE.  The theme this year is Simplify: Discover the Biblical truth that less is more.  I’m nervous, but super excited to be a part of it.  I have a feeling that this opportunity is going to be a springboard for some big things that God is about to do in my life!  Registration is open to anyone who is interested…I’d love to see people I know there!

I took some photos last week of my garden, but I hadn’t looked at them until tonight and realized how much bigger things are even in just a week! My garden is totally my favorite place to be right now. It makes me feel accomplished and productive and proud of all the things that I planted that are growing and making food as we speak. It’s amazing to me! But at any rate, I thought I would show some pictures of it currently (or a week ago) and update on where we are!

Strawberries- still getting a bunch!

So, this is where my potatoes...were. They didn't come up, so I planted zuchinni instead. However, some surprise potato plants have finally come up, so now I have both!

I only got very few lettuce heads...so I moved what was there and am trying spinach now.

Cucumber

Green beans!

Onions

Carrots

My tomatoes- now they're way up to about the bottom 1/3 of the window behind them!

My whole garden

So yes…it has been a while since I last blogged.  A great while.  And I was doing so well at being consistent, too!  We are just coming out of a really busy season in our house and I have to say, it is SO nice to have a bit of down time.  The only thing that we have planned for the entire rest of the summer is the church family campout weekend in a couple weeks.  After that… NOTHING!  I’m happy about that.  Of course, by then my garden will be in full swing and I will be canning and it will be time to get ready for back to school…so really, it’s not like we will ever be doing nothing.  Anyway.

So, since there has been so much going on, I’m just going to write a little paragraph about everything that has been going on…then I will feel like I’m “caught up” and can proceed forward from that point.  Ready? 4th of July. I have decided that this holiday is probably one of my favorites.  It’s in the middle of Summer…nothing else surrounds it so it stands on it’s own.  It’s about family and freedom and BBQ and fireworks…and s’mores.  At least it is for me.  I love s’mores.  So we (well, I) decided that this year I wanted to have a 4th of July party.  Despite the fact that we were leaving on vacation 2 days afterward.  But since we live in Corbett just down the street from where the “famous” Corbett 4th of July parade happens, of course we have the perfect house for a party!  So we spent literally over a week cleaning up our yard, planting flowers, painting outdoor furniture, and laying a patio for our pool area.  But the work was SO worth it.  I am finally for the first time in the almost 3 years of living here, starting to be happy with how my yard looks.  It’s definitely not perfect, but it’s starting to be enjoyable being out there now and I’m so glad!  Anyway, we had the party and several people came and we had a blast.  Plan on it again next year everyone!

Yellowstone.  Like I mentioned earlier, we planned to leave 2 days after our 4th of July party on vacation.  Now that I think about it- as sad as it is, I think this was the longest vacation that we’ve ever been on.  Ever.  We left on the 6th, drove 16 hours to Island Park, Idaho where we were staying and didn’t get home until the evening of the 14th.  That’s 8 days!  My mom’s family has a reunion every other year and different families take turns planning it.  This year my mom her sisters and my grandma planned everything.  They rented a big house for all of us to sleep in (5 bathrooms, sleeps 30) and so both my aunts and my grandma, most of my cousins and even grandkids came to sleep in that big house.  It was a blast!  During our time there we drove into Yellowstone on several occasions.  We were about 40 minutes away from the park.  What I never realized was how much driving was involved in the whole Yellowstone experience.  We had to drive there and drive between each geyser or waterfall or whatever we were looking at.  We would get out of the car, walk around and then get back in the car and go to the next one.  It was a lot of driving!  But it was beautiful.  I don’t think we saw everything, but we saw lots of different geysers where the water is so hot that it boils out of the ground…that was so fascinating to me.  We saw waterfalls and rivers and wide open meadows (which are my favorite) and we saw lots of bison, deer, some elk, a coyote, and even a couple brown bears which were Josh’s favorite.  We had a good time.  And amazingly enough we made it home with all 5 of our children.  It was touch and go there at the end of our trip.  We almost had to throw someone out the window.

After arriving home from Yellowstone on Wednesday night we had another whirlwind few days getting ready for Bryce’s birthday party (he turned 10 on the 13th….10! Can you believe I have a child that old? I can’t) AND the decoration day for VBS which was the entirety of Saturday.  Saturday consisted of heading to church about 10 am, starting the process of decorating my classroom, leaving about 12:30, heading to Bryce’s party and then going back to church to finish up.  Thankfully, Josh went with me the second time to help me with the decorations.  He’s a lot taller than me.

Monday morning began the week of VBS, which is always a very full and busy week.  This is my third year of teaching the 5th grade and I still love it!  The week for me consists of getting up around 6-6:30 am, getting myself ready to go, waking up the children, getting them all dressed, fed and ready to go, loading them plus all my teaching materials for that day up in the car and leaving the house  by about 8 am.  VBS runs from 9am to 12:30 and is filled with 20 minute blocks.  Every 20 minutes we line up and go to a new place for a new activity.  I’m surprised that I didn’t lose weight from all the running I did from place to place that week.  We usually leave the church about 1-1:30 and get home around 2.  At which point  I have 5 tired, cranky children that I need to feed.  Then I have to decide what I’m going to do for the next day’s activity and what I’m going to make for dinner.  Then it’s clean up, kids in bed and us in bed and start all over in the morning.  This year though, was the best year ever!  Our class was huge- 32 kids on Wednesday.  I had so much fun with the kids and one girl even asked Jesus in her heart by the end of the week!!  So it was all totally worth it!

Well, that fairly “sums” up my last 3 weeks.  At this point, I am just so happy to be at home and not have anything urgent that needs done or any place that I need to be. 

I will do better in the next couple weeks at catching up on other posts that need written such as Bryce’s birthday, my garden and a couple of exciting announcements coming soon…so watch for that!

“Life is not about waiting for the storms to pass…it’s about learning how to dance in the rain!”

While I’m talking about gardening, it seemed appropriate to mention some other areas that we’ve been working on.  This area here is a super ugly part of our house- but we’ve made it a little less ugly after working for several hours last weekend to get it swept, weeded and sprayed clean.  In a few weeks, hopefully it will look even less ugly  because after all the work we did, I c.r.a.m.m.e.d this dirt area with all kinds of flower seeds.  Tons of wildflower seeds, daisy seeds and some really cool orange flowers called Chinese Lanterns.  I can’t wait until they pop up!

This area here is by our storage shed come woodshed come chicken coop come woodshed again.  Whatever it is, and whatever you want to call it- it’s ugly. U.g.l.y.  Ugly.  I took out all the grass that was there and rototilled and then planted a couple rows of daisys there.  I’m hoping to replace a few of the sides that face the yard with lattice and have Morning Glories climbing up.  I’m hoping this will make it a little less ugly.

The girls have also been getting into gardening.  They are becoming super helpful by making use of their creativity and planting lots of sticks throughout the yard, as well as taking branches off of other plants and planting them.

This is the first year since we’ve lived here that our irisis actually bloomed.  I have threatened the girls with death to not touch my flowers.  These by some miracle seem to be the only flowers that are still attached to their stems.

The end part 2.  Now you all have a full account of every patch of dirt in our yard.  Aren’t you lucky?

Despite the fact that I heard from a weather guy that this May we’ve gotten 200% of average rain fall in Oregon, I’ve been hard at work in my garden.  The trick is I think, to go plant things in between the torrential downpours and then pray that your seeds don’t wash away.  Anyway, I thought it might be fun to document what I’ve been doing in my garden so far this year…at least it will be fun for me to (God willing) see the progress through the summer… I told Josh last night that I was super proud of my garden and he said, “I’m proud too.”  And I said, “I’ll be even prouder if the seeds actually grow.” And he said, “Yeah, me too.”

Here’s a photo of the whole garden…what you won’t see from the close-up photos is in the front of all the markers, I planted herbs: Parsley, Basil, Oregano, and Thyme..and between each group of herbs I planted marigold seeds…both for a pop of color as well as they are supposed to be somewhat of a pest repellent.  We’ll see.

Just one row of onions.  I mean, how many onions can a family eat anyway?

And yeah…it looks like the potatoes haven’t been planted yet- because they haven’t.  I just realized last night that I could squeeze a couple more rows out of it and decided to do potatoes.  So what you see in this photo is really just dirt.  And the sign. =)

My favorite thing in the garden so far….they’re already getting flowers and everything.  Thankfully the rain hasn’t drowned them out yet.

The end.

All these photos were taken June 1.  I’m gonna try and take new photos every week or maybe every other week.  Maybe it will  help me to be better about weeding too!

Aka: Sometimes you just need to blog about it.

Yesterday was quite a day.  I’ve just sat here staring at those words for a few minutes and wondering where to start.  I guess I’ll start at the beginning.

I woke up yesterday morning with the expectation that it was going to be a busy day.  It was Friday so the kids were all home (No school on Friday in Corbett). Plus I needed to go to the grocery store (with all 5 kids, which I generally try and avoid like the plague). Plus, we needed to go pick up milk (we buy raw milk and have to pick up every other week and it’s probably about a 2 hour round trip) Plus we were having company for dinner.  Let me just say that we LOVE having company for dinner. Love it. But of course, it makes extra work in trying to get the house looking presentable.  But it’s always totally worth it…which is why we keep doing it.  So, all that to say, it was going to be a packed and busy day.

When the girls came out of their room yesterday morning, Kynden wandered over to where Josh and I were holding her blanket.  She said something about there being blueberries on her blanket.  Which didn’t make any sense to me.  But Josh said, “oh no”.  He then explained to me that the night before (while I was gone) Adelynn had a hurting finger, which he tried to make feel better by getting some frozen blueberries out for her to hold on her finger.  And then he forgot about them being in their room.  The girls woke up and found the bag of not-frozen-anymore blueberries and then proceeded to smash and smear them all over their room.  All.over.their.room.  Josh offered for that to be his job after work, but I knew that there was not going to be any time for that after work…plus, I knew it would be harder to get the stains out after letting them sit and dry all day long.  I so wish I would have thought to take a picture of the destruction.  It was quite amazing.

I watched a little video online about how to remove blueberry stains.  It said to soak in vinegar, and then pour boiling water over the stain.  And then my favorite part at the end with the very good advice of, “And next time, try not to be so messy.”  Thank you blueberry-stain-removal man…I will try and work on that.  Well, the vinegar I could do, but the massive amount of blueberry covering such a large surface area…I knew there was no way to be able to do the boiling water treatment like they showed.  So I improvised.  I shook all the remaining blueberries from the bedding and put them in the bathtub and then poured vinegar on all the stains as best I could and let that soak for 10 minutes or so.  Then, I filled the bathtub with hot water (and added as much boiling as I could) and several scoops of oxiclean.  And let that soak for about an hour.  The water turned yellow.  I wasn’t sure if that was good or bad.  I then washed everything in hot water with tide plus clorox for colors.  Amazingly enough, all the stains came out!  However, this took up a good two hours of my morning.  At this point, I called to ask if we could pick up our milk on Saturday instead of Friday…thankfully she said that was fine.

While I was waiting for the laundry, I decided that it would be best if I could make my dessert for the evening before leaving.  I wanted to do a cheesecake and thanks to my stockpiling skills, I had everything I needed.  So I went to work on that.  And in order to turn my day  into a joke, I later decided to top the cheesecake with blueberries.  Yummy.  I actually had Josh and Bryce convinced that I had swept the blueberries off the floor of the girls’ room and didn’t want them to go to waste.  Ha!

So, during a moment when waiting for the cheesecake to bake, I was sitting at the computer and Ellyanna came to me and told me there was “big water in the bathroom”.  Sometimes my children say things to me and in that very moment,  the significance eludes me.  I didn’t think anything of it for several minutes until I was up and the bathroom door was closed and the sink water was running.  I opened the door.  No one was in there.  The sink was running full blast.  Water had filled the sink, was pouring over the counter and the e.n.t.i.r.e. bathroom floor was covered with an inch of water.  The girls, I presume, had poured oxiclean into the sink drain…which got wet, but not wet enough to disolve, but wet enough to make a cement in the sink drain and clog it.  And then they turned on the water.  Oiy.  The boys and I grabbed things to start bailing into the bathtub…we did as much as we could and then covered the whole floor in towels.  Aka: load of laundry #3 of the day.  Bad news:  The water incident took up another hour of my busy day.  Good news:  The bathroom got really clean.

After I spent an hour cleaning the bathroom, I closed the door and ordered the children to not enter that room upon penalty of death….or something like that.

At this point, I’m absolutely certain that there is just no way that I am going to get the house looking presentable AND get to the store AND get dinner ready in any sort of timely manner.  So I texted Josh and asked him if he could just come home and be done working after his last meeting.  Which he did.

To make a long story a little shorter, most everything got done…our house still looked a little more real than not real…aka: not perfect.  And I’m okay with that.  I used to call myself a frustrated perfectionist.  But not so much any more.  I think now I’m a perfectionist at heart…but my standards of perfectionism have gotten lower with every kid that has been added to our family.

There were a few things that happened as a result of the two main disasters that were kind of small things on their own, but definitely a part of the overall day.

*The oxiclean ruined the “finish” on my bathtub. (Don’t laugh…when we moved in, our bathtub was stained and the finish was totally worn off…I know you can have people come in and refinish…but I knew that would be expensive…and if we ever wanted to spend that kind of money on our bathroom, we would probably just get rid of the bathtub all together and get a new one.  So my genius idea was to scrub it down and spray paint it.. It’s actually been almost a year and has held up fairly well…but the paint did not react well to the oxiclean…so there’s another project for me down the road.)

*My cheesecake got over done because I was so busy cleaning the bathroom that I didn’t hear the timer.  Kinda bummed about that.  But it still tasted pretty good.

*I melted something plastic on one of the stove burners.

*I had to buy bread for dinner instead of making it…which literally didn’t digest well for me I think because I’m so unused to eating large amounts of white flour…my body didn’t know how to process it.  At least that’s my theory.

*I couldn’t put the girls in their room to play in the afternoon…which works for them like an afternoon nap…sort of decompresses them and gives them some time to play on their own without a lot of stimulation…anyway, the beds had been washed but I hadn’t had time to clean the floor, so there was no way I was going to let them loose in there with the blueberries.  So by the end of the evening, they were melting down…which after the day I had, was not a welcome event.  Not that it ever is…but I had less capacity for dealing with it.

But our story has a happy ending.  Our company came and we had a great time with them!  And there was alcohol with dinner.

The End.

Over the weekend, I officially turned 31.  The process of getting older is not nearly so bad when your husband plans a whole weekend away for the two of you!  In fact, it actually gives you something to look forward to.  Several years ago, when Josh asked me what I wanted for my birthday, the only thing I could think of was, “A day off”.  And so we started the tradition of taking at least an entire day off for my birthday day….but this year Josh did all the planning  and scheduling of babysitters and took me away for the entire weekend!  We had so much fun!  The best part was literally just not having ANYTHING we needed to do…no set schedule, no other people to consider or take care of.  Just us!  We didn’t take a whole lot of pictures while we were gone, but I’ll share some that we did take!

On Friday, we were able to leave about 10 am because Josh had scheduled a manicure/pedicure appointment for me at about 10:30.  After my appointment, we went to the lilac garden in Woodland, Wa.  It was beautiful and this is where this picture was taken.  Next year we’ll have to go back perhaps a month or so earlier…the lilacs were fading, but still it was a beautiful place.  I love lilacs!  We then had lunch and made our way to Seattle, where we checked in to our nice hotel and then decided to do some shopping.

People always do *I think* on vacation, what they can’t normally do at home…for some parents that might mean get a whole night of sleep…but for us, we almost always get a full night of sleep, so we did the opposite.  We went to see a movie at 9:50.  We saw Date Night and both enjoyed it.  We would NEVER be able to see a movie that late normally!

Saturday was a pretty full day.  In the morning we went to Pike Street Market, because of course, you can’t go to Seattle without going to Pike Street.  We got coffee at Starbucks and breakfast at the French bakery… Yum.  We walked around for quite a while and around lunch time decided that we were not hungry but tired.  So we went back to the hotel and took a NAP!  Another thing we never get to do!  Then we went out for a late lunch and came back to the hotel where I took a bubble bath (another thing I almost never do!) and started to get ready for the Seattle Symphony.

We had it on good authority that the symphony was a black tie-ish event, so we spent a good amount of time Friday night and Saturday afternoon shopping for an outfit for both Josh and I…which of course I didn’t mind.  Josh needed to own a suit anyway for business reasons so it was a good time to purchase one.  And my dress?  I found it at Ann Taylor Loft at the mall.  Have you ever owned a dress that fit you like it was made for you?  I haven’t until now.  I spent $50 for it, which is WAY more than I normally spend on clothing, but I think it’s probably going to be worth it, having a lovely black dress that can be dressed up or down and fits me so well.  I just wish that we had some better pictures of the dress.

After the symphony, we went for dessert at the Cheesecake Factory…where we, of course had cheesecake… MMmmmmmm.

On  a side note, we were at the restaurant at about 10 pm… I kept noticing that there were a LOT of families there with really small children eating dinner at that hour.  Is that normal for a city?  It seemed so strange to me that there would be so many small children out at a restaurant at that hour…

On Sunday we had the privilage of attending Mars Hill church and seeing Mark Driscoll in person!  I have to admit to being a little star-struck.  I am (we are) huge Mark Driscoll fans.  We have watched his Peasant Princess series 5 or 6 times now and find it to be one of the best sermon series on marriage ever made.  He is such a great preacher and I just totally respect his heart and his ministry.  So since we were in his neighborhood, of course one of the things I wanted to do was to go see him in person.  I wish we would have gotten a picture of the church building…that was the most surprising thing to me.  From the outside, you would never guess that it was a church.  It looks like a large non-descript warehouse…which it probably used to be!  Very industrial looking and right in the heart of the city.  It was so strange seeing Mark preach in person rather than on video.  My biggest surprise in seeing him in person was that he had really big feet!  =)  But the music was great and so was the sermon.  My only disappointment was that we didn’t get to actually talk to him as he was nowhere to be found after or before the service.

After church we found this very cute little farmers market place.  I actually liked it even better than Pike Street!  There was vendors selling everything from antiques, to used clothes, to flowers, to food.  This photo is of me standing next to some sort of strange vehicle that was a food vendor.  It was giant and hilarious.  I’m pretty sure that they sold pork items.   But at this place, I found some super cute cowboy boots.  Which if you know me at all, you’ll know I have been looking for for quite some time!  We were having such a fun time walking around this place that we lost track of time and when we looked to see what time it was, we were late in leaving and were both sad that the time had passed so quickly.

All in all, we had a super great weekend…my only complaint was that it should have been longer!  Thank you to my awesome husband who put so much work and thought into this weekend to make sure that we did things that I would enjoy.  And thank you to all 5 babysitters who watched our kids!

I had about an hour last night to throw together some dinner and I decided to use a soup that has become a family favorite in the last several months.  I was thinking about how easy and yummy and healthy it is and how there might be others out there who would benefit from the recipe.  Actually, my sister in law asked me for it several weeks ago, so she can now just get it from here.  =)

This is my adaptation of the Black-Eyed Pea and Sausage Soup from the Betty Crocker Whole Grains cookbook.

2 cans black-eyed peas rinsed and drained (I use dried- it’s cheaper- I’ll talk about this more later)

12 oz smoked sausage link, quartered (I use the hilshire farms smoked sausage…when it’s on sale and I have coupons, I stock up and freeze them)

2 cups chopped carrots

4 cloves garlic, finely chopped

1 c uncooked wheat berries

2 c water

3 cans (14oz) beef broth

2 cups spinach

1 tsp thyme

bay leaf or two if you want

1 tsp (to taste) tabasco sauce

salt and pepper to taste

Option #1 Throw all this into the crockpot in the morning and cook all day- for this method, I would put the black eyed peas and wheat berries in a pot and boil them for about an hour and then drain and add to crockpot.

Option #2 if you’re in a hurry, add everything into a large pot on the stove. Even the dried peas.  Bring to a boil.  Simmer for about 1 hour.  The wheat berries will still have a nice little crunch to them, but if you boil for a little longer, they should soften…but I kinda like them crunchy.

The amazing thing about this soup is that EVERY single person in my family likes this soup and eats it without complaining.  And even though it looks a little “scary” healthy, everyone that I’ve made it for has loved it.

This is nicely paired with my recipe for Cheese and Garlic Drop Biscuits

2 c flour

1 tsp salt

2 1/2 tsp baking powder

1/3 c oil

2/3 c milk

1 c shredded cheddar cheese

Mix dry ingredients together, add milk and oil and stir together- dough will be sticky. If you use whole wheat pastry flour like I do, you may want to add a little less of the wet ingredients.  Stir in shredded cheese.

Drop by spoonful onto a cookie sheet.  Bake about 10 min @ 450.

While the biscuits are baking, melt 1/2 a stick of butter.  Add 1/2 tsp each of garlic salt and garlic powder. Add 1 tsp of dried parsley.  When you remove the biscuits from the oven, immediately either brush the butter mixture over the tops of the biscuits with a pastry brush- or spoon over the top of each.  The butter will soak into the biscuit.   Eat them warm and it will be one of the best things you’ve ever eaten.  They’re similar to the bread that is served to you at Red Lobster.

Now you all know what to make for dinner!  Enjoy!