Okay, so now that winter appears to be over, it’s time for a project awesome yard update.

My lawn was looking pretty good (thank you fall fertilizer!) until I started getting some yellow spots.  Yellow spots?  Now, this is different from dormant grass which kinda looks dead (it’s not, it’s sleeping shhhh).  So I rechecked out all my lawn care books from the library I read last year and decided I had iron chlorosis, or my lawn was anemic.  I went with Ironite and spread it at the recommended rate and didn’t notice much of anything.  So I decided to boost it a little with a shot of household ammonia.  Still nothing, but the lawn looked a little perkier.  Finally, after 2 weeks, the lawn is looking green again.  Next time, because I’m impatient, I’m going to try a liquid iron.

In other learning experiences, the 2 year old pea seeds never sprouted, so today I planted some 2009 ones.  I noticed some carrot seedlings and spinach seedlings, but my dirt had crusted over so they were having a hard time peaking out.  I raked a little and added some peat moss and I’m hoping that will help.  Oh, and I had to reseed my lettuce too.

A word about peat moss.  It’s a non renewable resource so it should be used in very small amounts, if at all.  Unfortunately, my dirt clay is so bad that adding compost isn’t enough.  So I decided to limit myself to one bag of PM for my whole yard.  I’ll let you know if that works out.  So far so good.

I pruned my plum tree.  This is time to prune your fruit trees and if they’ve never been pruned (like mine) you have to really cut them back hard.  I forgot to fertilize it though and I need to get on that this week.

I’m trying to get lawn aerated in the next two weeks because I need to fertilize it and that works better after aeration.  Again, the heavy clay soil makes it tough for roots to spread.

In my next post I’ll let you know about my flower bed!  Remember all those bulbs I planted?

Dad

me: hey kiddo, whatcha drawing?

the boy: that’s dad!  See, that’s his ______.

Let it never be said I’ve neglected to teach my children anatomy.

There’s three things I love: earth friendly hippie stuff, saving money, and Jack Bauer.

The first and last are pretty individual, but I don’t know anyone who doesn’t love saving money.  So after talking with some friends about it, I decided to share some of my secrets with you.  I use two websites to help me save (they’re free) couponmom.com and theobsessiveshopper.net (she’s affiliated with the Fun With Food Storage ladies I’ll talk about another time.  They have national chains like Walmart listed too so just because you aren’t in Utah doesn’t mean you can’t use them.  Check them out.  Do it.  Now.

What did you think?  Pretty cool huh?  I like how obsessive shopper lets you know if something is a good deal or not.  Sale doesn’t always mean good buy.  I also like comparing stores to see who has it cheapest.

I especially like the free stuff at Rite Aid and Walgreens.  Sometimes when I combine a rebate with a coupon, I make money.  That’s coupon mom’s whole premise.  Every time she helps you make $1, she asks you to donate it to charity.  I can live with that!  Sometimes when I have enough shampoo and they’re giving it away, I’ll donate that to the food bank (they take more than food).  And if you hate clipping coupons and storing them or whatever, then just save the entire thing because they tell you the date and coupon magazine they came in.  However, there’s been so many times I’ve come across an unadvertised deal and get a better deal because I bring my organized coupons with me.

So this week I bought $51.20 in drug store stuff.  Those items were on sale so the new total was $31.96.  Pretty good right, anyone can save $20!  But then I added coupons and rebates.  Guess my total?  $5.75.  I’m totally serious.  $5.75 for excedrin, triaminic, theraflu, mouth numbing stuff, girly products, shampoo, mousse, and chex mix.  You can’t save that much buying generic either.

I haven’t calculated my food totals yet, but I usually save 50%-60%.  Not bad.  I cut our monthly groceries from $400-$500 to about $250 for a family of four.  I know I can make it smaller too, which is why I’m starting to track everything.

I have a new hobby   I hope some of you can use it to save a little money too.

If I could pick one word to describe my hobbies, it would be dilettante.  A jack of all trades, a master of none.  A dabbler.  I don’t really have a focus for my life except raising my kids.  I have so many hobbies and interests that I often find myself spread out too thinly and I don’t seem to enjoy much of anything any more.  So it’s time for more focus.  Time to make some goals and pave some roads for my life to follow.  This will also be extremely helpful in decluttering my home   I have a little depression era mentality where it’s hard for me to chuck things I know I could use later.  Like towels.  I still haven’t made anything with those towels.

I’m not a scrapbooker.  I gave it an honest effort, but I do it like once every two years and I pretty much just use the internet to track my family’s goings on.  So I think it’s time to ditch the scrapbooking crap.

I love gardening.  I’ll keep that one.

I like sewing, but I don’t love it.  I think I just need to use up all my fabric and then go one project at a time.  Same with knitting.  And it’s time to give the craft stuff to the kids since I never use it.

The thing I keep thinking is, how much is it costing me to keep this stuff?  Is it worth the money?  Most of the time, it’s not.  The more stuff we have, the more mental energy we expend keeping track of that stuff and thinking about it.  Then we have to buy totes or boxes to store the stuff in.  And if it keeps accumulating, we find ourselves buying a bigger home to store that stuff in.  Is it really worth $30,000 more in interest to store those comic books or that fabric?

I think I just made a ton more space in my little 900sqft home.  Go ahead, tell me I’m awesome!

I saw this on Jim, and Lex’s blog and wanted to share it too because IT’S SO TRUE!

“We live in an amazing, amazing world, and it’s wasted on the crappiest generation of just spoiled idiots that don’t care.”

I coudn’t find a video to embed on my blog so you’ll have to click the link.  Life is so hard.

This might be child abuse recording this.  I don’t really care.

I can rationalize anything.  It’s true.  Remember that one year I did that stuff?  Totally rationalized it.

This is especially true of me with money and weight loss.  I’ll spend all week saving money and not eating out and buying crap I don’t need, and then the weekend hits and I’m like, “hey, I saved so much money this week.  I can totally afford to go to my favorite restaurant!”  Instant sabotage.  next thing I know I’ve spent all the money I saved.  Same thing with weight loss.  I’ll eat well all week and then the weekend comes and it’s time to take a “vacation” from the diet.  Bring on the chips and ice cream!  I gained back all the weight I lost.

With both I end out staying in the same place.  Two steps forward, two steps back.  And I’m getting tired of the view in this spot.  Time to move!

This weekend will be no exception, I’m sure.  I love super bowl Sunday!  I bought hot wings, brats, and various frozen snack foods already.  No chips or  cookies, but I’m sure those will provided by others.  I can’t decide if I want to give up eating this food or not.  I love food.  I’m a total hedonist.  It’s not easy to give up hedonism.  I guess we’ll just see what I decide tomorrow (Go Warner and Cardinals!!!)

I guess my point is, maybe if I’m more aware of this behavior within my own psychology, I can finally stop it.  I just have to want it.  or something.

I’m like a bear. When it’s cold outside I go into hibernation. I need warm sun and plants poking through the ground and buds on trees for my brain to wake up and write.
I’m going to order my garden seeds in the next week sometime. I’ve looked though my catalog and there’s all kids of cool veggies I can grow!  I’m excited to have my own vegetable garden because my government is bringing on it’s own demise and I’d like to have a good supply of food when that happens. I have about 500lbs of dried beans, but I’d like some side dishes with them when armageddon hits.

You said you were different Obama!! You said you would change things!! *sob*

*for the record, I never thought anything would actually change with him. Except that it doesn’t hurt my brain when he talks. Hate to disappoint the Obamaphiles, but he’s bought and paid for like the rest of them.  It’s still The Man!

Okay, today is the last day to vote in Obama’s “ideas for changing America thing on his site.  Even though most Americans just want to sit around and get high all day, there are some who want to work.  I am begging everyone who cares about small business and American jobs to not only vote at change.org (http://www.change.org/ideas/view/save_handmade_toys_from_the_cpsia) but to write your congresspeople about CPSIA.  The bill’s intent was to make Chinese toys safer, but now it’s forcing thousands of businesses to go under because they can’t afford expensive testing.

In a nut shell: Starting Feb 10, if you make anything product for children, you can’t sell it without having it tested for lead and phalates.  If you like buying handmade, American made items for your children, you can forget it.  No one but large manufacturers can afford it.  The same cloth I buy for any other project can’t be used to make kid’s clothes.  The same yarn an adult’s hat is knitted from can’t be used to make an infant’s.  Make sense?  Of course not!

Originally, this law also made selling anything used (yard sales, goodwill) illegal w/o testing!  A clarification on that was made last week (after tons of angry calls and emails I bet!)

PLEASE  WRITE YOUR REPRESENTATIVES!  For more info about CPSIA, you can check these out

http://cpsia-central.ning.com/

http://liletsyshop.blogspot.com/2008/12/why-you-should-care-about-cpsia.html

http://coolmompicks.com/savehandmade/

http://www.cpsc.gov/ABOUT/Cpsia/cpsia.HTML

I really did.  I’ve been doing real world things other than blogging and facebook.  It’s crazy!  I need to upload pictures from my camera, but we’ve been enjoying our awesome backyard sledding hill and built an igloo with all the snow.  We went to Ely and it was as desolate as expected.  But we had a good visit with the inlaws and were just barely out of the storm until the last 25 miles before home.  So we’re grateful for that.  We really enjoyed our Christmas and seeing all the family we did even though my little brother completely schooled us in Ticket to Ride (Europe), which he’d never played before.  We spent New Years Eve at my cousin’s birthday party and then her dad joined us at my other cousin’s house (across the street) playing Rock Band and Guitar Hero (mine and hubby’s Christmas present) all night.

The boy and I have started doing yoga again.  Baby girl started walking, really walking, about a week ago.  And I’m being bit by the home improvement bug again.  I’m finally picking paint colors (goodbye pasty pink!) And I really, really want a dishwasher.  I’m fantasizing about dishwashers! I got a bunch from the library about installing electrical circuits.  Can I get my tax refund now?  Please!

Of course today I’m dreaming about ripping up this carpet since baby girls been puking all morning.  I have really nice carpet so we kept it, but I’m starting to remember all the reasons we ripped it up at the condo.  We have original hardwood underneath, but it’s incomplete.  And honestly, I think at this point I’d rather have a dishwasher and a bissel.

I guess that’s all.  I gotta go clean my carpet