To 2016

Hello dear friends. The latter part of this year has been quite the whirlwind! (Which is why I have been absent longer than I would have wished.) From welcoming our second child, returning to work (and then some), and the arrival and exit of of the holidays, aside from being absolutely blessed I can say this for certain: I am overwhelmed.

I say this as I type on a shattered phone with the most beautiful, no longer screaming, child asleep atop me. #dailygrind 

I am not one for New Year's resolutions. I don't have diets awaiting me January 1st (healthy eating is sufficient!). However, I do like to think of goals for the coming year. Most often I try to consciously read more. But this year I have a larger, more active goal in mind: minimize. 

To many of you have known me for the better part of my life this is likely a surprising statement. In the past, I was ready to shop till I drop without recourse. These days that is not the lifestyle for me, but I still live with its remnants.

Aside from myself, my household has two kids, two cats, and one adoring husband (I should count him as two for all his Orioles paraphernalia). We have a lot of crap. Seriously, crap. It is time to weed it out. 

So many items maintain residence in our home with little reason or function for its presence. (Beauty for me is most certainly a function.) With 12 months in the coming year my goal is to tackle a room a month. We only have 7 rooms to set straight so maybe our storage areas will be lucky participants as well!

I have begun my smaller but no less important goal of reading daily with the book, Essentialism, by Greg McKeown. I can already recommend this book highly. His main tenant of "less but better" is applied with instruction to daily life. I look forward to applying much of what I read to a less but better 2016. Essentialism is available at my library so I'd bet you could find it at yours! 

I wish you all a happy and safe New Years! 🎉Here is to a great fresh start for us all. Keep a look out, I may just have to shame post before pics as a motivator...

lets talk compost

You want to know my dirty little secret? I'm OBSESSED with composting.

But really, I am. Almost two years ago I decided to take the plunge. This year, it's really happening. Living in a townhouse you would think composting would be a difficult feat, but you would be wrong!

In addition to looking for a responsible and chemical free way to boost the growth of my plants (especially after the pumpkin fail of 2014) I also wanted to decrease the amount of waste my family produces. I don't know about you, but this sounds win-win to me.

Starting was easy. Really. And it wasn't a high cost project. With the direction of Pinterest/Blissfully Domestic and some good faith I was on my way! I purchased a 20 gallon storage container in a nice beautiful green shade. (Darker can be better, but it's what they had and it works for me.) I pulled out our handy dandy power drill and used a drill bit to drill small holes around the entire container in no particular pattern. (Word to the wise - use the right drill bit. A brad point bit or a spade bit, which both have points on the ends, make the hole drilling much easier.) Once all the holes are drilled, you are ready!

completed compost bin in use!

After that, add some brown material. You can use anything from bits of cardboard, dirt, leaves, pine cones, assorted natural material to create a base. (These things are also important for helping the compost "breathe.") Once you have created your base you're ready to start adding scraps from your kitchen! There are varying rules and opinions on what you can and can't add. I stick to uncooked fruits, vegetables and egg shells. I don't want to worry about oils or meats getting in that shouldn't.

As for me, I keep a medium plastic storage container in my kitchen where I toss food scraps as they evolve. This houses a lot of apple + pear cores, veggie peelings, cantaloupe rinds, etc. I take it out every day or so, or once it's full and add it on in! It's good to stir it up or jostle the container each time you add more green in. The one thing to remember is keep adding brown material to keep enough air in the container so it doesn't become a soppy mess.

(aah, beautiful compost! Can you tell what fruit variety we really love at home?)

Through composting we have kept so much extra trash out of our garbage can and have really minimized our trash output in general.


While I love this benefit, my favorite one is the unexpected items that come from composting - the unintentional plants! Most notable so far, I added some compost in with my lemon tree that was needing some love. The tree has flourished since the addition about a month ago, and we have added a vine wielding companion to the pot. It took some deductive research by my husband and myself to debunk it. Low and behold a watermelon plant is growing! But this lady is flowering and if she doesn't start to hurt the lemon tree, she may last through the summer.








To your left here are some additional lovelies that have shown up most recently. Definitely a tomato on the left, and I assume a melon to the right. (Only because P and I are in route to becoming melons ourselves.)

I do have some larger compost dreams for the future (see dual chamber rotating composter) but for now I'll settle for  a nice counter top upgrade for the kitchen: White Ceramic Compost Bucket.


Do you have any fun stories or tips for composting? I'd love to hear them!

projects

Oh it has been an eventful few weeks! We have made two trips to Wilmington and one to Baltimore in the past three weekends and I am EXHAUSTED. (Aside from being officially 34 weeks pregnant.) I have to say I am looking forward to the forced "down time" of not traveling far until someone makes her appearance.

In our spare time, the pumpkins have officially been planted. One did not make it, the other is doing alright in its new home. An additional one has since been planted and will hopefully thrive!  Direct sew may be the best way to go next year, but then we will already have our planter so that will make things easier! The garden as a whole is really starting to grow, even some unexpected  additions to the group. (see my thoughts on composting for more!)

Feeling like I will have a wealth of free time on my hands the next six weeks a few personal projects have been added to the books as well. Namely, a triangle quilt for E, a new headboard for Jon's and my room and, oh, E's bedroom... 

For E's quilt I had originally been inspired by a post done by Elise Cripe that included a triangle quilt tutorial. While this tutorial seems to have more substance to it, I've settled on a pattern found at See Kate Sew. Since I don't feel like investing in quilt cutting materials quite yet, the larger pattern seemed a bit more doable and less likely to make me scream as I cut triangles by hand. (Hopefully...) But after long wait the fabric has been purchased and delivered, so with any hope this won't take too long and will arrive before E! (Loving my fabric below, by the way! - Thank you Fat Quarter Shop!) Might I mention I don't have much sewing experience, so this will be interesting!

Speaking of E's arrival, I'm so not ready. Wait, her room is so not ready. I am! The walls are still a lovely hue of lime green awaiting a nice neutral revival that we expect to complete this week. Her room has been a quandary for me since I really don't like overly girly things nor do I like overly baby things. Uh oh. I have also been attempting to keep this nursery minimal to try and start out on the right foot in any attempt to avoid over-clutter. As this project progresses I will definitely have some pictures to post!

Last  but not least I've been trying to update Jon's and my room since it would be nice to have things pulled together (2 years later....) before we bring a little person home. I found a nice headboard that needs some work on craigslist and we will see what happens! A bottle of spray paint later, hopefully it will be what we were looking for. Or at least me, Jon is trying to understand still why we need a headboard. I don't really have an answer other than we do.

If you know me, you know this list will likely grow... but for now, ready, set, GO!

small spaces + pumpkins

Did I miss the memo and jump straight to August? Unfortunately no. North Carolina has decided to welcome summer with full heat this year (JOYS). Our temperatures have reached above 95 most days in the past couple of weeks which have unfortunately made outdoor adventures a little more scarce in our household.

With a little less on the books these days, P and I have been able to get some good garden time in during the mornings the last week or so and it has been quite refreshing. Most significantly we are working on our PUMPKIN crop! (Yes, I know it isn't October yet! But one can dream...) Now in our second year of trying to grow pumpkins in containers, I am hopeful we are a bit wiser this time around... we started our pumpkins inside a little under a month ago and these babies are yearning to get out!

To preface, we live in a town house. This has as many benefits as deficits, especially when it comes to gardening. However, it makes you get creative when growing large, vine oriented crop. 

My mother in law recently started working on projects with pallets and has really proven to have a knack for it. She was kind enough to build a trough to house pumpkins on our back patio. It should offer them more growth potential than our shallow under bed storage container from last year. Again, live and learn. With any luck we may add some mid-season radishes, carrots and lettuce in as well!

Our pumpkins have not made it outside quite yet, but we have had fun getting the space ready for them!

We went for a walk to gather some materials (pine cones) to add to the bottom and allow for better drainage. In the land of the pines these are luckily not hard to come by! (Gardening win!) Three bags of dirt later we determined a fourth is required, so with any luck we'll be all done and planted tomorrow morning! Once these little sprouts are up and growing I'll definitely be updating pictures regularly. (check me on Instagram!)

If you're interested in trying it isn't too late to start your seeds! It's pretty simple too.

1) PICK YOUR PLANT If you're short on space, aka live on small land or no land, I recommend choosing a smaller variety pumpkin to grow. Heirloom pie pumpkin seeds are available at Home Depot (among other fine retailers I am sure), as well as large variety pumpkin seeds.
2) SEED STARTING As far as starting your seeds you have two options. Option one, you can plant your seeds directly into a container or the ground. Option two is to start them indoors and transplant the seeds when they're larger. You can do this easily by putting some dirt in a small container (cup, tupperware, small terra cotta pot, etc - I chose cups when not doing my mass seed starting), add the seed and keep the soil moist but not wet.
3) GROW BABY GROW Keep them watered and throw some mulch on the top of the soil to help retain moisture once they are large enough. Those big leaves of mature pumpkin plants get droopy when dehydrated, especially in the warm NC sun! Don't forget to nourish them as well. (Compost really is a girls best friend!)

Pumpkins are pretty resilient. They have done famously at preschool two years in a row in October (it's just to late to plant them outside by then..) You should have no trouble getting them going!

Depending on how things go I will post my year 2 dos and donts for container pumpkins later this year. Happy Growing!

long time coming... long way to go

Well ladies and gentlemen, as the title would imply this post has been a long time coming! Over the past few months I have had some ideas swimming in my mind, many of which wouldn't allow me to lay them to rest. This is when I know it is time to take action. That can't sleep, over excited, mind in overdrive feeling (that always hits hardest when I'm trying to go to bed!).

Taking a few steps back, I attempted to start this blog in college under a different name -- ramblings of a perpetual student. Not too much came of this, and I fell off the wagon pretty quickly (5 posts later - shout out to my only 2010 archives!).

While I will always be learning, grow is a verb that is ever-present in my life these days and represents a lot of what I want this space to be... (drum roll please) growth in progress.

It took me longer than I am willing to admit to come up with this title, and many post-its were sacrificed in the making.



What you can expect to find in this hopefully hospitable abode are topics on growth, many of which I am/will be going through personally. I am a lover of things green - eco friendly topics + gardening, I am a penny pincher (sometimes to a fault) and cherish homemade goods (all the FOOD + crafts), among plenty of other things. My kid(s - full plural coming August!) is/are my whole heart. Oh, and I happen to work in the midst of wrangling the rest of this!

I look forward to recapping how I got to where I am today AND growing with this journey, as I have a long way to go! 

(FYI - I am still in the building process of this page and hope to have WAY more info out there soon! But there are too many good ideas in my head to keep me from getting started!)

Welcome to the world?

I guess this could be called a pseudo-birth, per se, as this will be my first true venture into the blogging world. I am not one to wholeheartedly embrace all that technology has to offer, and am more likely to err on the side of overly-critical. (This says the girl whose Blackberry is more of an appendage than tool.) Well, here I am.

My decision to create a blog came this morning after listening to NPR (as I always do), and heard that the Library of Congress has decided to begin archiving Twitter posts. Twitter posts? Really? (clearly I disagree) Upon hearing this I have decided that I might possibly have to join in the fun, but rather than posting that I happen to be walking my dog (which I don't have, and am fairly sure my cat's would be opposed to leashes), I should do something productive with this site that to me only seems to stimulate those who have a need for constant visual stimulation. The resulting idea: turn this into something useful.

Currently, I am three weeks from finishing my fourth year of college. Four years ago, I believed I would be graduating at this time. Rather, I've opted (not been forced) to enter into a fifth year to further my studies before graduate school. What do all good grad school prospects do with their spare moments (other than blog, of course)? Pour their lives and souls into studying for the GRE.

So, how does this correlate with Twitter? My plan is to post my studies, definitions I run across, etc, as twitter posts. Help myself, help others... Maybe I should get volunteer credit for this? Something productive should come from people being glued to their computers (as we all undoubtedly are).

Now, all I have to do is bring myself to register for an account...