Five on Friday

I'm joining Darci, April, Natasha and Christina on the Friday fun. 
All you have to do is...

1.)  Write  your post about any five things you want. 2.)  Share the logo on your blog and link back.  3.)  Link-up at the bottom of the post so some new readers can check out your five things and say hello!

(one) I have fallen in love with Parenthood. I have been watching 2-3 episodes a day. I can't believe I missed it when it previewed. I cry every.single.episode. It's SO good and if you haven't watched it, Netflix it asap. Alan and I have also started Lost together. We have watched 4 episodes in 2 nights. I'm glad we have another show we can watch together. It's very good too. Lots of surprises already!


(two) The weather has been so nice this week but I'm thinking Madison has allergies. I kept her from school on Wednesday because of her runny nose and cough but she seems better now.

(three) Spring Break is next week. I need daily activities for the girls. Crafting, library, parks, etc. Hoping I can come up with some sort of schedule or activities to keep her happy and busy that week.

(four) I have a massage tomorrow that I'm looking forward to! I haven't had one since December when I was 9 months pregnant. Going from monthly massages to not having one in 3 months does a wonder on my muscles. I know, I know.. first world problems.

(five) I have the itch to plant flowers and my garden. I'm scared we will have another cold snap though. Hopefully in the next few years I will have a couple of more above the ground gardens. I would love to grow all sorts of fruits and veggies. I also want to get into doing winter planting.

 

What I've been doing...

 A friend of Alan's gave us a huge basket of veggies on Friday. Corn, tomatoes(red and green), and speckled butter beans. We are also garden-sitting for one of our neighbors, which means we pick what is ready while they are gone. I gave some of them away. Even after giving away a lot of it,  I still had a ton left and I'm not one to throw away fresh garden fruits and veggies so I go to googling "How to freeze ...." I came across how to freeze tomatoes. Seems silly but I've never frozen anything but some blueberries and a few leftover veggies. Plus I'm all about eating fresh and not buying canned products.

I started by boiling a few tomatoes at a time until the skins started peeling. 

Yes, I mixed Roma with regular tomatoes :)

 

Roughly chopped them up until I had 2 cups

 

I then wrote on the bags and froze them flat!  

15 or so tomatoes gave me 6.5 cups(3 cans) of diced tomatoes!

I made half of the beans for supper the other night and I shelled these and they are now simmering in water, garlic and onion for the next hour or so until they are ready to freeze.

I got 6 cantaloupes from the neighbors garden yesterday and another 5 today! 

I cut up 1 for us, gave 2 to Alan's mom and am saving another 2 for my sister coming over tomorrow.

I can't bear to toss these and there will be another 10 ready probably by the time they get back! 

Who knew you could freeze cantaloupe?  I will start working on this during M's next nap or after Alan gets home, since I've decided to blog during her current nap :) Online it says to dice up the cantaloupe and freeze it in a single layer on a cookie sheet for 12-24 hours.

We have also been planning Madison's 1st birthday party. The guest list is made and I think we have a game plan for food and cake, which I need to schedule.. Just have to pick between 2 places.. Oh the decisions! I have been pinning like crazy ideas for the party. I will leave a teaser :) It won't be this elaborate but the color scheme is what I'm aiming for...

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I am also currently working on her First Year photo book. I am so excited that some one told me about Mixbook. After Shutterfly was taking me days to edit 1 page and being so disappointed I wasn't going to be able to use it, I posted a Facebook status asking if anyone had any suggestions. My last boss told me about Mixbook and I was so thrilled to find a book I loved as much as the one on Shutterfly. Plus I'm able to put text anywhere I want and add pictures anywhere I want. Shutterfly was pretty restricting from what I could tell. I was worked on it from about 8pm-12am and got half of the book done! It's SO fast. I hope the quality is as good as it looks online. And a HUGE shout out to Stacy C. who is doing me a ginormous favor of redoing Madison's newborn photo cd since I was in tears because I couldn't track it down! :(  Thank you SO much Gwyn and Stacy :) 

We have also booked a vacation between now and her birthday. I'm so excited! We took a few days in February to go to Georgia but this time we are headed to the beach and I'm excited to see Wilma and Madison in the ocean/on the beach.  Booking the house was another story! We found the perfect house on a lake with a huge fenced in yard about 20 miles from downtown Charleston. We had all but paid for it when the owner emailed me and said she had a guy interested in renting it for the whole month and she would know by July 15 whether or not we could rent it. We were in a time crunch so we found another house within walking distance of the beach and we've paid half. The original lady emailed me today and said she was willing to rent it to us since she hasn't heard from the month-long renter. We are actually trying to cancel the house we've paid on to get the lake house. Sounds crazy to not be closer to the beach but we aren't going to be on the beach all day every day with a dog and a baby and the lake house would be more fun for Wilma and it looks so much more relaxing. Hoping for good news.

It's garden time!

I promise this blog has not turned into Madison-land. I will try my best to post about things other than our little girl! She has just taken over and everything interesting lately has revolved around her! It's already started and she's not even here yet!

So after weeks of basically begging Alan to till up the garden, we decided the best option would be a raised garden. With my growing belly and our ground being red clay, we feel that this will be easier for me and will also produce more veggies! Here he is digging out the ground after he had already put the frame up. We decided to do an 8x6 frame and the boards are 12" wide.

Measuring the corner pieces so he can attach some support beams..2 trips to Lowes, 20 bags of manure, 27 bags of top soil and 2 bags of Miracle Grow later....
Ta-da! I helped clean up a little bit and raked the bags out while he emptied them and then planted the plants but he did all the manual work! Thanks again babe! You're the best :)

3 tomatoes plants on right, a cucumber plant and 2 rows of sweet onions in
middle and 4 okra plants on left.
Okra

Onions
Cucumber
Tomatoes
And the 2 worst helpers ever. Wilma
and the neighbors dog, Dakota.

Thanks to my dad too, who every year reminds me what brand/type of plants I need to get and answers all my crazy questions. I will learn soon enough!

Yard goings-on. Is that a word?

You know you are married when a night out means a trip to Lowes. Alan worked all day Saturday in the yard cutting grass and spreading seed. It looks really good. While he was doing that, I went to the Farmers Market with his mom. Then we had lunch and went shopping. I then had to go to the grocery store after I dropped her off. I pulled in our driveway just as he was weedeating around the last tree. Timing couldn't have been better..... The yard looks great and with these weekly trips to Lowe's, it's starting to look better and better. Here's some of the Workman happenings in the yard.

 Aren't these gorgeous? We went to Lowes to get a stake for my 5 feet tall cucumber vine. As we were talking, we saw a buggy with 2 of these bushes on it. I stopped and sniffed and patted it and looked for a price and of course nothing. So I walked around trying to find them on the racks. Couldn't find them. 15 minutes had went by at that point and the buggy was still sitting there so we took one off to see how much. $3.50 the lady said and I told Alan to grab the other one. They are so pretty and I'm in love. This one is out by the road and the other is in the landscaping in front of the house.

 Lowe's also had their trees 50% off so we snagged this Redbud...

..and this Maple tree

I was excited to see this tiny tomato sprouting! Yay!

 And my hydrangeas! It doesn't take much to get me excited, people! We transplanted 2 plants from my dad's last year and I'm glad to see some blooms so I know that we didn't kill them both!

And lastly, a picture of supper tonight. It was so good! A sausage and egg mcmuffin with bacon, hash browns, blueberry muffins and tomatoes from our neighbors. Yum! It hit the spot!

Never been so glad to see such a mess!

It was so nice to come home and see this today! We've waited 2 long years to have an irrigation system put in the yard and get that nasty muddy hill sodded!

It looks like a maze with all the trenches!

My poor garden was traumatized with all that digging! See the one big plant? That's my bell pepper...or is it a cucumber? I can't remember.

Here's a closeup of it. I'm not sure why it's the only plant that is doing well. Even the okra that I just planted this weekend have already died. What am I doing wrong?! At least I'll have whatever this turns out to be. Next year I will mark what it is.