Wholesale Living

A morning-glory at my window satisfies me more than the metaphysics of books. ~Walt Whitman

I grew up w/ my mom working at Price Club, now Costco, when I was younger so I was used to having a stockpile of food and household supplies on hand. If I had extra space for a separate freezer and larger pantry I would have the mini-grocery store in our house I was accustomed to when living with my parents.

Having a smaller house has limited me on storing everything, especially groceries. But now I'm home bound more often because I don't want to drag the boys shopping with me every week. We make a monthly run to Costco and it covers me with pantry staples (all the boys in the house go thru a case of applesauce cups in a month!), and also provides fun rainy day activities with things I have on hand anyway.





Don't know what I'd do on rainy days without that 15pk of of paper towels to make a tower with!



We go through paper plates in the summer because of eating outside anyway but they are also useful for disposable paint pallets and super cool sun visors too!

Mommy's little Gardeners

Flowers are the sweetest things God ever made, and forgot to put a soul into. ~Henry Beecher, Life Thoughts, 1858

The boys have been a big help with the gardens I've already established around the house. Their favorite thing to do is using the watering cans- of course- but I had them mulching in the Spring with me and recently tried teaching them to pull weeds (a never ending task that will eventually lead to back pains when I'm older :). They were great when I showed them which ones to pull; it was when I turned my head that there were mint stems and flowers that somehow got into the weed pile. Gavin's attention isn't too long nowadays so he'll jump over to the spade and dig out a few spots of mulch or go back to watering, where Carter could sit there and pull things out of the ground for hours I'm sure!




Black-eyed Susan

Rose


Daylily



Balloon flower


Hopefully they'll grow to love gardening just as much as I do! I think I might let them pick out the annuals next year when it's time to re-plant the pots. Can't wait to see what they'll look like!

In Bloom

"For myself I hold no preferences among flowers, so long as they are wild, free, spontaneous."~Edward Abbey

In my stage of life right now everything is growing by leaps and bounds. In 6 years my wonderful husband and I have

bought a house in Lothian,


renovated it to a livable state,

got married,


had 2 bouncing boys(literally in this photo),

Carter- 1yr & Gavin- 2yrs

and added on to the house again.



Saying it, 6 years sounds like a long time, but boy has it gone by fast!

That's why I am so thankful to be at home with the boys while they are young, they change with each coming week.






And with us living 45 minutes to an hour away from most of our friends and family I hope to use this blog to help keep in touch with everyone until the boys are older and I can run them around to everyone more frequently. Right now it's hard with them being so young. There's eating schedule's, nap routines and not to mention a decent bedtime so Mommy can have some downtime or actually get things done around the house.

All you parents out there know exactly where I'm coming from and those of you without kids will one day find out that those cute little faces always get put first so it's not a matter of loosing touch with friends or not be sociable anymore, those times will come back again, but right now I'm exactly where God wants me to be and I couldn't be happier- here with my little wildflowers in the country!

Tilling the land

"Gardening requires lots of water - most of it in the form of perspiration." ~Lou Erickson


The grounds around the house are also getting a makeover per-say. Two years ago we fenced-off the backyard and added a patio off the back deck. That was is though, everything inside the yard,

weeds, piles of dirt and weeds, low areas filled with water,




all took a back seat when Gavin and Carter arrived and we focused on the inside. This summer I find myself really utilizing the outside to get their pent-up boy energy out most of the day.

Throwing sticks in Mother Nature's Pond

We relocated 1 large frog, 2 medium frogs and 14 tadpoles into the Windsor Pond down the road. Poor things had been there so long they were calling it home!

So a few weekends ago we took a break from working on the addition to empty, grade out and seed the backyard (It was too cute watching the boys throw seed, Gavin thought it was bird food :)







Rain had been plentiful but of course as soon as the seed touched the ground it didn’t rain for a week and when it did rain it washed some of the seed from a few areas. Looking back we should have washed the vehicles that same weekend- that always makes it rain! Some seed took with the help of our nightly watering routine but it’ll be a while for it to get established.

We have big plans for a tall fireplace and barbeque off the patio and I would like to put gardens throughout the backyard- but that also takes time and money and you can’t utilize one without the other.

So here’s hoping next Spring/Summer we can finish what we’ve started and actually have friends and family over to entertain!