Sunday, April 29, 2012

Mother's Day Kitchen Aid Mixer Giveaway - For Your Homemade Meal Needs

I have teamed up with some super hosts and sponsors to bring you a Kitchen Aid Mixer giveaway for Mother's Day. We love our readers and thought this would be a great way to say thank you for your support and continued participation of our sites. We've made the entries as simple as we can and we really just want you to have fun with this giveaway. Extra entry options will be provided throughout the giveaway and you can share on social media sites daily for extra entries as well. We hope you will take the time to visit each participating site to say thank you for the money each contributed to make this giveaway possible. Grandma Bonnie's Closet, Linkies Contest Linkies and Terri's Little Haven   have joined up with Mom Blog Society, The Homeschooling Blog, Ginger High Books R Us, The Joy Of Saving Money, Frugal Plus, The Mystic Kitchen, Quick Tattletails, Dallas Single Mom and Insights by April. Please thank your sponsor by clicking the below Twitter buttons to share this giveaway. This is not mandatory to enter the giveaway but it is very much appreciated. We love your comments but please note that you will need to enter the giveaway using the rafflecopter form. If you are not familiar with rafflecopter you can watch a quick 52 second video to show you how to enter with rafflecopter. Thank you for your participation and good luck to each of you. a Rafflecopter giveaway Disclosure: This giveaway is hosted by the above mentioned websites and is not affiliated with Kitchen Aid, rafflecopter, facebook, Twitter or any other individuals. The winner will be notified by email at the close of the giveaway as soon as the entries are verified and the giveaway item will then be sent directly from Amazon. None of the above mentioned websites shall be held responsible for any issues that might arise during the shipment from Amazon. Participants must live in the continental US and be 18+ to enter.

Saturday, March 24, 2012

Booty Buns Giveaway Event
Welcome to the Go Green ♥ Give Charity Cloth Diaper Giveaway Event sponsored by Booty Buns Cloth Diapers! Over 175 blogs have teamed up to present this amazing cloth diaper giveaway hosted by Daily Mothering.
Here's your chance to win an entire stash of one-size cloth diapers!
 

This amazing cloth diaper prize pack includes:

20 Booty Buns One-Size Cloth Diapers
(these true one-size cloth diapers fit 3-45 lbs!)
20 matching flannel/terry cloth wipes
40 microfiber inserts
20 cotton flannel liners
Booty Buns Cloth Diaper Giveaway
(picture does not show inserts or liners also included)

First, a little about Booty Buns...

Booty Buns One-Size Cloth Diapers
In case you haven't heard about them, Booty Buns Cloth Diapers are incredible one-size cloth diapers that truly fit from birth to potty training! They feature a snap-down rise with 5 different snap settings (most one-size diapers only have 3!) and a waist with 10 regular snap settings plus 2 crossover snap settings. The diapers have hip snaps to prevent wing droop on smaller sizes. The incredible size range of this diaper fits from 3-45 lbs!
Booty Buns One-Size Cloth Diapers
Booty Buns Cloth Diapers are pocket diapers and each diaper includes 2 snap-on microfiber inserts that can be stuffed into the diaper or laid on top with the included cotton flannel liner against your child's skin. The diapers have a waterproof PUL outer and a soft suedecloth inner with dual gussets on the inner lining to ensure everything stays IN the diaper! Booty Buns One-Size Cloth Diapers come in an assortment of bright colors and each diaper includes a matching handmade flannel/terry wipe. You can find out more about the diapers at Booty Buns, or check out the detailed Booty Buns One-Size Cloth Diaper Review at Daily Mothering!
Booty Buns Cloth Diapers
Booty Buns is dedicated to encouraging others to "go green" and "give charity." Shannon, the owner of Booty Buns Cloth Diapers, leads by example. For every diaper that Booty Buns sells, she donates one Booty Buns Cloth Diaper to a child in need in the US and third-world countries. Booty Buns is the exclusive cloth diapers donator for Operation Showers Of Appreciation, and they are also donating diapers to babies that have severe medical issues here in the US. Shannon hopes to donate a lifetime supply of cloth diapers {20 diapers} to every baby in need around the globe. You can join in this effort by purchasing your own set of Booty Buns Cloth Diapers and telling your friends about Booty Buns!
Make sure to stop by and follow Booty Buns via Facebook, Twitter and Blog for news and giveaways!

And now for the giveaway!!

Booty Buns Cloth Diaper Giveaway
ONE WINNER will receive this gigantic cloth diaper prize pack valued at $546!
And, the winner will get to select their choice of diaper colors!
This giveaway is open to U.S. and Canada.
Use the Rafflecopter form below to enter.
Sign in using your Facebook account OR your name and email address.
Click "Do It" for instructions on how to complete each entry.
There is no mandatory entry. Complete as many entries as you wish.
The more entries you submit, the better odds you have of winning!

Friday, March 23, 2012

Thank You, Henry Allan!

Big thanks going out to Henry Allan for yesterday's donation to Mini Farm Sustainability Project! We are deeply appreciative and will fulfill our promise to go on with this project, no matter what the outcome. Without supporters like you, it would take much longer for us to get our cause off the ground. Thank you!

I apologize for not posting sooner. We've been experiencing technical difficulties with our internet connection hardware as well as being insanely busy now that Spring has decided to come early. 

I will be posting a giveaway up tonight at midnight for a lifetime supply of Booty Buns Cloth Diapers valued at $546! This giveaway ties in nicely with our project, because using less disposable diapers is crucial to a sustainable future. I used cloth with my son, and I'd love to let others know that cloth can be just as convenient as disposable!

Thanks to everyone for your continued interest in our project and for your patience as we journey to become more sustainable! 

Wednesday, March 7, 2012

Mind Your Mitochondria

Please watch this short presentation. It is powerful, full of hope, and inspirational. Some of this information, I already knew, but there was a lot that I didn't. I sincerely hope that Dr. Terry Wahls is able to help many people escape the shackles of debilitating diseases through diet improvement.



I am reminded how important it is to grow nutritious food to make essential vitamins and minerals more accessible to people with a limited income. When I tell people I eat organic, they usually comment that it is so expensive, and I agree! It is. But, the costs are worth the benefit of a healthy, long life.

Thursday, March 1, 2012

Garden Schematics

Planning out the raised garden beds we are going to dig is one of the first steps I'm taking while biding my time until Spring. If you're looking for a place to start, this is where it's at: schematics. Just get yourself some graph paper and have at it!

First, you have to consider what kinds of vegetables and fruits you and your family eat on a regular basis. Do you make lots of chili? Consider growing onions, tomatoes, and peppers. Do you buy watermelon and cantaloupe at the store when they're in season? Try growing your own! If possible, grow vining varieties of plants to trellis up, creating a 3rd dimension to your garden. This saves more space than if you were to plant bush varieties. So, instead of planting bush beans, try to find pole beans. Instead of tomato varieties that bush, find ones that vine.

Next, consider how much space you have to grow your plants. Do you have a small front or back yard? You'd be surprised how much you can fit into a small space! We have a very tiny yard on rented land, and we manage a 6'x4' garden. Why this measurement? Because, any more than 4 feet deep, and we wouldn't be able to reach inside all the way to the middle without compacting the soil. Compacting the soil destroys air pockets within and decreases the yields of your plants. If you are planting varieties that you plan to trellis, such as pole beans, it is best to limit your garden to 3 1/2 feet deep if your length exceeds 6 feet, because again, you don't want to have to step inside the garden and compact the soil.

Once you know the space you have to work with and the varieties of plants you want to grow, the next step is figuring out the alignment of your garden beds to make sure they all get optimal daylight. The long sides of the garden should face North and South, with the vining varieties of plants placed along the North side. Why? To prevent them from shading the shorter plants. In the Northern Hemisphere, the sunlight beams in at a slant from the South. In the Southern Hemisphere the sunlight beams in at a slant from the North. Therefore, if you live in Australia or New Zealand, you'll want to trellis your vining varieties along the South side of your garden beds.

What types of plants do best when planted next to each other and what types of plants negatively affect each other and should therefore be kept apart? This is called companion planting, and a quick search on the internet will bring up many guides to help you figure out which plants do well with which. For example, tomatoes do well when planted with carrots. Peas hate to be planted with anything in the onion family. A lot of gardeners have figured out which plants do well with others by simply observing plant health and crop yields and jotting down these observations in their gardening notebooks. This is why it is also important to keep a detailed journal of your garden - to figure out what works and what doesn't so that you can improve your garden from year to year!

Lastly, you have to give your plants the necessary spacing they need to grow and get enough sunlight. Looking at the seed packages, use the "thin to" measurement for your plant spacing in the garden. Disregard the row recommendations, as mini farmers do not plant crops in traditional rows. In fact, as long as you leave the appropriate "thin to" measurement all the way around the plant, you can space them much more closely than in a conventional garden.

Here is the plan for our small, 24 square foot, 6'x4' raised garden bed. Each square on the grid represents 3 square inches. Therefore, 16 squares equals one square foot.


The tomatoes, eggplant, and squash are all being trellised along the North wall to prevent the sunlight from blocking the shorter plants. Also, I am keeping the peas away from the onions, since they negatively affect each other's growth. You may also notice that I am not planting using a square configuration, but a triangle. This allows me to space plants closer. Carrots, lettuce, and radishes need a minimum of 3 inches between plants. Onions, beets, spinach, and peas need 4 inches. Celery and the various herbs need 6 inches. Potatoes need 12 inches. I am trellising the tomatoes, eggplant, and butternut squash, so they will not need as much space to bush out.


Feel free to use, distribute, and circulate these plans. I claim no rights to any of them, because that's just silly. However, don't feel constricted to them. You can lengthen the garden to 20 feet long, for example. You can also add varieties such as cabbage, broccoli, and cauliflower. It's all up to you!

On the families' properties that I am helping to set up raised beds this year, I aimed for about 100 square feet of double dug beds. I created a schematic that utilizes four 8'x3.5' beds which equals 112 square feet and planned out where to plant each crop variety.


Notice that the walking paths are 3 feet wide between beds. You can make them whatever width you'd like, of course. The garden beds and walking paths would be a total of 19 feet long and 10 feet deep, for a total space used of 190 square feet.

Once I made a rudimentary map of the beds and plant varieties, I made more detailed plans. Here's Bed 1 through 4 in greater detail. Bed 4 is the only one that will not need to be trellised on the North wall. This is because I am companion planting the green beans and corn close enough that the pole beans can climb up the corn stalks for support. The corn benefits from the beans which put nitrogen back into the soil that the corn heavily utilizes. The squash nearby attracts beneficial insects to the corn and beans, reducing pest populations.



You may have noticed that I did not include any broccoli, cabbage, or cauliflower in the above garden beds. This is because these vegetables have to be space 1 foot apart, and I don't personally use these plants in a lot of my cooking. The following beds have been amended to include these veggies.


I made these plans that extend the length of the garden to 10 feet, still with 3.5 feet of width. I also included cabbage, cauliflower, and broccoli.


Any questions? I know I threw a lot at you, so feel free to ask. I'm in a bit of a hurry today, as it's almost time for me to go teach student drivers in the car. I'm also trying to make sure my son gets a bite to eat. Multitasking has it's drawbacks, but I hope I helped to get you off to a good start.

Having plans helps you to know how many seeds you need to buy and how many plants you're going to start in flats indoors to get a head start on the growing season. Next post, I will talk about soil blocking. Happy planning!

Wednesday, February 29, 2012

$145 PayPal Cash Giveaway Winner

The winner of the PayPal giveaway is......... Tracey T. She has been contacted, and her prize has been sent. Congratulations, Tracey!

Thank you, everyone, for supporting new bloggers such as myself! It has been great hearing from you all. I will be participating in future giveaways, and I can't wait to make them available to you.

I have been very busy planning the raised bed gardens which will be central to Mini Farm Sustainability Project. I have started seeds and, thanks to the lovely weather we've had lately in Ohio, I have already double dug our 24 square foot bed. Bendar and I put together shelving and set up growing lights for the seedlings, as well. Most of them have sprouted nicely! I took pictures and will be sharing these experiences with you.

Until then, once again, thanks for stopping by! Here's a little preview of our double dug garden bed:


Our son, Rohnin, had fun playing outside the whole time we were digging.


Tuesday, February 28, 2012

11 Random Things

MLoueez from http://www.mloueez.com tagged me in a fun post and asked 11 questions for me to answer! Check out her blog! The rules:

1. Post these rules
2. Post 11 random things about yourself
3. Answer the questions set for you in their post.
4. Create 11 new questions for the people you tag to answer.
5. Go to their blog and tell them you've tagged them.

11 Random Things About Me

1. I am very picky about the coffee I drink. If it isn't an organic light roast and vanilla-flavored, I will drink it to get my morning dose of caffeine, but I won't enjoy it. Also, I have recently taken up grinding my own coffee beans instead of buying already ground coffee. It adds a ridiculous level of flavor!
2. I don't really have a favorite color. I prefer combinations of colors, my favorites being: orange & green; red, orange, & yellow.
3. To me, the sound of chewing mushy food is one of the most annoying sounds in existence.
4. I love baking pumpkin or butternut squash pies. I baked over 3 dozen pies between Halloween and Thanksgiving last year. This year, I want to bake pies made from my home-grown pumpkins and butternut squashes.
5. It disturbs me that we didn't get much snow this winter, even though I don't like it being on the road when I teach my students as a driving instructor. It would be nice to build a snowman with my son!
6. My house is not very organized, and I am working to correct this little by little.
7. This one might be a little obvious, but I love to grow plants! I feel an overwhelming sense of satisfaction when I go out to the garden and pick something off the vine to serve for supper.
8. I want to change the world for the better, and I have been searching for a way to do so for a long time. I hope my project will make a huge difference for everyone interested.
9. I love glass, and I love displaying it in my kitchen even more! I recently bought a glass pumpkin jar that I cannot wait to put to good use this fall (not that I'm in any rush for fall to get here)!
10. I steam distill all the water my family drinks. It tastes awesome, and I don't have to worry about weird things being in our drinking water.
11. I love to crochet and have stockpiles of yarn in my closet.

11 Questions from MLoueez

1. What makes you smile?
Seeing my son do something silly or say something silly. He surprises me every day!

2. What is your biggest regret?
Wasting thousands of dollars going to business school just to glean only one useful piece of information: sba.gov. If I had to do it all over again, I wouldn't have gone to school for business. I would have become a dietitian.

3. Drink of choice?
Margarita. Definitely margarita.

4. Your goal for 2012 and have you been successful thus far in keeping with it?
I have many goals, and some of them I have been keeping well, while I have fallen off the bandwagon with others. Blogging more often? Check. Regularly exercising? Flop. Starting a thriving mini farm? Still in the works.

5. What is your favorite accessory, besides your wedding ring?
I don't really wear accessories on a regular basis, just a simple hair clip to keep the hair out of my face. I don't know what I would do without it.

6. What is your dream job?
Being a mini farmer on my own land while helping others grow their own food. I'd also love to be a musician, as I've written music and I've played the piano since I was 5.

7. What is your favorite item that you have made?
It would have to be my baked goods if food counts. I love baking zucchini bread, cookies, pies, etc.

8. Biggest pet peeve?
A lack of empathy in our society. If we all had a little more understanding and concern for each other, this world would surely be a better place. Whenever someone is exhibiting a lack of empathy, I have a hard time holding back my frustration and anger.

9. What is your signature dish?
Probably my pumpkin pie. I have invested a great deal of time and love in perfecting my crust-making technique and in discovering the perfect balance of pie filling ingredients, including the type of pumpkin or other squash used.

10. What inspires you?
Seeing what others have done to better their lives, sometimes even in the midst of intimidating odds. Successful mini farmers really inspire me!

11. What is your favorite quote?
"Money isn't everything" - A Lot of Wise People


My 11 Questions

If you could snap your fingers and make 1 thing happen instantly, what would it be?
What's your favorite time of day?
What species of animal companion do you prefer?
What project have you undertaken that has fulfilled you the most?
Are you spontaneous or do you thrive on a routine?
One thing that still scares you from childhood?
If you had to choose between a big house on a small property or a small house on a large piece of land, what would you choose?
Favorite fruit?
Vegetable you eat the most?
What #1 quality do you look for in a friend?
If you could do one dangerous thing without getting hurt, what would it be?

There are my questions; time to tag others for answers! Don't feel pressured to participate; it's just for fun.

Grandma Bonnie @http://grandmabonniescloset.blogspot.com/
Bendar @http://adventuresoutsideofazeroth.blogspot.com/
Zaylyn @http://tootsabellarose.blogspot.com/
Steamjules @http://viewbehindthecounter.blogspot.com/
Megan @http://potatochipcats.blogspot.com/
Kim @http://my-bloggityblog.blogspot.com/
My Journey with Candida (Sorry, I couldn't find your name!) @http://myjourneywithcandida.blogspot.com/
Heather @http://www.ratherbechangingdiapers.com/
Terri @http://www.terrislittlehaven.com/
Jeanette @http://jeanette-myownfourcorners.blogspot.com/
Ideas by Mom @http://ideasbymom.blogspot.com/