Time Is Flying

Time is flying past me at speeds I can't keep up with. With so much going on, it's a wonder I manage to shower some days at all. Gross, I know. It's nice to finally have some time with the Mac. We recently cleaned our garage - it was such a task that both our cars sat outside overnight for a week, it was awful! I feel like my car is mad at me.  

 Anyways, I pulled out my favorite tool in the process, my badass hand sander. I know when I get this out, I have fun things planned in my near future. Right now I'm using it for small projects around the house that I'm painting and getting ready for renters, next it will hopefully finish some projects around my house.  

I cleared around my rhubarb and it looks so happy! It's so healthy and just exploding with life! Being on a gluten free diet, rhubarb is something that I may finally have a use for. It's a cousin to buckwheat, something that we've been eating lately. Maybe I'll learn how to make a gluten free rhubarb pie one day. The thought of not using my personal crust recipe doesn't sit well with me, so I'm not sure I'm looking forward to that. I think I might have to hide the eyes of a betrayed recipe box. 

Cooking has been...a bit backwards. I haven't gone to Costco in a month, and instead go out every couple of days and get what  I need because everything I put together now, involves fresh organic uncooked fruits and/or vegetables. I'm starting to think that my 3 hour shopping trips might have seen their last day of chaos. Could I be so lucky? Mark has also been wanting to do the cooking as he likes to understand his food better, and feel it out as he goes. I'm not entirely sure I'm ok with this, I'm a stay at home wife and mother, shouldn't I be doing the cooking? Well, perhaps it's time to let that go and find a way to fill in the void. I purged my cupboards of food, and went through every single thing that I had. I filled 2 Costco bags with food that I need to distribute elsewhere. It was sad, and refreshing all in one. Now when Mark opens the cupboards, he doesn't see a bunch of food he can't eat. I have one small corner for some things for the girls like cheerios, crackers and peanut butter. P.S., I'll finish what I have, but one day I will need to find a way to make my own peanut butter. I'll go into further detail sometime about peanut butter. 

This was a soup that I made that was super yummy! It was bean based and I got to add some bacon to it. It came from the gluten free cook book that has endless amounts of information in it. It has an awesome and easy recipe for making my own flour so I can finally start making some bread. I have to say that even my girls are enjoying whats been coming to the table. 

I still have terrible cravings for bad things. Chocolate, fast food, Taco Time. It's awful but I'm happy to report that the only things I've cheated with are chocolate and crackers, maybe a piece of gluten loaded bread here and there. Twice I found myself driving towards fast food, and both times I turned myself around and once I got over the mouth watering thought of greasy meaty food, I felt better about my decision to NOT eat what my heart desires. Sometimes I think I could just indulge and binge eat a bunch of stuff, but I can barely finish a half sandwich - which I've been getting at the Co-Op. They have amazing gluten free sandwiches there and it's become our new "fast food".  I am off to paint so have a wonderful day!

The Problem With Change

Changes. Some are good, some are bad, some are just darn hard! I watch my husband go through these changes, although healthy and so rewarding, it's still hard to change how you think about food, and drinks. So with these changes, I've decided that I too need to make some personal changes. I thought it might be easier to do this on my own terms instead of waiting for someone to tell me to do it. Yes friends, we are talking about that morning cup of joe. Coffee, latte, caps, whatever you want to call it - it too, will have an end but will be given visitation rights. I plan to kick my morning coffee, and replace it with good tea and lemon. Human's are suppose to drink warm water (preferably with lemon or lime) in the mornings to wake your warm sleeping belly. Warm water wakes all the acids that sit in your intestines over night and restores your body's PH back to neutral. 

So this morning, I sipped on Chamomile tea with lemon and ate a hard boiled egg with the slightest hint of sea salt. I'm sure I'll get a caffeine headache sometime today, and probably tomorrow, and hopefully not the next day. 

So in short, the plan is to cut my coffee out. I hope to be able to enjoy a good latte maybe once a month. But I know that once I get to that point, I probably won't want coffee at all. 

The second part of the plan? Is to not freak out about it. Baby talk will happen, sneaking trips to my favorite barista which whom I have free coffee available to me, will happen. I expect this to take time and, I'm no stranger to afternoon coffee - it's going to happen. I've always gone through coffee phases, and during an off phase I would buy a mocha, savor it, look forward to it and then could be done with it. Let's pull these big girl panties everyone talks about on and get this snowball rolling. 

P.S., the eggs we get from our friends farm, make the best and most creamy hard boiled eggs ever. Yumm!  

I challenged myself last night. I told myself to make a dinner, without going to the store (a huge challenge in these early weeks). As bland and boring as this plate looks, it was really good and satisfying! I made my first batch of buckwheat, cooked only one chicken breast, shredded it, added black beans and the slightest amount of pepper, and then of course some lightly steamed greens. It was so simple, but as I watched myself "get away" with using only one piece of chicken, and only one pepper, and one head of broccoli, I couldn't believe how much I was stuffing my family. Mark and I cleaned out plates, and the girls did pretty darn good at eating and we were all satisfied for the rest of the night. Mark and I topped ours with the ever so slightest amount of bleu cheese and it gave it an awesome little kick here and there. I felt 18 all over again as I was trying so hard to come up with something edible. 

I'm starting to see past the costs of being gluten free, because by not buying nearly as many meats and expensive dairy products, I could see myself lowering my grocery bill. It's going to take a lot of time, and I will make a lot of mistakes. We did become members of the Skagit Valley Food Co-Op, with kickbacks! It's a start!

Breathing Goes A Long Way...

Breathing CAN go a long way, if you remember to do it! I often forget and instead get overwhelmed, overworked, and stressed out. Trying really hard to get a grip over here, and it's not going so well. We are working hard on becoming a gluten free/dairy free household. Hardest. Thing. Ever. 

This was a simple simple crock pot gluten free meal. Chicken in broth, add some onion and whole celery sticks. Put it on high for 4 hours, take out, shred, add lots of hot sauce (make sure it's gluten free Val) and then you make lettuce wraps topped with fresh shredded carrots - thanks only to Pampered Chef for that amazingly awesome tool! Sprinkle some bleu cheese and fresh celery, wrap, slowly consume and be happy. A bit on the spicy side, but all around good and satisfying.

 Remember the experimental tulip bulbs I rescued? Well they were planted, struggled a bit, and then thrived. This picture is not them thriving, I had just planted them. The yellow one bloomed, the red one thats all bent over had a hard time, but then reached back up into the sunlight and started to bloom. I stepped out to take a picture of my happy tulips only to find the flowers dismantled and thrown out of my dirt...I'm pretty confident that I have Isabel to thank for that one. Looks like she played "loves me, loves me not"...I'll try to replant them but this might have been too much for them. The garden in the back of this picture will hopefully one day be all grass.

 A girlfriend gave me this book - sorry for the blur - and it's amazing! It gives me the baby talk that I need to be able to execute this change without the stress of just not knowing how to make anything. I've been looking at my pantry, and I'm thinking that I might have to go through and get rid of everything I have and just start over. The more we learn about this diet, and they way that humans are suppose to be eating, I cringe every time I open a cupboard. I have pounds of flour that I will never be able to use again, so why keep them around. "The more you cook, the more you rot!" - A very smart man! Well shit, maybe I won't be doing as much "cooking" anymore.

My trillium is blooming. I wish these got taller. They're so low to the ground they're hard to see. But I have lots and they love where they are. This bunch is nestled between two different types of ferns, a very dainty Japanese fern, and the good ol' Washington found ones. (I don't know it's book name)

Remember the dandelions? Well, we got most of it cleared. We stopped just past the last blueberry bush, and then had a major discussion. It involves the removal of ANOTHER 3 trees, and I...don't want to talk about that yet. 

Resets, Upsets, And A Bit In Between

Annihilation. Reset. Upset. That is how I feel as my plans changed dramatically overnight. Everything seems to have been flipped around. After much discussion between the Mr. and I, we have decided to make the large garden on the road a vegetable garden, (the last thing I ever thought I would see in this garden) and we have decided to rid ourselves of most of the garden area in the back yard so we can have a much larger grassy area for the girls, and we will be adding evergreen trees against the fence lines as needed. I will  only have one small section of garden, and all my raised boxes in the back yard. The rest will be grass. That means we have three tree's to pull and I'm not looking forward to that work. 

This is what the future vegetable garden looked like. It's about 7 feet wide, and runs the length of the house. Part of it has flowers that grow well and take up a whole corner, so we just maintain those and the two large bushes that sit outside of two bedroom windows. This garden also has six blueberry bushes that prove to be faithful in their production of juicy berries. I see those bushes and only see pie, jam, and crepes in the summertime. This patch is a huge work in progress and I will keep you updated.  We are so close to be being done with the first shoveling. 

Coffee grounds. After bla bla bla bla about how good coffee grounds are for your garden, while making my coffee this morning I decided to empty my grounds into this pretty canister. Since I have hundreds of filters I will never use, I used some for a liner and spilled the beans. I have to do some reading as to what exactly I should be doing with them. Double bonus is that I won't be making such a mess with the grounds in my compost bucket. Score! I might throw egg shells in their if I can remember 

 An experiment. While we were shoveling the dandelion garden, of the hundred or so bulbs we pulled I put these aside with some dirt and water and will try to transplant them somewhere. Overnight the yellow one got color and is about to bloom. I threw in a red one late last night, it's still in shock. Time will tell what happens with these guys. Your suppose to dig up tulips every two years and split them. These have obviously been neglected. 

Because dammit every good morning begins with properly foamed milk! I cherish these calm moments as I have them. The Mr. and I are gearing up to do a walk through as we prepare to get another house ready for renters. This will be so different from the last house, it's well updated and has nice hard floors.  Last time it became a serious renovation, (previous blogs have before and after pictures of that house) but this will be just a remodel, thankfully! I get a serious high when I get to go into houses and fix them. Too bad my house had to be the experimental one, I'm still fixing my own mistakes. I've had such a hard time figuring out my musical taste for the day, while writing I went from BT&H, to Metallica, to Rob Zombie, to Twista to System of A Down. Too many decisions! 

Time To Let Go

Things have been busy, and it's been a good busy. We have pooled our energy and started tackling some huge projects this past week, things I have purposely ignored and with good reason. We finally pulled out a bunch of very large bushes, small tree's, and a lot of what was in between. For the first time ever, we are seeing some blank canvases in the gardens and it's exciting, but I'd be lying if I said it's been easy. My body is sore, tired and already has it's first tan line. 

This garden is bigger than I originally thought. We pulled a walnut tree, another ugly something, two large fushia bushes, and a large bush of some sort. We lost just about all our privacy from the living room, but that will soon be fixed. We planted our new winter rose, Pink Frost Helleborus. It was a gift from my husband to both of us for our anniversary. It was happily planted and now we get to plant around it. Still a lot of work to be done here..

The fact that all this major work is finally being done, means two things. For starters, it's amazing to have a husband who is dedicated to a good garden. The knowledge this man has from his days on the farm is priceless.  Second, all this time I have been trying so hard to save some of the gardens and bring them back to their former glory, the award winning garden it once was. I learned that the former owner made wine out of the grapes that grow in the back, so I suspect she was either drunk a lot and did good gardening that way, or she hired help. Either way, I have decided that it's just time for a lot of it to go. It's too hard to live another's vision, Mark and I want our own. Hopefully this way it will be even more successful, because it will truly be ours. Short of the winter rose, I'm going to finish pulling up all those other plants and flowers.

 Here's a close up of the flower, Helleborus Pink Frost. I wasn't familiar with this before, but I am over the moon in love with it! I think it's happy in it's new spot. We have been talking about re-graveling too, something I would LOVE to do, but holy back breaking work! The positives outweigh the negatives.

Ahh, garage sale season. A few weeks ago, I was given a request. Someone wanted a small, boxy type thing that could easily be concealed and locked. I saw it as a challenge, and set out early in the season for some hunting. I honestly thought that it would take all season to meet all the listed desires, found this piece for $3. It's mostly real wood, the door is in good condition, and it's overall a sound piece of furniture. Now I get to make it manly. I can't wait to get my hand sander out, something about being covered in saw dust. It's exciting. I'll give an update! It's suppose to rain at the end of the week, that might be a good time to get these projects checked off, like my growing pile of sewing projects.