Garden Plans

We close on our new house on Monday, and our home improvement plan-making is in full swing, including plans for our first real fruit & vegetable garden! Even though we've lived in apartments, the past few years we've maintained a few potted vegetables, but we are planning to step it up a few notches in our new place.

We've been talking about this garden for a long time now, and we are asking ourselves a few questions to decide what to plant.

1) What do we eat most often right now? Green beans, peppers, lettuce, spinach, onions, and basil.
2) What could we grow that will store well? Berries (jam!), tomatoes-onions-jalapenos-cilantro (salsa!), and potatoes.

Once we came up with our list of plants, we started our research on how much spacing/sunlight each will need as well as what plants grow well in the same bed. Then we mapped it all out and MS-Paint'd our plan so we could share it with all of you!

Tentatively, we are going to build two raised beds next to our driveway that are 20' x 4' each, with a 4' walkway in between. On the east end of the garden area, there is a partially shady spot near one of our trees (that's what the big ol' gray circle on the map is all about).

1 Potatoes	6 Kale	11 Jalapenos	16 Basil
2 Beans (Bush)	7 Lettuce	12 Strawberries	17 Cilantro
3 Asparagus	8 Spinach	13 Blackberries	18 Oregano
4 Tomatoes	9 Onions	14 Raspberries	19 Parsley
5 Cucumbers	10 Bell Peppers	15 Blueberries

We don't want to overdo it this first year and have half our garden go to waste, so we're probably not going to plant as much as we have in our plan. For example, we will probably only plant one row of green beans but leave some space in case we decide to do a few more rows for next year. Oh, and we've already missed the planting season for some of these, so those won't actually make an appearance until next year.

Also, have I mentioned that we've never done this before? I think we'll both be happy as long as our garden isn't an utter failure.

Garbage Challenge Strategies

Alright, we're in our second month of what we've been calling "The Garbage Challenge", and we're starting to put to use some of the strategies that will (fingers crossed) help us reduce our total waste.

1) Get paperless statements.
2) Use rags instead of paper towels. My paper towel usage is quite embarrassing.
3) Pay attention to packaging.
4) Reuse produce bags.
5) COMPOST. We will post again on this later once we are moved into our house and using an actual outdoor composter. We're still trying to decide what kind of composter is best...

In the interim, we are just using a small bin with a tight lid to hold our food scraps.
6) Eat more whole foods. Including foods we will grow in our own backyard this summer! (hopefully)

We also want to find a way to opt-out of junk mailings, since they make up about 50% of the mail we get and they always go straight to the trash. Haven't figured this out yet though.

And here are some things we already do:

1) Reusable grocery bags.
2) Never buy bottled water. And if we have to, we refill them as many times as we can before recycling them.
3) Save and reuse gift bags/tissue paper.
4) Recycling. I hate to admit it, but I was once a non-recycler.

So, that's the plan! We'll see soon if it's actually working.

Ellie Monster Turns One

My puppy girl is going to be a year old in a few weeks. How has time passed that quickly?!

So I was thinking the other day about all the ways she has helped me prepare for being a parent someday. Here's the rundown on the things she has forced taught me to have:

Patience. Some people can internalize their frustration and let it out constructively after they have calmed down. I am not one of those people. When I get super frustrated, I basically explode with emotion. There is throwing and crying and cursing and gnashing of teeth. I can't even count the number of times that I have gotten to this point while puppy training. People warned me when we were first talking about getting a dog that it was a lot of work. It's so true.

Over the last 12 months I have severely improved my ability to stay calm and collected in the face of total disobedience. My dog doesn't really have an "I didn't do it" look, but I've definitely gotten the "Yeah, so what if I ate the memory card for the camera, what are you gonna do about it" face from her. There is, quite possibly, nothing more composure-shattering than when your animal, who knows better, intentionally ignores/spites you. I'm sure it's at least 1,000 times more difficult when your opponent is a same-language-speaking, tiny human.

Selflessness. The times when Ellie has needed me most, always seemed to be around 3am on a week night. The event was usually something like an upset stomach (surely caused by eating something she wasn't supposed to) that resulted in her vomiting, etc in her kennel. Which then required one of us to get up and clean her/the kennel/the carpet, do a load of laundry so she has a fresh pillow/towels to sleep on, and rub her belly until she falls asleep. Who doesn't want to sacrifice hours of precious sleep for that? Oh, me.

In those moments though, I could feel just how much she loves me. It's really pretty great to have someone or something that just needs you like that. Once I could get past the frustration (see #Patience), I actually kinda treasured these moments.

A more relaxed attitude. Having a perfectly neat home (even for a moment), with no random plastic shrapnel strewn about is a thing of the past. Treasured home decor pieces and picture frames now all have at-least-slightly-chewed corners. Being on time happens less often because, sometimes, the dog just does not understand that you have somewhere to be and she would rather watch the birds in the trees than go #2 for you.

But it's all good. I absolutely love and adore her.

Buffet Table Refinished

So you remember about a week ago when I posted about the great table we found at Goodwill? Well, we got to work right away on refinishing it and I'm excited to show you how it turned out! Here's the before/after shot!

I am in love with it! Here's the process w/ pictures...

It's the Little Things...

We will be closing on our first home in less than 3 weeks, and we are beyond excited! Aaron and I have been busy making plans and doing research. We're also becoming frequent "just looking" visitors at Home Depot because we can't actually start the work/making purchases until we have the keys!

I did, however, make one purely-for-fun purchase out of excitement/anticipation. I was catching up on posts from All Things Thrifty when I ran across these great custom address stamps!

They're from Paper Cafe, and I couldn't help myself, I just had to get one. After much consideration and debate, I did eventually decide on a design. Here's the one I ended up going with:

So it's just a fun, little thing, but I can't wait til I get to actually use it. And have a permanent address again! I have moved 11 times in the last decade! Hopefully we will only move once (maybe twice) in the next one :)

A Great Find

We went rummaging, auctioning, and goodwilling this weekend for things to put in our new house (that we close on in 3 weeks!) We really enjoy auctions in particular, if you're patient you can get some really great stuff for super cheap. And they are so fun to just find interesting stuff and see what it goes for.

Not only do we have a long list of home improvements to make to our new place, but I've also got a long list of furniture that I want to purchase. One of the pieces that I've been keeping an eye out for is a buffet table to put in our dining room. In the 2.5 years that we've been married, we have never even taken our "good dishes" out of the box! We haven't ever had a place for them/enough cabinet space. Definitely need to change that in the new house.

So, I've been scouring blogs and magazines for ideas. I had decided what size and level of detail I was looking for, and when I spotted this table at Goodwill I knew it would be perfect!

The table definitely has scratches and stains, but I wasn't too worried about those because we're planning on re-finishing it. It's got an older/retro look to it, but I just know that a new finish will make it pretty fabulous. I love the hardware and the shapes in the doors.

Oooh and I haven't told you the best part yet... Want to guess what we bought it for? A whopping 10 bucks! Well, that was until we tried (and failed) to load it into our Civic... During our struggle with the table and our car doors, we were approached by a kind man who offered to drive it to our place in his truck! We paid him $14 for his time & gas, so really the total cost was $24... But still!

Our Family Mission Statement

Shortly after we got married, Aaron and I decided we wanted to have a family mission statement. We wanted to put down in writing those values that are important to us and that we would like to instill in our children someday. Since then, I started following a great blog, Simple Mom, that had a post on how to come up with your own family mission statement. We didn't follow her steps, but if we ever redo ours I think we would revisit her post and give it a try!

Here's what we came up with:

In our family, our mission is to:

Be RESPECTFUL in all that you do. Have reverence for God's people, creatures, and earth.
Be SERVANTS to those who have need, great or small. You are the hands and feet of the Lord.
Have COMPASSION. Especially for those whose cries are not heard.
Be HUMBLE in everything. Your honor comes from God, He will lift you up.

And the foundations of all these fruits shall be LOVE. Love for family, for self, for others, and for God. Love will open the eyes and hearts of the world.

"Let all that you do be done with love." 1 Corinthians 16:14

After getting this all down and feeling pretty good about it, we wanted to display it somewhere central in our home. So we got to photoshoppin' and put everything in pretty fonts, printed it out on some colored cardstock, and then put it in a nice frame. Right now we have the frame on our kitchen counter and it serves as a nice reminder.

Disclaimer: The characteristics/principles that we decided on for our family's statement aren't necessarily things that we ourselves claim to be good at (in fact, sometimes we just plain suck at them). Instead, these are things that we value and want our family to strive for, aka we wish we were better at them and are trying really hard to not suck at so much.

House Tour!

Today we had our inspection, and everything went pretty well. There were a few things that came up that we didn't know about but no dealbreakers! And the things that we were worried about turned out to be OK! Warm fuzzies.

While we were at the house, I took the opportunity to do a quick video tour. Enjoy!

House Tour from Aaron Wimmer on Vimeo.

The Garbage Challenge - Month 1

Happy Earth Day! (Only a day late)

We have been weighing our garbage for about a month now and (as promised) we want to share the results with you! Overall, we had almost 73 lb of trash in 4 weeks. Here is the breakdown across the 5 categories we have been tracking:

What we've called "Misc." is basically just everything that doesn't fit into one of the other categories, and, as you can see, it is a huge portion of our trash. It's quite perplexing to me, really that we have that much random garbage. I don't even know what that consists of. I guess that's one of our goals through this process though is to become more conscious of what we are throwing out and figuring out how we can minimize it.

In my original post, I gave you some stats on how much garbage the average American produces in a day. Here's how we stack up:

There are some caveats to our data that make us look far less wasteful than we actually are. In particular, our data only includes trash from our home. The data we collected from the Clean Air site includes waste generated at work, restaurants, etc.

One of our goals in this project is definitely to reduce the amount of trash we have overall. The thought that we could potentially produce almost 1,000 lb of garbage in one year make me sick to my stomach. Eek.

A second goal of our is to increase the percentage of our trash that is reusable in some way (recyclable or compostable). This first month our garbage was pretty much 50-50 between reusable and "true waste".

And how are we going to reach those goals? Still trying to figure that out. Check back later!

House: For the win.

A little backstory for those that don't know about our home-buying experience thus far, check out this post. By the way, that house did not work out, and it was our 6th contract that fell through.

We have had a more frustrating path than most, I believe, when it comes to our first-time home purchase. As of last week, we were feeling exhausted and a tad pessimistic. We had been on a trend of seeing 5-10 houses per week, and there was always one reason or another why any house was not right for us.

The first time we saw this house, we didn't actually like it. It was well out of the price range we were looking at, and it needed some work. A few days after we saw it though, it dropped by $20,000! We saw the house again after the price drop and, looking at it under a different lens, we LOVED it! We decided to put an offer on it the next day. We left our Realtor's office that day holding our breath, remembering that we had been in this spot several times before and still never actually made it to a closing day. This house is a foreclosure though, so we were hoping to hear back one way or another pretty quickly.

Three days later we had still not heard anything back on the house, and we were starting to get anxious. At our Sunday morning church group, we heard a message on God's will. We have been working through the book of James for the last few months and this particular Sunday we were on James 4:13-17:

Look here, you people who say, "Today or tomorrow we are going to a certain town and will stay there a year. We will do business there and make a profit." How do you know what will happen tomorrow? For your life is like the morning fog – it's here a little while, then it's gone. What you ought to say is, "If the Lord wants us to, we will live and do this or that." Otherwise you will be boasting about your own plans, and all such boasting is evil. Remember, it is sin to know what you ought to do and then not do it.

These words hit very close to home because of this whole housing situation and how it plays into our long-term plans for our family. As a "Type A" person, this was not exactly a message I felt enthusiastic about. I love making plans. I have a 1-year, a 5-year, and a 20-year plan. And when my plans get changed, I freak out. So the reminder that God can just uproot my life and destroy my plans makes me less-than-pumped.

That night I was reading and reflecting on these verses from Matthew 6:

Seek first the Kingdom of God above all else, and live righteously, and he will give you everything you need. So don't worry about tomorrow, for tomorrow will bring its own worries. Today's trouble is enough for today.

I made a commitment last night that when I get frustrated or stressed or worried about our housing situation, I'm going to dive into God's Word. I gave it all up to Him. The stress, the worry, and the decision itself. If it works out, God has decided that's the house for us, and if it doesn't, He's got something else in store for us.

I was reading these verses at 9:30pm, just before bed. I wouldn't see the email until the next morning, but at 9:33pm we got the accepted offer email from our Realtor.

God is awesome.