More pictures...

More of the pictures that couldn't be posted yesterday...


This is one of the pipes that we found in the garden plot... They are about as long as my lower arm, and bigger than my hand around... They are made of a terra cotta type substance.

:) Here are the first things to grow in the garden! This means that it's ok to have the garden there!!!


Here's the progress of the daffy's as of yesterday, I don't think any more popped open today. They are looking so good!


We went walking to pick up cans today, and found some plants that we don't know what they are so I thought I'd post them on here to see what we can find out. This one is the first. It has velvety leaves.


This is the second. We took a far away picture, as well as a close up. It looks like Bamboo to us, but I've never seen Bamboo green, just dried, and I didn't know if bamboo could grow in our climate. UPDATE: We just answered our own question with this one! Click here for the Missouri Conservationalist Magazine Website where we found out the history of Bamboo in the Ozarks!

And this is the last picture for today. I am trying my hand at hand washing clothes. We didn't have the money to go to the laundromat for a couple weeks, and really need clean clothes. I put hot (boiled) water in the bucket, some of my homemade laundry detergent, then the clothes, then finished off with more boiling water. I swished that alot with a mop handle, then let it sit for a while. Swished some more, then rung them out. The water was disgusting! This picture is at the beginning of the second wash. I decided to try running them through soapy water twice, then rinse several times, then hang dry. Really not as much work as I though it would be. Rather enjoyable, as long as I don't do to much at once. May start doing it for all of our whites at least!

My hands are dirty.... Yay!

This is all you get today... I took more, but the camera batteries died. We were in the garden most of the day yesterday and from 9-1 today. We went inside then because of rain scares. Here's what we've done so far...
This is the total amount "tilled up". Wait till you see all the rocks we've gotten out!


This is only one pile of rocks, thre's another pile the same size! There's a bunch of pipes in there, we think they were sewage pipes from the house that was there.

Here's the other pile, it's a little neater.

Here's the half done and that's ready to be planted. It's rockless, glassless, and everything. I sat and cleaned it out with my hands!

This is the other patch. It's pretty much just dug up. I've worked some by hand, but we've just been trying to dig it all up and get the big rocks out. Then I'll go back through and get the glass and little rocks and other things out.

It's pretty cool, we've found all kinds of glass, from dishes and such, marbles, a jack, a piece of a comb, nails and some other stuff. Kinda like an archaeologist, huh?! Hopefully if we keep going at this rate (this is 2-3 days worth of work done), we'll be done by the time we want to plant!

My Coupon Binder, and the growing garden!

This is my coupon binder! I found the binder at Sam's Club for $7 or $8 on sale.

This is what you see as you open it. To the right I have my pouch with scissors in it (2 pair so if someone else is helping there's one for them too). Behind that is one of the provided dividing pouches where I have pens, pencils, and a calculator. To the right are all of the coupons!

This is the farthest to the left. Where I have all of this weeks current ads.

This is what it looks like inside the right side. I used baseball card pages that hold 1, 2, 3, 4, 8 & 9 coupons.
This is what it looks like filled. I have sections for Food (Beverages, Canned Goods, Produce, Baking/Cooking, Snack Foods, Grains, Frozen/Refridgerated), HBA, Cleaning Products, Household Supplies, & Resturants.

The garden is growing again!!! We spent about 1 1/2 hours last night with the potato fork and hoe, working it up. We're hoping by next week we can have lettuce in the ground! The part that's dug up so far is the lettuce bed, that way even if we don't have the rest dug up yet, we can get it in the ground.

The daffy's are slowly coming back. Here's the pitiful one that I've been taking pictures of.

And here's a sideways (still can't figure that out) picture of the rest of the blooming ones. You can't see if very well, but the one closest to the porch also has some blooms on it.

The right to dry our clothes in the Sunshine!

I found this picture on http://www.laundrylist.org/. It is a grass roots movement to regain the right to line dry our clothes. I had no idea that it was illegal in some places. I know that some home owners associations prohibit it, but for it to be illegal? Wow. Well, that's all I have to say for today. Just wanted to share this photo, and to share that website!

Spring is on the way!

Ok, for everyone who's been asking... Here's the house! Ok, the front porch has some of the garden tools on it right now, because the back porch has our washer and dryer in it, and the front porch shields them from the rain. But isn't it cute!

Here's the daffy's before the snow came. They were doing so good!

This is them after the snow... :( They are drooping and pitiful now.

Here's the garden, starting to be plowed up. He's "tilling" with a potato fork, that's why its taking so long.

And this is our wonderful plant that we don't know what it is. We got it from a friend, who dug it up out of her garden and we put it in the car, and forgot about it. A week later, we remember it was there, in the hot car, without water. We planted it in a pot, and hoped for the best. It's still going! It died at the end of the season, and we picked it all out, and left the pot, hoping the roots were still good. Here it is, coming back! A friend said they thought it was a yucca, but we have yet to find out.

P.S. I just got an email from Red Box (the movie rental kiosk at walmart).

It's March Movie Madness for redbox, so get in the game… on Wednesdays! Visit redblog every Wednesday in March for your Free Movie Wednesday code. Then visit your local redbox kiosk for your FREE 1 NIGHT's RENTAL.

Yay for free movie rentals!

Shopping Spree!

More pictures! We went shopping with our tax refund check. The below pictures are what we got, with $50!!!

6 pounds of ground pork for 1.99 a pound, costing 1.96 each! We dug out all the ones that were this price, as all the others were at least $3.00 a pound. These were vaccumed sealed and frozen.

We're debating how much the pork chops were (we don't have the recipt here) but in the picture it looks like it was $19, but I thought it was less than that. But there were 8 huge pork chops in there, and the chicken was a 6 pounder for 88 cents a pound! All the others were 98 cents a pound.

The boil in a bag rice, I don't usually buy, but these were $1.92 each, and they all had $1.00 coupons on them! We hunted down all of the ones with the coupons on them. So we got them for 92 cents each! The Clorox Dish Cloths and Kitchen Towels were on sale as well. Starting price was $5.96. We got the Dish Cloths for $2 and the Kitchen Towels were $3. The other item in the picture is cloth napkins. We've been meaning to buy some to last us until I get a serger to make some. They were $2 for 4 napkins.

Ok, so this was kinda a splurge. These are a new product that they had on sale for $2 instead of $2.98. We got some to try and loved it so went back and bought 6 bags to freeze!

This is my new pot rack. Not sure if another will be going up next to it, but here it is. Tabatha gave me the idea, and so I thought I'd thank her for that as well. It's just a shelf hung upside down. We bought the shelf for about $5 at Wally World, and then we bought hooks to hang it with, and S hooks to hang the pots with.

Daffy's... we think

No pictures today, but we think we have Daffodils coming up in the front yard. The irises we planted last fall seem to be spreading some as well.

I have started my very own coupon binder, and will post pictures of it soon. Haven't gone shopping with it really yet, but got to use a 20% off coupon at Big Lots yesterday, and got $39 for $33. Got some 1/2 off v-day stuff, and lots of groceries. Some scrapbooking stuff too. I love their scrapbooking stuff.

Ok, well I'll post more tomorrow (hopefully).

An organized Kitchen... almost!

More Pictures!!! I just can't stop now that I've figured it out!

Max again, being lazy, what he does best!

Princess & her Pa looking out the window "Whatcha looking at guys?"

This is what the babies got for Christmas. They were gorging themselves when they didn't have food out all the time, and they drink so much water we couldn't keep enough out for them! Got them at Dollar General for $2.50 each!

Ok, these are back to the kitchen. I was thoughtless for a bit, and took them all upright, and can't change them on this computer! This is the baking/cooking cabinet.

The vegetable cabinet.

The Fridge Door. All clean and pretty!

The inside of the fridge. The canned veggies are in there so that we think to use them quicker (DH's idea). It's so pretty clean!

The above the refrigerator freezer. This is used for the meals ahead, ice making and snacks. We haven't been grocery shopping yet this month.

I bought myself a toaster oven yesterday! It was only $10 at walmart (I hate that place but sometimes can get good things on clearance.) I'm still learning to use it, as I've never had one.

The freezer all organized. The top shelf is baking stuff, the next is meat, next is veggies and the bottom is fruit. In the door we have pot pies, freezer jam, frozen soups and jiffy mixes.

The top shelf of the freezer.

Next to the freezer we have a 5 gallon bucket for flour, and one for sugar, a small trash can of rice (we bought it for that purpose before having free 5 gallon buckets), and my containers of organized cookie cutters. More pictures tomorrow maybe!

Updates with pictures this time!!!

So I thought I'd add some pictures today, since I finally found the cord and learned how to do it. I don't have any pictures of the house on here, other than the project we've been working on.

This is Princess, our American Shorthair calico. She is about 2 1/2, and finally growing past some of her kitten-ness. When we first got her she wouldn't sit still for anyone, and was very fiesty, biting and clawing everyone. Now she will try to be good for pretty much anyone. She sleeps with Grant & I and when other people come over, she at least tries to snuggle up against them!
In this picture she's helping us with the sorting and organizing of the cabinets.

This one is Max, our Russian Blue. He is our baby. We've had him since before we got married. He's like 4 years old now. :( He's growing up too fast. He is a snuggler and such a baby. He wants to be with whichever of us is awake and in the house, and if no one is awake, then he needs to be near the one sleeping. They both are also great watch-cats. They both seem to take turns watching the door and seeing who comes in. Especially when I'm home alone sleeping.

Now I'll show you our project that we're still kinda working on.

First Grant cleared out all the cabinets... This caused some stress for a little while, as you can probably imagine, but it really helped getting everything out in the open so we could see what we had.

Here's all the store bought canned veggies, (we didn't have as much home canned last year, and some was given to us.)

All the "grains" and such went on top of the upright freezer.
For some reason some of the other "grains" made it onto the floor beside the freezer, along with beans and pasta.

Here is Grant modeling with his vienna sausages. He keeps telling me that if I go to visit one of my homesteading friends for a while to learn stuff, he will live off of vienna sausages and bread for the entire time I'm gone!

Here I am making my inventory of groceries.

These are of part of the inventory. I started with meat, and made a boxes for the amounts that we want to keep on hand, then I'm going to laminate them, so that when we use something we can mark the box, then when I go grocery shopping (hopefully eventually once a month) I can know what we need.

And this last one is Princess helping mommy make the inventory. She seems to like being involved. Thats all for now!

Things to come...

Yay! We spent all day yesterday morning orgainizing our freezers, refrigerator and cabinets. We finally got our upright deep freezer to our house, its been at a friends house since before we moved. We have been working on making up an inventory so that we can keep track of what we have and what we need. I have taken pictures of the whole escapade and as soon as we can track down the cord will be posting them (yes, I will finally have pictures!!!). Will update tomorrow!

I'm Back!

I don't know how often I'm going to be able to post, until we get the computer and internet at home, but I'm going to try to keep this fairly regular again. I miss getting to write to everyone and getting support and hearing from everyone. We've been very busy lately.

*The house still isn't organized, however one room down, three to go. I have the bathroom completely organized for the time being. That's the first room that is going to be remodeled (as of right now.) We are working on the bedroom tonight, which shouldn't take long with both of us working on it.

*The garden is coming along nicely (as nice as it can in January). We've temporarily lossed our sanity, and have decided until we get the tiller that we are hopefully getting this spring we're going to do it by hand. We've been raking dead grass for what seems like forever, but everytime we work on it it makes us feel so good knowing that we've done it ourselves with our bare hands and simple tools. We've going to start on spadeing it soon.

*We've both been working like crazy. Grant (DH) is still working at the kids rehab place. He still enjoys it, but we're hoping soon for him to move to a day position. What we're looking at will be wonderful, as he'll work days, and work teaching the kids about gardening. :) The best of both worlds. And of course, me with another momentary lapse of judgement and my move to management. I can't believe the things that people do to people in service postions. I saw it as a cashier but I'm the brunt of it as a manager. Sometimes I just want to scream at them, but then I remember why God has put me there. It is a blessing to see how many people are blessed by me being there.

Well I think thats all for now. We've starting outlining the garden, now we just have to come up with the money in the budget for seeds and plants. Hoping for a patio blueberry bush and strawberries in a pot on the patio as well. I bought a strawberry pot with my birthday money. More later!

I'm still here!

So, this will be a short post, but I wanted to let everyone know how we are doing. Sorry there hasn't been a post in a while. I will try (key word; try) to post a longer one tomorrow. I recently got a promotion at work and am now the third key (lowest manager) at work. I went from 20 hours a week if I was lucky to now between 30 and 40 hours a week and got a 50 cent raise! So needless to say I've been quite busy. We're hoping with tax money that we will get a computer and a couple months of internet so that I can keep up with this and my yahoo groups better. I think that's all I'll do for now, but I'll post again as soon as I can.