It's January

 Still here. Still plugging away at life. Both kids are in school. Phil is.... Phil. 

I'm super happy to finally have some time to myself but before I can even do that.. I've been clearing out and decluttering the house. I've donated so many things, I made more than 5 trips to Goodwill. I've given away so much on Buy Nothing. I feel lighter? For a very long time I really thought I should SELL everything that I don't want anymore and I've come to the realization that our house should not be a holding area for "stuff" that I need to sell. My house is not a store. I've let go of the amount of money spent on items and just said "eff it." Get it out of my house so I don't have to spend the mental energy on it anymore. When you constantly are thinking about your stuff, it's robbing you of the awesome things that you could be DOING instead. 

I unloaded over 7 bags of clothes from my closets. It was stuff that was too small. Fancy work clothes that I'm not going to wear again. Old t-shirts. Old ill fitting clothes. Clothes that I thought I would wear. Clothes that I kept that I just LIKED but didn't wear. I started trying stuff on and wore it around for awhile and then put it in a pile if it made me itchy. If I have to dry clean it, I decided to donate it. I don't want to spend the time, energy, or money on dry cleaning unless I absolutely need to. 

I have only tackled a small portion of toys. Unfortunately Baby Chewie doesn't play favorites with toys and so he has his interests in many things - cars, trucks, rocket ships, books, action figures, LEGO, trains, PJ Masks, and everything in between. And he has way too many cars. At least 5 bins. It's time for 3 of those bins to go. 

I gave away all the wooden toys that I liked but got tosses aside. I gave away Barbies and babies and books. I can now go through all the Christmas and winter books - instead of putting those away I will post them on Buy Nothing and put the rest in the Free Little Libraries in the neighborhood.

And I decided not to buy books AT ALL this year until my library requests and my to read pile are down to nothing. I know. That's a HUGE challenge for me - there's two cookbooks sitting in my Barnes & Noble cart right now. So.... we'll see what happens... 

Saying Goodbye to Orange Juice

Orange juice is the bike. Not the actual juice.

This kid finally outgrew the orange bike and he was SO SAD. We had to take a goodbye picture with his first handbrake-only bike. It served him well - it was heavy enough to help him keep his balance but after doing Cuyuna several times and Colorado trails we decided it was time to upgrade him to a bigger, and much lighter bike. We ended up going with a Commencal for his new 16 inch. Now we go onto bigger and faster and more trails with more features. He can now do wheelies with his lighter bike. He's been really fun to watch learn how to ride (and he's had many scrapes, bruises, falls, etc...). 

I was really happy to see it go to a LITTLE GIRL NAMED RITA. When I heard that from her dad who picked it up, I almost screamed for absolute joy. She's getting an awesome bike to learn on with upgraded brakes for little kids and she's going to be awesome. 

 

School has Started!

School has started! Both have started, Baby Chewy is no longer Baby Chewy, he's now a Kindergartner. I sometimes have a few minutes to myself - but as it seems in the last 5 weeks of school, I can rarely get my shit together to have time for myself. 

Or shall I say.. life keeps happening around me when I would really enjoy taking a break.

So here's a photo of Phil. Waiting patiently for someone to give him the bacon that's on the table. 

 

Hey! I'm Still Here!!

 Just busy AF. I rarely have time to even shower, let alone blog. I love how much more independent my children are as they grow but also as they grow, they need more of my time - which seems counterintuitive when you think of how babies rely solely on their parents. 

I'm driving my children to camps; trying to figure out when I can shower; keeping my plants alive in the dry heat (we've been reaching the record breaking temps and it's driving me insane if I have to keep watering daily, I'm tempted to leave all my perennials to the heat and see which ones are hardy!); my elderly mother needs more and more care - she needs cataract surgery so I'm in charge of finding doctors and setting appointments. 

I'm hoping I have so down time in the next few weeks. But somehow, I still feel like I'm running around like a chicken with my head cut off. It's not always the best feeling.

Summer is terrible for my workout routine. I thought it would be better because we're home in the mornings, but instead I'm rushing around trying to clean the house before I leave to drop the kids off at their summer camps, leave for parks and the lakes, play dates, mountain biking, etc... 

Summer is a lot of work for parents. 

Veronica Speedwell

If you haven't yet heard of Veronica Speedwell, you're missing out.

A Perilous Undertaking is the second book in the series by Deanna Raybourn and the characters are absolutely delightful. Veronica always has something clever to say and is the complete opposite of what Victorian ladies are supposed to do - she also recognizes "the male being" and definitely loves what she does - which is solve mysteries and hunt butterflies. 

This is a short entry because I don't want to spoil the series! If you love mystery novels AND historical fiction, this book is a great blend of the two. The writing is fantastic and nothing about Deanna' Raybourn's books are boring. Highly recommend if you need a new series to read.

 

Homemade Berry Syrup

Damn, berry syrup is beautiful.

Super easy to make too!

1 pint of blueberries

1/2 pint of strawberries, cut into small pieces

2 tbsp water

1 tbsp lemon juice (I used the juice of 1 lemon, so a little more than 1 tbsp)

2 tbsp sugar

Put everything into a small pot over medium-low. Stir, until simmering. Once it's simmering you can squish the berries to the consistency that you like with the back of the spoon you're using. Simmer for about 10 minutes (enough time to mix pancake or waffle batter). Turn off heat, let thicken for a few minutes and cool before pouring over waffles over pancakes.

 

Where Supplements Go to Die

So hard. So hard. I know vitamins and minerals and calcium is really good for you so I buy a bunch of vitamins and try to take them. I try so darn hard. But then the next week starts and I stop.. It's like I've forgotten that I've tried to start a new habit. 

For example: let's take the calcium supplement on my counter. Over the winter I was like, "I'm Getting To Be An Old Lady" so I should take a calcium supplement for my bones! And so I started. I took them daily for a week.

I did so, so, so great for a week. They're even CHOCOLATE. So they would even taste really good!

But it's now months later and I should have finished this container already.

Lots of face palms over here. I'm sure you're wondering what else I have - Vitamin D in pill form (I like the gummies better), Vitamin C is slowly disappearing, some gross probiotics, other gummy probiotics with carnauba wax that I can't have (I get hives from carnauba wax, it's weird), and other stuff. 

Le sigh. Next time I deep clean the kitchen I'm going to have to clear out all the old supplements. 

 

Suck it, Covid!

20.2 miles on the bike down. WOOHOO!!!

My lungs are still recovering from yesterday on the bike. I am still out of breath walking up and down stairs, walking the dog, etc... But I seriously push myself to exercise because I LOVE my bike and I really enjoy exercising. It's good for me. It's fun. but my lungs. 

So in any case, my lungs still feel tight, my watts are only half of what they were pre-Covid. I like endurance biking anyway, so this doesn't bother me too much - going slow and steady is better when it comes to Covid lung recovery. I'll bike again on Wednesday morning and push for another 20 miles - but not worry about my outputs because honestly, at this point, I'm on the bike and I'm working out. How professional athletes can recover so quickly after having their lungs ravaged by Covid is just mind boggling. Bodies are amazing and do amazing things. 

 

Minnesota is so cold this week

 

I decided to make some rainbow bricks. Honestly, I didn't think about what I would do with them after frozen so... I decided to line our retaining walls with them. However, it's snowed (barely) and of course the snow covers them up! HA! My plan has been foiled. I made 50 bricks and was able to line the upper retaining walls and a little bit of the walls leading up the stairs. I had 4 leftover so I dug out around the little retaining wall I made around the bird feeder and lined that one too. 

Had I actually come up with a plan, I think I would have made 100+ to be able to make a snow fort for the kids - more castle-like than igloo. I don't like how kids don't think about how the igloo forts can fall in. I've seen my children run at snowbanks full send and there's no way both of my kids would stay off the top of an igloo. Kids just don't know any better!

So, noted for next year is to buy a snow brick maker to make a castle for the kids. The kids next door are older and so they don't usually mind when I steal their leaves for piles for my kids or shovel snow into a large snow bank either - mostly because it's all less yard clean up for them. 

Tips and tricks I learned: 

1. IT'S SO COLD. I used an old Brita pitcher filter and went in/out of the house about 10 times. I'm not sure how else to do it because in Minnesota you have to turn off the outside water lines so they don't freeze and the pipes don't burst. You can't do it one by one and walk them out from the sink because you'd have colored water everywhere with spills. 

2. Fill up the tins FIRST, then randomly do the food coloring. The Monkey dripped 2-10 drops of coloring in each tin and by the time we got to the end, she had made way more blue/purple than any other color and I didn't notice until it was too late. 

3. Wear gardening gloves instead of mittens to place the bricks when they're all frozen. Your mittens will end up with dye on them - I used my gardening gloves and they worked so well to punch out the bricks.

If it gets below freezing where you live and you need a winter activity - this was actually a ton of fun. Totally going to do this next year too! I saved the majority of the tins but because a few froze to the sidewalk, some have holes. 

2021 Garden Plans

 As it snows right now, all I can think about is my garden.

I ordered a garden arch to go over our front sidewalk, but Amazon sent me two - so I think what I'm going to do is set it up in the backyard so it leads into the back garden by the composter and flowers back there.

Last year no one helped with the veggie garden and barely anyone volunteered to help with anything actually. So this year I'm not going to start veggie seeds - instead I'm going to focus on flowers and herbs. I'll put in a few veggies here and there but I'm not going to do anything big this year besides tearing up more grass (well, putting down cardboard over it, really) and transform more front yard to pollinator habitat. And same with the backyard.

For the sandbox - it has a hole in it, so I'm going to just put the sand in the garden and the dog and Quentin can just dig in the garden. I'll find a large bin to keep the toys in that can stay outside year round. I'll keep that closer to the house or maybe I'll just put it by the fence. Not sure - I'm going to have a ton of hostas to move this year too and split! I'm going to move all the ones I need to split to the north side of the house and take up more rocks (move the rocks out to a friend's house because they need gravel for their driveway). 

There's so much to think about! I'm so excited to have our outdoor space again.