Garden Re-Hab Phase One & Pond Repair, Spring Cleaning Spices & Organizing Kitchen Cabinets, 1949 Step Saving Kitchen Video

 

Garden Re-Hab Phase One & Pond Repair-

We found a pond leak after we filled it last week, one more thing to do, sigh. We had seen some repair products on TV as and decided to do some research. Dave went to Ace Hardware and was able to buy some Flex Tape as well as the liquid version. Since Dave was able to find the exact leak spot (hopefully) he decided to start with using the tape-

Link to the pond (before flagstone install) where you can see the shape Early shot of our pond  He cleaned off the plastic and let it dry and cut a piece big enough to hopefully cover everything and seal really well-

We let it dry overnight. Dave filled it tonight, we'll see how it looks the next several days. If that doesn't fix the leak he's going to coat the entire inside with a Flex Seal "paint" material. If that doesn't work we're going to buy pond liner and do the whole thing. We love the pond so much! Our neighbors do as well, since one of ours told us that he loves listening to the sound of the water running in the summer from his deck. We were lucky enough to get the pond and a pump at a yard sale several years ago really cheap. We did eventually buy a second pump as well as some other sprayers. Once the weather warms up enough we'll buy water lettuce and fill it in.  Nice calm area right by our deck when we come out.

Phase one- Dave and I shopped around and found a great deal at Costco for Emerald Arborvitaes. They were $25.00 each, 4' tall, much cheaper than anyone else. They kept selling out, so we had to go back. One guy in front of Dave bought 12! I had wanted Bamboo but couldn't find what I wanted. While I'm not a fan of these shrubs (WAY overused commercially IMO) I decided they would be a goof fit for the space-

Also bought a Dwarf Alberta Spruce for another spot

The previous shrubs were basically for privacy from the house behind us- 

Before

First we called DIG LINE! You can see the orange paint above on the ground. Luckily we had enough space without killing anything. The new shrubs will get taller and about 4' wide, we can prune if needed. The GREAT thing is they will be green year round! No more brown fence all winter long. Se here was the process. Dave started by pruning the old shrubs down to the ground with hand clippers-

More cutting with pruning shears-

Down to the big woody base. Dave used an ax, a pry bar and then a chain saw on the bigger pieces-

All three planted, will mulch and bark dust soon-

Dave straightened the middle one tonight

Dave will tear out the rest of the cold frame soon. Next will be the new garden. This is the basic garden plan that will be in front of the shrubs-

More info here Our Garden Re-Hab

More coming soon!

Stuff

Spring Cleaning Spices & Organizing Kitchen Cabinets- 

I have been watching some YouTube videos on organization and minimizing lately. It's inspiring! They can also suck you into a black hole as I have found. One woman does videos of mopping her home over and over again. Put me to sleep... Anyway, I digress.  I've been reorganizing a few little areas here and there. One of the things I really needed to do was take everything out of part of my upper food kitchen cabinet to see what I had. I realized that some of my spices were probably old and lost their potency. I also knew I had some duplicates. In the interest of minimizing I decided to take everything out and see where I was at, see photo above-

Misc Stuff 

That didn't take too long and I laid everything out then I cleaned off my rotating Lazy Susan things. Hit them with a hot soapy sponge and wiped down the shelves as well. When it was all over I was able to throw out some old spice's, recycle some empty glass spice jars, and wound up with lots of extra room. Now I can really see what I have! Before shots- 

After- 

I also organized some of our new smoothie ingredients and moved the blender over by the sink. I've tried Goji berries and Beet powder added to fruit and protein powder.  Gave me more energy! Nice to have it all organized to see what's there. I like the jars better than bags. Both of us are wanting to eat healthier and I've been craving more fruit smoothies with protein powder in it. I've got a few extra supplements that I bought that I had heard of add. 

 

I also re-organized the inside freezer (chest freezer in the garage).  I found some things with freezer burn which I tossed and then I re-organized. Everything was kind of mixed together. Now fruits and nuts on the left for baking and smoothies, everything else on the right. Much better!!! 

If video on your side doesn't work you may need to turn off your pop-up blocker

1949 Step Saving Kitchen Video-

I stumbled on this and wow, they had some good ideas back then! Watch for the tilt out bins under the windows, my fave! What do you think? 

Updating Technology On A Budget, Winter Project Time

 

New Wind Anemometer

Updating Technology On A Budget-

Recently we did some updates of some of our technology, on a budget of course! Our TV was getting a bit old and it always had terrible sound. It was a great deal seven or eight years ago but it was time for something bigger with our aging eyes. We looked around for a while and I had always told Dave I wanted to get something with some decent speakers since I love music! For my birthday in December Dave bought me /us  a new TV! We wanted one that fitted in our existing entertainment center since we didn't want anything too big. I'm not a fan of huge huge televisions. Maybe if I sat around all day and have nothing to do but watch programs, but hey, I have other things to do! We got a great deal at Costco and got a perfect size. It's a Roku Smart TV, and since we already had a Roku stick on the old TV and account it was easy to transition over to it. The sound is amazing!

We donated our old TV, hopefully someone will give it a new home! 

For a Christmas present Dave got me something I have wanted for quite a while. Being the Weather geek that I am Dave got me a La Crosse wireless weather station with an anemometer (solar powered)  or wind measuring device. It's on the top of our house's garage peak! Pretty easy install, works great!   

It has a really bright LCD tablet that's easy to read. He also got this at Costco apparently. Truly accurate which is nice and I'm always watching the winds because we can have some pretty severe wind gusts here. That can affect our chickens and the coop and whatever we happen to be growing at the time. It's nice to have the app on the phone too, part of the set up process, which was pretty easy.  

Our Keurig coffee maker was on its last legs. We wanted to be more environmentally friendly and David said he really preferred French press coffee anyway. I did some research on electric teaa kettles on Consumerreports.org. You can sometimes find their test results for free. If you ever have to buy a car I highly recommend spending the $5 a month subscribe for 1 month and do some research. We've been super happy with our Mazda hatchback after doing research and buying one. It's 11 years old and has had hardly any problems of all, super reliable. Anyway I did some research and I we bought an electric tea kettle. Some of them are glass, which makes me a little bit wary, if you drop it's dead!  So I went with Consumer Report recommended as a best buy-

It's funny some of the most expensive models out there had poor testing results...

Some winter kitchen decor

Winter Project Time-

I decided to take a four-day weekend and work on some projects this week. One of them is deep cleaning my kitchen counter, back splash, my spices, and re-organizing part of my kitchen drawers. Some painting too, reveal coming soon! Good things to do when it's winter! It's been cold, but then we had two days where it was in the low 50's! Almost felt like spring, but back down to the 30's tonight. 

Dave and I will also be cleaning the coop this weekend replacing the old deep litter Pine shavings with fresh. This method works so well I cannot even tell you! No smell, biodegrades/composts and I only have to clean off the top roosting area about once a week in the winter. In the summer I do it two or three times a week. A bale is about $9.00 locally, with some leftover. We do about 4"-5" in the winter-

Debbie on the right, Sunny on the left

Sunny says what's up!

Next going to hit a couple thrift stores on Friday when I'm off look for a couple things. I've been trying to find a simple nice wood twin headboard for our spare bedroom where our grandsons stay. It doesn't have one, want to dress it up a little bit. I'll look to see if there's something cute that I can either rehab or retrofit. If not we make break down and build one-

I bought this online from Ikea several months ago, a Moppe Mini storage chest, Birch plywood, 16 ½" x7" x 12 5/8 "-

I had plans for it, but kept changing my mind! I finally found the perfect thing to finish it. It's bare wood and I wanted some kind of finish. Will post it when it's done! 

Independence Days Challenge

Independence Days Challenge-
It's been cooling off a little bit here, but a few hot days once in a while. Generally the days are getting so much shorter that it's cooling off at night really nicely. Trees locally are getting some color, as is our huge maple tree-

We're getting a little bit of smoke again from California, not much we can do about that. There's also terrible fires now over in the Oregon areas we love. One is nearing an urban area where Dave's nephew lives, he may have to evacuate. I can't believe there are stupid people doing stupid things, like gender reveals involving explosives! Yeah that's a great idea to do in a drought stricken area! My one daughter was smart enough to do a pie reveal. One was supposed to be pink or blue, easy and safe! So anyway, here's what we've been up to lately-

1. Plant Something- 

Not this time of year, too hot/cold. I don't do fall plantings here. Might do some flower bulbs for spring.

2. Harvest Something- 

We just had a really nice harvest of tomatoes! They were late but prolific!!!

Many of these are heading for the freezer. We've also been getting Basil, several kinds of peppers, Kale, Collard greens, lemon cukes (almost done), the last of the blackberries and yellow squash. I'll be the drying some yellow squash for this winter. My BIG Italian peppers haven't turned red yet, but should soon. They're worth the wait! 

Collard greens

Green cabbage coming along slowly, red cabbage never got heads for some reason-

We have our mini-pumpkin patch too, I planted a mixed-seed varieties-

3. Preserve/Store Something-

I finished up the jams, chutneys, from the peaches that we had-

We let the pears ripen inside since they were pretty green over Labor Day weekend, which is when I had hoped to can them. I'll be canning these this weekend-

Will be harvesting our apples next weekend. Didn't have a great crop this year, but I'll decide what to do with those.  I still have plenty of apples in the freezer and canned previously. I may dry some. I have a small, nice food dryer. It's been challenging finding canning supplies and I guess that seem to be a national issue since it's been on the news Washingtonpost Canning Shortage  I was able to find some pint size jars on Amazon, so I did order one box today. Wasn't much more than I would usually pay in the grocery store, although haven't bought jars in a few years. I have tons of Basil and will make pesto to freeze soon. 

4. Manage Reserves- Get a Good Deal/Barter/Stock Up/Prep-

I went out to the Eddie Bauer Outlet on a whim. It's on the outskirts of Boise and found some great deals. I found women's flannel lined jeans, polar fleece lined wind pants (water resistant) and a regular pair of jeans. The warm ones will be handy in winter! They were all $17 each, a real steal,  very expensive (overpriced) originally-

Nice pockets!

So soft and warm 

Cheery flannel!

I got a new HEPA air filter replacement as my previous one died.  It turns out Amazon does not honor the warranties after a certain point, so I contacted the manufacturer directly. Took about 3 weeks, then I got a new one in the mail a few days ago. The other ones have lasted for years and years so I was really shocked it died after 4 months!

I ordered some pasta bowls from Ikea online that were delivered. Even with the shipping I can't find good ones for their prices. My old ones were in bad shape, but they lasted lots of years! 

When I ordered canning jars on Amazon I also bought a Vidalia Chopper/ Dicer-

I like making things like corn relish, but it is so much dicing for big batches! I've decided to make another big batch, for the fridge. I'm running out of canning jars and it should last quite a few months chilled in my 2 Qt. jars.  

5. Eat the Food- Try New Foods/Recipe-

Will be using some of my homemade Chutney that I now that I have some. I posted recently about the BLT sandwich with catfish although I did substitute tilapia for that. Was great with our fresh tomatoes! Also tried the new Mexican dish that I posted about last week-

Cooked down the last of the frozen Rhubarb and made sauce for Dave.

6. Build Community Food Systems-

We supported our local Orchard and farmstead stand by buying our peaches, corn, apples and a few other things. We may go back next weekend to see if we can get some more apples and corn. The local Gala apples were the best I've ever had in my entire life. To say they were crispy was putting it mildly, really juicy and amazing-

7. Recycle/Re-Use-

I did some mending of some clothes, donated some bedding, towels, toys & decor to our local thrift store. I realized I had stashed some new bath towels from last time we went to Ikea, last year. The ones we were using we're getting pretty beat up, so it's nice to be able to get into the hall closet and bring out new ones! Sadly Ikea discontinued their apple green bath towels which I love, sigh. 

8. Skill Up-

I checked out Jamie Oliver's cookbook Ultimate Veg since I've been seeing some of the episodes on PBS. I love his recipes! I'm happy we can still get things from the Library, just can't go in. He has a really great use of spices and different cooking techniques I'm getting familiar with. Will be posting some reviews later as I try some of them-

9. Regenerate What is Lost/Salvage Something-

Last year we added some new fence boards in our backyard after a small dog got in and killed two of our hens.  Dave didn't like the way the new boards stood out from the old.  He borrowed one of  relatives electric pressure washer. We are both pretty shocked about how fast a lot of dirt just came right off the boards. Electric pressure washers don't have the same high pressure as the gas powered ones do, but it did a great job! Clean part of the board on the right- 

Before photo last fall-

River saying high to neighbor kitty Posey

After shot- 

After shot, was really dark before! 

Not perfect but it will weather out anyway. 

After working in my home office/bedroom I realized how dirty our blinds were. When we bought the house the 2 front bedrooms had heavy, wood grain, plastic white blinds. Great for light control, so we added curtains and kept them-

I realized how dirty they were, so I asked Dave to take them down and I could wash them. Turns out they were too long for the tub! So Dave took them out washed them down and rinsed well, let dry. So white now!!!

Drying

So much cleaner! That's it for now!