Supermom (it's not me)

I'm not sure I can explain how I ended up standing in my mothers kitchen making avocado buns for 7 hours, but it reminded me of how hard it is to eat healthy and how frustrating life was when I couldn't eat what most people eat. For years I had to restrict what I ate (I still do to a certain extent)and suffered horrible reactions to anything I put in or on my body. It only recently got easier after I had Annie, and by easier I don't mean cured. I still have to be really careful and pull back every now and then. A friend of mine has recently embarked on the long journey of cleaning out her families diet (which is who I made the avocado buns for). A task I do not envy, but I am very impressed with her ability to stay afloat. It is near impossible to overhaul the diet of one person, add three kids, three different food allergy lists, and then the reality that you can never just pick up dinner again; life can get scary. I remember getting to the point of panic when I would be stuck somewhere with no food and I couldn't just run out and pick something up. Add to that a family who did not understand or support why I was changing my diet, and all I can say was it hurt. My friend Kim is doing an incredible thing for her kids. I am so glad that she has started sharing her journey on her blog, and that through her blog my mother and I were able to help her a little. Kim you are doing an Awesome job with an incredibly hard situation, and I really hope you have a lot of people supporting you because it's a lot harder than anyone one ever thinks it is. And it's even harder when the people around you don't understand. I will get faster at making these avocado buns (7 hours = 33 pieces, and some of them look a little wonky), and if you even need anything call me.

Potager Garden

So I got the ok from my land lord to put in a Potager or kitchen garden. I am so excited. All winter long I have been dreaming of this garden in my head. Now that I actually can do it, I'm beyond excited. I've already picked out my design layout, ordered my seeds and made a mini mock-up with Annie on photoshop. She did all the tomato dots. I think it turned out kind of cute. Annie put in a few more Purple cabbages than I think we'll need, but you get the idea. I'm going to need a lot of bricks to layout the paths, but hopefully Craigslist will come through for me.

Here's the area we are going to transform into a large kitchen garden.

This is what we're going for as far as general layout.

Scooby Doo

Annie and her cousins have developed an obsession with Scooby Doo. This is no slight infactuation, they are enraptured with all things Scooby Doo. Annie does nothing but talk about it, Ruby is trying to convince her mother she needs a Velma wig now, and Sadie of coarse is the resident expert on all things Scooby Doo. Together they solve mysteries as the meddling kids. Ruby is always Velma, Sadie is Daphne, and Annie has been struggling to find her place. Until this morning that is.
Annie dresses herself this morning, comes downstairs and informs me she is Velma-Daphne. Yes, she is dressed in the combined fashions of Velma and Daphne, neither of which is very fashionable. But she did look cute, even if she was basing her clothing on two cartoon characters from 1969. So we now know what a cloned cross between Velma and Daphne would wear.
Turtleneck dress with a pink sweater.

Little love sprouts.

I took Annie downstairs to see her first sprout from the soil blocks. It was an interesting conversation on the way down. We were talking about our week, when Annie suddenly says, "JJ is my prince."(We had just talked about playgroup, and Annie said she was sad that JJ wasn't there). As the conversation continues she tells me, "I had a dream about JJ." What was the dream about? "that I love him." So it's officail. Watch out all you JJ lovers, Annie has entered the race for JJ's heart.
Thankfully the sprout changed the subject for me; I really wasn't ready to talk about the birds and the bees with my three year old. She was overjoyed with excitement as she searched through the tray for the tiny sprout and it is tiny. So tiny that Annie almost didn't see it, but once she did, she started to jump up and down. Then insist upon a picture being taken of her with the sprout and her new Scooby Doo DVD. An odd combination, but those seem to be her two great passions at the moment. Well that and JJ.

The Speedy Seed

Evidently while I was upstairs working on my taxes we got our first sprout out of the soil blocks. It only took 4 days! I was expecting something closer to ten days, like we had with the Impatiens and Pansies. Covering them in the thick black plastic and finding the right temperature setting for the heating blanket cut the germination time by more than half. I am so excited to go get Annie and show her. Broccoli is the winner!

A lunch date with taxes

Today, I attempted to do my taxes. It was not fun, nor was it as fruitful as I had hoped. But to be fair I do not owe any taxes. That was good news. I was just hoping for a much bigger refund. I more than doubled my income from last year and as a single mom that wasn't easy. I guess my lesson is to no longer look at my taxes as a savings plan. Thank you so much Meike for all your help. I could not have done it without you. Taxes, we'll talk later when I have the rest of your endless list of needless information complete.

Update on our seedlings

Annie went down to the big scary basement with me to check on our seedlings today, and it really is amazing how a few seedlings can captivate her attention for so long. What was meant to be a simple 5 minute check and water turned into 30 minutes of "ooh," "aah," and "oh my mommy, look at that one."
Hopefully they will all make it, because I think Annie is expecting these plants to grow old with her. I'm not sure what she'll do when next winter hits. I'm pretty sure she'll be trying to hide plants in her room. So far though, everything is going great. All but a few seeds came up and they seem to be doing fine. The heating blanket is working great and I love how much heated space we have. I am able to start germinating seeds in the dark on one side of the mat while the others are under the light. I'm just hoping I have everything timed right otherwise I'll have seeds sprouting and no room on the lighted half to put them. Anyone have any old florescent light fixtures hanging around?