Archive for html404

Organized Days & Seed Update – This Week’s Monday Motivation

Posted by html404 on March 19, 2012
in Family Stuff, Farm Stuff, Food and Treats, Fun Stuff, Gardening, Monday Motivation, Saving Money

There is always something to do around our home, whether it’s housework, work or whatever. For this week’s motivation I want us to work on organizing our days better to get more done across the board, especially once we have the garden and chickens. It’ll be easier once summer comes, I think, but for now we need more organized days as not everything is getting done that needs to be done lately. It doesn’t help that all the children have been sick the past week, but still when we get behind on things it is time to pull up our boot straps and get back at it. I may blog less this week as we catch up, just depends.

Seeds and Veggie Plants

On Friday afternoon I was able to get onions, kale, parsley, leeks, spinach, cabbage and Swiss chard planted. You should see the children’s seeds! They are no longer seeds, but little plants! It’s amazing how they sprouted and grew in the last week!

And here are the seeds I planted on Friday, March 16. Again, as you can see I used what I had to save money, instead of buying seed flats I used the big foil roasters and lasagna pans. Hey it works as I got 40-45 seeds planted in each! I did buy 4″ pots to replant everything into and we’ll reuse the egg cartons and pans to plant more seeds for succession planting.

Fun! 🙂

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DIY: Chicken Coop Ideas & Ordering Baby Chicks

Posted by html404 on March 19, 2012
in Farm Stuff

I’m in farming mode this week as the weather has been in the 70’s and we have tons of stuff to do if we are going to get anything accomplished! I ordered baby chicks online yesterday and was even able to schedule their delivery date. Yes! The chicken breeds we wanted were not available for several weeks.

Different Chicken Breeds

Here are the breeds we ordered:

25 Buff Orpingtons, a gentle brown egg layer. This is the flock my little ones and I will manage.

6 Black Australorps, a docile breed that is heat and cold tolerant and lay brown eggs as well. This is the breed that my two daughters chose for their little flock.

8 Arcuanas, another docile breed but they lay green/blue eggs! This breed will be cared for by my two older boys.

We ordered them from Murray McMurray Hatchery. We’ll be sure to take photos of the chicks when the arrive in about 6 or 7 weeks.

Do-It-Yourself Chicken Coop Ideas

We ordered baby chicks and now we need a place to keep them! The whole idea behind our farming is to not only grow our own food but to allow our children to experience different things and learn new skills. That is why my husband plans to build our own chicken coops with our boys and why I am chief researcher in getting ideas. We are doing this ourselves to save money and to teach our boys how to do it.

PVC Chicken Coops

We are interested in a moveable chicken house, which allows the chickens to scratch in new areas and not be confined to one place. We would like to try to make a chicken coop that is light-weight, which is why we are considering making one out of PVC pipe. We’d need to get PVC Fittings, like Schedule 80 PVC fittings for the corners and such. PVC also seems like it might be more economical than wood, and wouldn’t rot.

The one disadvantage I thought of in regards to the PVC is we get a lot of high winds and what if the whole coop just up and blew away…..whooosh! There goes our profits and meat supply!

A-Frame Chicken Coop

My daughter wants an A-frame chicken tractor/coop like the one at this website. However, I am partial to different moveable coop, but a modified version for laying hens.

This should be a fun project once I finish researching, deciding and figuring out the costs of each one. And yes, I intend to take lots of pictures and videos as we build our coop.

How about you, do you have any DIY projects on the go? If so, what are they?

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$1000 Grand Event Giveaway is Here! Enter Today!

Posted by html404 on March 17, 2012
in Blog Stuff, Contests, Giveaways

It has been fun (and time consuming ;)) to participate in many blog hops and joint giveaways with other bloggers. It has been very beneficial to my blog all the way around. Meeting new people, finding new blogs and offering YOU a way to win some great prizes or CASH! Without further adieu here are the details for the $1000 Grand Event Giveway! Enter today!

You know you neeeeed it…

Well a great group of bloggers have come together to give it to you!

Welcome to the Grand Event Cash Giveaway!

1 Grand Prize: $500

1 2nd Place Prize: $250

5 3rd Place Prizes: $50

Moms with Voices Media is hosting the GRAND Event Cash Giveaway. With a few clicks of your mouse, you can be entered to win a Grand Prize amount of $500, Second Place Prize of $250, or FIVE third place prized of $50!

This giveaway runs from 12:01 AM 3/17/2012 – 11:59 PM 3/31/2012. With so many different ways to enter, why not come back and do a few each day along with your daily entries!

RAFFLECOPTER FORM

a Rafflecopter giveaway

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Couponing for Good: A Donation to Turning Point #CBias #AllYouCFK

Posted by html404 on March 16, 2012
in Blog Stuff, Coupons, Family Stuff, Giving Back/Charity

I never thought about couponing for charity until I became involved in the Champion For Kids All You Couponing for Good campaign. Without a doubt it is an awesome idea, one I want our family to implement on regularly basis, which is why I am trying to get myself and my crew organized to hopefully do a monthly donation. Ask me next month to see if I have followed through! Better put it on my calendar to remind myself…..seriously.

Photo above shows most of the things we gave, but chips, tomato sauce and juice boxes are missing.

Shopping & Donating

If you haven’t read my first post about our shopping trip for our donation items, please read it here and see my complete shopping trip here. I was considering giving our goodies to our local food pantry but because I don’t have a car during the day, I decided to give our couponing for good donation to Turning Point instead because their hours were easier to coordinate with my husband’s work schedule.

Women’s Shelter

This week my children have all been sick in one form or another so unfortunately they did not go to the shelter with me. 🙁 Oh some of them wanted to but I really didn’t want to be the cause of others getting sick with runny noses, stuffiness, wooziness/dizziness and headaches! We’ll just keep those germ bugs to ourselves! Yesterday my husband was home all day because I had a meeting and needed the car, so after that was over my oldest helped me load up the car with what we had already purchased at Walmart, juice boxes and juice/vegetable boxes I picked up at Costco, plus a few extras I took from our own pantry. Then I drove to Turning Point to drop off our goodies. Champions for Kids encourages SIMPLE service projects like this to help children (and women in this case) in our own communities.

I have never been to a women’s and children’s shelter before but was kind of surprised at the surveillance cameras outside, the door buzzer and locked door. I found it sad and scary – not for me, but for the women and children (workers too) who sought refuge there. The building was well taken care of and clean. I am always timid when it comes to asking if someone would mind me taking their picture so I never did ask the ladies working there. Maybe one day I will once I get to know them better. It might be a great blog post to interview them!

After I rang the buzzer and was let inside, the woman who let me in asked if I needed a cart, which I was grateful for and I only dumped one bag off the cart while rolling it in! I had to carry two bags, but the lady took those from me when I reached the door that she so kindly held open for me.

Our donation was appreciated and I was told to keep an eye on their website to stay current with their needs. It felt good to help a local organization assisting women and children in need of shelter from domestic abuse and violence.

Champions for Kids

To learn more about Champions for Kids visit:
Website: http://championsforkids.org/
Twitter Handle: https://twitter.com/#!/champions4kids
Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/ChampionsForKids

This shop has been compensated as part of a social shopper insights study for Collective Bias. All thoughts and opinions expressed are my own. #CBias #AllYouCFK

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Are You Green Contest

Posted by html404 on March 16, 2012
in Contests, Food and Treats, Free Stuff, Fun Stuff, Giveaways

Get your button here

Are you green? Do you love ice cream? I do! This is a fun little contest by one of my favorite authors Suzanne Woods Fisher. Have fun!

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#HealthyHabits & Oral Care Challenge Update

Posted by html404 on March 16, 2012
in Family Stuff, Health, Health and Nutrition

Nearly a month ago we started the Healthy Habits & Oral Care Challenge, if you missed my first post about the Healthy Habits & Oral Care Challenge, please go back and read it here. We had our ups and downs of changing our individual daily habits, after all isn’t that why we give a challenge at least 30 days? I have heard some say it takes up to 90 days to successfully start a new habit or break an old one, while others say 2 weeks. Who’s to say, right? We are all different.

Depending on my work schedule, I improved my goal of getting back to brushing 2x/day and flossing at least 1x/day, even though I know our panel of experts recommended flossing 2x/day, but I wasn’t flossing at much, if any before the challenge. I was pretty much able to rinse 1-2x/day as well, just not consistent with the 2x/day recommendation.

My children were pretty stellar and I think some advancement has been made with certain ones that were really struggling. Consistency is key. A couple of the children really did not care for the mouthwash or were afraid of swallowing it (they know too much and read labels!). Another one of my children thought the toothbrush she had was too soft or not soft enough? I cannot remember now and she’s in bed early because she’s sick. 🙁 But that is just a personal preference.

I really liked the flavor of the alcohol-free mouthwash we got. Not sure if my husband even tried it (I don’t keep tabs on his oral care! :)), he’s putting the little ones to bed so I can work so I cannot really ask him right now! I think overall everyone in our family has been pleased with the experience. It has made us more aware of how important it is to be a good example of practicing healthy habits to the younger children and showing them good oral care.

Tips on Getting Your Kids to Brush, Floss and Rinse

● Make oral care fun (e.g., make it a game; brush, floss and rinse to music; etc).
● Reward their behavior (e.g., give gold stars for good oral care).
● Show, don’t tell – make oral care a family affair.
● Involve them in their own oral care routine by providing products like LISTERINE® Smart Rinse, which can make the daily routine more fun,
provides 12-hour cavity protection for kids and strengthens teeth 99 percent better than brushing alone.

These tips were provided by Dr. Kaneta Lott, DDS (pediatric dentist).

Need oral care products? Shop here.

Faith and Family Reviews received the following product in exchange for writing and participating in the Healthy Habits for a Lifetime Oral Care Challenge. We are being compensated by Johnson & Johnson and TheMotherhood. While we consider it a privilege to receive free products to review and compensation, our reviews are our honest opinion and thoughts of the product.

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How to Shoot a BB Gun – The Joys of Living in the Country

Posted by html404 on March 14, 2012
in Family Stuff, Farm Stuff, Fun Stuff

Our oldest son has challenged us more in homeschooling than any of our girls ever did and in order to get him to read we had to come up with certain incentives that were of interest to him and made him want to read for the end result. For him it was getting a BB gun. Even the promise of a $50 bill did not motivate him! He had to read a certain amount from January until his birthday in February then he could have his BB gun. He made the goal and on his birthday or the day after my husband took him to Farm & Fleet to buy a BB gun. However, he could not shoot his BB gun until he finished a certain amount of books….let’s just say he kicked his reading up a notch because this past Sunday he (and the rest of the family too) got to shoot his BB gun. The joys of living in the country affords us new experiences we would never had if we still lived in our townhouse subdivision and I have to say our children are happier for the change!

The Target – Nothing fancy mind you, but it worked for us!

The Master Teacher – An awesome Dad! (a must-have!)

The Students – Eager boys (and girls in our family’s case)

Teaching Safety – Especially to our younger crew (and NO we did NOT shoot at the target with them behind it! That’s why we were teaching THEM about safety as cute as they were trying to hid behind the box!)

Ready, Aim, Fire! – The REAL fun!

That about says it all! My husband was the only one to hit the target. Our two sons and one of our daughters hit the box when my husband decided that might be an easier target to start with. The rest of us missed!

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Wordless Wednesday – Who Do You See?

Posted by html404 on March 14, 2012
in Wordless Wednesday

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Heart’s Safe Passage

Posted by html404 on March 12, 2012
in Books

Yep, read another book this weekend, however, I won’t have too many more book reviews to post as we get into gardening season. There just won’t be time to do much reading, not that there is now, but you know what I mean, right?

Heart’s Safe Passage is the second book in The Midwives series by Laurie Alice Eakes. I read the first one a year or two ago, I believe, and really enjoyed it. I am very pro-midwives, after all I have given birth at home with one for my last three births and have even studied midwifery at one point but had to put it aside when my husband got laid off. I find the history of midwifery compelling and dates back to the beginning of time in the book of Exodus in the bible.

I found this second book interesting as well, though again this novel was not so much about the midwifery as much as the spiritual and personal life of the midwife, Phoebe Lee. The story is set in the early 1800s and shares Phoebe’s story, which was only hinted at in the first book, as she helps her sister-in-law Belinda. Phoebe is a spunky little thing. I actually loved Phoebe’s spunk, she made up for Belinda’s character…one spoiled rich girl.

Even though this was a romance-y book, there were twists in the plot and a fair amount of guessing when it came to figuring out who was against Captain Docherty, what Phoebe would do in any given situation and how she and the two other female characters were going to survive their time on board a privateer brig (different than a ship).

Revenge, bitterness, forgiveness and healing are important elements in this book and when these are presented there is always something for everyone to learn.

Heart’s Safe Passage gets two thumbs up from me!

“Available February 2012 at your favorite bookseller from Revell, a division of Baker Publishing Group.”

Faith and Family Reviews received the following product in exchange for writing a review. While we consider it a privilege to receive free products to review, our reviews are our honest opinion and thoughts of the product.

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Starting Our Seeds: Motivation Monday

Posted by html404 on March 12, 2012
in Farm Stuff, Gardening, Health, Home

Daylight Savings has begun, the days are growing longer and warmer. Signs of spring. Ahhh….the change of seasons is so refreshingly sweet, isn’t it?

It was so nice yesterday and we our box of seeds (Mike the Gardener’s and Johnny’s Seeds) came the other day that my girls were begging me to start planting. I did not have our seed flats or other containers, but we did have plenty of egg cartons that we were saving for when we had our laying hens, so I told the girls to go ahead and use the egg cartons to start the seeds. They went to town and got a lot planted. Then again when you have 5-6 pairs of hands it does not take long to get a job done. They planted veggie seeds and flower seeds.

My motivation this week is to get the rest of our seeds planted that need to be planted so they are ready to put into the ground at the right time. What the children planted yesterday was for their individual gardens, not our big one! We have one table set up in our living room and will probably need to set our other one up once I get my seeds planted. I am hoping it is warm enough and light enough in front of our big window. (Dreaming of the day we have a greenhouse or hoop house!)

We also have to get the tiller serviced so it is ready to go when we start planting outside. I have asked my dear husband to do that job!

Chickens will be ordered but we will plan for them to arrive in April and May. Pretty exciting stuff going on here at Loony Acres!

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