Gardening Tuesday: Indoor Gardening

If you want to maintain your garden as an organic one, then studying how to create and keep a compost heap is necessary. If you don’t want to bother with that and you have a small garden patch, then you can buy natural and organic fertilizer. You can collect tips from internet, or family members. It just takes a bit of space, lots of love and care and a little water and food, and your garden will be your pride and source of better health. It also provides some exercise, so that’s an added benefit! Many plants are suitable and capable of growing in small plots in soils of poor fertility, including even contaminated soils, or those suffering from high levels of leaching.

Vitamins and minerals are very essential to growing kids that’s why moms have to know the right food to feed their little ones with. Grow foods, as the name suggests, makes people grow. These are dairy products like milk, margarine, yogurt, and the protein-rich ones like pork, fish, etc. These foods make the bones and muscles stronger. These foods could help your child run faster and allows him or her to be able to do a lot of other activities.

Fresh and nutritious produce for the participating gardeners or families. If organic methods are used, then the produce is much healthier than any commercially grown vegetables. Foods grown organically restrict the use of pesticides and insecticides and other synthetic chemicals. Likewise, animals grown organically are not regularly given antibiotics and other medication which enters the food supply and may be ingested by human consumers. Instead, organic farmers use renewable resources to grow their vegetables, fruits and animal sources. Indoor garden offers some perks that you can’t get from outdoor gardening. However, just as there are perks, there are also drawbacks. This article will examine both. You will also find places to situate your indoor garden, what types of flowers and plants you can grow, as well as some gardening tips to help your indoor garden flourish.

Some typical indoor garden plants that require low to medium light are Philodendrons, Cyclamens, African violets, Boston ferns, and Creeping Fig. Along with the Boston fern, there are many types of ferns that require low to medium light levels and are a beautiful addition to an indoor garden. A helpful tip is that darker leaved plants typically need less light that their lighter leaved cousins. You should then decide location for the placement of the pots. The lights that the plant would receive are yet another necessity of your indoor garden that you must consider at all cost. However, you need to be careful of the heat and warmth your plant would be getting from the surrounding atmosphere because you might find yourself in the need of proper ventilation along with it as well at some stage. Another indoor gardening idea is that you may wish to place your plants at different places around your house, so you benefit from colors and well-oxygenated air throughout the house. However, when growing plants like this, you have to ensure that they will constantly have enough light, warmth and humidity.

Happy Gardening!


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1-800-Flowers Birthday Smiles Giveaway

Love this Lily Meadow Bouquet from 1-800-FLOWERS! Life, Music & Laughter is giving away a $40 gift card from 1-800-FLOWERS. And I’d like to win, so if I blog about her contest I get an extra 5 entries!

1-800-FLOWERS is celebrating October birthdays! Come on over and join the fun!


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Movie Monday: The Way Home

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.

This movie is a real tear jerker! The Way Home is a true story about a family who are in the middle of getting ready for a vacation when their two year old son just disappears. Since they live on a vastly wooded area filled with lakes and ponds the family is very concerned. What starts as a family packing for a vacation turns into a massive search for little Joe. That involves almost the entire community in helping to look for this little boy.

Our family really enjoyed The Way Home. It is a wonderful movie that is a good quality film by Lions Gate. This movie has some thematic elements so if you have children that get scared easily this isn’t the movie for them. The Way Home is rate PG because of the thematic elements and brief tobacco smoking by a older gentlemen in the movie. But, our children didn’t get too scared while watching The Way Home. Just some tears when little Joe went missing. We really didn’t find any flaws with this movie at all so we were impressed.

We highly recommend The Way Home as a wonderful Christian movie for all family’s.

You may purchase The Way Home here for $21.99. Please check out The Way Home’s website for more information on The Way Home.


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Monday Motivation

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Last week’s Monday Motivation:

~ My husband and I have an appointment with the Executive Director of a farm incubator program that we are interested in. This meeting went better than I expected feeling rather unprepared. Now to finish our business plan!

~ We really need to do our end of season garden clean up! My husband has been battling a cold but is feeling better so we should be able to do the garden this weekend. The weekend weather turned out great and everyone was healthy so we were able to accomplish quite a bit in this area.

~ Swim lessons for the children. We decided to take advantage of the YMCA’s no enrollment fee (at least for this month as we test drive this membership thing) and have been swimming every day since Friday. Yes, even I went swimming once. The children love it. I am hesitant to take Sir Eats Alot in the pool at his young age or else I would be in there as much as the other children. I grew up swimming all the time. My mom tells me that my sisters and I were swimming by four. We’ve been swimming most days and only one child has been complaining about it and lessons. I think our four year old and two year old could take off swimming any time. They just need to gain more confidence and arm strength.

So I actually exercised! My goal is to get exercise while teaching my children how to swim. All of them are at different levels but for not growing up swimming I think they are all doing great. It’s exciting that we can share the love of swimming together. Yep, I swam again, but this out of shape mama needs to go slow. Not as young as I use to be, unfortunately. But I am loving our family time at the YMCA.

Other than that I am just trying to manage home, children, homeschooling and work. It is definitely a juggling act. That’s why I may be taking most of November off from most of my work-at-home responsibilities except for one client whose busiest season is Christmas. I need to regroup and refocus a bit and hope that time off will help. Still juggling!

This week’s Motivation:

~ This week we have a mommy blogging event that TheMotherhood.com and Wendy’s have coordinated. So we will be going to lunch with grandma and other mommy bloggers.

~ We also have another CRAFT (Collaborative Regional Agricultural Farmer Training) Field Day to attend. Looking forward to that.

~ Writing our business plan and submitting it is a priority so we can see where it takes us and hopefully allow us to plan for the approaching new year.

~ De-junk. Organize. We already have two big bags and a box to giveaway and I hope to have more before Vietnam Vets pick up comes this week. We just don’t want to be cleaning stuff we don’t need. It is so crucial for our sanity to get down to bare minimum. Just the basics here please. But do you know how hard it is? Hard. Believe me! If you are the praying kind, please pray that we discover what our bare minimum is for our family and home.


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Kraft Delicious Days

Delicious Days is Kraft’s new headquarters for all things seasonal. Watch featured videos to learn new recipes that really take advantage of fall’s unique vegetables – even picky eaters will dive right in! There are also tons of classic recipes that are sure crowd pleasers – your family will definitely be asking about your secret recipe stash when you serve them an apple crumble filled with fresh picked apples and fragrant cinnamon!

The site also features content the whole family will love. Check out fun games, budgeting ideas, and party planning must-haves. If you celebrate Halloween and want to get creative, Delicious Days also features fun recipes that are spookily delicious, like eyeball cupcakes and the Ghosts in the Graveyard cake, perfect for getting kids to help out in the kitchen! After these recipes, your house is sure to be haunted with delicious candy ghosts! We actually don’t celebrate Halloween, but even I can admit these are cute recipes.

While you’re at Delicious Days don’t forget to enter the AOL Home for the Holidays Sweepstakes* for a chance to win $2,500! It’s the perfect prize to get your family together in time for the holiday season.

Below are two tutorials from the site:

How to Pick and Store Fresh Fall Apples

Easy Recipe for 20-Garlic-Clove Chicken – Only 5 Ingredients!

*AOL’s Home for the Holidays sweeps is solely sponsored by AOL only, not Kraft. If sharing please only refer to the sweepstakes as “AOL’s Home for the Holidays Sweepstakes.”


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***Closed***FFR Friday Giveaway – Dot Girl

Congratulations to Wendi P! You won our Dot Girl First Period Kit giveaway! Thanks to all who entered and to Dot Girl for sponsoring this great giveaway. Winner chosen by Random.org

Do you have a daughter who is starting her period or is at that pre-puberty stage and are you looking for a product to help her out with that? Well Dot Girl has the product for you! Here is a little bit about what Dot Girl wants to give one of you a Dot Girl First Period Kit! Cool huh?

The kit includes:

A Dot Girl Period Answer Book- It answers twenty common questions about menstruation including:
How many days will I bleed?
When will I get my first period?
How do I track my period?
What about cramps?
What is a period anyway?
Written in an easy-to-read and positive tone, it covers the basics of menstruation in one compact booklet.

5 Feminine Pads
5 Disposal Bags for disposing of used pads.
1 Reusable Dot Girl Warm Pad, a gel heating pad for soothing cramps
2 Hand Wipes

So you wanna win?

The giveaway is open to both US and Canada and one winner will be chosen to receive one kit.

Mandatory Entry: Visit http://www.dotgirlproducts.com/ and tell me what you want besides the kit.

Extra Entries (Please be sure and leave a comment and link for extra entries):

1 Entry:Follow Faith and Family Reviews On Twitter (http://twitter.com/faithfamilyrevw)

1 Entry: Follow Dot Girl on Twitter .

1 Entry: Like Faith and Family Reviews on Facebook.

1 Entry:Like Dot Girl On Facebook

2 Entries: Follow Faith and Family Reviews on Google Friend Connect.

2 Entries: Tweet about this giveaway, but only one tweet per day please. Include your tweet url with your comment. You may write your own tweet or use this one:

Giveaway: Enter to win a Dot Girl First Period Kit @faithfamilyrevw! http://tinyurl.com/28zrqqu Please share! Thx!

5 Entries: Blog about this giveaway and link back to this post and to dotgirlproducts.com website.

1 Entry for every comment you leave anywhere else on this blog, but please leave a link with your comment!

Details:

This giveaway will run from Oct. 15th, 2010 until October 29th at midnight CST. The winners will be chosen through Random.org. Winner will be contacted via email on or before Nov. 15th and asked for their contact and other pertinent info. Winners will have 48 hours to send me their info at [ffr] [giveaways] [at] [gmail] [dot] [com] (without spaces and parenthesis). Please note: This giveaway is offered to US and Canada.

Thanks and have fun!


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Thrifty Thursday – Barter

Bartering is a age old custom used since 2000 B.C. In China. You can barter for anything now. There are many sorts of barter styles from trade exchanges, internet bartering, and even barter markets. But how exactly can you find people who want to barter? Good question here is a list of websites/places that can help you learn how to barter and how to find items to barter for.

1. Craigslist: Craigslist Barter section is a GREAT way to find barter items. Go to craigslist.com and look for Barter under the for sale tab.

2. Barter Quest.com

3. Swap Treasures

4. Swap Tree.com

5. U- Exchange.com

6. Free Cycle.com (not a bartering place exactly but you can save money)

7. Care To Trade.com

8. Trash Bank.com

9. People Trading Services.com

10. Swap Hog.com

Happy Bartering!


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Win a Kindle Contest!

Suzanne Woods Fisher is thrilled to announce the release of The Waiting, book two in The Lancaster Secrets Collection. In The Waiting Jorie finds herself caught be two loves and two lives in this compelling page turner about complex people living the simple life.

The Waiting is the next stand alone story in The Lancaster Secrets Collection and follows in the footsteps of the best-selling, The Choice. The Waiting is in stores now and to celebrate Suzanne is hosting The Waiting KINDLE Giveaway.



One Grand Prize winner will receive a Kindle preloaded with Suzanne Woods Fisher titles and a Amazon.com gift certificate! The Prize Pack (valued at over $185.00) includes:

* A brand new KINDLE, Free 3G, 6″, Latest Generation

* The Choice by Suzanne Woods Fisher

* The Waiting by Suzanne Woods Fisher

* A $15 dollar Amazon.com Gift Certificate

To enter, simply click on the icons below to fill out the entry form, then tell 5 or more friends about the contest. Oh, and enter soon! Winner will be announced on October 28th at Suzanne’s Lancaster Secrets Book Club Party.

Join Suzanne for the Lancaster Secrets Book Club Party on October 28th! She’ll be announcing the winner of the The Waiting KINDLE Giveaway, hosting a book club discussion of The Waiting and The Choice, and giving away copies of both books and HEAPs of readerly prizes! Be sure to join us on Thursday, October 28th at 5:00 PM PST (6:00 MST, 7:00 CST & 8 EST) at Suzanne’s Author Page. 


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Wordless Wednesday- My Cute Baby


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Code Triage

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.

Dr. Leigh Stathos is an ER doctor who loves her work – “Treat ’em and street ’em” – without any emotional attachments. The hard knocks of life had taught her that nothing lasts forever, including her marriage to San Francisco police officer, Nick Stathos. Time is running out for the young couple’s marriage when an act of violence forces Golden Gate Mercy Hospital into a lockdown. As the Stathos manuever their way through the maze of events that rock their world, will their marriage survive Leigh’s confrontation with “the other woman”?

Code Triage is another one of those books that make you take a good look at your marriage and cause you to wonder just what it can survive. This book not only me made go through all the emotions Dr. Leigh Stathos went through, but also those of her husband, sister and patients. The whole gammit and the whole range of emotions of a broken heart.

Candance Calvert kept me on the edge of my seat as I read her book waiting for the whole story to unfold. I loved the faith Nick Stathos exhibited and empathized with him as he struggled to hang onto his marriage. I hurt with Leigh as she struggled through a wounded heart. It was really difficult for me to embrace “the other woman” who seemed bent on being a destructive force in more than just two lives.

If you like hospital drama and police action intertwined with romance then you’ll like Code Triage.

Tyndale House Publishers has provided me with a complimentary copy of this book.


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