Clstratton- a long ways to go in self-sufficiency!

[clstratton]

Just in case knowing my dad wasn't enough...Here's more about me.

Name: Leslie
Birthday: December
Hometown: The Army?????
Relationship Status: Married.
Political Views: Left leaning Republican or right leaning Democrat. But my vote didn't count this election. I live in Idaho. Very Republican.
Religious Views: Latter-day Saint.
Activities: Spending way too much time on the internet, gardening, spending time with my family, having fun, watching movies, Survivor, being a Master Gardener.
Interests: See above.
Favorite Music: A little bit of everything.
Favorite TV Shows: Survivor
Favorite Movies: Lots. the new Bridge to Terabithia, Waking Ned Devine, Secondhand Lions, to name a few.
Favorite Books: Ender's series by Orson Scott Card, specifically the Shadow books.
About Me: I'm #2 of four girls. I have two kids of my own. I want to be more self-sufficient, but I like my "city" living. My town is around 50,000 people.

And now for the other list with duplicates removed.


02. Gender: Female.
03. Disneyworld or Disneyland: How about a Disney Cruise instead?
04. What is your favorite color: Blue
06. How much do you weigh: Just right. About 125.
07. How tall are you: Almost as tall as my dad. I'm 5'5"
08. Can you swim: Good enough.
09. Do you like to swim: Not as much as DH
10. Living arrangement: I have a DH, DD, DS, and three fish.
12. Favorite board game: Settlers of Catan.
13. Favorite magazine: None. I get some parenting/baby mags, but they are free subscriptions that I won't renew.
14. Do you have an accent: Not very often.
17. Favorite smells: Bacon is pretty good, so is bread and chocolate chip cookies (good answer Poppers)
18. Least favorite smells: poo and diesel exhaust (again, good answers Poppers, I would have to agree, and we have both at our house. Yuck).
19. Favorite sound: The sound of silence
24. Would you like to own a motorcycle: No
25. Do you sing in the shower: Only sometimes.
27. What is the first thing you think of when you wake up in the morning: Go back to sleep Abigail.
28. How many rings before you answer the phone: One or two.
29. How do you want to die: Peacefully
31. Gold or silver: White Gold
32. Would you ever go bungee-jumping: Sure
33. Do you like dressing up: Not very often
34. Would you rather be short or tall: I like me like this.
35. Do you enjoy reading: Yes
36. What book are you reading now: Five Love Languages. SOS Help for Emotions. And I just finished "The President's Daughter".
38. What was the last movie you saw: In theaters? Twilight. At home??? Was it the new Willy Wonka? We will probably watch Nim's Island tomorrow.
40. Do you sleep with a stuffed animal: I sleep with two body pillows. Good thing we have a king bed or DH would be on the floor.
42. What are your personality traits: I don't know. I'm slightly neurotic.
43. What's your biggest fear: Losing my family
44. Would you ever have cosmetic surgery: For my mom belly?? Sure. Is it free?
45. Future child's name: I'm done.
46. Favorite foods: I had some delicious omelets this morning. But usually I enjoy chocolate.
47. Chocolate or vanilla: see above.
48. Do you like to drive fast: I try to go the speed limit, maybe five over.
49. Storms - cool or scary: It depends.
50. Do you like to dance: Sometimes.
51. Do you do drugs: Only with a prescription. In the past six months I've had two Rx for Percoset and one for Vicodin. I like my narcotics and major surgeries.
52. Do you smoke: No
53. What do you think of people who smoke: Let's just say I think it's gross.
54. Do you drink: Water, milk, hot cocoa, cream soda. Those are my favorites.
55. Favorite drink: I drink water the most.
57. Do you eat the stems of broccoli: Yes
58. If you could have any job you wanted, what would it be: Landscape designer.
59. What's your "type": My DH
60. Do you bite your nails: Yes
61. Any siblings: Yes
62. What movies have you cried in: Tons.
63. Do you believe in God: Yes
65. Have you ever stolen anything: Probably, but I don't remember any specific instances? Do you?
66. Do you procrastinate: Yes
67. Do you believe in fate: Not really
68. Who's your favorite Sesame Street character: I don't have one.
69. Do you organize your CDs: Not anymore.
71. What are your favorite bands/artists: Beatles, lots of stuff. I'm pretty eclectic.
72. What was the last CD you got: I think Dixie Chicks Fly. A long time ago.
74. Who do you admire the most: My parents, DH
79. Glasses or contacts: Neither. I now have slightly worse than 20/20
80. What color are your eyes: An amazing blue. I'm not conceited, I just get it a lot. Sorry.
81. What is your natural hair color: Brown. I think I now have something like three gray hairs.
84. Any pets: Some fish.
85. Good, decent, or poor grades: Good enough to have a BS. And graduate from high school with "Distinguished Honors."
87. Do you type with your fingers on the right keys: Close enough.
88. What's under your bed: All sorts of stuff. I think most of my teaching stuff. My BS is in Elementary Education.
89. What is your favorite number: I have two. Three and thirteen.
90. Favorite sport to watch: Football.

 

[clstratton]

More about me....

How am I trying to be SS? Well......we were going to get chickens. Until we found out our Homeowners Association forbids it. So we decided to do it anyway, until we found out it's against city code. So we tried to change it. Then the city denied us (dirty jerks, I think we were trying for six hens in the code, no roos). But every summer I've been pregnant (two summers out of three) we've done a garden. This year we will do so again (no, I'm not preggo, we are done). This year though, we will plant stuff we actually eat, instead of things I think we will eat (edamame anyone?). So, sometime in the next little while, I might start some seeds. We are planning to try corn until our bag of seeds runs out (it might last us another year, since we are pretty low volume gardeners), Early Girl tomatoes (my Better Boys were big and green when we had our first frost last year), Sweet 100 tomatoes (a very tasty cherry that did very well for us last year, until the frost ), bush green beans, Sugar Pie and Snack Jack pumpkins (I saved lots of seeds a few years ago), green onions/chives, cilantro, jalapeno peppers, maybe white or yellow onions (from sets this time. We tried Walla wallas from seed last year...no good), and whatever else might tickle my fancy. I've given up on trying to grow cukes. Bust both times. I refuse to grow anymore zuchini, I still have some in my freezer from 2.5 years ago.

From Dacs winter ice storm adventure this year, I have come to realize just how ill-prepared we are. If our power goes out, we are screwed. And our year supply has much to be desired. We do own a manual wheat grinder now. No wheat yet :/ We also have one of those nifty can roller systems. It rocks! We are in the planning stages for getting our year supply. DH is an engineer and very meticulous about research and the like. So we are figuring out what we want. We still have a ways to go though.

As for spelling and grammar...I love my dad, but thankfully I'm not him So don't worry if you screw up. Unless it is "its" or "it's"

 

[dacjohns]

Thankfully you are not me or your mother but you have enough of both of us to be scary.

 

[miss_thenorth]

Thankfully you are not me or your mother but you have enough of both of us to be scary.

My kids scare me the same way!!!!!

Welsome Clstratton!!!!

 

[clstratton]

I want to be a super gardener this year. I'm already a "Master Gardener", but IMHO that really doesn't mean much. All it means is I took some classes, passed a bunch of open book quizzes and one exam (that I was given more than a month to complete), and then did my 40 hours of volunteer service. I have found that I am one lazy gardener. I do not like planting stuff. That's why my flower beds are full of perennials (thank goodness for spell checker, I still can't spell that word on my own) and bushes.

DH just asked me what a "super gardener" is. I said "one that actually gardens." I've already mentioned a little bit about growing stuff that I don't eat. Last year we wanted to do a salsa garden. It failed. The cilantro came up months before anything else. Only some of the tomatoes (Supersweet 100) ripened, and the onions didn't do jack. Even the green onions failed us. When we did a garden our first year, the green onions did great. This past year, not so much. I don't know what the deal was with the garden this time around. Could be I was preggers (the babe was born August 26th), could be the snow in JUNE (!), could be that we were slow to get the drip line hooked up, could be there was no mulch (although there wasn't the first time either). I just don't get it.

So this year I want to do better. Maybe I'll get tomato cages. And maybe I'll mulch. And I don't think I will start quite so many seeds quite so early inside this year. But I should probably start them soon. Problem is, now I don't have a spare bedroom to germinate seeds in. Pretty sure the basement isn't warm enough. Although with a heating pad, I'm sure they'll do fine. But I don't know that they'll get enough light. Could bring the growing rack into the basement, with the grow lights. Maybe I need better grow lights too. The ones we used were just regular florescent lights. But they didn't generate enough heat. At least I didn't have to worry about my seedlings burning, right?

So yeah, this year I'm open to suggestions. Anyone want to come and garden in my yard, just for fun, while I eat the fruits of your labor?

 

[PamsPride]

 

[clstratton]

Today we made seed pots out of newspaper. My sister and her DH made circular ones, but we found some that were square. I think they will work quite nicely. Had to cut off part of the newspaper to get them to stay together really well though. That's okay, we usually just recycle the paper, so the unused portions went back to the recycling bin. I guess we could just use them as mulch in the garden too. Maybe we will. Hmmmmm.

We are hoping the square ones will fit nicely in the planting trays and that we'll be able to pack them in tightly. Less trays to lift and water this way. Hopefully. We also went and bought seeds yesterday at one of the local nurseries. I was unimpressed with their selection. We decided to go to one of the smaller nurseries, trying to help out the little guy, you know, but yeah, I was disappointed. We will be going back to the larger one. They just have a better selection. It's also locally owned and operated, but a much larger scale production than the one we went too. I guess there's something to be said for being bigger.

If we get around to it, we will add planting medium to all the pots today. Maybe even stick some seeds in the soil. Well maybe not, since the seeds I want to start, we don't have. The nursery was sold out of Early Girl tomatoes. They didn't have any cherry tomatoes, and we didn't buy jalapenos, because we thought we still had some from last year. We didn't. But we do have a buttload of bush green beans now. I'm hoping for a bumper crop this year, then I can can them or freeze them. Or turn them into baby food.

I made some baby food the other day. Granted I bought baby carrots, but I didn't buy them for the purpose of making baby food. So I steamed some of them, and put them through a grinder. I made about five or six servings, but DS didn't like the carrots. We will try again today.

 

[kaycei]

Those are definitely not the pots I described to you this morning. They do look really nice though, and nicer than our newspaper pots. I bought more seeds today myself -- broccoli and cabbage. And I bought from the big guy. I've been buying mostly from big box stores this year, with the exception of 2 internet orders I've done.
My tomato seedlings are looking really good though. They look like a jungle of tomato plants in their seed tray.

 

[dacjohns]

Baby food out of baby carrots .

He doesn't like carrots. Wait 'till he's bigger and learns to eat carrots mushed up with potatoes and smothered in butter.

 

[clstratton]

Baby food out of baby carrots .

He doesn't like carrots. Wait 'till he's bigger and learns to eat carrots mushed up with potatoes and smothered in butter.

I didn't even think about the irony of baby food from baby carrots. That was pretty funny.

I love carrots and potatoes and butter too. Must be genetic or something. I dunno.

We went to Jared's today and helped with his new coop. Well, Carl helped, and I watched all the kiddies. His boys are pretty well behaved. He has some gorgeous birds there. And...we got some eggs. Older son claims that he has two flocks of chickens. He has always claimed the buff orps as his, but has now also claimed the Easter Eggers. LOL. He's a pretty funny kid. We might have to go back next week. He just had some eggs hatch, but they are still wet, and the incubator has no windows. I think Abigail would love the baby chicks. She was a little apprehensive of the big ones. I had to hold her. She seemed to like the dog well enough, but still a little apprehensive. Didn't even go back outside in the 3.5+ hours we were there. Oh well. All in all, a good day. It was nice to get out of the house and help someone out. Jared's a pretty cool guy.