austrya

My favorite is herbed goat cheese from the farmer's market. It's so good on crackers. I also love brie and my homemade mozzerella. Velveeta is NOT cheese but it's awesome mixed with some Hormel chili and used as a nacho dip...

That link that Jorge posted didn't work for me. Is it the urban homesteading people? I read their blog and go to their website quite a bit. They are very inspiring. Here's the link: http://urbanhomestead.org/journal/ I'm slowly starting to dig new flower beds and gardens and such. We're going to look into natural/organic ways to fertilize our lawn for next summer so we don't have to put chemicals down on it. Has anyone seen or used this? It looks interesting. I don't think we have many earthworms in our yard thanks to TruGreen...

I'm growing an heirloom variety of tomato this year and I'm saving the seeds to start plants with next year. There are all sorts of seed exchanges out there and hopefully I can grow most of my garden for free next year by using those. Nothing like eating organic for free!

Here's some e-crayons to use to draw mustaches on that pic from EL Whatever his name is. Good luck with everything.

Sure, they can stay in a basement or a garage when it gets too hot or cold outside. From what I've read, a lot of people keep them right in their kitchen. Jay's too chicken to let me do that. Little does he know that they will be living in our basement this winter. hahaha Just keep them out of the sun and they should be fine.

I would withhold veggies then. That will teach him.

One of these days I'll have my own bee hive in the yard. Ever since we had the swarm on our patio chair, I've been fascinated with bees. Plus, honey is just soooo good. Here's a video of it:

Yeah, I like Gardenweb. I've posted in there a few times and have learned a lot by visiting their forums. I was on their vermicomposting forum the other day and Jay said I go to the most boring forums in the world sometimes. He's such a brat.

I just grow some veggies in containers on the deck. Next spring we'll put in a big garden in the yard. It was just too much this year to deal with a big garden and two toddlers. Now that you have a garden, you should try some worm composting. My 6 year old and I built a bin out of an old rubbermaid tote and I went to the bait shop and got some redworms. They eat your food waste and produce some awesome fertilizer in the process. We only have about 100 worms right now (we just started it 2 days ago). It's better to have about 1000 but we'll keep adding them as we get them and eventua

My geography professor in college said he was at the Grand Canyon once and a group of Japanese tourists were there and one guy was taking a picture and slipped and fell in. He said you could hear him scream and then it just got quiet. He said it was the most disturbing thing he's ever witnessed.

I just use the Lipton ice tea blend (family sized bags) and put 4 bags and fill my sun tea pitcher (the glass kind with the little spout at the bottom) with water. Then I sit it on the deck in the sun for a couple of hours until it's nice and dark. When it's done, I take the tea bags out and dump in about 3/4 cup of sugar and serve it over ice. I haven't had it turn bitter on me yet.

I love me some sun tea loaded up with a bunch of sugar. Sweet tea is teh awesome!

Sounds like a good idea. I'm in!

Happy birthday, Mart!!

I was out Saturday early afternoon and noticed that there were hardly any cars out on the road. This was in town even. We live not far from a pretty popular state park with a lake. Usually every weekend in the summer there are tons of boats on their way out to the lake. I only saw a couple. Granted it was a little chilly on Friday and Saturday, but Sunday and Monday were beautiful.

I'm sure Jay would love to bike to work, but it's about a 30 mile trip each way down roads that are less than bike friendly. We'd move closer, but we can't afford the housing prices in Ann Arbor, or the taxes. Plus, it's not like you could argue the point that if we lived there, we could get rid of cars and save money that way because we could use public transportation. We live too close to Detroit. You don't really get public transportation this close to the Motor City.

It's $4.09 in the town I live in. If you go 30 miles south, it's $3.91. Luckily, I was already there to get groceries this afternoon and filled up the tank. Sometimes it sucks living in the rural midwest.

Carson Ellis illustrated the first Mysterious Benedict Societ book. The one Jay is reading says it's illustrated by Diana Sudyka, but I thought it really looked like Carson Ellis too. Inside the book it says that it's illustrated by Carson Ellis - 1st ed. But also lists Sudyka. So does that mean that Carson Ellis did the illustrations for the first edition? All of the illustrations inside the book look like they are done by her too. When we bought the first book, we happened to be walking through the book store and I saw the book on the shelf in the kid's section. I grabbed it because

Jay was home today and got to watch the match. He just told me if an Aresnal championship match ever ends like that one that I might need to have 911 on the speed dial because he might just have a heart attack.

It was $3.85 around here today. We've just been planning trips better and staying home more. The thing that sucks is that it's about a 25 mile drive to go anywhere worth going. Luckily, Jay works near Target, Best Buy, etc, so if I need something, he can go on his lunch break.

The censored word(s) were "a diet high in Omega-3's" Get your mind out of the gutter.

Jay kind of took over mine so he can listen to it at work. I have XM Radio, so I listen to channel 43 all the time. When he gets a new one, I'll get mine back. Eventually.

My older kids mostly play the Ages of Empires games on the PC and also sometimes Sim City 4. Other than that, they play Star Wars Battlefront on the x-box and a bunch of games on the Wii.

I have nothing against video games. When my son was 4, he could out play us on one of the Tony Hawk games on the x-box. That shows awesome skills for a 4 year old.

Whole foods is expensive. Try going to a farmer's market or just a regular supermarket and shopping in the organic/produce section. You'd be surprised.