Homegrown Thoughts

…just looking at the picture of these bars. Oh. My. Word. I am so making these as soon as my husband is done with his challenge diet. 2 more weeks to go!

I mean, seriously. Chocolate Chip Cookie Dough Cheesecake Bars? Each word you read just makes it better and better. And that doesn’t even include the chocolate drizzle on top.

Check these out!

Bake or Break recipe post

I have this habit of working on ‘hidden’ clutter before tackling the more obvious clutter ( like the kids’ toys littering the living room and the pockets of disarray scattered around our home). I was up to my tricks again today as I finished filing the multitude of clipped and printed off recipes I’ve collected over the years. I tend to think that recipes in the paper, magazines or online look really good at the time, so I’ll tear or print them out thinking, “I’ll have to try that sometime!”. Most of these recipes have managed to congregate in a couple of areas that are hidden, but I still know they’re there…taunting me.

So, as I said, I finished up filing all of these today. I bought (before my ‘want’ buying ban, I might add) a FilePLUS organizer for my recipes. A simple accordian file would have accomplished the same thing, but I think I’ll use it more because it’s attractive. I feel more organized when my organizational tools look nice. Here is what it looks like:

Nice, huh? I have a section for the recipes I still want to try. I threw away probably 80% of what I started with. I have other sections for recipes I’ve tried and liked. As I try out the new ones, they will either be filed there or tossed if they aren’t to our liking. The very popular recipes will be transferred to my personal cookbook, which is another great organizational tool.

This isn’t the same one I have (mine is nearly 20 years old, a wedding shower gift), but it’s the same idea. I think this is spiral-bound and mine is a 3-ring binder.

Also, I will NOT be clipping any more recipes unless I am sure I will try them and they will be filed in this folder or they will be thrown away.   I have enough new recipes to keep me busy for quite awhile, so any that get added will have to be VERY impressive.  With allrecipes.com as another great resource, there’s really very little reason to be clipping anything out of magazines (where the recipes seem to emphasize certain products over really great taste anyway).

I hope to share some of our favorite recipes here at HomegrownHearts very soon!

This isn’t the first time it’s happened, but I have currently reached my limit for enduring clutter in my home. I’m a packrat who married a packrat and gave birth to two more packrats and I just can’t take it anymore.

Now, lest you think we live in squalor, that is not true. I don’t think they’d ever put me on “Clean Sweep” or “How Clean is Your House?” If I have enough notice (2 hours would be nice, thank you), I can get the house picked up and clean enough to let ‘outsiders’ in without cringing in horror. But the daily experience of not being able to find things I know are here, having to shift piles from one place to another, and general navigation around ’stuff’ is simply not okay with me anymore. I am not a clean freak or a neat freak and I’m not going to be a dictator about this - but I think our family deserves an environment that is better than what I can only describe as chaotic. I’m raising messy children and I think my future daughters-in-law will thank me if I nip that in the bud now and at least give my boys a basic understanding of how to pick up after themselves and not create needless work for others.

If you know me at all, you’ll know that I tend to jump into things quickly, then tire of them even more quickly. So I’m trying to make a plan that will work for me and that I can stick with. I want this to be a permanent thing, not a temporary fix until the next time I reach my limit. I’m also a researcher, which usually means trips to the library. This time is no different. Here are some books I have been reading and gleaning information from as I begin “The Great Clean-up of 2007″:

“The Clutter Busting Handbook: Clean It Up,Clear It Out, and Keep Your Life Clutter-Free” by Rita Emmett

“Help, I’m Knee-deep in Clutter!: Conquer the chaos and get organized once and for all” by Joyce I. Anderson

“Living Organized: Proven steps for a clutter-free and beautiful home” by Sandra Felton ( Of Messies Anonymous fame - www.messies.com)

These are library books that I’ve found to be helpful so far. After going through this before (too many times to remember), most of this information isn’t new to me - but so far I haven’t been bored to tears and have found these to be motivating and containing good ideas along with giving me things to think about as I prioritize what to keep, what to get rid of and how to keep from adding to the mess as I’m trying to clean it out.

I also just purchased these books:

“Organizing Your Home & Family’” by Sandra Felton

“30 Days to a Simpler Life” by Connie Cox & Cris Evatt (Recommended by Unclutterer.com)

I haven’t had a chance to look at these too much yet, but hopefully the will also be helpful.

I’ll try to document my progress here if anybody wants to follow along. We are having a garage sale at some point soon, hopefully, so that is helping with the motivation too. So far I’ve sorted through the kids clothes and found a lot to put in the sale. I need to go through their toys and they are VERY reluctant for me to do so. Ha. Today I went through a bunch of our DVD’s and video tapes and pulled some out for sale and others that I can transfer to DVD and get rid of the video tapes to save space. I’ve also gone through a lot of my clothes and cleaned out my part of the closet and other clothing storage areas.

I won’t tell you how long it’s taken me to accomplish that little bit, but, hey - it’s progress, right? :-)

…to take pictures of my growing seeds. Well, the week wait wasn’t necessary as they started sprouting after only 2 days. The sunflowers grew very quickly and were soon too tall to keep the lid on the ‘greenhouse’ at all. I’ve planted many of the sunflowers and alyssum along with a couple of the lavender plants. The rest I left outside in the tray to adjust to the weather, etc. Much to my surprise, after only 2 days all of those plants not put into the ground have dried up and died! ACK! Now, I would be even more upset about this, but if you’ll recall, I did keep out 1/3 of the pots for use later in case something went wrong. Something went wrong, LOL. So I’m going to replant some lavender and violas at a minimum, since I lost most of those, and then decide if I want to start anything else from my seed packets inside. It worked so well, I was amazed! I think only one pot didn’t germinate at all and most of the others had several sprouts.

Now here is the bad news for the plants I transplanted into the ground. They haven’t dried out, but the bunnies have found them. We put the sunflowers in 2 different beds, and the rabbits have totally destroyed the ones in one bed. So far they don’t seem to have noticed the other bed, but I’m wondering how long that will last. So I think I need to go pick up some chicken wire or something to keep the little varmints out temporarily. I assume I can take any fencing down once the plants are strong enough to survive any bunny attacks. Does anybody have any other bunny deterrent ideas for me that won’t actually kill the little critters?

Note to my backyard rabbit population: I do love me some bunnies, but stay away from my plants!! There are plenty of delicious weeds out there for your dining pleasure and that was NOT a bunny salad bar that I was planting out there. I’m sure you think I was very considerate and kind to put the new delicacies out for you, but you entirely miss my intentions there. Stick to the dandelions and creeping charlie and I won’t evict you from under the back deck. Do we have a deal?

I mentioned a couple weeks ago that my little guy turned 6. As is our tradition, I decorated up a cake for him. I decided that I’d be brave and attempt a 2-layer cake, which I haven’t done in AGES. With good reason. But not being one to shy away from a creative challenge, I forged ahead on this little experiment.

First of all, let me just say that although I have not taken any cake decorating classes (which will be evident as you view the photo), I do know some of the ‘rules’. One of the things they like you to do is cut your cakes to make them even - cut the round top off, even up the sides, etc. Well, I’m not one to waste cake (!!!), so I did not do that. Therefore, I have a bit of an uneven, lumpy looking cake. I may have to give in to the ‘rules’ on the next one, but that explains the less than even look here.

My son chose Funfetti cake and frosting. I really don’t love the taste of canned frosting and I had a feeling it would not really be enough to frost and decorate the cake anyway. So I made up a batch of my tried and true decorator’s frosting. To appease him, I used the sprinkles from the Funfetti frosting on top and he was completely happy.

He requested red. So I put little red dots around the bottom and the top. I used a coupler and tip from my Cake Class kit, which I purchased but have never used. I really need to get to a class one of these days! I managed to get that done without any major catastrophes. Then he requested that I put a “6″ on top of his cake. He had already chosen to have a 6 candle instead of 6 individual candles. I realize the colors don’t match, but he wanted red, not purple, no matter what color the candle was. *sigh* So i put on his big red 6 and sprinkled the Funfetti candies on top. Not one to leave well enough alone, I decided it would be fun to try to write his name on the cake, too. I really don’t know what gets into me. But it turned out pretty good, which is surprising considering I’d never done it before. And he really liked that added touch.

Below, you can see my very goofy 6 year old showing his excitement about his cake. Will those 2 front teeth ever come in? Will his mother ever give him a haircut? “Hopefully”, and “I have now”, are the answers to those questions. :-)

Oh, and the cake was delish. Like…really, really good. I wish I had some now.