Friday, May 28, 2010

And so it begins....

Dustin picked our first bucket full of tomatoes last night.
Ready or not.. canning season is here!



Oh! and the giveaway winner is #2 out of 9. Who was the second commenter?





Congrats Destry!

Will you have your mommy email me at laurenjh04 {at} hotmail {dot} com to claim your prize?!

Thanks!!

Wednesday, May 26, 2010

Love/Hate = Giveaway

I'm having a love/hate relationship with this blog...
why don't my pictures post themselves?

I'm having a love/hate relationship with my house...
why doesn't it stay clean?

The kids haven't ever really been motivated to help me around the house. I can yell and plead and beg.. but I've found bribes rewards work better.

 Recently, I found a job chart template from Brooke at Little Wonders. Brooke is amazingly crafty and well... she's super mom! So I downloaded her template and made some job charts for the kids. When they get their "jobs" done they get to do something fun like watch a movie or eat a cookie or something.


Brooke recommend laminating the charts but I got these cheap frame at Wal-Mart and you can write right on the glass with a dry erase marker.
Allie loves her pink chart. Every morning she checks to see what she needs to do and what she's already done. At the end of the day she says, "Mom we need to read our scriptures, I need a star on my chart!"


Mark just likes to erase all the stars off everyone's boards.. but he'll get it... someday.. I hope!

The job charts are really helping improve the love/hate relationship with my messy house.
So what do I do to improve the love/hate relationship with my blog?

Have a giveaway, of course!!

I'm going to give away a job chart design to one of you!
Just leave a comment, saying that you are a follower and that you love me.
On Friday I'll draw a name and announce the winner.

The winner will receive a customized job chart file that I will email to them and they can get printed at Wal-Mart or online, or wherever!


P.S.
The final four logos are up at Somewhat Simple -- mine is #3!
Go vote for me, please!!!
Thanks so much!

Monday, May 24, 2010

Its Official...


none of my kids can take a normal picture.


But being silly is way more fun!

Thursday, May 20, 2010

Breakfast at the Nelson's....

pants always optional.

Have a great day.

Wednesday, May 19, 2010

Garden Grass Gnomes and Trees


The garden is thriving in this wonderful weather!
Our tomatoes are doing better than they ever have.


We have a couple rogue squash


and corn stalks growing in random places.


After the onion fiasco of '08 and '09. We learned our lesson and only planted about 20 onion plants.
Those and the millions we have frozen will be plenty for summer canning.




Dustin got me 12 pines trees for Mother's Day. He finished planting them all around the yard yesterday.
They will be amazing relief from the summer sun.


And my grass is coming up the backyard!!! Yippee!


While we were working in the garden we found these little gnomes poking around.






They are pretty silly, but we love them.

Tuesday, May 18, 2010

The Turtle Club

Do you remember that terrible movie Dana Carvey made, The Master of Disguise?
Dus, Meliss and I went to see it thinking, "Yeah, Dana Carvey! This'll be great. Party on Wayne. Party on Garth."
Yeah... not so much. However, there was a part in the movie that stuck with us.

The "turtle turtle turtle "part.
If you haven't seen the movie, please enjoy this clip:





I've decided that I'm going to start calling the first railroad bridge, where we fish, The Turtle Club! 
We've caught more turtles here than fish, by 100 times!!

Mark did NOT like the turtle. He said, "Gusting. Shoot wif gun."


This is little Dana Carvey


Turtle Turtle Turtle
Am I not turtle-y enough for the turtle club?



Estefan loved them. He wanted to take one home.


We did however catch a few Catfish.


Allie said, "Mom, look! My fish has a mustache!!"


The Turtle Club


Exclusive Members
Mark


Estefan


and Allie.

Saturday, May 15, 2010

Tour De Pantry

I got quite of few comments the other day asking about my pantry. (view post) So I thought I'd give ya'll a tour of my pantry/laundry room/storage area/shoe pile/utility closet. My house was built along time ago.. I'd venture to say that it is 80 years old. My great-grandpa built it. The back of the house, which pretty much consists of the master bedroom and this pantry were added in the 70's (I think). My wise Grandma Faye had this large pantry made with these weird shelves. Shelves that were slanted down... who in the heck wants to use slanted shelves????



Thankfully my grandma was a smarter woman than me. The rolling shelves allow for easier food rotation!! There is a stopper on the edge of each shelf so the cans don't roll to the floor. Which is awesome, or it would defeat the whole purpose. :P


On the other side there are regular shelves without the slant, that fit my #10 can perfectly.
Coincidence?
I think not.
Thanks grandma.


The tops shelves allow for easy storage of large items. Like my canning and gardening supplies...

and paper goods and water. These shelves are easily two feet deep. I have a lot of water stored up in the very left hand corner. See the Jaritos bottle? There are like 50 of em back there.
{Hmmm... I think I need to make a TP run soon!}


Beneath the shelving there is floor storage. I don't like to keep lots of stuff on the floor because... its the floor.. it gets dirty! So we have our shoe storage and above that our crafts storage. Next to this I have a bunch of 5 gallon buckets... but I forgot to take a picture.. oops!


Continuing on... we have the washer and dryer. Not so exciting after those rolling shelves, eh? And yes I got those rocks out of Estefan's pockets. Always check pants pockets!


You can buy these Shelf Reliance rotating shelves online for an ok deal. They are spendy but they are on sale right now. Also on Shelf Reliance there is a "Thrive Plan." It calculates how much food your family will need to live for a year or more.



But you don't have to spend TONS of money on a fancy food storage room. You can do like my friend Annie did and get a filing cabinet!!
She said, "i can't wait to print out the little labels for the doors. you know one is going to say: OLIVE OIL. and the other CANNED BEANS. doesn't that just scream classy?"

I love it!


The point is to have food storage, somewhere. Whether is be a pantry, a filing cabinet or under the bed!!

Though we never know when we will face a challenge that will require us to depend on the resources we have stored, we know that the Lord has said, “If ye are prepared ye shall not fear” (D&C 38:30).
President Gordon B. Hinckley reminded us in October 2005 general conference of our need to be prepared: “We can so live that we can call upon the Lord for His protection and guidance. This is a first priority. We cannot expect His help if we are unwilling to keep His commandments. … I have faith … that the Lord will bless us, and watch over us, and assist us if we walk in obedience to His light, His gospel, and His commandments.”4
Let us do all in our power to “walk in obedience” and be prepared. (lds.org)

AMEN

ETA: How awesome!! I just received an email from Raegan about food storage and preparedness. Take a look HERE for recipes and ideas!!!

Thursday, May 13, 2010

Our Simple Life

Since my last post I've been thinking a lot about life.
How fast its going by, how good it really is and how much I love mine!

This evening we had dinner at the dam. It was a perfect time to relax and enjoy the little things -- the wonderful, little things that make up my simple life.
Like tuna fish sandwiches

and koolaid Squeez-Its.

Spiderman fishing poles

and happy faces.
As I sat and watched the water run over the dam, I thought about how simple and wonderful my life is.

As I watched my kids play






and throw rocks in the water...

I realized how blessed I am.







Its the simple things in life that are really the most important.





Just fishing on a railroad bridge and at a dam with my family.


I lead a simple yet amazing

wonderful life.
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