June iPhone Snaps

We've been busy this past month! Projects galore!

The previous renters of our townhome had awful, awful big ornamental grasses right up by the front door. Talk about obnoxious! Nathan & I finally agreed on what we wanted to do in that mess of an area; a mini garden pond & fountain. 

These are the before pics, obviously lol. It's surprisingly easy to build your own little garden pond & water fountain. AND CHEAP! 

We bought a pump on sale at Lowe's & a pond liner (they give military discount too! Always knocks a good chunk off our receipts). We priced stones there ($7.00/stone!)-- YIKES! That was going to be a budget breaker. So, we decided to scavenge for stones. We found half at a lake up in Holten, and then the other half we found off country roads out in the Flint Hills. It was fun to go out as a family & search for the stones. The kids liked the car rides & Nathan & I had fun laughing at ourselves for getting excited when we found the "perfect" stones ;) I guess we're kids at heart still. 

I clipped down all the grasses and then Nathan & I went at the stumps (?) with a shovel and a manual tiller. In that process we discovered HUGE tree roots. How fun. Not really, we ended up using the manual hedge clippers to cut them to aid in the removal process. Lily sure did enjoy chewing those roots though!  Anyway, our hole for the pond basically was complete after ripping out all the roots and ornamental grasses. So then Nathan leveled it & we laid the liner. Nathan built up the fountain and then I laid all the rest of the stones around the pond. 

We've actually broken it all down since this picture, because Nathan wanted to put sand down under the liner. And we added a few bags of decorative river rock at the bott of the pond. At first I was irritated, but I'm glad we did. It looks MUCH better now than this picture. I'll have to take a picture later & post it, but this is the basic idea. We're going to plant some more flowers around the pond, add a pallet bench & a trellis of sorts. So, about half way done with that project.

This was a month ago! My garden has grown SO MUCH! 

^ from just a few days ago :) 

In the smaller container I replanted cherry tomatoes, peppers & lettuce. 

In the other container I planted a ton of spinach. I use it a lot for smoothies. I have at least one, usually two a day & put a few handfuls in each time. So, growing it seemed like a good idea.

Ah, CORN! I'm nervous about growing it in a Rubbermaid tote, but I've read good things about doing it this way, plus I don't want to use the entire backyard as a garden. Where would we build the kids' playset if I did that?!

I got a little over zealous maybe and planted pumpkins. Yes, I know they're in a small bed, but it's because I'm going to try growing them VERTICALLY. Yes, it can be done! I've done a lot of reading up on it & I think I can pull it off ;) I'm going to have to get the supplies to build the structure for it soon. They're already so much bigger than this picture. And it's only been like 3 days. 

Tomatoes are finally starting to flower. Hopefully I'll get enough to can purée, and to make a few batches of marinara to can & who knows what else. I'll have to look up recipes! 

My zucchini-- All 5 plants are producing great! Haha. A few weeks ago I noticed two plants had some white stuff on the leaves & after talking to my best friend, Mandy (she's the plant whisperer- her bachelors is in horticulture), she determined it was powdery mildew. So I made some non-toxic spray (water, baking soda & a little olive oil) and that did the trick! When I was spraying it though, it got on my tomatoes & peppers. So I lost half of my tomatoes and peppers, because the oil in the solution suffocated the healthy plants. Oops. I still have 7 tomato plants (plus however many cherry tomatoes I just planted a couple weeks ago), and 5 pepper plants + whatever I just planted. 

The first zucchini growing a couple weeks back :) 

The first 3 I picked. I decided to use these for baked Parmesan zucchini chips. It was yummy! John had fun helping me prepare them too :) 

Since we are broke college students, I've been searching for ways to cut back on expenses. Once I added up how much we were spending on tide free & clear laundry packs, snuggle exhilarations fabric softener & finish quantum dishwasher tabs, I decided to be really Pinterest-y & make my own (yes, I had tried off brands/cheaper brands & they didn't clean as effectively!).

I had a good laugh at myself as I was making the laundry detergent remembering quite clearly a time a couple years back where I SWORE I would NEVER spend time doing this; after all, there's nothing wrong with buying it. It does the job & is super convenient. But, we are trying so hard to pinch our pennies. 

I used a gift card from my birthday to order a 2 gallon glass jar with a built in chalkboard label for the laundry detergent & a chalk pen. 

Pinterest worthy, right? ;) haha. So basically you grate zote soap or fels naphtha. It takes 2 zote bars or 3 fels naphtha. Well, I chose Zote & didn't feel like grating it. Instead, I popped it in the microwave for 4 minutes. 

This is what it looks like after 4 minutes. Let it cool for a minute or two then crumble with your hands. Faster & easier than grating two bars of soap :)

So you mix the soap with baking soda, then add washing soda & borax & oxy- clean. I also added Purex scent crystals for well, scent obviously. It takes ONE - TWO tablespoons per load. It is BY FAR the best detergent I've ever used. It gets stains out the first time, and actually makes the clothes pretty soft. 

I haven't made the fabric softener or dishwasher tabs yet; I still have some time before I need to. But I'm optimistic with how those'll turn out. 

Next on my project to do list is a big "L" shaped storage bench to go behind the couch & on the wall the chaise section of couch sits on. I've been eyeing pallets & think I've found a great place to get them FREE. I just need to call in the morning to make sure it's okay to collect them. 

It has been HOT and HUMID this past month, in true Kansas style. The kids enjoyed the pool until John chucked my garden spade in & ripped a big hole in the bottom. Whoops. 

Lily is doing pretty well; she turned 4 months on July 1st. She has her moments, but I have to remind myself she's just a puppy. Ellie and Lily are so sweet together :) it's adorable to see how happy the kids are every morning to see her & vice versa. 

The kids are doing great! They're both growing fast & advancing developmentally every day! John is starting to speak English more & more, but he still uses his own little language sometimes. Ellie talks a lot & is FINALLY doing great in nursery on Sunday's. Today was the first week in 6 months that she didn't scream the entire time. She cried for a few minutes then played, sang songs, participated in snack time, etc. I was proud of her! 

John has been falling asleep in the middle of the day on the couch- I swear he grows an inch every time this happens. He says, "mama, oh, tired" then asks to be held before zonking out. I can't believe I've been filling out pre-k paperwork for him! And he's completely potty trained, even at night! It's like one day he woke up & decided he was just gonna be a big boy & that was that! 

I cut his hair last week. I think I did pretty darn good for not having hair shears! I only had the scissors that came with our kitchen knife set haha. I was surprised he agreed to let me do the cut. 

She really loves mustard. In case that wasn't clear ;) 

Let's see... I turned 26 on the 26th! Crazy. I still feel like I'm 17. I had a low key birthday day. My favorite was seeing my best friend from high school! It had been 3 years since I'd seen her! And getting a bouquet of beautiful flowers :) I love having colorful flowers in my kitchen! 

And here are some screen shots of photos I edited of the flowers. They were so pretty, I had to take some good shots before the kids ruined them lol

And one of Ellie because she's just a ham ;) 

Well, that's all for now! I'm editing a pretty large batch of photos to include 4th of July photos. Hopefully I'll finish those up soon! I'm excited with how the fireworks shots turned out :)