This Is Us

Yes, It’s January, but now is the time to start getting ready for spring! If you buy your seeds now, you can plan your gardens and have it all ready for planting. We plan by drawing them out on paper or sometimes we just plant everything in the same place as the previous year. It's not good to plant the same things in the same place for to many years in a row.  This is because everything you grow takes nutrients out of the soil, and some things take different nutrients than others.  So if you rotate what you grow, and add in fertilizer in the fall, then you are sure to have great crops every year.  When we plant, we make sure to mark everything so if we save seeds we know what we are saving. We have bought from lots of places, and some are better than others. So we thought we would share our favorite places to buy seeds. Here they are, in no particular order: Seed Mail Seed Co: Stefane from @mint2grow owns this seed company  Seed Mail Seed Co .  She started this...

Growing up my mom used Tide Laundry Detergent and Downy fabric softener. It never bothered me and I have never had a problem with sensitive skin. When I married Nicolas, I found out that he could only use a certain detergent. So for a good portion of our marriage we used Fab. It’s was hard to find. We could only find it at one store. So we switched to All Free and Clear about 9 years ago. We haven’t tried other detergents to test the kid’s skin, because we didn’t want to risk Nicolas’ skin getting itchy and dry. When my mom has washed the kid’s clothes before they complained about their skin itching. So... All of our kids have sensitive skin too. Here is what we use. Our main detergent is All Free and Clear. We usually buy it at Costco, but sometimes we will buy it somewhere else with a coupon. We also stock up on it when it’s on sale. I don’t think I’ve bought it for at least a year. Yeah, when I say stock up I mean it. Lol! We can only use Snuggle brand fabric softener. Snuggle brand...

  For the last several years we have had our own New Year’s Eve party at home. They have been the best. This year I got out our serving dishes and made our food spread a little prettier. We have so much food and get so full. As a white elephant gift we got Rootbeer Pong. So we played that and had so much fun. We watched movies, and live streamed some of the celebration at The Gateway. Then at midnight the kids went outside and banged on pots and pans, yelled happy new year, and watched the neighbors fireworks. Hopefully 2021 will be a little happier than 2020!

  Several years ago I decided to make a laundry schedule. I felt like I was constantly doing laundry and at the same time not being able to keep up with it. So I wrote down which laundry I would do on which day. It’s been very helpful, and I don’t have to do laundry on Saturday (I’ve never done laundry on Sundays). It’s not perfect (I have Nick’s work clothes written on two days. I actually do them on Friday), but it works for our family. I only have to do laundry 5 days of the week, and it’s only a couple loads so it’s not even all day. I do wash all of our socks separately. I just wash them when the hamper in the laundry room is full, which is about every other week.

  I was so busy, and at the same time not feeling like doing much, so I didn’t get a December Dinner Calendar done. Here is January’s. We are almost out of colored ink, so it’s not the blue colors it’s supposed to be (just a small glimpse into real life, right?).  We buy the XL one and it still doesn’t seem to last long. 🤷🏻‍♀️🙄 Here is what colors it’s supposed to be: 🤣

Here are my nails for January. They weren’t perfect, but they were okay. I made a snowflake on my thumb and tiny snowflakes on my other fingers. I used this  Nail Tool