Gearing Up For Another Great Blog Season!

Summer is just about over and I wanted to write a quick update for all of you lovely readers!

I have had quite a busy summer and am honestly not ready for it to be over. I am trying to enjoy the last of these days before it turns cold again. I have been working on quite a few posts and have several new topics to add to my reader list for you all! I am excited about the future posts for this blog and hope you all will enjoy them as well!

Over the summer I have worked on yet another room makeover, two actually! My living room & hallway. Still haven't finished decorating ANY of the previously made-over rooms, but I have been slowly working on them as I find the things I'm looking for to complete the 'look' of each room. I will be sharing living room renovation pics when I come back from my summer break.

I have been back at making and canning homemade jelly this year! I already made two batches of Strawberry Vanilla, and a batch of Blueberry jelly. I have plans to make more strawberry, more blueberry, plus grape and blackberry jellies too! I probably wont have recipes there to share, but I might share some pics of all the canned goods! Our apple trees have not done well so I probably wont be doing much canning with them, but I did get a gallon of cherries off our trees and want to attempt homemade cherry pie filling! Homemade spaghetti sauce (canned) is another canned item I want to try and make soon too.

Our gardening experience has been less than good this year. Not only did I get started late, but I also ended up spending 2 weeks on a blueberry farm, and then two weeks on the living room/hallway makeover, and then some time on vacation to see my best friend & my sister. Needless to say, I am grateful for the green beans we have gotten out of it so far (3 quarts and counting!) and there are plenty of green tomatoes that are just needing to turn red so I can make some homemade spaghetti sauce! Our okra is not doing well at all. The plants are barely knee high and there are only a few pieces of okra all together. My corn looks terrible as well, but it might surprise me in the end. I really think we will get nothing there either. I planted sweet onions in the main garden...they have since been transplanted into the organic bed where the dirt is looser to hopefully help them grow.

Cloth Diapering is going really well! I have written an update post to share more details about that with you. We are pretty much full time cloth now. In the beginning we did cloth only at home. Now I am brave and do cloth on the go, and on all-day times away from home. Still not brave enough to do cloth while on vacation, but that's okay. :)

Breastfeeding is going well too! Little Man is a pro and is getting so big. I cant believe how fast he is growing, but it is exciting and I'm happy he is getting big. I recently discovered that I can donate breastmilk and have donated 206oz. so far! I'm working on getting together more to donate again. It is such a wonderful feeling! (I will also be sharing more details on this!)

I've been into healthier eating lately and have come up with a few yummy recipes which I plan to share with you all when I come back. Oatmeal is a main food for me right now with pumping to donate milk. I make oats for breakfast, muffins, cookies, put it in smoothies...its a huge part of my diet so I've had to come up with many ways to eat it in order to avoid burning out on it! I've also got a new Cajun recipe to share with you as well! Hubby has been cooking in the kitchen this summer!!

Our cat Demi is doing SO well with LM. They are good play mates and LM crawls after him all over the living room and hallway. Its quite entertaining to watch them play.

I have quite a bit more that I plan to share with you during the fall months!

See y'all soon!

-Helen