Tomboy Tools!

So one of the things that I do is sell Tomboy Tools.  These are great for the handy woman in your house, the do-it-yourselfer, or any woman who wants to be able to do things!

These make great gifts for the going back to college crowd!

Check out my website:  www.tomboytools.info/bevbafus

Here's one of our new products that I just LOVE:

Precision Socket Set

$24.00

NEW! Our 10-Piece Precision Socket Set features high-quality, Chrome Vanadium 1/4" drive mini flex-head with a comfortable rubber-grip ratchet.  The 72 fine tooth flex-head provides more strength and durability and features a quick release ratchet. Comes with Hex sockets ranging from 3/16" to 1/2" and includes a 1/4" socket adapter.

Cheering up a blah corner

Any blah corner of your property can be cheered up with a few flowers. This corner next to our house has no topsoil, just gravel next to the foundation and fence. I dug out a bit of gravel and added some soil and hollyhock seeds. Leveled the gravel and placed a flat concrete block. A pot planted with flowers... And this is the cheery result!

SUMMER --and lovin' the CSA!

Wow. I didn't realize that it's been this long since I've posted something. Summer has been crazy, with a million things to do.

Greens, Greens, Greens earlier in the summer

But a highlight of our summer for the last three years has been our weekly CSA share! CSA stands for "community supported agriculture". I'd love to be able to grow awesome vegetables but all I seem to produce is a small quantity of tomatoes. Signing up with a local farmer is great.

1) we get fresh local grown chemical free produce
2) I pay in early spring, usually with the tax refund! :)
3) we are supporting local (usually young) farmers!
4) it's a surprise and a challenge every week!

Arugula, tomato, onion salad and honeyed beets, all from our share!

So here's a shout out to our local farmers:  http://www.deep-roots-farm.com/  Marci & Greg, you are the best!

This week we had two fennel bulbs in our share.

So tonight's salad was ORANGE, FENNEL & ARUGULA!

Arugula leaves

One orange thinly sliced

Fennel bulb very thinly sliced

3 green onions chopped

1/2 cup almonds, chopped or sliced

3T orange juice

3T olive oil

Salt and pepper

Tear arugula, place in bowl with sliced orange, fennel and green onions. Toast the almonds in the olive oil in a small frypan until slightly brown. Allow to cool. Add orange juice to almond/oil mixture and blend well. Sprinkle veggie/orange mixture with salt and pepper. Pour dressing over and toss.

Sorry - the Hubby ate it before I could take a picture!

In three hours

From this:

To This:

In three hours.  One of the things I do is coordinate a local food pantry.  It amazes me every week how quickly the food disappears.  It amazes me that in our fairly well off part of Northern Idaho, that 6,450 people are estimated to be "food insecure", and that 53% of those are considered to be living in poverty.

see: http://feedingamerica.org/hunger-in-america/hunger-studies/map-the-meal-gap.aspx

But what amazes me the most is that God makes sure our shelves are filled to bursting again every week.

Next week, it will look like this again:

Like I said - Amazing.

Kitchen herbs

This is my rendition of a little herb garden I saw on Pinterest.    Started with some tin cans, and spray painted them red.  Drilled holes in the bottom for drainage.  After a couple of weeks, I covered all but the top strip with painter's tape. I waited primarily because I was busy, but waiting helps the first coat of paint to cure so that the painter's tape doesn't peel it off.

The next step was to spray-paint the top strip with chalkboard paint.  (Have I mentioned that I'm in LOVE with chalkboard paint?)

After that layer dried, I peeled off the tape, filled the cans with potting soil, and planted herb seeds.  Set in a sunny kitchen window, and watered occasionally, they soon sprouted in the cheery picture at the beginning.  These are almost ready to start using!

Future Food!

Got the computer back up and running, so I have a bunch of posts to get caught up on.  Back in January, I started thinking about the future garden, and all things green.  Our local recycling center quit taking milk cartons, so I started saving them.  I cut off the tops, and saved the bottoms.  It took about two months for us to save enough 1/2 gallon milk cartons, and orange juice cartons for this project.  Of course, there's only two of us, so with a larger family, this would happen faster.

Then the first week of March, I started tomato seedlings (three different varieties) and peppers (two varieties) in Jiffy pellets in a bright window.  By this past Saturday, they looked like this:

Time to transplant!  Using the milk cartons, I started by drilling three holes in the bottom of each:

(And if you want to know where to get the CUTEST little tough pink drill in the whole wide world, check out my Tomboy Tools website at:  www.tomboytools.info/bevbafus )

I don't worry too much about the tomatoes getting leggy - since each time you transplant, you can bury the stem up to the leaves.  You can even pinch off a few leaves, and bury more stem.  The tomatoes will grow roots from the stem, and become even more hearty.

Remember to label all your seedlings with the variety.  Of course, you can do this with a Sharpie or even masking tape, but the geek in me has to do this with technology, so out came the Brother P-touch:

I place all the milk cartons on some old lunch trays that I found at a yard sale, and they are sitting on a cool rack found at another sale.  I take them outside on sunny days.  These will probably go into the garden in late May. 

The seedlings have grown about three inches just since I transplanted on Saturday.  Can't wait for the yummy tomatoes and peppers!

Update to Dress a Girl!

A while back, I told you about sewing for others, specifically Dress a Girl around the World.  (see post here)

A team from Resonate Church went to Tijuana over spring break.  I just have to share this picture with you:

She's wearing one of our dresses.  Isn't she a cutie pie?