Square Foot Garden

We have busy the past few weeks getting our garden ready for this summer. Since we don't have a very large back yard, Nate and I have decided to use the square foot gardening (sfg) method. Thanks to Marne, Nate's sister, for introducing us to this method of gardening. So far we have 2 boxes ready and are working on a third. We have planted some green onions, chives, radishes, broccoli, spinach, lettuce, brussel sprouts, onions, and peas. I am excited to see the first seedlings pop up through the soil!

I have also planted quite a few starts so we won't have to buy the expensive starts at the store. We have several assorted tomato plants, cucumbers, assorted peppers, and assorted flowers. They are taking up about 1/3 of the kitchen table, so it's a good thing we are still a small family. I put them in the sun room on sunny days, but it has been quite cloudy and not warm enough out there lately. I will take pictures of our first year of sfg and post them. Hopefully it will be a prosperous year.

Oh, we also bought some fruit trees for the back yard. We may have gone a little overboard, but it was so hard to decide what kinds to get. We bought a peach, nectarine and apricot, and then variety trees of apple, plum, cherry, and pear (they have several different varieties of the same fruit grafted to one trunk). The variety trees have fruit that ripens throughout the summer, so we should have fresh fruit for much of the summer. We wanted to get them in ASAP so we could reap the benefits of them before moving since they take a few years before they produce any fruit. I love having fresh fruit and veggies right in our back yard. Thanks Mom and Dad for showing me how to grow a garden growing up.

Kitchen Remodel

We have been busy the past two weeks working on our kitchen remodel. So far we have painted all the mounted cabinets and are in the process of finishing the doors. They used to be an oak color, but we are painting them parchment paper (it is a light cream color) and are going to "antique" them. So far they are looking great. The antiquing is hard, but I guess that should have been anticipated. We also bought some handles for the drawers and knobs for the cupboards. They are a dark brown (almost black) with some bronze showing through. I'm sure that has an actual name, I'm just not sure what it is. Those handles were pricey! They cost more than all the paint and everything else for the cabinets and walls combined. But I think we will be very happy with the end result.

After we get the cabinets done, we will be painting the walls. We have picked out a nice green color called "guacamole." I think it is perfect! Once we save a little more money we are going to replace the linoleum flooring with tile. We'd also love to get new counter tops since they are blue right now. We'll be keeping our eyes out for some inexpensive granite (hopefully) and then add a tile back splash as well.

You might be thinking our kitchen must have really needed some help, but it actually wasn't too bad. We just figure that since we are going to live here for a while, we might as well fix things up the way we want them. It will be nice to actually have cupboard doors on again soon. Right now Ian has free range and loves playing with whatever he can find in the open cupboards.