So you want to have a garden but need a little extra motivation to get started this year? Spring is here and if you ever thought about gardening now is the time to get started.

I compiled the top 10 reasons to get out there, get digging, and grow your own produce this year!

1. Cost/Savings: The average family with a vegetable garden spends just $70 a year on it and grows an estimated $600 worth of vegetables. (source) Thats a 850% return on your investment!! Try getting that at the bank!
2. Nutrition: Produce is at it’s peak nutritional value when ripe. Fruits and veggies that have to travel to the super market are picked well before they are ripe. While it may become ripe by the time you eat it, the nutrition comes from the stem of the living plant. Once harvested, a vegetable is as nutritious as it is going to get. Nutritional value actually decreases each and every day past harvest.
3. Organic: When you grow your own, you decide what goes in the dirt, what goes on the plant and more importantly WHAT DOESN’T. Organic famers do a great job, but with all the politics surrounding the term “organic”…you never really know exactly how it is grown UNLESS you do it yourself.
4. Education: Gardening is an incredible activity to do with kids. Many kids have no idea watermelons don’t grow on trees! What’s more YOU learn a lot too! Did you know lemons are ripe in december? And Brussels sprouts grown in the winter?
5. Exercise: Gardening provides all three types of exercise: endurance, flexibility, and strength. burning up to 500 calories per hour! (source)
6. Convenient: Yesterday I was in the middle of making dinner when I realized, “I have no cilantro!!” But then…Eureka! I realized I have some outside in the garden! Having fresh ingredients in your backyard beats a trip to the store every time!
7. Immune system booster?: Joel Salatin mentions in his book that getting in the dirt can actually help boost your immune system! A little dirt don’t hurt!
8. Taste: Due to many of the reason listed in #2, homegrown taste SIGNIFICANTLY better than store bought.
9. Variety: At the grocery store and even at many famers markets there are maybe two varieties of every type of fruit/veggie. But when you grow your own you can choose seeds from an endless list. Do you know there are over 100 varieties of squash?
10. Put your yard to use: Don’t let precious real-estate go to waste. Grass takes water and nutrients and gives very little back. But herbs and veggies earn their keep like none other. They produce a bountiful harvest for you to enjoy!

I hope these reasons convinced you to get out there this year! What do you love most about gardening? Do you plan to have a garden this year?

I know it has been for-ev-er since I have posted. It’s funny the way life can bury you sometimes, isn’t it? But I am back and have a bunch of stuff to share in the near future. This week, I have GIGANTIC news. Simple Mom is running a series Project Simplify 2013 and it could not be better timing for me, this house, and my family.

Want to know why?

We are moving.

*gulp*

That’s right. We’re moving. Not to another house in town. Moving, moving. To Northern New York. Where we are taking on the endeavor of starting a family farm.

*gulp*

In just 8 short weeks, we are leaving sunny Florida, and every time I look around my house I wonder how the heck I am going to pack this place up. The clutter is out. of. control.

Want to see?

&nbs

p;

Crazy, right?!

I have a rock in my junk drawer.

Clutter on every open shelf and in every drawer.

So, week one of Project Simply at Simple Mom is just for me. Time to brutally eliminate everything that I wouldn’t dare move 1800 miles away. I will share my progress on drawers and shelves at the end of the week.

And in the meantime, I have a review – fantastic!! A guest post here – also fantastic!! And my contributor post at Simple Mom – which is so-so. See you Friday with my progress on Project Simplify. And with a lot more about this leap of faith wild, fly by the seat of our pants move that my family and I are making in just 8 weeks!!

I have missed you all so much. Hope some of you are still here reading.

xo
Emily

I can’t even begin to tell you how frustrating it was for me to be working with photography clients and needing to produce discs for them without a working disc drive on my mac. Yes, I have my little man to blame – although the apple store happily removed a foreign object from the drive last year, it has never worked the same since. So, each time I did photography work, I was going through a very long, aggravating process to get the photos to disc via another computer after editing them on my mac. I could not be happier with how this drive performs and how easy it is to use. It is so easy, that I thought for sure there must be more steps as I was setting it up and using it the first time.

As for my kids, they can now watch their DVDs again and couldn’t be happier about that. We do love instant Netflix, but it was frustrating to have stashes of DVDs that we couldn’t do anything with before. The blu-ray DVD player/burner is the perfect solution for our family when we are plugged in at work or play. Now we can add watching new movies on DVD to our Friday night pizza and wii night.

My daughter can pop a new CD in (Taylor Swift anyone?) and load her music to Itunes in a heartbeat. I love that it’s simple enough for ALL of us to use and that it has given us more options when it comes to both music and movies.

We haven’t even begun to touch the options we have with this DVD burner and love it!! I am not sure I even know how (or why?) I’d burn a DVD but I love that I can if I have to and in the meantime, my family can do all the things they love and that I can continue my photography business with much more ease than before. It has been completely wonderful for all of us.

Thank you, Staples!

Times like this make me grasp even more for the small moments and the beautiful things that make up this life. I know I will be back soon to continue sharing the things that I have been guilty of thinking weren’t important enough to be here in this space to share anymore. See you soon. xo

I’d love it if today you visited Jamie Martin, editor Simple Homeschool.

So… I started a bath.

The kids jumped in. They are just on the edge of not being able to bathe together because they spend more time yelling to me about who is doing what wrong when and why they hate each other and less time washing themselves. But sometimes a mom needs a few minutes of silence and so we are sticking with this for now. Until it backfires.

Hubby and I sat down on the couch, one room away, to watch an episode of Weeds while the kids bathed. It all seemed nice and family friendly-ish enough. As family friendly as watching Weeds gets. Then I heard one kid say “Why did you throw that in the toilet?!?!” really loud so that I would hear and he would get in trouble. While the offender stood in the doorway, naked, barely able to defend himself from his sin.

One kid had gotten out of the tub to poop. I know she will hate me one day for telling you this, but it is what it is – a bath makes the girl poop. And the boy had gotten out of the bath to get a “toy” to play with, but it turns out his “toy” was a large clump of dried playdoh. No idea where it came from or why he thought it would be a fun thing to take the time to get out of the bath, drip on the floor for and then retrieve only to return to the bath to play with. But he did. And then he threw it at his sister’s head. He missed. She ducked. It sailed over her head and landed – in the toilet – with the poop that my lovely daughter didn’t flush.

And here is where it gets ugly.

I walk into the bathroom after the sounds of what I can only imagine is melodrama – it couldn’t be that bad, right??! But indeed – there is a large- in fact, the exact size of the toilet hole size of playdoh in the toilet. And there is poop in there too. And some pee.

I stand there, ready to scream, swear, flip out and my husband would say I did all of the above but I claim he is wrong.

I reach my bare arm into the poop and pee filled toilet to try to get to the said playdoh that I have been informed is in there, right under the toilet paper. Instead of getting it, I push it down inadvertently and it is lodged. Stuck. Not moving.

I pull my arm out, covered in pee and remnants of soaking wet toilet paper, reeking of poop and realize I have to keep trying to figure this problem out myself. My husband is still laying on the couch watching Weeds afterall and one of us has to be able to tell the other one what happened while we were in the other room retrieving playdoh from the toilet. It’s not like it has “pause” or “stop”. Or does it? He just didn’t want to get involved.

So, I did the next rational thing any mother would do and I furiously marched to the kitchen, grabbed the grilling tongs and returned to the bathroom to try to retrieve the ball of rock-hard playdoh that had lodged itself in the toilet. I yanked, I pulled, I got poop on my hands, and didn’t succeed. At all. My husband laughed.

Laughed.

The problem is still not solved. It’s still there. He is convinced that with time and lots of soaking, the rock hard mass of playdoh will turn to mush and we’ll be able to use our toilet again. I am not so sure.

The bright side is that it was 7 o’clock and I told my kids “Get out of the bathtub, put your pajamas on and go to bed!” in my mean mommy voice (my husband called it the fear of death voice, but I disagree) and they have been asleep since 7:15.

The toilet is yet to be unclogged though.

And my hands and arms still smell like poop.

Who wants to come over for a cookout this weekend??!?!

Hello!

I cannot believe how quickly time passes and suddenly it’s been 2 weeks since I’ve blogged again. My little family just spent a long weekend in Coronado, California. We went for a wedding but packed lots of other stuff in as well, like the San Diego Zoo, Legoland and other family fun. I wanted to share that we got a nice family picture taken! After my post sharing the pics of me and my kids and your comments, it made me realize how very important it really is to have pictures of the 4 of us. You don’t realize how special it is until you have one, I promise you!! I will tell the story another day soon, but suffice to say it’s a miracle that all of our clothes are on straight and we look decent in this family photo above as we went from Legoland sweaty hot to being ready for the wedding in about 5 minutes.

And…I keep forgetting I want to share the family photo that we took this past mother’s day that is on a canvas hanging at my entryway. Thank you to Groupon! You can see it in this post that went up at Simple Mom a couple of weeks ago and I have yet to share with you. Want to know the secret to a perfect home? You’ll find it there. As I was saying, the photo gets compliments every time we have guests, and again, reminds me of the importance of family photos!

Back soon with much more about our recent adventures, lessons I’ve learned along the way and the little beautiful things that have been enjoyed in the in-between.

xo
Emily

*deep breath*

There are some things in this life that are easy to declare. I love ice cream! My kids are cute! I love bedtime!

But then there are things that are not. Like: I’m going to train for a marathon.

*gulp*

I spent last week doing a lot of thinking about life. The things that we want and can’t have or can’t control the outcome over. The things that many of us take for granted without even realizing what blessings they are. That there are so many things that we *can* control but often fear is what holds us back, not anything permanent. I get like this – thinking too much. While often, my over-thinking annoys the heck out of me (and my husband!), sometimes it results in good. I think a lot about who I am and who I want to be.

Last week, I said outloud to my husband this big scary sentence of “I love telling people what I do for my job when they ask, but I want to add to that that I am also a photographer.” Do you know what happened? The very next day, 4 people emailed me about photo shoots through word of mouth recommendations. It’s not a big thing. I don’t need photography to be the way I make a living, but I love it and want to do it and saying it outloud was scary, but then it was like I got this message “You are one” and I felt at peace.

So, a few days ago, I was looking into fall half-marathons. It’s been a long time since I’ve run one – February of 2011 – and I wanted to do another. As I searched, I suddenly thought to myself “You’ve always wanted to do a full marathon. Why not?” and it was like this flash of inspiration. I got butterflies in my stomach and a nervous excitement that I haven’t felt in so long. I thought about how it is the scary, big, brave, unknown things in life that make those butterflies, but butterflies are the best feeling. It means that you are challenging yourself. It means that you aren’t playing it safe. I know I can train for and run 13.1 miles. I’ve done it. But 26.2? The unknown, the big, crazy, scary unknown has me excited for a new challenge.

So? I’m doing it!

I’m training for my first full marathon. All 26.2 miles of it. I’ve never run more than 13.1 and I’ve been sure to tell anyone who asks that the 13.1 was worse than childbirth (in my wimpy defense, childbirth was really amazing for me ), but I loved it. I should say, I didn’t train long enough for it – only 6 weeks. But I did it and it was such a great accomplishment that left me feeling so great. I can’t wait to face this new challenge. I can’t wait for the training runs, the work that goes into it and the guts it will take to get through the last 6 miles.

I can’t fully start training until November, but I have it on my radar and will be doing all I can before then to be ready for full on training for February 2013. Almost exactly 2 years to the day from when I ran my half. It won’t be like last time. I barely blogged at all about my training and fears and hopes and all that during the process. This time I will be. I will need the motivation, the place to share this journey, a place to keep me accountable.

I am taking on a big dream that I have had for so long. I can’t wait to share it all.

I also need lots of tips. Anyone done this? I am mostly nervous about fueling (never even ran with water while training for my half), getting up early to run (I like to sleep!), and staving off injuries. I have run regularly for 3 years with no injuries but have knees that like to bug me from time to time. I would love all of the feedback I can get.

We had friends visit a couple of weeks ago and while here, they made a fig and goat cheese with honey flatbread that was to die for. It got me onto a fig kick and right after they left, figs went on sale BOGO at my grocery store, so I got some. I made another flatbread, but then wanted to try something else as well.

This is where I confess that I have never in my life made a pie. The crust intimidates me. Hubby bought me some packaged, store brand pie crusts to experiment with and even those had me nervous. I always joke that I am a big nerd who has 4 pie plates in my cupboard and have NEVER USED THEM. Nerd.

So, I pulled two of them out one day since from the recipe I used, I thought I had enough ingredients. In hindsight, I should have just made one huge overflowing with figs pie. But instead I got two sort of skimpy pies. I liked this recipe because I didn’t have to do anything scary like put crust over the top of the pie.

My family claims they loved it. I thought it was pretty delicious for breakfast this morning. I want to try it again while the figs are still on sale and try one big pie maybe with honey instead of maple syrup.

Anyway…if you would like to whip up a super easy, delicious fig pie, this is how you do it! Only 4 ingredients!

1 pie crust (thawed if frozen) or be fancy and make your own.
20 fresh figs, top cut off, thinly sliced
1/2 cup brown sugar
1 tbsp maple syrup

Directions: Preheat oven to 350°F. Slice figs and place in crust. Sprinkle evenly with the brown sugar. Bake for 25 minutes. Drizzle with maple syrup and bake for 5-10 minutes.

Serve warm.

Enjoy!!

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I stopped blogging for a long time, and even before I stopped, I went from frequent blogging to sporadic to not at all. A big reason for this was that I began to feel like blogging had turned into some adult version of show-n-tell. Suddenly, I didn’t need to flip through magazines filled with pages of beautiful people in beautiful homes living beautiful “perfect” lives to feel inadequate – all I had to do was read blogs. Blogging – where we get to share the good, good and good of our day but none of the bad or ugly. I felt by reading and participating and having a blog of my own all I was doing was contributing to this growing phenomenon of moms who stay home and blog and make other moms who read blogs feel bad about themselves. Of course, this was never the intention of my blogging. I didn’t share my life and journey, projects and wonderful times with my kids and the transformation of my home to make anyone feel less than. I actually hoped the opposite – that by sharing this simple little life of ours and what we’ve made with very little, I could show that life doesn’t have to be all about big houses and lots of money and beautiful people. That life can be beautiful despite (and maybe because of) not having a lot of any of the above.

But the feelings continued to grow inside me – I’d hear comments and feel resentment or judging and instead of keeping doing what was me and being true to myself, I quit. I silenced my voice and stopped sharing. And you know what happened? I became unhappy. Sharing the good stuff, the beautiful little slivers of everyday and seeing in front of me on my blog screen that life really is pretty good even when it’s not is what helped me through 6 long years of renovating a home with 2 little kids under foot, a husband struggling with depression, and the ups and downs of everyday life. I realized that sharing was my way of letting myself reflect on and appreciate what was good each day. Without that, I dwelled more on the negative than I would’ve liked.

I am not perfect, my life is not perfect, my kids are not perfect, my marriage is not perfect, my home is not perfect, my job is not perfect.

I have frizzy hair and coffee splattered on me today. I judge people and say mean things about people. I forget to call friends back. I yell at my kids. There are cobwebs around my house. My husband and I argue and many days I don’t like him, but I always love him. I don’t appreciate him as much as I should. I am ungrateful and selfish. I am a walking contradiction. I sometimes put my kids to bed early just so I can lay on my couch and drink wine and check out. I can’t do a graceful cartwheel. I yell at other drivers. My kids fight and talk back. I burn dinner sometimes. I see things other people have and am jealous. I let myself believe that everyone else is happier than I am and has it all together. I make mistakes – a lot of them. I am clumsy. I talk too much. I never know what to say when someone needs me to say something uplifting or helpful. I stumble over my words and think of something later and am much better at writing things down than speaking. I have stolen, I have lied, I have hurt people who never deserved it.

This is why it is hard for me to put forth one version of me online while there is this other bad version of me. The version of me that is more than worthy of hiding from the world. But by celebrating the good parts of myself, my family, my life – I am reminded that there is more to me than those things and so I can go on and work through another day, trying to be better than before. I don’t want anyone to ever have the impression of me that I always look put together, that I am always nice, that I never do bad things, that I have it all figured out. I am learning each and every day that we all struggle with these things when we see other people’s lives. Is it just what we do – stuff down the bad stuff and put on a happy face? At least focusing on the happy face and the good stuff at the end of each day reminds that in the middle of all the bad, imperfect parts of me and my life, there is good to celebrate. The moments when the kids are happy and kind, the moments that I don’t burn dinner and look nice doing it, when I choose grace instead of nagging my husband, when I found the good.

By sharing my happy I found happy again.

The summer that I was 11 years old, I went to summer camp with a friend from school. My parents drove me to Algonquin Park in Ontario, Canada and dropped me off on the adventure of a lifetime. 4 weeks at camp where I would end up meeting some of the best friends of my life, and having some of the most valuable learning experiences that come only with roughing it in the woods. There was no running water or electricity. We bathed in the lake, at mediocre meals, slept in canvas tents on wood platforms, and went on canoe trips lasting anywhere from one night to 14 days.

The very first canoe trip I went on from camp was a 4 day trip. We arrived at our start location and got paddling, then portaging, then paddling some more. Halfway into our first day, our counselor realized she’d forgotten the dish pack, the bread, the toilet paper, and…the tent. If you are unfamiliar with the world of canoe tripping, this meant that we couldn’t cook, eat peanut butter & jelly sandwiches, wipe our butts or sleep inside anything at night. It rained the whole 4 days. In that 4 days, we were creative out of necessity, snuggling in under our canoes to keep as dry as possible, sleeping on picnic tables under a pavilion, and wiping our butts with leaves. I am not sure what we ate.

Instead of having this experience and swearing off of canoe tripping, camp and life in the wilderness forever, I was hooked. I wanted to go on trip after trip and begged to go back to camp again the next year and the next. I went for 7 years until after a year of being a counselor. I met my husband there, too!

I have a special place in my heart for camp, the people, the experiences. My daughter is now 8 and nearing the age that she can start going. So, this past spring when I found out that there was a reunion for those of us who had attended during the 90s, I knew it was the perfect opportunity to go, relive some of the best times of my life, and introduce this magical place to my girl.

We flew into Ottawa Thursday night and rode up to camp with friends the next day. 22 years after that first day at camp, one of my best friends in the world is the girl that I shared a tent with that first summer. We rode up to camp, reminiscing, preparing my daughter, getting our nervous jitters out, and laughing as we sort of sang old camp songs.

While there, I caught up with old friends and learned that apparently – thankfully – 15 or so years can go by and people are the same. Wonderful, comforting, familiar same. It was like picking up right where we left off – singing around the campfire, playing silly games, hiking, swimming, laughing, laughing, and more laughing.

While I was experiencing these things with my old friends, my sweet 8 year old girl was making memories and friends of her own. She ran around with new friends like they’ve known each other forever – doing arts & crafts, making up plays, swimming, eating smores, exploring, hiking, singing, laughing, laughing and more laughing. It was amazing to see and showed me that some things in life do come full circle. I was thrilled that she loved it so much she wants to start going to camp next summer. *gulp* Bittersweet.

It was a magical couple of days that went far too fast. I couldn’t believe it was already time to go come Sunday morning. A wild, long trip to make for 3 days, but so worth it. Sometimes in life you have to let go and realize that there are some experiences in life that are worth the tired, hungry, expensive, and crazy. A weekend at one of the most beautiful places on earth to me with my girl was one of those experiences.