Best Valentine Gift Ever!

I'm so excited by what I deem my true Valentines gift this year!

Since the fiance is prone to buying me flowers, taking me out and being sweet year round, I don't feel the importance of flowers, chocolate, etc on Valentines day.

What I do want, however?

Chickens.

Yep.

I got chickens for Valentine's Day!

Garden: Round 2

Two weeks ago I started our first round of seeds for our garden. We had a good number of them sprout (apparently the seeds were three years old which means only 25% of them on average would sprout) and I had to thin out the dill.

Painting Peg Dolls

Recently, a friend of mine came across this blog Catholic Icing that talked about the authors involvement with a Saint Peg Doll Exchange. She thought this was an amazing idea and, since there are ton of us crafty Catholic women about, quickly put out the feelers to people in our city.

Our group was ecstatic and quickly grew into a size of 32. Being a lover of spreadsheets, I put my sister to the task of creating a way for people to sign up with the saint they wanted to paint with googledocs.

I chose Saint Teresa of Andes and am basing my peg doll off of the following picture from Shower of Roses blog.

What to Have in a Car Survival Kit

I've recently become somewhat-obsessed with survivalism.

If you've watched the show Doomsday Preppers from National Geographic then you'll quickly know my feeling of needing to stockpile canned goods and toilet paper.

After watching several episodes I talked to my fiance who has lots of experience with survival skills. He then surprised me with a car survival kit on my birthday and I think it's valuable for everyone to have these with them in case of emergencies.

Everything that is listed fits inside of this small medicine bottle and is kept inside of my center console. It's small and compact for easy storage.

The One About Sourdough Bread

Mmmm sourdough bread!

Is there anything more yummy?

Perhaps, but we've gone on a sourdough baking kick!

And it isn't even me!

Recently, the fiance and I have been discussing our future and what we ideally would like in our marriage, family, life, etc. One thing that we're both pretty passionate about, and slowly making steps to achieve, is living self-sustaining and being aware of home preparedness skills.

Beef Jerky

For a while, the fiance and I have dabbled with the Paleo diet (okay, I've dabbled, he follows it much more regularly). While doing this, I realized that I have a huge love of beef jerky. The price of buying jerky, however, was not something I loved.

Thus, the fiance said he would start making me beef jerky from home and it has been delicious!

Ingredients:
1.5-2 lbs of eye of round roast
soy sauce
Worcestershire sauce
pepper

To make, quarter the roast into smaller chunks that are more manageable. Place the chunks on a freezer safe plate and let them harden. This makes it easier to slice them into thin strips (if there are extra chunks we give them to the dog as a treat). When the meat is frozen (we set it in freezer overnight) remove from the freezer and place in the fridge.

If you give a mouse a cookie...

If you give a mouse a cookie (or in our case, dog food), he'll likely take over your laundry room and begin to torture your existence with his little mice friends!

I, my friends, have an infestation of mice!

Yes, I know...its disgusting!

They showed up about two weeks ago when I noticed that there was a corner of the bag of dog food chewed out. Yes, chewed!

After noticing the chewing, I saw the droppings.

And after the droppings, I saw...IT.

The One Where I Fall in Love with Wood Filler, Part II

It's finished!

It's finished!

Thank God Almighty, the bookshelf is finished!

Like, seriously, it's completely finished.

Sanded, painted, done!

I've never been so happy in my entire life!

Starting the Garden

Our 2015 Garden is underway and I'm excited for what we're going to be growing!

The fiance and I are super excited for this years garden! This is my first time being in a house where I can do more than what I was limited to in my container garden.

Technically, last year I was already in my house by April and did try a limited garden but I wasn't fully acclimated with the layout of the backyard and ended up planting it in the middle of a very shady spot. Oops! Needless to say, things didn't grow that well.

The One Where I Fall in Love with Wood Filler, Part I

I've recently been binge watching Friends on Netflix. It's perfectly acceptable in my mind to admit to this since Netflix made all 10 seasons of them available as of Jan. 1, 2015.

If you haven't started watching them yet then you need to stop whatever you're doing and go do that now. Except finish reading this first and THEN switch over and start watching them.

Or if you're like the people in my family, hook up multiple computer screens and then you can do both at the same time!

.....Right?