Landscape Plans

Last week I promised a post on our landscaping plans. They're ambitious, far more so than the plans we have for the inside of the house to be honest. The big changes that the house needs are almost exclusively financial dependent (redesigning the kitchen and bathroom, waterproofing the basement); while the plans we have for the yard will definitely cost money, the changes we want to make are long-term investments that can be started cheaply in most cases.

I should explain before anything else that I have two rules for my yard, that make design more challenging but incredibly satisfying. Every I plant has to either be:

1) Native to central Illinois
2) Used in food production

That means no hostas, ornamental grasses, the linden tree I would adore owning, or any number of other plants that are perfectly charming. I'm generally not great at living my ethics in terms of meat selection, recycling, or sustainability - all parts of my life I hope to improve gradually over time. The yard is one area where I've developed enough passion and expertise to just put my foot down now and make a difference.

Here's a drawing of the yard as it is today, after our first six months here:

This is all to scale, due to getting some lovely pictures when we bought the house. The green is all the trees that were here when we arrived. On the left there's a maple tree, a mulberry tree, and the larger patch on top is a clump of what we believe are native plum trees. Darwin just adores these plums, he goes around like a cow with his nose to the ground snarfing them all up. The mulberry isn't native, but it's such an established tree (and the birds love it), that I'll probably keep it. The righthand side green at the top is a mess, just a horrible tangle of dead trees and a few that I don't want. We were hoping to get it all removed this year, but it will have to wait for the spring, financially. 

I've already discussed our fruit trees (red and orange dots), blackberry bushes (purple dots), and prairie patches (yellow spray). I also planted a single juniper bush (green dot at bottom of garage) that's close to where Darwin likes to sleep outside. At my parents house he loves to burrow under the bushes, so I've started a juniper growing to eventually form a cave for him, which I'll be tying up along the chain-link fence in the spring. Turns out, unfortunately, that I must be sensitive to juniper, because after I planted it my arms developed a nasty rash. Not enough of a deterrent for me to get rid of the bush, but I'll have to wear long sleeves and gloves in the future when working with it. 

That's what we're dealing with right now, and the blank spaces are mostly just normal grass or weed patches at the moment. Not desirable when you consider my two yard rules, but acceptable for now. 

Next, I worked out where I hope the yard will be at the end of 2013 a year from now. 

The big changes here are the addition of the "farming" plots. The big grey area is where the dead trees will be removed, and we'll be surrounding it with chicken wire to plant things like tomatoes, broccoli, corn, beans, squash, peppers, onions, garlic, and potatoes (as the list currently stands). The brown patch along the garage is going to be my medicinal herbs and tea garden, and I've already prepped the area with soil and mulch for the spring. 

It's questionable whether I'll get to the blue line along the edge of our property, but my hope it to plant native shade plants along that area, which is just a strip of dirt right now. I'd wanted to plant blueberry bushes, but it just doesn't get enough sun with the angle of the house and a giant maple tree in our neighbor's yard. So shade plants it is!

Then, I have perhaps ridiculously ambitious plans for the end of 2014, that are largely dependent on our being able to harvest a considerable amount of seeds during the previous season. But to me, by dreaming big ahead of time, we have the potential to accomplish a lot of this. 

I would love to have a lush garden that becomes a haven for us, Darwin, and local wildlife. I want to massively expand the prairie and shade plants, to include much of the front of the house. Add more space for farming, once we know more about how to manage food production on that scale. Maybe plant additional fruit trees. I'd also like to add official pathways from place to place, and that's the black lines, most likely stepping stones as opposed to strict sidewalks.

And then I want to do some things just for ourselves: the grey sprayed areas are places of "human development." That could mean patios, benches nestled in amongst the plants, or art work. I've told Nick all along that I want our artistic sides to be reflected in our outdoor spaces, and that we shouldn't be afraid to be creative. I want to put up art, statues, sheltered reading nooks. Really, just take the Homesteading/Survivalism page from facebook and transform our yard.

Like I said, ambitious for a three year plan. It's more realistically going to take 4-5, especially where prairie and shade plants need to become established. In the meantime, we're hopeful that the fruit trees and bushes make it through the winter, as well as the prairie plants we're using as the foundation for our native sections. We have a good start, and I'm excited to see how it develops over the next few years!

PCOS Transitions

Today's post is going to be a short one, and I actually changed which topic I was going to write about. I was going to treat everyone to a look at our landscaping and garden plans and what we accomplished this year, but tonight's episode of The New Girl was too timely to ignore. The two main girls of the show were concerned about fertility, as 30 year olds without partners. It's an issue that hits close to home for me right now, though I'm 27 and have been happily married for four years.

In early October I was told that my hormone levels are consistent with Polycystic Ovarian Syndrome. It's not a disease, it's not quite a formal diagnosis (though I have no reason to doubt it), and while it does increase my risk of developing diabetes and heart disease, I don't have any of those conditions. Honestly, I'm otherwise a fairly healthy individual from what my bloodwork showed, but the PCOS news wasn't especially welcome to someone who's looking to start a family in the next few years.

I wasn't going to talk openly about this, as it's a fairly personal issue. But then I realized that very few people talk openly about conception, at least with their friends. There are lots of forums and support groups (and I found one locally that's just starting up), but that feels impersonal and like I have something to hide. I don't have anything to hide, and I lean towards talking about these things openly because who knows when the same thing might happen to my friends, or their friends. I also think that all the mystique we wrap around the topic of conception is unnecessary and not helping anyone, but that's perhaps a topic for another time.

Why share this on domestiCaited? Because the longterm "treatment" is all about lifestyle changes. I could take fertility drugs that would help regulate ovulation, but I've opted not to do that for now, choosing a more natural course for these first few months. When I could easily lose 15 pounds and still be healthy, it seems like a better place to start than putting anything else into my body. In advance of having a kid, I'm supposed to maintain a diet that's effectively what a diabetic would eat (which is ultimately the way we should eat anyway). After children I theoretically wouldn't have to be so strict, but right now it's all about regulating hormone levels and not letting excess simple carbohydrates further any insulin resistance I've already got.

So, expect to see some PCOS-friendly recipes popping up in the next few months, and how I transition to eating 5 small meals a day instead of 3 larger ones, a recommendation I've found in multiple places. There should also be information about exercise plans, as that's one of the more important steps for me to take. I'm hoping to take adult ballet classes again, as it's been 12 years since I danced and I miss it. I'll also be looking to bike to work once spring returns, and I'm considering how to put some exercise equipment into the basement.

Next week, I'll start into the discussion of our new yard. We've made some progress over the last five months, but we've got ambitious plans for the next few years! I promise to include lots of pictures.

Moving On Up

Well hello there folks! It's been a while I know, and though good intentions don't mean much when it comes to blogging, I assure you that I've frequently thought about posting about my recent domestic exploits. Mainly, there's one big piece of news that most of you already know, but it's fun to repeat it.

We bought a house!

With the help of my lovely parents we were able to close on a house in Champaign this past June. There's so much to share about how it happened, settling in, and working through the first-time-homeowner kinks. To ease back into the blogging process, I thought I'd share a few pictures of the place.

Here's the outside! It's not much to look at, a fairly plain white house that extends into the back. Note the fence coming up around the front of the house; that was a major selling point for us with the St. Bernard. The place came dog-ready right from the start.

Here's a drawing of the property altogether, with a few notes on landscaping that I made (in paint...). The first floor is 1200 square feet with two bedrooms, and there's a full basement that effectively doubles the amount of space we have. The basement is unfinished, but it has a lot of potential, depending on time and funds. 

I'll do a more detailed post on the yard landscaping soon! 

Here's a shot of the yard from August. Even before we bought the house we had purchased fruit trees from a local gardening store. August, of course, was a horrible month across the country and went over 100 degrees almost every day. Yet, we persevered and planted three of the trees (two apple and one peach), and I can safely say that I never want to do that ever again. I planted a fourth tree myself in October, and it was a much more pleasant experience at 75 degrees. 

We've made a lot of progress on the inside as well, and I'll write more about how we've made interior design decisions, especially the paint colors. That was a potentially frustrating process that I actually thought we handled rather democratically. The living room ended up being "Grandfather Clock Brown."

The dining room is "Fields of Gold." We thankfully got the table in through the front door, though we put a lot of scratches in it. Someday, I will fix them.

The bedroom by far has my favorite color: Melodious Blue. I wake up in the morning and just stare at the walls still, it feels so homey and comfortable to me. The cats, I think, mostly enjoyed having access to the bedroom and clear bed (usually they're locked out).

Moving forward with the blog, I want to make sure I talk about each of the following, as they're topics that we've learned a lot about over the last few months:

• The home-buying process
• Color selections
• Landscaping decisions
• Homesteading efforts
• Establishing a prairie
• Recent dietary changes
• Interior design
• Longterm plans for the house

I'll try to tackle at least one of these a week through the end of the year. And then, there will undoubtedly be more to talk about! 

Growing, Growing, Gone

We had a smidgen of tragedy on our little patio homestead today, as one of my upside-down tomato planters plummeted to the ground after I watered it. I thought the hook it was balanced on was strong enough, but clearly I was wrong. The really unhappy part of this is that the particular tomato that fell was my best one; it's the only one that had flowered, and upon closer examination after it fell there were fruits growing on it. Teeny tiny ones, but they were there.

The husband pointed out that I have eight other tomatoes growing, and shouldn't feel too bad. But it's sad to lose your best plant. Ah well.

The rest of this post is going to be mostly a photo dump, so you can see the progress the plants have made. I'm also going to label what was started from seed and what was store bought. I'm really impressed with them, especially the zucchini. You'll see in a moment that they've become pretty monstrous.

Starting inside, I have five pots of basil (grown from seed) I haven't transplanted outside. Honestly they're doing so well on the windowsill I might not move them, and the few I did take outside have suffered a bit. I expect delicious pasta dishes in the near future as they're almost ready to start being harvested.

Also pleasing is how well my lavender (seed) is growing. When I bought lavender seeds I thought it sounded sort of romantic, to grow my own lavender. This was with no research, and definitely qualifies as an impulse buy. I found out later it takes months to go from seed to substantial plant, and almost didn't both to transplant the seedlings. I'm glad I decided to give them a chance, because they've done pretty well and started developing secondary stalks already. Still small, but doing just fine.

This morning I transplanted the sensitive plants (seed). Seven of them had been living in just two pots, and they were getting to be of a size where have their own pots was recommended for quicker growth. I'm still planning to keep 2-3 of them and bring the rest to the museum I work at so little kids can have the joy of poking them, just like I do most nights. What can I say. Plants that move bring out my inner child.

I also transplanted my jade and purpurea (both long-standing house plants of mine), because the latter had developed a fungus. Not sure if it'll be alright, but I'm propagating a few stalks off to the side in case the mother plant dies. 

Here's my remaining upside-down tomato (seed), which you can see is doing really well. It's got several flowers, which hopefully yield fruits. And don't worry, I checked the stability of the hanger and this one isn't going anywhere. I think.

Here's the main patio, which you may not have seen yet as I think the husband only posted to facebook when we put the planters out. I've taken kitty litter tubs and buckets and attached makeshift trellises to them made from twine and upcycled branches from a tree my neighbors cut down. Total cost for four trellises? $2.00. Sure they're ugly, but they're functional and cost almost nothing.

The planter without a tomato formerly had my other upside-down friend, but since the top flowers (store bought) were alright I figured I'd place them by the other tomatoes to attract pollinators, which was their purpose in the first place. You can also see the way we constructed the trellises a bit better. We zip-tied the branches onto the sides after drilling small holes, and then strung the twine around in a few layers to provide support. The great thing about this is that I can add layers of twine as the plants grow, depending on how tall they get.

I have to show this off, even though it's not especially impressive. My broccoli (seed) have been transplanted into a new box, which I made myself. The dimensions are all slightly off and the bottom was too long, but I cut the wood and hammered it together. First thing I've ever really constructed in my memory. So, a little goofy, but I'm proud of it.

I took a shot like this a month ago, and you can see how much most of the zucchini (seed) have grown . Except that second one. I don't know what happened there, but it was the first to flower and just hasn't really done anything since. It's the only plant in a wood pot, so I wonder if that has something to do with it. But the others are monsters that I'm convinced would take over the whole patio if given the chance.

The herbs are doing well, primarily the pineapple sage (store) that dominates the left side. You can't even see the rosemary on top, it's so big. I might have to switch their locations, though the rosemary (store) is still green and healthy for now.

My latest planting was cilantro seeds (seed, clearly) into the bottom level, and they've come up just splendidly. A few of them even look like real cilantro which is encouraging. So far (except for one diving tomato plant) I haven't killed anything that made it outside, and I'm really proud of that. This is my first real "garden" and it was ambitious, but with the husband's help we've kept it growing and blooming. Now I just hope it actually produces something, though I know it will be a low yield my first year. You have to start somewhere though, and I'm confident that with this strong a start in growing my own food, I'll eventually reach the point where we're nearly self-sufficient for fruits and vegetables.

Stay tuned for some big announcements this week! Things are about to get exciting. :-)

Garden Expansion

This post was actually prompted by the husband, who as soon as we were done with planting and photographing this afternoon said "you're gonna write a post about this right?" In all fairness to him, he was pretty instrumental in this next step for our little garden. It expanded rather nicely today. 

You can see that my seedling staging ground is mostly empty now, replaced with the houseplants that were enjoying the outdoor weather until it hit 90 degrees the last two days. The jade was starting to look sunburned unfortunately, so it'll need to spend a few days inside and then only be placed in partial sun when it gets back out.

Here I am watering things after we were done planting. Our army of potted plants is growing, with a few more herbs added to the collection today and the first fruits of the summer. One is a small tray of strawberries that just looked too lovely to pass up, and the other was a splurge purchase: I bought the last blackberry plant at the garden center. In the picture above, though, I'm giving the zucchini some attention, as they started blooming this week and need a little extra oomph.

You're probably also curious about that pile of wood and branches. Our landlords live close to us and we share a gravel lot behind the houses. They recently took down a dead pine tree, and made huge piles of the branches out back. We took a few stumps as "seats" but I kept staring and staring at the branches thinking they were going to be a huge waste. And then I realized that very soon I'm going to need about 10 trellises to support tomatoes and peas and blackberries. So what I'm going to do is set up small tripods using these branches and make rows with twine for the plants to support themselves. It may be a disaster, it may be awesome. We'll see!

The big news of the weekend though was the new herb planter that the husband made for us. It's got three tiers though it's open all the way through. I put a few empty soda bottles at the bottom to decrease the volume of soil (and thus the heaviness), but hopefully everything will have enough space. It's hard to see but up top is the rosemary plant, on the second tier is the pineapple sage and new lavender and thyme plants. At the bottom are a few of the basil plants, testing out whether they're hardy enough to move outside. The rest are still inside so I can transition them a little more gently. To the left of the planter you can see the blackberry bush, and a bit of one of the zucchini plants looking lush. 

Ok, the above is a slightly odd picture. But before you think I'm a lunatic, hear me out about the kitty litter buckets. I have a lot of tomatoes to be growing in a container garden, and I've been a little stuck with finding them good pots to grow in. And then I realized that I have lots of leftover kitty litter buckets, and that these make perfect pots if you drill holes in the bottom. I further realized that they come ready-made with handles, and that I could experiment with keeping tomatoes upside-down, utilizing vertical space. So we cut 2-inch holes in the bottom, stuck the plants upside-down in them, secured them with a bit of newspaper, and then filled them up with soil.

But, having read online about how to do this sort of thing, most people recommend that you plant something up top as well. So I've added a few colorful flowers to attract pollinators. They'll grow up and over the sides pretty soon, and hopefully won't compete too much with the tomato at the bottom. Within a few days I anticipate the tomatoes flipping their leaves around and then continuing their grand progress using gravity.

One set of my plants isn't doing so well though, and that's the broccoli. Something's decided that the leaves are the perfect place for some baby insects to hang out, and lots of them. Luckily I'm not growing the broccoli for their leaves, but it's still not going to be healthy for the plants to lose their primary method of energy production.

Here's a close-up of the back of a leaf, with three little wrigglers hanging out and chomping on my broccoli. And a couple more eggs. I'll have to do some research and figure out what they are (unless one of you knows), and then decide whether or not I'm going to try to get rid of them. I don't like the idea, but I also don't want to lose my plants.

We'll keep taking photos as things grow!

- Cait

Plants Glorious Plants

It's a lazy Saturday afternoon, and I thought I'd share an update on all those plants I started in mid-March. There have been a few failures, but there's also a decent amount of success for my first time starting things from seeds and transitioning them outside. 

Here's the spread outside, all placed in a little clump right now. There was a nasty thunderstorm earlier this week and I moved all the plants under the eaves of the house to the best of my ability. They still got really swamped, but they're all still standing!

Here's the tomatoes. There are nine of them right now, all moved to their own pots last week. They really perked up without the intraspecific competition, but now I need bigger pots rather quickly, and trellises.

The zucchini! These have been my biggest failure in my opinion, as I started with 18 sprouts and now only have 4 plants. But these four look great, and they each have about a dozen buds on them already.

The broccoli, which I'm probably most excited and most worried about. Their stalks are very thin, and they took the worst beating in the storm. When I got up in the morning, half of them were entirely underwater, which I tried to dump, but their soil is still very compacted. All five of them are still alive though, so maybe they're hardier than I think.

This might look funny, but I'm also keeping dandelions in a few pots as food for my lizard. Ironically, these were the only pots I needed to weed today.

Here's a (really bad) picture of the only two houseplants I keep. The jade plant is from the historic house I worked at in California, and the purple guy is from the Beloit College greenhouse. Parts of that plant live in five states that I know of off the top of my head (Illinois, Wisconsin, New York, California, and I think Virginia). They're happy to be outside after the winter.

Inside, I still have a few little guys in pots, just upgraded today from their seedling trays. I have seven pots of basil, probably 4-5 plants in each pot. There will be delicious pasta dishes all summer long.

You can't see these very well as they're still the smallest in my little green menagerie, but on the right are a few lavender seedlings and on the left are sensitive plants. I wasn't sure about transplanting the lavender, it's grown so slowly, and I'm not very confident about them making it to bloom. The sensitive plants are looking pretty good, but haven't grown much in the last few weeks. I'm planning to bring a few to work for kids to poke at, and I'll keep 2-3 for myself.

The husband brought home a couple of plants for me a few days ago too! It was funny, I rubbed the leaves first to smell before reading the labels. This one confused the heck out of me, and it turned out it's a Pineapple Sage, which indeed smells like the fruit.

This one's a more normal rosemary, but will still be delicious on meat this summer. I need to get both of these into new pots soon, which will mean a trip to the store. 

That's my plant update for this week! I'll keep taking photos as they grow, and hopefully bloom and fruit!

Surprise Seedlings

These seedlings have just been full of surprises. It's been five days and all but one type of seed (the Rosemary) has sprouted. The Lavender only has a few up, but it's at least something. Everything else has already become a monster.

It's actually inconvenient, since I started seeds because I wanted it to take a while. All the packets said germination would take 2-3 weeks! I'm already looking at having to transplant the zucchini because they pushed the "greenhouse lid" of the trays off, and that has the potential to hurt the other plants.


I mean, look at how big they are. Some are already in the 4-5 inches range. What monsters!


The broccoli (right) and tomatoes (left) clearly thirst for more sunlight. Can you tell which way the window is?


Some of the zucchini haven't grown especially smartly. They can't seem to figure out to direct their roots downward.

These last few are the sensitive plants, with a random piece of trivia! I previously had no idea that the "electric" sense that the plants use to close up when touched doesn't develop until later in life. I discovered this because the babies don't move right now if you poke them. Their first little leaves are pretty rigid and inflexible.

I'll keep up with the photos as this process continues. I have to do a lot more research very quickly about how to grow crops in pots!

- Caity

Making a house into a home

It's been a busy few months for the husband and I. We've been in the process of figuring out if we can buy a house, and I had intended to make posts here detailing the steps we've taken and what we've learned so far. Unfortunately, I have to say that our search has been pretty discouraging, and I didn't feel like putting it down in words most of the time. I know that's probably the most useful information for everyone though - when people aren't successful - so at some point (when we have a final yes or no) I'll try to write down what we did and how long it took us.

The one thing I will say now falls on the "things nobody ever tells you" spectrum, where the information is likely relevant to many of our friends, especially the ones a few years younger than us. We were really sure that we'd have enough income and good enough credit ratings to get pre-qualified on a mortgage at maybe 70K or 80K. What no one told us until we were sitting down with bankers was that our deferred students loans were going to count against us. The law changed, at least in Illinois, a few years ago, and now banks have to consider every aspect of your debt before they give you a mortgage.

From an objective perspective this makes enough sense to me. What if the husband drops out or fails out of school? Suddenly we'd be saddled with $500 a month in loan payments, plus his income would be gone. Our ability to pay our mortgage would be severely threatened, and I understand that. But to me, our current stability should count more in our favor, especially considering the housing market right now. They've basically made it impossible for people to participate in the corporate banking system (admittedly, it's a pretty awful one), even though we have the money and could be contributing it in a time of national and global economic need.

So. Be careful with your loans. If you're not sure how much to take out, and think you might be interested in doing something like buy a house in the next few years, check out your state's mortgage laws. A quick call to a local banker should determine whether or not deferred loans will count against you when they calculate your debt/income ratio.

That's the bad side of things, but there have definitely been good things too! We're consistently making little improvements to our health and livelihood, one of which I just started two nights ago. Illinois has had some pretty unusual weather for mid-March, reaching highs in the mid-80s and being dry as a bone. The magnolias, daffodils, and hyacinths are all in bloom. It's lovely out, but it's also potentially misleading for people with gardens. No one's sure if there's going to be another hard frost, which certainly seems possible in the next two months. I had been thinking of buying vegetable and herb plants in May, but decided this week that I needed more joy in my life, and so I started SEEDS!

The guest bedroom has been transformed into a bit of a "tank room," between the lizard and the seedlings.

It's the warmest room in the house, with insulated curtains, heat lamps on the lizard, and direct sunlight. It's also the room where things won't get disturbed, as the cats and giant doggy aren't allowed in there.

Here's an updated picture of the little guy (Golly), hiding on the "cool" side of his tank where it's just 95 degrees. You can see from all the salt crystals built up on his nose that it's been pretty warm in there for the past few days. As a creature that sometimes likes it to be 120 degrees, though, I don't think he's complaining.

On the other side of the room are my two seedling trays. The instructions all said to keep the soil pretty damp, give them as constant sunlight during the day as possible, and maintain around a 70 degree room temperature. I was pretty sure the guest bedroom could accomplish this, but I still knew I'd need to be patient and that germination could take up to 3 weeks for some of these plants. Little did I know that two days later...

...I would have broccoli shoots! Look at all those lovely broccoli plants in the making. I guess the conditions were just right for them afterall! So far the broccoli, zucchini, basil, and tomatoes have already started poking up, while the rosemary and lavender are still dormant for now. We'll see in a few days though.

This last one is the "fun" seed that I decided to try. I've always loved sensitive plants, and used to keep them in my dorm rooms at college. I bought one when I moved to Illinois, just a little fella, and it promptly died on my windowsill. I thought I'd have to wait until the end of summer to get a new one, but I'm happy to say I was wrong. These little darlings above are sensitive plants just beginning germination. They're the one non-food plant that I've started this year, and we'll see how well they hold up. I'm pretty excited about them though.

Next up will be possibly making a few planters from wood with the husband, keeping up with the seeds, and of course, spending the next 2-3 weeks determining if we're buying a house afterall. Wish us luck!

Transitions

As predicted, starting a full-time job has been a huge transition for me. Not just in terms of scheduling other aspects of my life, but my overall energy level when I get home. My sleep schedule hasn't quite adjusted yet, so I feel tired a lot of the time, and not up to many home projects. I'm afraid a lot of plans have fallen by the wayside.

I did, however, take the opportunity to make a few other life changes, in the general direction of becoming healthier. This is largely driven by my desire to make a few tiny versions of my husband and I in the next few years, and the knowledge that there's a lot you can do to prepare your body for that. These are some of the changes I've been able to make recently:

Organic milk: this was actually something we started when we moved to Illinois, and milk prices weren't as high as they were in California. The big deal here is getting dairy products that are hormone free, or as hormone-free as possible. We also get organic cream and yogurt for baking. The one we haven't managed yet is organic ice cream; that one's still just too expensive for us right now. But too delicious to give up entirely! (for now)

Bringing my own lunch: Except for one day of going out with my co-workers, I've brought my own lunch every day for two weeks. Some of this has been leftovers for restaurants (haven't done quite as well on the dinner front), but a lot has been homemade things. My batch of avgolemono soup was perfect with some pita bread and salad brought alongside. I'll probably be trying to continue that trend in the coming weeks.

Mostly dropping alcohol: This one has been building for a while. I'm not alcohol-free at this point, and will still get a glass of cider if I'm out somewhere. But I'm trying not to buy alcohol to have at the house, and usually won't have more than one drink on a special occasion.

Going Caffeine Free: This is the biggest lifestyle change I've made so far. I'm not a huge coffee drinker (though I enjoy it enough), but pepsi/coke and black tea are a huge staple in my drinks menu. I'm not caffeine dependent, and usually only have one caffeinated beverage a day. But I knew this would be the hardest habit to kick, and the one I would need most practice at. It was maybe a little crazy dropping it right before starting work, but so far I'm alright. I have caffeine free peppermint tea and mango tea at my desk, and I drink plenty of water.

Decreasing my sugar intake: Without the same amount of soda in my life, my sugar intake has decreased hugely. I'm also no longer putting sugar in my tea, which is a big step. There are still cookies, and some sugar in my oatmeal, but overall I'm eating much less sugar.

Those are some of the changes I've been able to make, and hopefully I'll manage more in the coming weeks. The husband bought me a membership to our local co-op for Christmas, and I've been happily using it to get discounted organic produce and grocery items. But they also offer classes and workshops, and that might be my next step in healthier eating, and hopefully providing a much needed breath of creativity into my meal planning.

- Cait

There and Back Again

Hello dear readers!

I'm sorry for the unexpected hiatus. The holiday season was pretty busy, and I was in the midst of handing in my master's thesis (which is now done!), so blogging took a back seat. I'm afraid the next few weeks may not get much better as I start a new full-time job tomorrow. But I definitely still have things to share with all of you, and so I'll try to keep up with posting.

Tonight I'm cooking one last big complicated meal before launching into work. I've been doing a lot of meal planning in the last few weeks, especially while the husband and I were both on break with very little to do other than be at home and eat. I bought a whiteboard and promptly took a sharpie to it to outline days and meals; so far I've used it 3/4 weeks this month, and I have to say it's been great for grocery shopping. I still forget things, but in general I feel more confident heading out to the store with a list in hand. It's made meals much less overwhelming.

Tonight is my favorite beef stew recipe, which calls on you to throw in a whole bunch of guinness and red wine. Tonight we went with New Castle beer instead, because the last few times making it with guinness have felt too heavy. New Castle still brings a rich ale flavor to the broth, but it a little lighter with the rest of the ingredients. This is by far my favorite stew to make on a cold dreary evening, or just when I need something hearty. We're pairing it with some homemade cornbread and, of course, more New Castle for ourselves.

The beef stew, besides being delicious, was also a great example of how I'm going to be shifting my meal planning starting this week. Dinners will need to be fairly easy to make, but also need to support being made in a reasonable quantity; I definitely want to have leftovers available for lunch whenever possible. Soups are probably going to become a bigger staple in our diet, as I can easily package them and heat them up in a microwave.

The soup I'm looking forward to most is the Greek avgolemono soup I'm going to make this weekend. My husband doesn't like it much, so I thought it would make a perfect soup to prep for lunches ahead of time. I made my own chicken broth last week with baked lemon rings thrown into the crockpot, and I think it'll just be heavenly. Substituting brown rice, though, and maybe with a little bit of frozen spinach thrown in for a vegetable component.

I'll let you know how adjusting my cooking schedule around work goes, and also try to make a few updates soon about decorating the rooms in the house. We've made several improvements in the last few months that I haven't gotten a chance to share yet. And I promise, next time I'll include pictures.

- Cait