Snow Shoeing - Penguining

The last few years for Christmas we have tried not to add junk to our house. We have a small house, with not a lot of room for extra STUFF. My kids have a ton of toys already (and by a ton, it is probably minimal by many people's standards, but too much to store in my small house. I tend to get over stimulated easily, so too much stuff really frustrates me. But that was totally a tangent so back to what I was discussing before).  So we have tried to get things that we can do as a family.  A few years ago we all got snow shoes.  My kids were all little and we got the plastic snow shoes for little kids.

 

We love to go snow shoeing as a family.  And by snow shoeing I mean we go on a well beaten path of serious snow shoe-ers,

 and then travel off of it a bit to jump off into  snow banks.

 

 

 

Last year we got a snow storm in March on a Monday. We decided to go snow shoeing that  weekend.  But it being March meant it had warmed up,  and then froze and warmed up and froze again. There were no snow banks to jump off of, everything was ice.  Just as we parents were about to decide we would go home, the kids discovered what it was like to be penguins.

 

 

 

 

 

 

The kids loved it. They found a whole new way to enjoy snow shoeing. Again and again they would climb the hill and penguin down again.

The kids laughed and giggled and laughed and giggled some more.  And mom and dad did too.

Last winter the girls were approaching way too big for their snow shoes (the snow shoes were only four years old. . . man how kids grow)  so this year we decided we would do a repeat Christmas. We all got snow gear again.  The girls got new snow shoes,  my son he will now fit in their old ones, but he got snow shoeing poles.  He spent way too much time last year fallen in the snow when he wasn't supposed to be and me picking him up Santa thought they might help.  (Unfortunately we haven't had a chance to use them, there has been no snow all winter, until this past week. . . and we have been way too busy this week to figure out a time to go. SAD).

Also, we have had way too many times where snow shoeing has been cut short because when we jump off banks the kids get snow up there snow pants and down their boots and they are too cold.  So for Christmas I made them all new snow gators.  Picture tutorial will come later.

Often, I have to force myself to get out and do fun things with my family.  Part of it is I am too busy, sometimes it is I am too lazy, and the rest of the time I am just not in the mood to be that great of a mom (awful I know, but it is the truth, I am always coming up with excuses not to) so most of the time I have to force myself to get out and do stuff. And when I do I am so happy I did. This is when I find my smidgen of heaven. Out playing with my kids, laughing and giggling and laughing and giggling some more. Forgetting about how much there is to do at home, forgetting that they were driving me crazy even on the car ride up the mountain, and forgetting that we are a normal family with normal problems. And just truly enjoying the moment.  This is why "Successful marriages and families are established and maintained" not only "on principles of faith, prayer, repentance, forgiveness, respect, love, compassion, work"  but also on "wholesome recreational activities"



 

To Every Thing There is a Season

In Ecclesiastes we learn: "to every thing there is a season, and a time to every purpose under the heaven: A time to be born, and a time to die; a time to plant, and a time to pluck up that which is planted; ... A time to weep, and a time to laugh; a time to mourn, and a time to dance; . .  A time to love, and a time to hate; a time of war, and a time of peace."

I love this set of a scriptures, it reminds me on hard days that today was the time to be hard, but the time of peace is coming. On the days that I feel I fall short and can't do everything I feel like I should, this is just not the time, it is a time for something else.

Right now is one of my favorite times! While it is cold out side and the ground is frozen it is time to dream! Time to plan! and time to order seeds. (shortly will come the time to plant seeds indoors for transplanting later.  I always plant my tomato seeds, and my pepper seeds end of January beginning of February.  I have recently ordered my seeds. And I am so excited!

I love gardening for so many reasons, it really brings out the creative side, it provides the perfect opportunity to work side by side with the ones I love, it beautifies my yard and gives me lovely things to eat. Spencer W. Kimball taught there are many rewards of Home Gardening: Family Unity, Appreciation of Work, Self-Sufficiency, Instruction and Pleasure, Health, Reduced Expenses. Who doesn't want these!?!

So what have I ordered? Mostly tomatoes and peppers. Oh I am so excited.  My tomatoes I ordered from Burpee They are a great seed company and they have a lot of specialized breeds of plants.   When ever I want to try something new I go with burpee.  This year I got some standard roma tomatoes.  I will mostly plant these because they are great for canning.  My family loves cherry tomatoes. This year I got a Sun Gold Hybrid of cherry tomatoes, to add a different color to my garden.

 

And then for fun I got two HUGE varieties of tomatoes,  The supersauce tomato (which is a 2 lbs variety of Romas) and the Steakhouse Hybrids (a 3 lbs tomato)

Both of these are Burpee exclusives.  I have seen a couple of knock offs sold on amazon and other seed sites, but the reviews all say that they are not the same thing, and they are just standard romas, or standard slicing tomatoes, big, but not the same standard as Burpee.  So I decided to go with the real thing.

I was going to order my peppers and carrots from territorial seed they had some really cool varieties on there, however, they were expensive and I couldn't find any promo codes on line so I decided to see what I could find on amazon. 

I haven't received any of them and I haven't planted any of them.  so I can't say if they worked as well as burpee seeds. Going with Amazon I was able to save a lot of money. Because I wasn't as particular about these items I was willing to chance it.

I ordered a rainbow assortment of bell peppers.

 

I was so excited to find this particular set of bell peppers. Normally if you buy mixes of bell peppers it is just that, a mix of seeds, you have  no idea what color of pepper you are planting until it grows and ripens.  this seller sold them in separate sets so you know what you are planting.  SO EXCITED!  there weren't any reviews for these peppers, so I was a bit hesitant to buy them, but when I reviewed the reviews of other things sold by the seller they were mostly positive. I hope it wasn't a bad choice.

Then I also got a couple of hot peppers for salsa and such

I really like variety in my garden.  Most of my garden is in my front yard. I did this on purpose, I figure so often front yards are wasted, kids normally play in the back yard and the front yard just goes to waste.  I love having a garden in my front yard because it means we spend a lot of time in our front yard, and we get to know our neighbors lots better because we are always out side.  It helps a lot to have odd variety of foods growing because they are great conversation pieces.  So I orders some purple jalapenos. These ones had good reviews and they were really inexpensive. Double bonus!

 

And then I ordered some standard Jalapenos. 

 

Finally I ordered some carrot seeds.  Often seeds do not hit the shelves as early as I would like to plant some of my cold weather seeds (beets, carrots, peas etc.) but also these are a mixed variety.

This rainbow collection is all mixed together, but I am ok with that because I will plant every single seed so it doesn't matter as much as the peppers.  To be honest, I was going to buy colored seeds from territorial seeds. They had different varieties that were not mixed. and I was super excited for them, they were all of the sweet carrot variety and their color went all the way through. so the purple carrots were purple all the way through and the red ones were red, so they would make very pretty veggie trays, somewhat of a conversation piece at parties.  Some carrots their color is only on the outside, and then they are orange on the inside. And not all carrots are sweet.  But at Territorial Seed each seed packet was about $4.00, I had 4 varieties I wanted so that would have been $16.00.  This collection of seeds was only $6.95. So I thought I would try it once.  If I am disappointed I will go with the more expensive seed variety from Territorial seeds next.

 

Transformation

We know from the scriptures that the home is one of the most sacred places in the world, even more sacred than a church house.  The only more sacred place than home is the Temple. When I think of temples I think about how everything has a place and a purpose. As I strive to make my home holy, I often use the Temple as a model of what I am striving for.

 

Yesterday when I opened face book it popped up with a memory,  it was the last two photos in this  post.  Sometimes the memories that Facebook reminds me of are ones I would just assume totally forget. But many times I really enjoy that memory feature of Facebook.  While I didn't re-share this particular memory I did enjoy remembering this one.  In fact many of my favorite memories involve home improvement.

 

This first photo was essentially how the first bedroom in my condo looked when we moved in (aside from the fact it had carpet, that is an entirely different subject) but the walls were this awful color (later I discovered that most of the condo at one point in time was this color, they must have painted the rest of the house to sell it). We had a foster son move in. We were not sure what he would like so we left it as was and gave him a bed, with very generic covers.

 

After he had been there a while and we knew he would stick around a while we let him design his room.  I didn't want to go to the expense of painting (although I am normally a big advocate that painting isn't too expensive and it goes a long way in updating a room).  We got him a bedspread of his choice and matching curtains. We put some vinyl designs on his wall,  that matched his bed spread.  I was quite pleased with how much it really updated the room.

 

By the time our foster son had moved out our family had grown by three and we needed a play room. and I was so excited to get rid of the awful blue/teal color. And this time I did paint.  I painted the top with the same toffee color we used in the main part of the house. When you repeat colors throughout your house it makes your house more welcoming and calming.  You aren't so overwhelmed by the constant color change. However you want to vary it a little. I didn't want this small room to feel even smaller so I decided not to repeat the chocolate brown moldings.  We went with white.

 And once again we added simple basic molding at about four feet to separate the toffee from the white.  it gives it a real finished off look.  And the play room was ready.

 

I love the transformation shown here. And how you can update a space and totally change the function of a room. I strive to make my home like the temple, both beautiful (or at least attractive), functional, and everything has a purpose.