This is definitely an undertaking that will take more weekends to complete; but at least the ground work is laid. I am glad that we have some place to put our compost.

Now for the placement. We have a Empress tree who's roots are limiting the space we can use for the separate compost bins. I insisted that we use these cinder blocks so we can save the big pretty rocks for other places in the yard. Why does composting have to be prettified?

We sorted all of the rocks, from the concrete, from the cinder blocks. Then we dug out sections of space from the dirt hill and removed a Camelia and a Hasta, both which are being replanted in the front yard.

This is the area we picked out to create our composting piles. Of course, we will first need to clean up the rubble. . .but I've been itching to do this for a while now.

I am currently reading the book, "Let it Rot!"; and it is a good place to start for the composting information and getting this started.

I found a forum talking about grinding and storing wheat berries that I found to be extremely helpful since this has been on my mind for about a month now.

http://forums.gardenweb.com/forums/load/homest/msg0620312821416.html

I still have questions about pest prevention, so if anyone runs across more on this, let me know!

I thought it might be worth mentioning something about cleaning products; after all I have streamlined my cleaning using less money, less time, and is more healthy than using the animal-tested alternatives. I use 3 basic household cleaners for the bathroom and kitchen mostly. Let me start with my favorite. Half Hydrogen Peroxide, half water. . .that's it. You just need to find a good spray bottle, pour the mix into it, and now it will be useful as a good disinfectant and cleaner. I use this mixture mostly to spray into my shower once a week b/c I am lazy and don't like scrubbing it very often. You might be surprised at how well it keeps that orange stuff from growing in there. I also use it to spray on door handles when we've been getting sick, or if a nose picker visits my house. The only thing that I have not yet determined is whether it is animal tested. If anyone has any information to offer about this--please let me know!

My next cleaner is pretty simple as well: vinegar and water. O.K., so, vinegar stinks so I don't really leave it like that, but you can if you're short on cash. I buy something called "CitruSolv" from the health food store which is like between $8 and $20 depending on what size you find and where you live. That sounds really expensive, but it is concentrated and the smaller bottle should yield approximately 8-10 cleaner bottles of the stuff, so now it competes with the dollar store price; but it is actually more useful than your average dollar store cleanser b/c at full strength it can scrub off that goo that duct tape leaves behind! So my cleanser actually consists of 50% water, 50% vinegar, and 1 oz of CitruSolv. I use this once and a while to scrub out the shower when tiny amounts of pink/orange begins to grow where the water pools around shampoo bottles. It also does a pretty good job cutting through the soap scum too. I also use this cleaner on the kitchen and bathroom floors, kitchen sink, bathroom sink, and toilet.

My last and most versatile cleaner is Dr. Bronner's Castile soap. This is also a concentrated soap so I use a soap dispenser in my kitchen to mix my watered down versions that are used daily to wipe down the kitchen counter tops.

I always knew that most cleaners were pretty harmful (like bleach which is found in most cleansers), but I had a mental block about changing over, partially b/c I didn't realize that it could be done economically and effectively. If you simply switch to the hydrogen peroxide water alone, I think you will find that you will save money and time.

This planter contains garlic bulbs and lettuce seeds. The 2 shoots near the tall sticks are the garlic bulbs and were planted merely last month! So go and get your sprouting garlic bulbs and stick them in the ground right now! The lettuce seeds aren't doing so hot though, or maybe need more time? I hear mixed stories about planting lettuce seeds and so far I haven't gotten them to germinate outside in the summer, inside in the fall, or as demonstrated here, outside in the winter. I won't give up though!!!!!

I have 3 Pinto's started (the other 2 are tiny still) in the basket with tin start cups. I also have 5 Trail-of-Tears Beans started in the red cups, well one is actually outside already as an experiment--even though it is only February! I don't really know a lot about growing beans yet, except that it is easy to start them from dried bean in your window seals and that they will need a trellis to climb. I started with Beans starts first b/c we eat beans, probably once per week. We used to eat canned beans until I learned that canned foods are one of the highest sources for BPAs--higher than plastics! Then I discovered, by switching over to the bulk dried variety that they taste better, cost less, and are actually quite easy to prepare using the crock pot and store in Ball jars in the freezer. We currently buy our Beans from the bulk department @ the health food store and they are still less expensive than the canned varieties. I decided that if we were going to save money preparing our own, I will afford the luxury of buying the best dried variety possible.

I am slightly obsessed with self-sufficiency. I have learned a lot, but I know that there is so much left to gather in the way of knowledge. I set up this blog to help me track where I am with this journey and to share with other people since most everyone has economy and saving money on the brain. I will mostly focus on anything food related and textile related, but of course anything creative that wasn't prefabricated will be fair game for blog content!

When I step into the kitchen, I aspire to replace anything that we consume down the interior aisles of a grocery store, with it's homemade version. I am taking this challenge, one product at a time and find success thus far with items like bread, cookies, rolls, and pie crust. On the other hand, there are still challenges ahead in the kitchen that I have yet to face like pasta and tortillas.

My sewing projects, on the other hand, are far from the success stories that my kitchen adventures have taken; so I will approach this with as much humor as possible. I have also taken a Refashion pledge for 2 months that might serve as inspiration and to force me into finding some success somehow. This blog can be found @ http://wardroberefashion.net/.

The newest adventure would be trying to plant as many things that we use in our kitchen in our small backyard as possible. This will serve as a test and learning experience also.