Here's A Rock And There's A Hard Place...Guess Where I Am...

Just checking in to say I'm still alive; we're all doing well, we've been traveling with Shane a bit while he's been working out of town, doing some other fun things closer to home, and I had the chance to meet, in person, someone who's been my e-mail friend for the past ten years!  (Hi, Melinda!)

But here's the deal...I've had absolutely no inspiration to post anything here for quite a while.  Neither am I ready to close the blog for good. 

So...I'm not sure when I'll be back, but I probably will be.  Just waiting for blogging season to come back around.

Haphazard Homestead Happenings

Where does the time go?  The days are just flying by lately and so much is happening around here.

The gardening is beginning to show signs of growth.  Except for the potatoes, onions and ginger, everything we planted this year went directly into the ground as seeds.  Almost all the little seedlings have started to come up.  We have carrots, onion, radishes, peas, lettuces, Swiss chard, spinach, broccoli, Brussels sprouts, cabbage, kohlrabi, turnips, and beets.  No signs of cauliflower yet, though.  We've been eating asparagus on a regular basis, and some of our rhubarb is almost ready to harvest.

We had a couple of nights of freezing temps last week (in late April?), but we covered everything and it all made it.  The weather, and therefore the garden, are running a few weeks behind this year, and I'm wondering now if we'll have any room for our late spring plantings that I had thought would follow behind some of the early crops.  Oh well, we might just have to build another raised bed or two.

Like everything else, our flowering trees are behind schedule.  Our red bud, white bud and crab apple are just now starting to bloom.  One of our young rhododendrons is in full splendor right now, though.

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I have almost completed my April craft project and I'm pretty sure I'll be able to finish by tomorrow afternoon.  Look for it on Wednesday, along with the rest of my April goals update.

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For those who enjoy hearing about Bob the Basement Cat, he is doing well, but we've come to the conclusion that he is either partial or completely deaf.  I'm not sure how we missed it, actually.  We can often go in and out of the basement and do whatever we need to do, and if he's asleep or just looking away from us, he might never realize we're there.  Also, when you speak or make other noises, his ears don't move toward the sound, not even a little.  It might also explain why his meows are so very loud and might be the reason he craves touch so much.

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Our weekend schedules are filling up fast for spring/summer.  A couple of biggish home improvement projects, a trip to the zoo on Mother's Day, a day of city-wide garage sales, and camping, have us booked up for most weekends until after Independence Day.

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19 more days until school is out for Kat, possibly for good!  We have decided we will unschool her once this year is over.  Learning about this lifestyle change is huge in our lives right now and is what I've been spending much of my time on recently.  I promise, though, that this shift won't turn this into an unschooling blog.  I'm not sure I'll blog about it much at all, but if I do, I'll spin it off to a separate blog much like I do with our RVing stories.  Just thought I'd mention it, since it's been taking me away from the blog and Facebook page lately.

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I apologize again for not being around to visit your blogs and pages much lately, but I'm going to try to remedy that this week. 

Ready, Set, Garden!

Gardening has begun at Haphazard Homestead!

I now have a new printer and have begun using the garden planner I purchased earlier this year.  I have mapped out our garden on grid paper, but I also like mapping it on an aerial photo (this one's from Google Earth) and pasting it into a drawing program to add the ground features.  It just gives us a more realistic perspective, I think.  All the white boxes or lines are our planting areas, both raised and in-ground beds.  If they aren't labeled, they are still empty.  It should also go without saying that the beds are absolutely not-to-scale.

Shane and I have been simultaneously planning on paper and planting in soil.  So far, we have planted a largish potato patch, two new gooseberry bushes, as well as transplanting about 75 strawberry plants to a new pyramid.

While I'll try not to neglect the blog entirely, you can expect that posting will be more erratic for a while. I apologize in advance for absences that are sure to happen, and will post if/when spare moments and inspiration coincide.

Deep

In anticipation of the snow storm, I missed Wednesday's post; today's won't be much of one either, unfortunately.

In the city, nights are bright when snow's on the ground.
Taken 10:00 last night, out our back door, with no flash.

We're sitting in snow, 10-12 inches deep right now.  With Shane and Kat both home yesterday and today, the house is feeling a a little full for weekdays.  It's hard for me to find my regular groove, blog writing included.

So, I've been doing what needs to be done, but otherwise I've been immersed neck deep in the archives of a blog I just discovered called Hickery Holler Farm.  The Canned Quilter is also a Missouri blogger and it appears we have a lot in common.

I hope to get Shane involved in some more garden planning this weekend because this snow won't last long and garden season truly is right around the corner.  With luck, I'll have more about that on Monday.

Have a great weekend!

Happy New Year 2013!

Happy New Year!  I hope all of you had a fun and safe New Year's Eve, and a relaxing (or perhaps, recuperative) day yesterday. 

I'd also like to say welcome to the second year of Haphazard Homestead!

Yes, I made it an entire year, but not without the occasional -- okay, frequent -- thought of throwing in the towel.  Sometimes I get fed up, overwhelmed or under-inspired by blogging.  I would imagine we've all been there.  In the past, I'd just close shop for a while, but before long, I'd feel the itch to set up a new blog and start writing again.

Not this time.  This time I'm just going to keep going -- but with changes.  Simply put, I'm looking to free up time to pursue other interests without giving up blogging entirely.  So, starting this week, I'm going to be a M-W-F blogger.  Three posts a week should keep me in touch without burning me out.  I'll see how it goes for a couple of months, then make adjustments if I think I should.

I'm also thinking of opting out of the Facebook scene for this blog.  As Facebook becomes more and more difficult and unreliable, especially for those of us with promotional Pages, I'm thinking of switching to Twitter or Google+, or dropping the social media idea altogether.  Any feedback you can offer will help me make this decision.

Meanwhile, I hope you'll stick with me.  Feel free to tell me if there's anything you'd like to see here.  More on budgeting?  Gardening?  Home projects?  Nutrition and/or recipes?  Cat pics?  I can do those things.  Just let me know.

Back On Top Of Things

It's amazing what antibiotics -- when you need them --  can do in a short amount of time.  Turns out that in addition to being in a blogging funk, I've been sick with a sinus infection.  It didn't get bad until this week, but I didn't realize how long I've been feeling less than stellar until I started feeling better this morning.  The 4-hour-long nap I took yesterday didn't hurt anything, either.

I'm sure that being under the weather had something to do with why I didn't feel like blogging, but I think it's also just that time of year for me.  When Kat goes back to school, I feel like putting my new-found free time to good use, and for whatever reason, that doesn't include blogging.

I've spent time organizing around the house, organizing my online recipe files, trying to get into solid school-year routines, canning, gardening and so on.  I feel a little better about my house now and decided to get a post up before not blogging becomes a habit.

I'm good to go -- at least for another month or two. 

I'm Just a Blip on the Radar

Just a quick fly-by to say I might be scarce this week. Kat has been under the weather since Saturday night, I have tomatoes and other good things coming in from the garden that need to be worked up, I need to go vote, and I need to get ready for another weekend camping trip.

We're trying something different this time out.  Instead of camping in a state park or Corps of Engineers campground like we usually do, we're staying in an independently owned RV resort.  It used to be a private club but has recently been opened to the public and boasts a few more amenities that the state parks.  It's called Lake Paradise; I'll let you know if it's all it's cracked up to be.

We sold our travel trailer over the weekend, which was a relief.  This late in the summer, I was beginning to worry that we'd have to overwinter it (and make payments on it) until next season.  And just so I don't confuse you further, we sold the newer, but smaller, trailer that we bought last summer.  The older, but bigger, 5th wheel camper we bought a couple of months ago is still safely tucked in our side yard between trips.  It's doing a great job doubling as a a sunshade for many of our garden beds.

I just love happy accidents like that.

Now, Who Didn't See This Coming?

I need a blog break.  I promise it will be short, as I have plenty to say when I come back.  I just have some pressing things to take care of here at home.  Everybody and everything around here thinks they need to be fed, cleaned, clothed, petted or otherwise cared for.  Unreasonable, if you ask me.

BRB.
I promise.

A Blog Award

Jill, at Blessings of a Stay at Home Mom, has bestowed upon me the Versatile Blogger Award.  Thank you so much, Jill!

Normally, I have an aversion to blog awards, because 1) I never know who to pass them on to without slighting anyone else, and 2) my circle of blog friends is small, so by the time I get an award, most of my blogging buddies have already received it.  Makes it kind of difficult.  But since this is the first award I've received for this blog, I'll give it a try. 

I think 15 is an awful lot of people to tag, but I did manage to come up with 12.  If I tag you, and you've already received this one, or just don't feel like participating, I understand completely.  On the other hand, if I didn't tag you, but you'd like to play along, feel free to tag yourself!

Here are the rules for accepting the award:

1) Thank the person and link to their page

2) Select 15 bloggers who you follow regularly or have recently discovered & share the award

3) Share 7 things about yourself

4) In their posts of acceptance have them include this set of rules

5) Let each blogger know they have been nominated by leaving a comment on their blogs.

First, the tags:
The Cookbook Junkie
Don't Read This; It's Boring!
A Mom, Money and More
Better Me, Better World
Premeditated Leftovers
See The Woods and The Trees
Quiltgranny's Shoe
Osage Bluff Quilter
Life On Hackberry Road
Mom's Sunday Cafe
Sew Not My Day!
Easy Frugal Living


Ok, now the 7 things about me that you may not already know....

1) I was a math geek in high school and I probably still have the medals to prove it.

2) I will NOT...ever...under any circumstances...sing karaoke, but I will be the first to make a fool of myself on the dance floor.

3) My eldest sister named me.  (Not Annie, but my real-life name).  She found the name, suggested it to my parents, and they went for it.  BTW, I do not know even one other person who shares my real first name, although there seem to be a lot of women who do when I search it on FB.

4) In keeping with the name theme, my blog name Annie comes from my middle name Ann, which was also the middle name of both of my grandmas. Annie is the name I used to give to guys in the bar when I didn't want them to know my real name, and it's still the name I give when I order coffee at Starbuck's because it's so much easier than using my real name.

5) Although I don't/won't get into politics on my blog, I step down firmly on the liberal side of the fence.

6) I think I learned to cook via osmosis.  My mom never required me to help in the kitchen, yet when I set up my first household when I was 20, I knew how to cook almost everything she did.

7) I am not a strong swimmer by any means, but of my parents' six children, I'm the only one who learned to swim at all.

So there you have it.  I'm a geeky, liberal, cooking, swimming, dancing fool who lies about my name.  Yet a few of you still agree to be seen with me in public.  Imagine that...

My Return To Blogging

When I quit posting on my old blog a few months ago, I honestly didn't know if I'd come back to a blog or not. 

I began thinking of a new blog almost immediately and I toyed with the idea of making changes -- many and big -- to what I had been doing.  Still, I was enjoying my time off, so whenever blogging crossed my mind, I just brushed the idea aside.

After a while, though, I saw that one of several things I missed was the accountability that comes with blogging...or with my kind of blogging, at least.  Yes, near-daily posts had been taking up a lot of my time, but I wasn't always using the time I saved by not blogging in a productive way.  I had wanted more time for working outside, organizing my home and spending time with my family.  What I got instead was more time for Facebook and Pinterest.  Because I didn't publicly say that I was going to organize those recipe clippings or dig up the Jerusalem artichokes by Friday if it killed me, I just didn't do them.  Without a blog, who would know the difference anyway? 

It didn't take long for me to realize that I'm a lot more productive with an audience to keep me on track.  It took a little longer for me to decide that "many and big" changes weren't necessary and that a new look, new name and a slight shift in focus would do the trick.

As for my willingness to commit to a blog again, well, I'm still not 100% on board with that one.  The accountability, though, is worth enough to me to give blogging another go.

If you've been where I am, what made you decide to blog again and what keeps you going with it?

Happy and New

Welcome to the New Year and welcome to the new blog.  I'm Annie.  Some of you already know me from my old blog (you might find some useful stuff still sitting over there, but in the interest of fresh starts, I'll not link this blog from that end.)

The new blog will be a lot like the old one, but I hope you'll notice some differences.  I'm aiming for a more casual feel here, with less concern over ending a sentence with a preposition and less worry over whether I'll offend someone by being too this or not enough that.  I figure you're all able to decide whether or not you like it here and smart enough to move on if you don't.

Just like before, I'll be posting recipes and food ideas, ways to save money, gardening, tips for reusing and recycling, do-it-yourself projects, and other odds and ends.  As a family, we aren't focusing as much on bottom-line frugality as we used to.  Shane and I are both frugal and I can't imagine us being any other way, but having reached some of our financial goals, we're loosening up a bit.  Instead of just buying the cheapest, we're now making some of our spending decisions based on qualities such as packaging, area of origin, nutritional value, and expected durability.  Expect to see some of our new priorities reflected in the posts here. 

One last thing:  We know not what we do.  Thus the title of the blog.  Some people have told us we're impulsive; we think we're just quick to do some basic research and make our decision.  More than that, we're unafraid to act once we've decided on something.  We succeed or we fail, but either way we learn something.  We think learning this way beats reading a manual any day.