Updates!! Lots of them! And a cheap and easy chicken recipe!

So, I have been MIA over the last several months, but I have a great excuse! Several, actually.. 

The first? My husband and I are expecting our first child! We are very excited but I will tell you this pregnancy has consumed me! I was nauseous for the first 20 weeks, and now that we are about 35 weeks along and the nursery is about done, I have just a few moments of time where I can blog! I can't promise anything, but I will be home for a good chunk of time, so I hope to post something more frequently.. and fair warning, there might be some baby photos to go along with that.

Our little guy :)

The second? I've become an entrepreneur. Twice. I'm not sure if it was early nesting or if things just fell into place but I now have two small businesses. The first is a photography business. I'd been taking photos of other peoples' children for so long, it was about time I got paid for it. If you are interested, my website is Courtney Marie Photography. I will probably include photo tips and such on this blog, when I can.. but for now I'll leave you with some cute photos :)

What a cute toddler she is! She was so good for this shoot!

A client's little one- adorable!

The other business is a Mary Kay business. I get all sorts of reactions on this one! No, it's not just grandma's makeup :) Yes, I absolutely love their products. No, I'm not crazy. I have a lot of skin reactions and finally found some products that have improved my skin, even during pregnancy. Plus, living in the south means a high risk for skin cancer and they have a great daily facial sunscreen that agrees with my skin. I probably won't mention it again on this blog, but if you are interested, send me an email to craftyhobbyhouse@gmail.com and I'll be glad to give you more information :)

I've also gotten back into a healthier eating pattern (for the most part). Pregnancy has disrupted this, but I have been loving some new recipes and will share as I get them. I try to eat a higher protein, lower simple carb diet but on busy nights and when we are on a super tight budget (when are we NOT) I have to go to the staples of rice or pasta- but I still try to make those as healthy as possible. Here is a recent recipe I got off of BigOven (love their app!!) that was yummy- although it doesn't look like much-- it's easy and cheap (add frozen veggies and it's a little more healthy!)

Cheesy Chicken and Rice Bake

Main Dish  »  Casseroles     Original Yield: 4      Sized to 4 Servings

Easy to Make. Kids Love it!

photo by Rayel

Ingredients 1 10.75-oz can Cream of Chicken Soup; Regular or 98% fat free 1/4 teaspoon Black Pepper ground 1 1/3 cups Water 1 1/2 pounds Skinless Boneless Chicken Breast Halves about 4 - 6 3/4 cups Rice; Uncooked Regular long-grain white 1 cup Cheddar Cheese (4 oz) Shredded 1/2 teaspoon Onion powder Preparation Mix soup, water, rice, onion powder and black pepper in 2qt. shallow baking dish. Top with chicken. Sprinkle chicken with additional pepper. Cover with aluminum foil and bake at 375 F for 45 min. or until chicken is no longer pink and rice is done. Uncover, sprinkle cheese over chicken, the cheese melts from the heat of the chicken. For a nice addition stir in 2 cups of fresh or canned, or frozen vegetables into soup mixture before topping with chicken.

An update on the garden? Nada. Being prego killed my motivation this summer.. but I do want to have another winter garden. I'll probably update you all now and then!


And finally, I've really slacked off on project life :( I've been taking occasional notes, and keeping up with taking photos, so it won't take too long to catch up but I hate having to catch up! I plan to be better when our little man arrives.

Garden Update 2013: Week 1

My how the garden has grown :)

Not only are my cute little plants growing but we have added some MAJOR additions to the homestead garden! We've only been in our home for four months and I can't believe what we have accomplished!! Husband fenced in a 50x60 foot area and started building my raised bed garden boxes. Last week, he trenched from the house (probably 100 feet away) and put plumbing and electric in various places! I now have 2 running hoses, a timed watering system (with separate valves from the hoses) and a plumbed earthbox garden! We are still awaiting the finishing touches on the earthbox plumbing so I will share that later :) 

Two days ago we picked up a 50 foot soaker hose from Lowes and did our best not to ruin the grid system I stapled in place.. not sure we succeded but who cares! Now I don't have to spend a half hour a day standing in the hot sun/rain/cold :) My number one rule about this garden is that it would be as LOW MAINTENANCE as possible! So far looking good :)

One of many future raised beds :)

 Eventually, we will have 17 more that look just like this :)

Far Left: acorn squash climbing the trellis.
Left to Right- Back row: left 6 are caulflower, right 6 are broccoli. Middle Row: spinach, lettuce, carrots x 2 then onion. Bottom row: lettuce, newly planted garlic, onion x 2.

The other changes to the garden was that I added a trellis for the Spaghetti Squash plants. They were growing way too fast! I also planted 2 of the 4 acorn squash plants my good friend gave me, right next to the trellis, so assuming the weather holds out- we should have plenty of squash this spring!

The first female flower! I hope it's warm enough for it to mature :)

 The carrots seem to be happy in the raised beds as well. They were a little tricky since there are 16 plants in one square foot. I think we covered pretty good with the soaker hoses though. 

Happy Little Carrots

The broccoli and Cabbage plants also seem to be quite happy in the raised beds. Again, I am WAY past season with planting these since they started indoor from seed, but if they make it past the last frost, we'll be having broccoli and cauliflower early this season!

Cauliflower

 I spent some time today planting some garlic bulbs (cloves actually- which by the way, look exactly like those you buy in a grocery store!). From what I read, it's important to peel them back to remove the basal plate, but be sure not to damage the little root growth spots at the bottom. Supposedly this is the time of year to plant them, so we'll see. Since I live in Florida  none of the "suggested" times are ever correct!

That's all for now! On to raised bed #2, which is currently half full of soil. The plan will be to top it off with quality soil, add soaker hose and grid off for planting. I'm thinking tomatoes for sure.. maybe beets, cucumbers and squash as well. Will keep you guys posted :) 

I love the feeling that I am able to grow what we eat, it's healthier and more sustainable, and tastes SO MUCH better grown fresh!

Happy homesteading :)

Garden update: Week 49

Just an update, stay tuned for a "how I built my square foot garden" post :)

Early December has been quite warm so far with an average temp in the mid 70's. We've had some rain (thank goodness!), which the plants LOVE. I had always read about how great rainwater is for a garden (referred to as liquid gold even!) because of the nitrogen content and that it is not chemically treated. I never really saw the effect because I always used Earthboxes, but now that I have things in the ground, it's so much more obvious! It's literally like they grew overnight!

My super awesome neighbor had leftover onion transplants, so those were added at the beginning of the week (sorry for the poor photo quality- iphone photos are what I have right now!):

New happy onion transplants in bottom left corner :)

Iphone panorama of the garden, note the BROWN unhappy,crunchy grass around the raised beds!

After the rain came, they seemed MUCH happier. You can see the brassica family growing on the right (broccoli and cauliflower). The two winter squash plants are doing very well in the back too! 

Growing right along

I have been working 12 hour night shifts so I hadn't the time for close ups of the plants.. but they are all doing well! Even the carrots (left, bottom 2 squares in and 2 squares up) have started to peek through the soil! We also had a cold snap come through with night temps in the low 50's, so we will see if that stunts growth or not!

That's all for now, I will keep you all posted as the zone 9 winter begins.

Happy gardening :)

The Garden

Part of the reason I wanted to start a blog as also because I wanted to keep a virtual "journal" of sorts for my garden!

I have always gardened in containers. Always. I've mostly just used plastic pots from big box stores but over the past year I expanded to earth boxes. Since we finally moved into our dream home, I wanted a more permanent garden.

But, of course I didn't want just and old plot of dirt- I wanted to build and plant in raised beds.. Specifically square foot garden beds. I chose this method for two basic reasons. To start with, our soil here in zone 9 is basically sand. I'm not kidding when I say this- if you dig down 1 foot, you unearth what looks like wet beach sand (note what's around the fence posts? That sand was not brought in!) Not good for a garden. The second, and more pertinent reason was because I'm a numbers girl and with square foot gardening (SFG) I can get more bang for the buck.

SFG basically means you break up the raised beds into one square foot sections and plant in a grid system instead of rows. The benefit is that the soil never gets stepped on, and as a result, you can grow things much closer together (aka the bio intensive method). I'd never done this type of gardening... Until today :)

My sweet husband was kind enough to build a fence around the area we determined was best for the garden.. Ill go into details in another post, but basically we have a 50x60 area to do whatever we want to. He built me two awesome raised bed boxes out of lumber (not pressure treated)- then I stapled a combo of weed wacker line and garden tape to make the grid system. Today, I officially became a square foot gardener, after spending many hours transplanting and seeding the grid. It looks pretty good, I think :) I wish we could have afforded the drip irrigation before the plants went in, but we gotta start somewhere, so I decided to go ahead and start planting! I love the result.. There are still a few empty squares so I will have to decide on what they'll be filled with. Regardless, here's the final product, I'm quite proud :)

Happy gardening :)