City Garden

Frequently, when I talked about my garden over the summer, people would ask what kind of garden I could possibly have when we live in the city.

As far as gardens go, it's small, but as far as CITY gardens go, I think it's pretty substantial. We've tried to make the most of the space we have, and, as garden's usually are, it's a work in progress. But I was very pleased with how everything looked this year.

Our yard is long and narrow, with no alley. Years ago, I discovered that there was a brick pathway buried underneath the dirt and weeds, so we unearthed that. We added a couple of raised beds. A few years ago, we put in the butterfly bush, and three small evergreens. I usually plant colorful annuals in pots that hang on the fence, but those were largely a failure this year because of the intense heat. Our deck usually has more larger containers of flowers, but this year we tried our hand at container veggie growing instead.

Our garden is small, but it's a tranquil place where I can sit and read a book and where my kids can learn about various kinds of butterflies and other beneficial insects.

This is what a city garden looks like.

Party Animals

Yesterday, my 6 year old came home from school with an invitation to a birthday party.

Another one.

Which is great because he likes to party and it's always nice to be included. But if you count Johnny's party a few weeks ago, this will be the fourth kid party in about a month.

I thought about it and tried to figure out exactly how many birthday parties my children have been invited to this year. I lost count at nine. One was for my nephew, and there were at least 2 others that we couldn't attend because of previous commitments.

All of the parties so far were for children that both mine are friends with, so we didn't have to make arrangements for the other kid. But this latest one, Maureen is not invited because it's for one of Johnny's classmates.

The going rate for a birthday gift for a friend around here seems to be 10-15 dollars. There are 20 kids in Johnny's kindergarten class. Of course, not all of them will have birthday parties and some of them have summer birthdays. But theoretically, that's a big investment because all those ten and fifteen dollar gifts add up.

Since Johnny and Maureen are still at the ages where people tend to invite the whole class, we may have to come up with a plan to manage all the parties and gifts so they don't take over our weekends.

How about you? Do you have any guidelines for birthday parties?

Menu Plan: Crockpot To The Rescue

My crockpot is one of my most favorite kitchen appliances. Especially in the fall when we have lots going on, but I still want to put a good meal on the table.

Here's what we'll be eating, thanks to my trusty Rival.

**Crockpot Corned Beef and Cabbage--Both kids love corned beef, and we haven't had it in a while. Leftovers are always great for reubens. And if you wait to add the cabbage until the end, you can use the crockpot for that too.
**Family Nacho Night--Earlier this week, my planned dinner never got off the ground, so my husband dug around in the fridge and made very basic nachos, which Maureen loved. (She calls them "nachios.") Restaurant nachos are usually a fatty, greasy calorie bomb, but I think with lots of veggies and beans, avocado and either cooked beef or chicken, everyone can make a plate of nachos that are a lot healthier. And I plan to use the crockpot to cook the meat.
**Tortellini with Homemade Tomato Sauce and garlic bread--I spent a few days last month canning tomato sauce and pickles and my husband is anxious to try the sauce. These tortellini cook up so fast, and I'll make garlic bread and some kind of veg on the side.
**Turkey, Sweet Potato and Cranberry Stew--A recipe from Prevention. I'm hoping it will encourage the kids to try sweet potatoes. Salad to go with it. Crockpot, of course.
**Baked Potato Soup--This is an old Rachael Ray recipe that I just love, and it's also really easy. This is the first time I'll be making it in the crockpot, but I think it will work out just fine.

Do you have a crockpot? How often do you use it?

Menu Plan: Back To School

This week was Johnny's first week of full days at school. (His first day was a half day.) On Monday, Maureen goes back to preschool. Since I am treasurer for the program, and also co-room mom for Johnny's class, and there are only 104 shopping days until Christmas, that means we are busy! Busy is fine, I like busy, but it also means that our mornings and evenings are a little crazier than I am used to. So dinner needs to be something I can prep during the day when I'm home, or if I'm not home during the day, something I can throw together quickly.

With those criteria in mind, here's what we'll be eating this week:

**Pork Roast with mashed potatoes and gravy--I picked up a small pork roast last week on sale and stuck it in the freezer. I'll make it in the crockpot and also steam some veggies in the microwave.
**Pepper Jack Chicken with Succotash--This is a recipe I spotted in a food network magazine, and it looks yummy and easy. I'm actually still undecided on the succotash, because I prefer my veggies one at a time. And it's really easy to toss a steam-in-bag package of corn or whatever into the microwave. Salads to go with it.
**Pierogies--I've made my own pierogies in the past, but in the interest of time, I'd plan to buy the frozen kind, the new variety with feta cheese in them. The Mrs. T's brand pierogies are very good. One of these days, I'll get around to making a huge batch of my own and freeze them for future use, but for this week I'll be using the boxed kind. Artichoke and Tomato salad to go with it, and maybe bread.
**Peanut Chicken Stirfry--What I like best about stirfry, besides the ease of cooking, is how the recipes are so open to interpretation. I'll use the basic sauce from this recipe, but toss in whatever else kind of veggies we happen to have at the time. It always turns out great. Rice and salad on the side.
**One Pot Chicken Dinner--A friend gave me an enormous basil plant this week, so I set the kids to plucking it and they presented me with an entire colander full of basil. So I made pesto. Which will be perfect in this dish, which also works well in the crockpot.
**Lime Marinated Fish--When I'm stumped for dinner ideas, I like to go into my kitchen and start looking at the packages of food for ideas. Lasagna noodles always have a recipe for lasagna right on the box, bread crumbs usually have directions for chicken fingers, etc. This recipe comes from a box of True Lime, which I got as part of a giveaway I did last spring. I'll buy whichever fish looks best, probably tilapia, and broil it. My usual sides for fish to go with it: green beans and couscous.

What are you eating now that school is back in session?

How To Construct A Construction Zone Cake

Johnny turned six last week, and on Sunday, we had a birthday party for him. We held the party at a local bowling alley, which was awesome because we got the whole top floor of the place to ourselves, we could bring in any food we wanted, and management let the kids bowl in their regular shoes. In lieu of attempting to keep score, we just let the kids bowl, which worked out great too (except the noise level was deafening).

This year, Johnny asked for a construction cake and I originally thought I'd make a cake that looked like a backhoe or something. But some poking around online quickly nixed that idea, because I'd have to get a special pan or do complicated things with frosting, and it's usually all I can manage to slop the frosting on the cake without getting crumbs in it.

Instead, I decided on a construction zone cake.

I made a box mix in an aluminum 13 x 9 cake pan, then put that on a cookie sheet because the aluminum pans tend to be flimsy. I didn't realize at the time that my cookie sheet was warped, so when the cake came out of the oven, there was a hump in one corner! But for this cake, it actually worked out fine. I removed the cooled cake from the pan and put it on a larger, sturdier cookie sheet. I also dug a small hole for the pond and used that cake to build another hill.

Then I frosted the cake in buttercream frosting. Please note, it took TWO containers of frosting to make this cake. I used my Pampered Chef decorator gun to pipe frosting around the edges for neatness (and also because of that crumb thing I mentioned earlier) and I used a smaller tip to fill the pond with frosting tinted blue.

To make the dirt, I crushed Golden Oreos in a bag with a rolling pin. These Oreos have yellow cookies with chocolate cream filling and they were perfect for the dirt. The construction equipment came from a set from Walmart, and I used extra icing to anchor them to the cake. The boulders are from a Lego set, and the cones and barriers are also Matchbox accessories.

This cake was very easy and super fun to make, and Johnny loved it.

Happy 6th Birthday to my big boy!

Motherhood Has Changed Me

Motherhood changes us all in some way. It makes some of us more compassionate, more patient or more forgiving. It makes some of us more demanding, more judgemental or more controlling. It might make us more confident, or it might make us timid. It makes us learn new things, accept new truths, and let go of things we thought we knew.

Personally, having children has changed my life in a thousand ways. Some tiny, some large. In many ways, I'm the same person I was before kids, and in other ways I am forever different.

I have always been a planner, a list maker, an organized, time oriented, Type A overachiever. Much of this remains, but it's oriented around running a household and raising kids. That's where my menu plans come from and why my kids get their sense of structure from me. It also means I've had to let go of certain behaviors, letting them fingerpaint and cut paper into shreds and make tents and dawdle and all the other things that kids need to do to learn.

It also means I don't want to automatically pass on my neuroses, my irrationalities, my preferences to them. They can develop their own.

I've always had a great dislike of bugs, even a fear, if you will. A mostly irrational and baseless fear, but a fear just the same. I still don't do cockroaches or things that bite or suck blood, but having children has meant I've had to set aside my bug issues and let them explore and learn on their own.

Several weeks ago, an incredibly loud clicking noise in the house led me to discover an enormous Greater Angle Wing Katydid in my bedroom. I did not scream or rush from the room, I calmly flicked him out the window.

On Wednesday, Johnny discovered a tiny version of the same bug, smaller than my pinky fingernail. I coaxed it into a jar, added some leaves and twigs and punched an air hole in the top. Johnny named it Bug Hopper and it spent the rest of the afternoon visiting with us in the house. In the photo above, Maureen and Johnny say goodbye to Bug Hopper before we let him go.

Mosquitoes will still get slapped and ants will still get sprayed to death with tea tree oil and flies will get smashed, but I think it's safe to say my "bug thing" has gone away. It has been replaced with amazement that a mere bug could make a noise THAT loud, and a grudging admiration for how well a little green bug blends in with a geranium leaf.

How has motherhood changed you?

Six

Dear Johnny,

In April, the pants your wore for Easter were a gift from Busia and they fit perfectly. A couple of months later, you wore them again, but this time they were tight in the waist and you really had to suck it in to get them fastened. I see you every day and you look pretty much the same to me today as you did back in April, but it's obvious that you are growing and changing each day, even if it doesn't always show.

When I think back to a year ago, when you were five, it amazes me how much you have grown. Not so much physically, although those pants really are too tight. It's your maturity, your empathy, your compassion and your incredible ability to make friends with everyone that have shined this past year.

I've changed in the past year too, and for the better. I think I realized how fleeting your childhood is and that it's more important to savor it than it is to sweat the small stuff. Several of my high school friends started families recently, and while I love to look at pictures of their newborns, it all seems a million miles away. While they are in the trenches of night feeding and first teeth and milestones and all those pediatrician visits, my baby, my first baby, is now tall enough to ride some of the rollercoasters at Hershey Park and is approaching the age of first lost tooth. At your very rare doctor visits, if you get a shot, you don't cry, you tell the nurse, "Ow! That hurts my arm!"

Today is special, not just because it's your sixth birthday, but because it's also your first day of kindergarten. Today marks a big transition for our whole family, not just in how early we have to leave the house, but in leaving carefree and unscheduled days behind in exchange for homework and fundraisers and grades and uniforms. I have no doubt you will be fine in school, you'll approach it with the gusto you approach everything else. But if you find me hugging you extra or looking occasionally teary, it's not because I'm sad or because there is anything wrong. It's just because you're growing so fast and I love you so much and I'm trying to savor it all as much as I can.

Happy 6th Birthday, Best Boy In The World,

All My Love,

Mommy