Kristen Blog

Oh, dear sugar snap peas!  My dear, dear sugar snaps.  In all the time I've been growing food in our suburban farm days (approximately 10 years now!), I have to say that snap peas have been one of the most successful plants I've grown.   I started growing and harvesting peas when we purchased a home with a huge backyard.  That was about 10 years ago.  We ordered some seeds from one of our favorite heirloom seed companies, Baker Creek .  I bought sugar snap seeds one time, and I've never had to buy them again. Honestly, I never have planted many sugar snaps.  I usually put about 12-20 snap pea seeds in the ground, and that is more than enough.  My daughter loves to eat them pod and all early harvest, snow pea style.  Up until this year, I have only harvested peas early as snow peas, because she is the main consumer.  I've typically let the rest grow and dry on the plant, so I can harvest them as next years sugar snap seeds.  And...

SKIP AND PRINT SIMPLIFIED INSTRUCTIONS We have what I like to call a little "suburban farm."  It includes 5 chickens, a french angora rabbit, and LOTS of garden...right smack dab in the middle of your typical suburban, cul-de-sac neighborhood.  It embarrasses my teenagers.  Their friends love to tease them about "the farm."   The thing is...I LOVE natural and making things from scratch.  (When I was a kid, I used to pretend the tall grass in the overgrown field next to my house was wheat.  I would pick it and grind it in the concrete rain gutter splash block.  Then, I would go inside and throw a frozen chimichanga into the microwave and pretend it was homegrown. 😂 I am currently living the legacy of my childhood imaginations.  Well...kind of... I have long since realized I can NOT do everything from scratch AND live in modern civilization.  I grew up in a small, rural town.  After about nineteen years of feeling constantly lonely a...

Well...my girl has officially graduated high school...no pomp and circumstance for us.  Not that she cares.  I think I'm the only senior parent this year who is grateful for the abrupt ending.  Like her mother before her, she was more than ready to get the heck out of high school.  She didn't even want to walk in graduation.  I bought the cap and gown as a hopeful, just-in-case.   She was just ready to move on.  I get it.  However, being on the parent end of all this sure made things difficult.  Although I graduated early, my mom still threw a party to celebrate.  But...I wasn't sure how people would respond if I did try to throw something THIS year.  I simply stagnated in a state of bewildered immobility. Thank God my big sis got involved!  Apparently, a "card carnival" is a thing this year???🤷‍♀️ , and several people responded to celebrate my girl. 💕   It was heart-warming and endearing.  But my sister d...

  Life is a bowl of cherries...or chocolates...whatever.  You don't know what you are going to get.  Sometimes you get a bad one in the midst of the good.  (I grew those cherries, by the way! 👆) I'm just out here tryna' live my best life as a new baseball mom. 😱 Oh my goodness.  Baseball momming is exhausting!  I GOT to make sure he has his glove and his uniform and his bat and his hat and his sunglasses before we drive all over the country to play ball, like...every stinking weekend. (Is there a list somewhere?!!!) And oh, by they way, I'm going to need sunscreen and snacks and drinks and money and...in case I get bored while sweating in the blazing sun, these people are not joking around at their baseball 10u tournament games.  Not kidding.  One team even had announcers and walk-up songs for their batters.  (I couldn't quit laughing.  How am I supposed to take these babies that seriously when I just want to pinch their cheeks?!!)...

Happy Mother's Day! There is no misery quite like the one in which Co-Vid meets the DMV.  A.G.O.N.I.Z.I.N.G!!!!!!  We waited for 2 hours (with friends, however ironic, Thank you, God!).  They were ahead of us and kept checking the wait times.  45 minutes after a 45 minute notice, they were told it would be another hour.  We all got the heck out of Dodge.  I drove a little further rural, because I WILL NOT be defeated by the anyone, let alone the lady at the DMV who kept swearing up and down it was totally legit that they had managed to serve 3 customers in 2 hours. I can totally head rural, folks...I was BORN rural.  And you cannot take the rural out of the girl.  Besides, BY GOD, my daughter was going to GET her permit. And...all that said, our neighborhood officially has a newly permitted driver.  She can thank her mother's "Ain't NOTHING Gonna Break My Stride" tenacity.  My mama didn't raise no weak quitter.  And none of thes...

Honestly?  I don't take orders well.  I balk at the word "mandated."  Because NO ONE gonna tell Kristen Shanna what to do.  🙄🤷‍♀️ But seriously, I kind of feel like I'm in this bizarro twilight zone where everyone suddenly decides they want to live like I did circa 2001-2015.  And I feel right at home back in this, I-have-to-stay-home business.  Only this time round, I have a few more responsibilities (and a lot less toddlers to keep me from doing it).  And I have to admit, after a brief but rocky adjustment phase, I am kind of TOTALLY in my element and thriving. I mean...now that I am working from home (and not driving all over Kingdom Come), I actually have time to set out my tomato starts and bring them in when it is too cold.  So, my tomato starts are doing WAY better than they ever did before.  And I also now have time to walk out and check my coop twice a day, which means I am regularly gathering ALL the eggs the chickens are la...

In the midst of world-wide panic and pandemic, I consider it soothing to find practical ways to cope.  Making things from scratch is one way I assure myself I am competent to survive just about anything. Since I happen to have a couple of aloe plants lying around, and I am ALWAYS looking for fun new things to try (and ways to use my prolific aloe plants), I figured we should jump on the trend to make our own hand sanitizer. And what better homeschool science activity?  Am I right?!! I mean...we still have half of the gallon-sized sanitizer we bought at Sam's months ago (a year ago?), but...there is definitely room for more, if it is home-made.  We love trying things naturally and from scratch around this little suburban homestead. So, grab your ingredients, and join us to make your own hand sanitizer! Here's what we used: 3/4 isopropyl (rubbing) alcohol 1/4 cup aloe (we used raw aloe, but you can use storebought gel) a few drops of lemon oil a few drops of ...