smelling the flowers at the Palmer Museum & Visitors Center

a year ago exactly
Palmer Museum & Visitors Center

I love where I live. The little historic farming community of Palmer is just an amazing place to live year round, and to raise a family. It was even voted "the best place to raise kids in Alaska" in a 2013 Bloomberg article, and for good reason. It truly is a close-knit community filled with families who have been living, farming and homesteading here since the 1930's, when the Matanuska Valley was colonized during President Roosevelt's New Deal.

I know I've mentioned all this before, but I'm reminded of it every spring and summer when I spend hours and hours every week just hanging out in downtown Palmer. It's the kind of downtown where you can just walk and walk and run into friends and chat and eat ice cream and walk some more. There is wide open spaces and parks are everywhere meaning it's very kid friendly as well.

One of our favorite places to visit when we're walking around town is the Palmer Museum & Visitors Center across from the Library, specifically the gardens there. There is just this little enclosed area filled with rows and rows of flowers and vegetables and rock gardens and flowering trees and it's just gorgeous. I love that I can stroll at a leisurely pace around the beds, taking in all the beauty around me without having to watch Riggs too closely. He loves walking 'around and around' (as he says) through all the beds and especially loves watching the bees that congregate in mass numbers on all the flowering shrubs and trees.

If you live in the Valley and especially Palmer I highly suggest a visit, and while you're there be sure to stroll around and enjoy the lovely atmosphere of downtown Palmer. I find that when I need to get out of the house and don't know what to do, it's always a great idea to just go downtown, park and wander around. It's always enjoyable plus there's plenty of coffee shops and bakery's and even gelato for when you get hungry (or need to keep a toddler happy ha).

I'll leave you with this bathroom selfie I took at the visitors center just because. I swear I look in the mirror and still get surprised to see that big belly!

PS: if you live in Anchorage and want to enjoy some fun garden time
with the kids be sure to visit the Alaska Botanical Gardens this weekend
for the Boreal Garden & Arts Fest!

weekending and some rearranging

This was the best weekend because Steve got home from a weeklong trip to Kodiak for work. Both mama and Riggs missed him soooo much this trip and were very thankful to have him back a day early Saturday evening. 

 We spent nearly all of Saturday outside...

Tutka is so patient with Riggs!

we went on a walk and made some new friends down the street.

the weather was amazing - 70 degrees and no bugs

 Daddy called and surprised us by saying he'd be flying in that evening, so we packed up and headed to Anchorage (we just thought staying the night at my parents would be easiest).

Riggs didn't let go of Steve for a good 24 hours haha

 Sunday I went to a bridal shower for my friend Lindsey. It was so much fun celebrating her and I can't wait for her wedding on summer solstice! I just hope that baby girl cooperates so that I can go :)

Monday I decided to rearrange the living room and office area. It wasn't too big of a change but I think it makes a big difference and I love it. Now I just need to put away a few random things (air mattress and box of music books) and for Steve to move our TV and everything will be perfect. When we moved in we mounted our TV on the wall above our dining table and we've hated it pretty much every since. We never eat at our table and the TV is really too far away from the couch/chairs. Which is probably why we had theater style seating for a while in our living room, haha. (various before pictures here and here).

It's the first rainy (or even cloudy) day here since Spring arrived in full force and I'm loving it. So cozy and perfect for staying inside and getting things done. Happy Tuesday!

DIY distressed wooden cable reel end table

Last week Steve brought a small(ish) wooden cable reel home from work with plans to make it into a table for our living room. I was excited to see how it would turn out, and after working on it for a few hours each day for two days, he was finished. I am so in love with how it turned out and am so thankful to have a husband that is so crafty! I feel like he can do just about anything around the house if he sets his mind to it.

Of course he did have a very special helper to make the job go a little bit easier:

Like I said, I love how it turned out and thing it fits in with the rest of our furniture/style just perfectly. It was actually a 'new' cable reel and we wanted more of a distressed look, so Steve sanded it and used coffee grounds to give the top a more weathered look. He also added some copper details inside the reel, which I think really make the piece. We're trying to decide if we should distress the copper so it gets that 'green' look (like an old penny) or if we should just leave it be.

*ps don't judge the 'theatre' style seating, we pulled the chairs onto the middle of the rug when Steve first brought the table in to see how it looked and that's when I happened to get pictures. We typically have a much more normal seating arrangement in the living room, haha.

I have my appointment today at the midwives and am 98% sure I'll have an ultrasound too, which I'm excited about. I'm just hoping that everything is normal and healthy and that my uterus just happened to grow fast for some reason (more info in my weekly update, here). Happy Wednesday!

let's catch up

Steve has been off from work for a week or two and we are loving it! He's been getting to spend so much more time with Riggs than ever before and I know they are both soaking it up.

Steve has been working on projects in the garage for a few hours each day, and Riggs loves to go out and join him. Aren't they too cute in their matching bibs? I just love them!

Also as I mentioned a while ago, our chickens weren't laying during the winter (since about late November) because the sun went behind the mountain and there just wasn't enough daylight. We wanted to give them a break and didn't light their coop (or heat it, they are hardy girls!). I checked every week or so to make sure there wasn't an egg in the nesting boxes, and for months, there was nothing. I checked last week on Monday or Tuesday and there was still nothing. Then a few days later I decided to check again and I found 10 frozen, cracked eggs all piled up in the nesting box. I'm pretty sure the chickens thought I was crazy when I cried out in surprise and excitement. I gathered them up and brought them in to show Steve.

I was sad to waste them but they were pretty gnarly, so we had to toss them. But since then we've been getting three to four each a day and you can bet we've (very happily) been eating lots of eggs since then. I am so excited to not buy eggs for the rest of the summer!

Riggs has been keeping busy with lunch dates (slurping up his miso soup through a straw is his new favorite thing to do), play dates and even managed to get his hair cut last week. I just love his little personality and his facial expressions during his hair cut were killing me. He was really good about sitting still and following Sarah's directions as she snipped away, but you could tell he was very skeptical about the whole process. So funny!

It's been snowing little bits here and there and so when the sun was out and shining warmly Monday we decided to take advantage of it! Steve and I spent half the day outside, and Riggs just went inside for a nap.

Riggs is able to play outside for longer and longer without needing direction from Steve or I, it's been so fun to have him tag along while we work on projects that before would have been hard to do with putting him in the stroller (and even then he'd often get bored quick). He skied for a bit, then drove his car around the driveway and then just lounged in it while watching the flames at the burn pile. So fun!

We love where we live so much but the winter months can seem long and especially dark for us since the sun stays hidden behind the mountain for the darkest three months of winter. February is always an exciting time for us as the sun comes back for longer and longer throughout the day. It only disappeared for a few minutes behind the tallest peak so I know it will be here to stay on sunny days by next week. Yay for more daylight hours!

I've been baking and cooking more which has been keeping me busy in the kitchen - both while I'm cooking and for clean up. Our dishwasher is leaking and we would rather just buy a new one than fix the old one (again - Steve already fixed the leak once). BUT we have pretty hard water and so we'd prefer to install a water softener of some sort before investing in a new appliance, so for now I'm hand washing all our dishes. I don't really mind too much since I didn't have a dishwasher for the seven years before we moved into this house (or even running water for nearly two years of that!). It just takes a little more time, especially if I let them pile up after a meal or two. I try to wash them after each meal, but sometimes they have to wait until the end of the day.

Riggs has been helping me in the kitchen but he hasn't had an apron all this time, so I finally got around to making him one last week. It turned out so cute (and easy too) and I'll be sharing a simple tutorial a little later for how I made it.

We've also been hit with Olympic fever and have been watching them as much as they're aired on NBC primetime. We only have bunny ear antenna for our TV and I'm completely fine with that - until the Olympics rolls around. Then I wish we had all the NBC channels so I could watch more events, and a DVR recorder so we could record it when we're not home or busy and fast forward through the commercials.

Anyway, this has been the longest post ever and if you're still reading congratulations, you've finally come to the end. Thanks for hanging in there and catching up with me :)

grocery shopping, planning and budgeting

Grocery shopping. It's something I both love and hate to do.

There's something so therapeutic for me in walking slowly through the store, looking at all the items just waiting on the shelves. No matter how many times I've seen the aisles of Fred Meyer, I still love to explore them and see if there's anything I 'need' waiting there for me. I add things to my cart more freely at the beginning of the trip, then slowly put things back as I linger longer and longer in the store, thinking, I don't really need this...or that...or that. My family teases me about this, but I know I can't be the only one who does this!

I don't really plan out meals, and so sometimes grocery shopping can be tough. I've tried to plan meals in the past, but it just doesn't work for us. Steve's work schedule is just too irregular, and I hate for food to be wasted when he has to work late and picks up food on the way home. I usually have a few meals in my mind at the beginning of the week, and often I'll pick a recipe or two that I want to make, so I add the ingredients to my grocery list. But that's as far as my 'meal planning' goes.

I also tend to buy lots of one item I know we use a lot when it's on sale, such as peanut butter, bread, or frozen fruit, so I've had trouble with figuring out a weekly budget amount for groceries. Some weeks we spend less than $50, and other weeks (that include Costco runs) we spend $200-$300. I feel like everything balances out for us and that we've been getting better and better about eating whole foods (rather than boxed or 'convenience' meals) and eating out less, so we're in a good place financially when it comes to our food budget. But I'm always open to ideas on how we can save even more, or be more efficient about grocery shopping/planning.

How do you go about grocery planning, budgeting and shopping? I'd love to hear about the different ways other mamas do things!

Groceries are expensive up here in Alaska and since we chose to purchase organic options when available that adds even more to our bill. I was curious to see how our prices compare to others around the country (and in other countries!) and so I thought I'd share this weeks grocery trip purchases and bill with you. We spent $52.01 including tax for everything you see in the picture, and you can see the individual prices on the receipt. What do you think? How do these prices compare to how things are prices where you live?

chicken problems

Remember when I just had four chickens, and I went on about how easy it was? Then last week on Thursday, I picked up four more chickens to add to our brood, and ever since I've been dealing with chicken problems. The new pullets are Rhode Island Reds, and I specifically wanted that breed due to their winter hardiness and prolific egg laying capability. What I didn't count on was how sneaky and crazy curious these new birds are!

the newbies hiding in a tree while the others inspect them 

caught in the act

They spent the first day they were here escaping as many times as possible. Luckily they are very friendly and I could walk right up to them, scoop them up and put them back. But they also watched me like a hawk and wanted to follow me everywhere I went, including in the house. So they'd fly right out of their coop, hop along the edge of the fence and then hop down and stare in the back door looking for me. Sounds pretty cute right? Well it was, the first time or two. Then it was just maddening.

You can understand why I made them spend the next day in the coop. I went to get netting right away to cover the chicken yard so they couldn't fly out, a 30 minute drive one way to get to Lowes. But I only found metal mesh stuff and trying to put that up all the way across the yard by myself (with Riggs in the Ergo on my back) was so idiotic that it was actually comical. I worked on it for nearly two hours, kneeling down under the four foot height to connect all the 'mesh' together, which felt horrible by the way (and Riggs hated it too). Oh man it was quite the afternoon and I'll admit I may have cursed the new chickens and promised horrible methods of death during those two hours of agony. And then guess what? I didn't even have enough to cover the whole yard. !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

I just gave up and went inside. Pretty dang perturbed, but I assume that goes without saying. Poor Steve, he came home to a frazzled, fuming wife that night. Saturday we had a class at church first thing in the morning, so we couldn't go right away to get more mesh stuff. We didn't make it to Lowes (again ugh) until about 12:30, right around Riggs' nap time. Not a good time to wander around a big department store (remember this? not pretty). The good news? Steve found actual netting and so we purchased enough to cover the entire yard with the plan to tear down the sagging metal mesh I had worked so hard to put up. Bad news? Riggs was on the verge of a major melt down the entire time and I had to take him out to the car while Steve checked out because he had started crying and screaming.

Luckily everything calmed down once we got home - Riggs went down peacefully for his nap, I went out and got all the netting up and was finally able to free the newbies from being 'cooped up' (I guess that's where that saying comes from lol).

finished up the netting just before the sun went down

Sunday I was able to go out into the yard and spend some time with all the girls and I was happy to see they were all getting along AND that nobody was trying to escape. Let's just say the new girls better start laying asap to make this whole fiasco worth it...