Adventure: Container Gardening Part 1

So, after a miserable, failed attempt at Container Gardening outdoors (a combination of hot weather and forgetting to go outside to water) it occured to me that my little ledge by the kitchen window might be a good spot to get some plants started.

We picked up a few little starter kits at Target, with the teeny tiny pots and soil "pellets". My 5 year old daughter had a great time stirring up the soil after we re-hydrated it and distributing to the pots. We planted parsley, red bell peppers and strawberries.

The picture above is our progress after about 5 weeks. The parsley has gone gangbusters and is ready to be re-potted. The red bell peppers are doing well, but need more time - they are destined for one of the upside-down planters (even though we will look like dorks with that thing hanging off our patio). The strawberries are pretty fickle - they did great at first, had about 8 sprouts, but forgot to water one day and they all died off except one!

I did have a little redemption from my outdoor plants - my green onions came back this year on their own! Maybe another few weeks and I'll have green onions to cook with!

Stay tuned for our progress!

Adventure: Cloth Diapering

Hello out there in the Blog-osphere!

I'm about a month into my Cloth Diaper Experiment - my darling baby is almost 11 months old and I'm sure you're thinking "why start now, she's halfway through to potty training??" Well, there are a few reasons, but the most important to me was her poor, ouchie bum was getting too many rashes!

So after some major research (and some encouragement from my cloth-diapering cyber friends) I took the plunge and got a starter pack of Flip Diapers. I am thoroughly impressed! They are hugely versatile, and a more of a hybrid - they are a waterproof cover and have interchangeable inserts (both cloth and biodegradable disposable). But the feature that sold me is they are One Size, which allows them to fit from newborn to toddler (about 8-35 pounds). So not only will they fit my little one now, but will get her through potty training - and then can be saved and used for the next baby, or traded/sold second hand on one of the cloth diaper sites like DiaperSwappers!




We're having so much fun with this adventure! I have to say, if you're on the fence about trying cloth, give Flip a try, it's a great way to transition and you're doing something good for your baby and reducing the waste of disposables. We've cut our disposable consumption by 70% and I've spent less than $150 on cloth.

Happy Cloth Diapering!