Two Boys Painting

Having a great time!

Matthew didn't want to be left out while David was painting

Summer Highlights II: Rendezvous Days

Another highlight from the summer was having a booth at Rendezvous days.We worked like crazy to make and package enough body care products to fill a booth for the three day event.

I think our booth looked pretty good!

David had fun going on stage and blowing the train whistle during my in-laws performance

It was also fun to see Aunt Gina and Uncle Roger who came over from the coast

Summer Highlights I: Camping in Montana

 This summer has been so crazy, busy. With the farm bigger than ever, trying to do more farmers markets, starting a body care business and two active little boys, I have not really had time to keep up my blog. It has been a challenging, stressful, fun, exciting, crazy summer! We expanded the farm, but markets were down so it was harder to sell the produce, but we started selling some of our produce to a local grocery store which is  exciting. We have had a friend of Andrew's working with us all summer which enabled us to get more work done and made it more fun, but also added to the stress of whether the farm would make enough money or not. I have been making a lot of body care products; lip balm, body butter, scrubs and more; to sell on Amazon.com and locally. Plus I have my two sweet, precious, active, demanding little boys to keep me busy!

We had the amazing blessing of having my sister Melissa stay with us for two months this summer. I honestly don't even know how I would have survived without her. She helped with everything and anything; from babysitting to harvesting to making lip balm. It was so fun to have her with us. I haven't had the chance to spend this much time with since I got married and moved away.

We did take the time to squeeze in a few fun activities in the midst of our hectic days. One of the highlights of our summer was going over to the Bitterroot Valley, Montana to camp for a weekend. I lived over there on an 80 acre ranch.until I was 12 years old. My Grandpa still has property up there which is where we camped. It was fun to see all the old places, relax by the creek, and even visit some old friends who are now married and have families of there own.

David playing in the creek

Matthew enjoyed to creek, too

Melissa and Matthew in the old barn

The old barn, built in 1883

David in the barn

Sleeping in

Climbing an apple tree

Are the apples any good?

My sister and I with my boys

Colorful Fresh Salsa

I love summertime when all my colorful heirloom tomatoes come ripe. One of my favorite recipes to use them in is this zesty fresh salsa. It is bursting with color and flavor! It is also so easy to make. Recipe for Fresh Colorful Salsa About 2 lbs of various colored heirloom tomatoes 1 small onion 3-4 cloves of garlic 3-4 hot peppers depending on how hot you like it 1/4 tsp ground cumin 1/4 cup chopped fresh cilantro juice of one lime salt and pepper to taste Chop up tomatoes, peppers, garlic, and onion. Add spices and lime juice. Mix all together refrigerate until ready to use.

Little Boy Picnic

Last week I packed a little picnic lunch and David and I set out with Matthew on my back. We headed into the forest searching for the perfect picnic spot. Along the way we crossed the little stream and found a few wildflowers. We chose a little clearing in the trees to stop for our lunch; a stump made the perfect table. We spread David's teddy bear blanket over the stump as a table cloth, then proceeded to lay out the feast. We had peanut butter sandwiches cut into bug shapes, watermelon, chips, cookies and lemonade; perfect little boy picnic food. We sat enjoying our meal and visiting together. It was a beautiful day! David had such a good time and Matthew enjoyed looking around at the new scenery. We will have to do it again sometime!

David enjoying his lunch

The picnic fare

We picked some wildflowers along the way

And some yellow ones, too

Me with Matthew on my back

The pretty picnic basket

The flowers we took home and put in a vase

Pies

David and I made pies last weekend. We got a little carried away; we made cherry-rhubarb, rhubarb, and lemon meringue. We made three large pies and several mini pies. We also decorated them all fancy. It was such fun!

New Diaper

OH No! I must be getting really obsessed with cloth diapers now, to be posting about the new one I just bought. I simply couldn't resist this diaper, it is so cute and it matches my wetbag!. I had to buy it. It is a Blueberry cover for over prefolds. I have decided covers over prefolds are my favorite way to go. The Blueberry cover had a lot more color and cute print options than the flip covers I got. I really like this cover for the most part. It seems to run slightly larger than the Flips, which I think would make it hard to fit on a smaller baby, it fits Matthew great. It also doesn't have facing or tabs on the inside to tuck the prefold into like the Flips does. At first I found that more challenging but now I am used to it and it works fine. One feature that I really like are the double gussets around the legs. I have had no leaks with this diaper and would certainly buy another one, especially because they come in such cute prints. I spent $16.50 on this diaper.

ABCDEFG...

The other day while David was drawing on the white board I looked over and found him practicing writing his letters. He has known his alphabet for quite awhile now, but has never tried writing them until now. I think he did a pretty good job!

Cousins Close By

It has been very enjoyable having Andrew's sister Aimee, her husband Jon and their four children living just down the road from us. Matthew was excited to meet his cousin Patrick who is just his age. I think he overwhelmed Patrick a bit when he tried to crawl on top of him. David has been having so much fun with the three older cousins, especially Justus..

Cloth Diapers Again

 When Matthew was born and the dirty diapers began piling up in the trash, I started thinking again about cloth diapering. With David I did it a little bit. I mostly had some prefolds and some kind of fitted diapers with those rubber pant covers. I really liked the idea at the time but in practice I didn't care for it. I hated using diaper pins, the rubber pants weren't too great, he grew out of the few fitted diapers so quickly, and besides what was I supposed to do with the dirty ones between washes? Well this time I got online and did some researched. Lots of it. I discovered that there were more styles of new easier to use diapers than I could keep straight, a wonderful thing called a wetbag for storing those dirty diapers in, and that to get stared looked like it was going to cost a fortune. So not having much money to spend, plus having a sensible husband who advised me not to go overboard before I knew for sure what I wanted I went with a cheap diaper from China that I found on Ebay. The brand is BabyCity. They are pocket diapers with a waterproof PUL fabric on the outside and the inside is microfiber. They get stuffed with an absorbent insert. Did I mention they were cheap? About $3- $4.50 each. I bought enough to last a couple days(about twelve) and splurged on a nice large wetbag from Planetwise ($20)with a cute owl pattern on it.

I was super excited when they arrived. They looked really nice and are so simple to use. They snap on easily and are a similar shape to disposables. They are also a one size diaper with snaps for adjusting the size, I knew I wanted a one size diaper to avoid the growing out of them issue I'd had last time and so that I wouldn't have to have a set of diapers for each size. I also loved the wetbag. It is big and waterproof. I just pull the insert out of the diapers and toss the whole thing in dry and zip it closed. I have read that when baby starts eating solids the poopy ones need to be rinsed but we are not quite there yet,  probably soon though. The wetbag seems to contain the smells pretty well. When I wash the diapers I just dump all the diapers in the washer and throw the bag in as well. I knew that with such a simple system I could do cloth diapering and enjoy it. The good thing is that we figured out how much money we saved on disposables and after about two months they were all paid for out of the diaper budget. Around the same time though I had a few of my diapers delaminate, that is when the waterproof coating on the outer fabric comes off and they begin to leak. I then came up with a new scheme: keep using these but every month spend the diaper budget money that we were saving by not buying disposables to buy better quality cloth diapers and try out some different styles.

So far I have tried two brands. The first one was a lovely chocolate brown FuzziBunz. It was a pocket diaper so I was comfortable and familiar with it since it was similar to the Baby City ones. The first thing I noticed was how much thicker the outer PUL was. It felt so much sturdier! The inside was also much softer and it came with to inserts. I also really like the elastic size adjustments rather than the snaps. The fit on Matthew is really good. I  have been using it for about a month and love it! So far it has had no leaking issues except when I left it on him for way too long. I will probably be buying a few more of these. I spent about $17 on the FuzziBunz diaper

The second brand I tried is a Flip diaper.  The Flip is a bit different than the other style. It is a one size PUL cover with snap closures. It works well with prefold diapers. I shied away from this idea at first when I saw the word prefold. It brought back not so pleasant memories. As I read more about these I began to get more convinced. I liked the fact that I still had my prefolds and that I could use the cover multiple times before washing. If only wet, simply wipe it out, lay another prefold inside and re-snap. I wouldn't need nearly as many of these as other styles, therefore saving money. I purchased a light blue one without an insert (I believe they come with an insert sometimes, but I was planning to use my prefolds). It fits Matthew well and is easy to use. So far I have had no leaks. I really, really like it! I am tempted to switch to this style only, although I don't think I will completely. I got my Flip diaper cover for about $13.

Now just a quick note about nighttime. At first I was quite nervous to try cloth diapers at night because he sleeps in our bed and I really didn't like the idea of washing all the sheets daily and I also didn't want to change him in the night. Again I did some reading and decided to try it out. What I have been doing is adding an extra bamboo insert to a pocket diaper then putting a wool cover over the top. I made the wool covers form old sweaters using this pattern.  It works amazingly well! He can go 12 hours without a change. I have fewer leaks than with disposables. The only problem that I am having is that they are getting too small and hard to get on over his chubby legs. I am going to try to make a one size wool cover with snap or velcro closures.

I have been loving cloth diapering this time around. At this point Matthew always wears cloth at home; day and night, and sometimes but not very often when we go out. I am planning to transition into using cloth even when we are out once I get a few more better diapers. I enjoy the challenge of working out the problems in my system and I love trying new diapers. I don't even mind washing and folding them. Besides Matthew looks so cute in cloth diapers. Here are a few pictures to enjoy.

Diaper Dryin' On The Line

A Red Wool Cover

Another Wool Cover

The FuzziBunz Diaper

So Cute And Chubby

And The Flip Diaper

Side View Of The Flip