Dandy Dandelions – Recipe

I posted this recipe last year but it’s that time of year again!  I just fried a batch today and they were delicious! 🙂 
I love dandelion greens! It is probably my favorite part of spring. I probably should have shared this recipe earlier in the year but, here goes.

Step 1: Find dandelions. A LOT of dandelions. I try to fill a large pot.

Step 2: Using a knife, cut around the root system to lift the plant out of the ground.

Thoroughly wash the plants. I prefer to cut off the hard bottom part.

Step 4: I like to fill a large bowl with water and really swirl them around for an extra good rinse.

Step 5: Fill the pot with water and bring to boil for a few minutes. You don’t want to over boil them. Just soften them a bit.

Step 6: Meanwhile, fry some bacon in a large skillet

Side note, the flowers taste so extra good. 🙂 My favorite.

Step 7: Drain greens and add to frying pan. Fry for about 10 minutes, tossing around frequently.

Step 8: Serve on your most fancy dinnerware. I suggest serving with a side of southern style cornbread and a protein.

There you have it! Healthy eating and weed control in one. Obviously, don’t pick dandelions that may potentially have been sprayed by weed killer or peed on by your dog etc.

Enjoy!! 🙂

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Bullet Points…

• I need so much to go to the gym tomorrow. I haven’t gone since 3 days before Christmas. Partly because we had colds, partly because we had company and haven’t had much time at all. I planned to go today but ended up having to drop a (4th this season! DH is on some kind of a roll!) deer off at the processor almost an hour in the opposite direction. So tomorrow, Lord willing, I’ll get to go. It’s better now that both Tru and Levi like the childcare and Levi doesn’t cry when I leave. He used to so much that sometimes I’d have to just go back home. 

• I finished my 5th day of Femara yesterday. Last month the only side effect I noticed was (tmi?) dryness. Well, and ovary pain. But that just gave me hope it was working. 

• After my post about Tru’s fever, that night it went up to 104.9f again. The next morning (01/02) I called the rheumatologist’s office but they were closed for the holiday. The on-call dr sent us to urgent care for blood work and to rule out pneumonia, uti, and ear infection since Tru had a cold. The blood work showed elevated CRP and ESR. Like last time he had a high fever (without being sick) but higher levels this time. I don’t know if that might have just been because of the cold? … I have tried twice to get in touch with his Dr through email and voicemail but still have not gotten to talk to the Dr about the results or if he needs a follow up. I guess I’ll have to try calling again tomorrow…

• I am soooo overdue to post a Levi update! I hope to get one posted soon. He has grown so much lately in maturity and size. I love his squishy self so much!! He is constantly talking and talks so well for his age. Can’t believe he’s almost 22 months! 

• Tru keeps hugging me and saying “I love you so much, Mommy!” And then, being the jokester that he is, he will say “I don’t love you so much.” and giggle to try to get me to tickle him. 😉

• I finally started mudding in my living room so I can get it painted! I have the colors picked out. Light gray with a dark gray/hunter green accent wall. I hope I’m happy with the way it looks finished. 🙂   

And because this picture keeps cracking me up…. 

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I’m Really Bad With Titles…Here’s An Update

I don’t know what my issue is lately. So much to say but then I don’t say it. Some of it has to do with laziness I’m sure and also the general blah that has come over me since that dreadful thing we call Fall has arrived. I feel mega stressed about winter, as pathetic as that may sound. I don’t do well with the cold. In the state we live in we have 7 months that range from slightly chilly to bitter blistering cold at a moments notice and 5 months that range from perfect to too freaking hot to be outside. As in, heat advisories issued on the television multiple days throughout the summer. Best of both worlds, cold and heat advisories. If we actually manage to pay off our house in the next 5ish years, I have plans in my head about buying a very tiny house in a warm state and renting it to vacationers during the summer and escaping there during the cold. If I sound like an old person for these thoughts, GOOD! They have the right idea! 

Because I know you don’t just come here to listen to me complain, dear readers – you dear patient people whom I love – I do actually have some fun updates to share. We celebrated Truett’s birthday with our friends and family on the 29th of October with a smallish (for us) party. It was great! Pirate themed and right up my alley seeing as how I used to read pirate books as a teen and absolutely loved them. Making the decorations was so fun. DH’s aunt spent a small fortune and countless hours on the – hands down – cutest pirate birthday cake ever. Dudes, the pirate had a butt crack showing! And belly button. If that’s not just the cutest!

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Tru loved his party so much and danced his way right through the happy birthday song. It was so fun! And of course he was spoiled rotten with toys which him and Levi have been playing with at the exclusion of all their “old, boring” toys. 🙂 

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Then we had Truett’s Rheumatology appointment on the 31st and seeing as he has not had a real fever since the Great Fever Incident of September, we are taking a watchful waiting approach versus doing blood work right now for Periodic Fever Syndrome. The Dr felt that was still a possibility but was not too concerned about it at this point. We are supposed to call in with any fever and they will do blood work. Also, Tru had his pelvic and abdominal ultrasound the same day which he hardly noticed since they let him watch a movie during it. 😉 Poor child did have to go hungry all the way until about 2pm though because of not being allowed to eat or drink beforehand. I felt so bad for him. But anyhow, the ultrasound looked good. So the last item on our list is the stool study and I have been unable to get an… errrm… sample, so we have not “turned in” that test yet. But hopefully this week we will. 🙂 That test is to look for a bunch of things that coud be causing his belly pain (which he hasn’t complained of lately, thankfully) and his marked bloating. So much so that his hernia which was going away, has seemed to pop out more.  

A few days after returning from New York (which I still want to post some really cute pictures we got there) I was hit by the stomach bug that I thought I had escaped desite Truett throwing up on my face. Yes. Always happens to me. The worst part of having a stomach virus is, for me, the fact that I have… emetophobia. It’s a thing. Look it up. But my Dr had called me in some phenergan. I thought it didn’t help since I still “got sick” a couple times but after DH came down with the bug the next day and got sick 15ish times, I was really thankful for the phenergan I had taken. It must have really helped me. The weird thing was that Levi came down with the virus twice in a week. Poor baby. But he never acted like he felt bad at all, thankfully. 🙂 And we all were well in time for Tru’s party. 

Last weekend we attended my cousin’s beautiful wedding out of state but still close enough to easily drive there. It was gorgeous! Levi danced his heart out at the reception and if I knew how to post video here, I would. He actually dances like he knows what he’s doing and he’s just a baby! It’s hilarious! He was getting all the ladies. 😉 

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And, because I have been good and not bored you with TTC news in a few months, I feel compelled to tell you that we have reached the 1 year mark of trying again and of course, nada. 😦 I am sad about it to be frank with you but I feel like I really can’t blog about the way I feel on here because some of my readers have suffered so and some are still struggling to have their first or second child and I just don’t feel I have a right to boo hoo on here about the way I feel right now. But yes, I’m struggling a little. I have days were I am fine and I just feel very content with the way things are and I never ever forget for even a minute how blessed I am to have my boys. Then there are days… or maybe just moments really were I remember the double meaning behind my blog name. Journey is the name that we picked out for our baby girl when we had been dating all of one week. I still want Journey, or another boy would be just as amazing. I love being a boy mom! I guess if I knew it would happen again someday that I will have another baby, I wouldn’t be worried at all. It’s just that I don’t know if that will ever happen again, so I struggle a bit. I have not OPK’d or kept track much at all in a few months but based on the massive ov pain I had this month, I’d say we BD at exactly the right time. Come on boys!! I’m still taking my Lovenox and so on and need to get DH and I back on our immune support and (hopefully) fertility friendly vitamins. There is a miniscul possibility that we would try ivf again in, say… 3 years. But it’s something we’ve barely talked about so far. 

Lest this get too long, I’d better pause in the updates for now. Stay healthy and happy!  🙂 

Bedroom Refresh

A few months ago I took on the project of painting my bedroom. I wanted to spruce it up a bit as it still had the original 20 some year old white wall paper. I still have to buy new furniture as our bedroom set is a hand-me-down that was already used when DH got it as a teenager. We had an enormous headboard but I threw it out before I took the “before” pictures. It wasn’t so ugly, it was just huge with a mirror and lights. Made our bed stick out even further into our walking area which already isn’t that big.

I am actually a bit weirded out by showing the world my bedroom (the tiny corner of the world who actually reads my blog – thank you!) but I guess I’ll just suck it up and post these pics. But keep in mind, The furniture is going to be updated soon! 😉

Before, but after I took out the headboard. Also after I bought those new blackout window panels.

I know it doesn’t show up too much in these pictures, but those strips that cover up the places where the wallpaper joins were just …. bleh! I tore all of them off and mudded the strips like they should have been done anyway. We also did this when we painted the kitchen, Tru’s room and the bathrooms when we updated them.

During the mudding process.

I told DH once I was done mudding there was no way he was going to come in and help me paint and thus take credit for my hard work. 😉 I like to do the mudding myself because I do it really really well. Yes, I am bragging on myself. So I caused a ton more work on myself by not having him help me paint but, oh well.

The first color I tried. Horrible

The first gray I used was a gray that DH used in the studio. We love it there. But here? Wow. No way. It looked really violet. It’s because of the wood-look trim. I really dislike wood-look trim but it’s what we have and we are not in a place to replace it all right now. Plus, all the trim is nice so it seems a shame to rip it out. But it limits our color choices SO MUCH!! We can only do warm colors, nothing cool. 😦 So, to the store I went to grab another color and hope for the best.

You see here the original white with the gray that looked lavender and finally, the new, very very light gray.

I love the new color. It isn’t a big change from the white but it makes the room look clean and fresh and with all the strips gone from the walls, it looks updated. Imagine how it will look with new and matching furniture!

My mil got me that comforter set for Christmas when I told her I wanted to paint my room gray. I matched the curtains to it when I bought them.

And, because we no longer had a headboard, I decided to go all diy and make a hanging headboard thingy. It’s a nice splash of color and is what I’m hoping to coordinate with.

I will try to post the instructions for the hanging headboard soon. 🙂

Diy Weed-Free Garden

I have very limited space for a garden right now because I am not willing to sacrifice any usable backyard space since I have a lot in the works back there for making outdoor living more feasible for us during the nice months. But there is a chunk of space behind the pole barn that was just going to waste and I decided to make use of it for a very small garden. I figure I can add on to it year by year. There are also wild berry bushes back there and the blackberry and blueberry bushes I planted this spring.

I started out by digging 2 trenches. They are 24 feet long and the space between them is maybe 3 feet wide.

 

Trenched out with what plastic I had leftover laid out.

The trench was about 9-10 inches deep.

 

As I dug, I put most of the dirt in the middle to raise the middle of the bed up a bit. I had to use some filler for the trench filling process.

The trench filing process.

I wish I had gotten the plasic tighter on this section.

After all the plastic had been laid out, and buried in the trench, I cut X’s in the plastic to plant my vegetables. Basically what I do in my flower beds also, except I then cover the plastic with mulch.

 

 

A nice little yellow bell ppper plant. Notice the X cut in the plastic to allow for planting while remaining weed-free.

Tomato plant.

 

The finished product. I am very happy with it. Next year I plan to add another bed a few feet over. I think I have enough room for a total of 3. I am hoping they will last several years because I don’t want to have to redo this any time soon!

Peppers, tomatoes and cucumbers this year.