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Gardening With GrowUms

You may remember my feeble valiant  attempt at a Vegetable Garden last year.   I was very excited about it and was quite proud of myself when I began to get something that looked like actual vegetables… like, remember my cucumber?

However, since we put our vegetable garden in our side yard, it was not long before the mice and squirrels began seeing my garden as their own private buffet.  Plus as business picked up, I was finding less and less time to tend to my garden – which again with it being in the ground and covering a huge section of our yard it was…. well, work.

Remember last week when I told you that Mike and I and the girls spent an afternoon waltzing through Lowe’s and Home Depot soaking up the AC and looking for stuff to spruce up our yard?  While we were there, Taylor and I discovered a whole kiosk of GrowUms – and they were absolutely too cute to pass up.

Imagine a world where the vegetables and herbs in your garden come to life – in more ways than one. It all begins with the Growums™ gardening kit that makes it simple for children to start a fun and easy- to-grow healthy garden.

I think I loved the GrowUms first because of the “Veggie Tales” look and bright colorful sure-I-can-do-that gardening style.   Then when I saw that each little kit was labeled with a different meal or theme, I was totally hooked.  I mean, who can resist Ratatouille?

Taylor and I absolutely loved coming home and “planting” our GrowUms Garden.  The first thing you do is register your GrowUms Garden online, and you will be sent emails with tips on how to tend to your plants to help them grow.  Taylor watched the intro video on how to set up her garden, and got excited about playing games on the GrowUms website.

We went outside again and began the steps of “growing” the garden.  It was perfect for her to be able to help – she is 6 – and we were both surprised at how quickly the “soil” soaked up the water and “grew” into perfect little planting pods.

Then the fun part began – the actual planting.  What I was most excited about was how NOT-messy this was.  As much as I love a good dig in the dirt, my girls getting filthy is a huge turn off to me.   These little pods stayed perfectly together while we poked three seeds into the ops of each, and then labeled them with the premade little markers that come with the kit.

It has now been a little over a week, and we have been watering and sunning our little GrowUms Garden every single day.  Taylor has loved the responsibility of checking on her plants, and I have loved that she only has to walk to the back deck to see and water them, instead of to the side of the yard.   I have moved our little seedlings from their pods to little pots, and  I am excited to say our little garden is growing beautifully.  I am so glad we found the GrowUms Kits.

I’ll keep you posted on the progress!

Disclaimer: I wasnt compensated in any way for this post – I just happened to find these and love them and want to share!

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Home Improvement Just Got Easier

So over the course of the last few months we have done a lot of “home improvement” type stuff – from painting the hallway to installing a new mantle  to building a Cinder Block Garden.  In the past I have just trekked up to our neighborhood Lowe’s or Home Depot for what I wanted, wish I had a bigger selection to choose from.  This week I was excited to find a site that has everything that I want – and I can get it delivered right to my door!  Mike is REALLY excited I wont have to keep using the Escalade as a “hauling truck”  :)

I actually discovered this site looking for a Garden Arbor to add to our back yard.  I have always loved the look of these and thought it would be a great addition to our short little fence that leads to where our vegetable garden is.  Garden Arbors are such a great way to really add some character to the entrance of a garden.   I love the ones that look almost “whimsical” – like there should be magic or fairies or something in the garden behind them.  (Plus then I have an excuse to get more purple Wisteria!!)

Then, last month we installed a new garbage disposal, which was an absolute nightmare, because truth be told we probably need a new sink.  It took four days – and three men – working on it to get it to stop leaking.  Who knew you could order kitchen sinks from the internet!?  If that bad boy starts leaking again, I will for sure just order a whole new sink!

I continued perusing this site – which offers just about everything you can possibly imagine – and fell in love with this glass top dining table which I think will replace the one we have just perfectly, so we can move ours into the “kitchen nook” which only sports a lonely rocking chair.   I hope to install French Doors in the kitchen leading out to the back yard and really start using that area of the kitchen for the girls to do their homework, eat breakfast, play games, etc instead of always using our dining room table.   Maybe it is the Post-Apartment Manager Staging Fanatic in me but I would much rather the dining room table be a place to put our China or glass vases filled with fruit or something pretty like that.

Between this new site and Pinterest, I am sure I will  have many more “projects” to do soon!  Did you do any Home Improvement projects this year?  Or do you have any planned for the Fall?


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My Vegetable Garden – Check One From The Life List

Actually, I am not sure I can really cross it off just yet, as we are just getting started, but one of my “To Do’s” on my Life List is to grow a vegetable garden of my own.  After falling in love with all of the fresh vegetables from Charlie’s U-Pik, I was determined to start my own garden and give my family fresh, whole foods as much as possible.  The garden will also help with my determination to have the entire family “Eating Clean” by the end of he year.

My Brother-In-Law Patrick is an avid gardener, so I knew to turn to him for help.  He taught the Tween how to germinate seeds in an egg carton, and taught me how to pick vegetables out from Lowe’s.  (He knows the differences between the Tween and I already)  We chose over a dozen little plants, and the Tween “planted” a dozen more.  It was a great start to our garden.  We have three kinds of tomatoes, cucumbers, corn, squash, zucchini, cantaloupe, watermelon, and bell peppers.

Shortly thereafter I had my surgery, so actually my wonderful Hubbly has been doing all of the tending to the garden – I can truly only take credit for the idea.  I am not sure there is anything cuter than watching Hubbly and the Tween work together tending to our veggies.

Wait – can I call them that yet?!?

You decide:

Our first Cucumber:

Our first Roma Tomato:

Our first Bell Pepper: (found on the ground after a strong thunderstorm :( )

Ok, so maybe I don’t need a truck (or basket!) to do the harvesting yet, but I am sure with some TLC, we are going to have a beautiful Vegetable Garden in no time!

Have you ever grown a Vegetable Garden?