Addict!

As much as I've been trying, I never imagined how difficult it would be to try to break away from our devices. Just three days later and I feel as if I haven't devoted of myself to eradicating this dependency; or at least lessening it.

I'm the worst offender! My iPhone is constantly on me, which is bad. Very bad. I lie to myself and say that I MUST keep it on me for emergencies and to be prepared for anything. The truth is, I have a tendency to slip it out of my pocket whenever my hands aren't busy doing anything else. I'm standing on line at the grocery store - I'm checking my Facebook. Stuck in a wall of traffic - I'm checking my email. The excuses just go on and on and on.

Tonight I made a date with the children to watch the Olympic Opening Ceremonies. They were great. They watched, commenting and oohing and aahing at various wow moments throughout the ceremonies. I found myself sneaking my phone into my lap - to check my mail, Facebook, text messages. The kids asked me if I saw something and I looked up, ashamed; caught.

So tomorrow I have vowed to keep the phone deep in my purse and only use it when I absolutely need to connect with someone. If my children can do it, I certainly can.

Upcycling Egg Cartons into Seed Starters

     I am creative. I have been since I was a child. I find uses for the simplest items and my knack of saving and sorting has proved handy in crafting with my kids, school projects and Bible school arts and crafts over the years.

    On my hobby and storage shelf in the garage, I had stashed about 9-10 egg cartons for crafting purposes. They've been waiting, unused, for weeks. But recently  I read how egg cartons make great seedling starters. BINGO!

    So since I've been toying with the idea of getting our gardening act together, I decided to go ahead and prepare seedlings for a Fall garden planting. I skimmed through my seed collection and ordered some late harvest seed packets from online. 

    The kids loved the idea! Together, we spread newspapers all over the kitchen table and cut the lids of the egg cartons with a pair of scissors. I filled two tupperware containers with gardening soil and gave them each a couple of egg cartons, two packets of seeds and a soil container with a spoon.

     Since my eldest son is disabled, his ability to help in the garden is greatly limited. THIS activity, however, was a great way to incorporate his excellent planning skills and careful attention to detail into a family garden project. He studied the seed packets and determined the very best planting depth and seed positioning for each product and coached his younger brother on how to do the same.

      The entire project took less than an hour and turned out great. Cleanup was less than 15 minutes and the cartons have been watered and are now sitting on the back porch, warming in the sun.

      We can't wait to see what springs up!

Mint Tea for Three

Partial day success. Over a simple macaroni lunch, I broached the subject of setting aside our electronics to live simpler and spend more time together. The kids were immediately on board. My youngest ran, barefoot, into the jungle of last year's garden because he spotted some rogue mint a couple of weeks within five minutes, I had a red-faced imp of a boy with two overflowing fistfulls of VERY fragrant mint.

So some of my main agendas with project Spend Some Time include living smarter, simpler and getting together as a family in the garden. SO while the children washed the mint leaves, I prepared homemade sugar-free sweet tea. We dropped a few sprigs into the finished product, chilled for an hour and voila! homemade sweet mint tea! It was amazingly refreshing and we spent time in the kitchen and (our unruly jungle of a) garden.

I'd say our first evening went well. NOW I need to research uses for fresh mint and get plans together for the rest of the garden. Enjoy our recipe!

                                              SUGAR-FREE MINT SWEET SUN TEA

1 gallon           water
1 1/2 cups       sugar-free sweetner (Splenda, Truvia, etc.)
12                    tea bags individual sized (black or grey preffered) OR 7 family sized
3                      4" sprigs of fresh mint (more or less to taste)


Normally you would boil water for tea in order to dissolve the sugar and steep the tea but you can substitute warm tap water since the sweetner dissolves with water. SO pour your sweetner into the bottom of a gallon pitcher, top off with warm to hot water, stopping 2" from the top. Tie teabag strings together for easy removal and drop them right into the water. At your discretion, tie the mint sprigs with twine or just leave them loose and drop them right into the pitcher.
I like to set my pitcher in the window to steep in the sun. If you prefer to set yours outside, that's a wonderful idea! Just remember to cover the opening of your pitcher with a cheesecloth or hand towel to keep any curious bugs at bay. Steep for about an hour or until thoroughly golden throughout. Stir your tea, pour over ice and enjoy!
(I like putting mine right into the freezer for 30 minutes for that extra chill before serving) Try different techniques and you'll learn what works best for you. It tastes great and is very easy for little children to help with.

Hole in the Hourglass

   Life flies by when we're not looking. It's a fact that we've been warned to prepare for since we were children. Childhood is a flash, school is a blur. Some of us marry, and "settle down" - what a joke - some of us hunt for our purpose in life. Some of us just wander.
  
   Technology both saves our lives and sucks it out of us. We sit at our computer one day in our teens and before we know it, we're only leaving the house for funerals and doctor's appointments; companioned only by our empty photo albums and faltering memories.

   The hole in the proverbial hourglass.

   This is MY journey to plug that hole and live my life...OUR life.

   I am a mother of two who works from home. I have two sons and a spirited husband. We like to think we're a typical suburban family, with a dog, two cats, three vehicles and a 5 bedroom, 2 bath house in a decent neighborhood in the middle of Long Island, New York.

   We're not.

   Our eldest son has Muscular Dystrophy, a disease that gradually deteriorates every muscle in his body. MD is the invisible thief. It started with his legs, stealing his ability to climb the stairs on the slide at the playground when he was only three...and it will end with his heart, sometime in the future.

   As one can imagine, this has had a major impact on our lives. My husband and I found out about this genetic killer when my youngest son was just four months old. Looking back, I realize our youngest son has never known what it feels like to live a "normal" life. At least our eldest had that luxury for five years.

   As our eldest son's condition worsened, we became hermits of sorts. I stopped attending church immediately after the diagnosis. I stopped working shortly after. Since he now relies on a wheelchair for mobility, we are restricted from going to certain locations and nearly all of our friends' and family's homes.

   We have become a family disconnected.

    Oh, we appear connected alright from the outside. Our home is loaded with state-of-the-art technology including iPhones and laptops, multi-room DVR system on each of our four 800-channel-cable boxes. Wi-fi, Cloud, Wii, Playstation III and other systems that I can't remember, all connected online. A cellphone boost tower in our living room to better power the phones that we all have on our person at every minute of the day...and that's not to mention the required electronics that we depend on to keep our eldest going with his disability. The boy could open a shop with all of his gadgets.

   No, we're not connected to us.

   We lose hours and hours to our "upgraded technologies." We do share a family dinner every night at the table but even that is dulled by buzzing cellphones, the drone of the television , and kids who want to rush back to their game system/movie/chat.

   Time is not a friend of ours in the first place and yet we continue to slam the door in its face.

   Before we know it, all of our sandy minutes will be used up. Gone. Vanished. Remember the empty photo albums and faltering memories? This is where they come into play.

   I'm taking the initiative to savor the minutes. I don't have a concrete plan yet, but I would like to spend more uninterrupted time with my family, bonding over cooking and gardening. I'd like to see the sun at least once a day. Bask in it! Get our hands dirty! Plant something! Play in the yard!

   I admire the people who have taken to "living off the grid" and I would love to steer my family toward that way of life. I don't think we will ever reach that lofty goal of being totally self-sufficient but it would be wonderful to stop being wasteful and start caring about our planet and our home. It's going to be hard and it's going to cause some issues at first but my hope is that maybe we can pile up enough togetherness and memories to make the hole in our hourglass a little less noticeable.

   I'm going to start by shutting the damn computer down.