Scattered Sundays

Happy Easter! If you were Lutheran and in church with us, the pastor would say “He is risen” and you’d repeat back “He is risen indeed”.

And then we’d all stare at our feet because Lutherans do not emote. But don’t worry, there will be donuts and coffee after the service.

We’re hosting family and friends later today, and rumor has it that the Easter bunny has made a stop at the house. There will be three teens, and two kids under eight, so it will be an interesting blend of goodies.

Jack had a great birthday, and three friends spent the night on Tuesday. Having a birthday during spring break is a bit of a mixed bag. On one hand, you can have a sleepover on a Tuesday. On the other hand, half of his friends were traveling.

But it was a good group of friends, and frankly, three extra teens were more than enough considering that we are still living in a bit of a construction zone. The basement and the brand-new carpet all survived, though the whiff of BO and Axe body spray remained for a solid 24 hours.

This group of kiddos young men was polite, nice, and so funny. They all had great manners and thanked us multiple times for dinner, dessert, snacks, and breakfast.

Lots of thank yous were said, and every single one of them bussed their plates to the sink without being asked, and two of them even asked me where the recycling was.

Only one of them has a younger sibling, but all three of them were nice to Bennett and included him when they could. One even played basketball with him for 30 minutes. Troy mentioned that the kid let Bennett win, but our security camera showed us that the kid was just really bad at basketball. Ha!

A few days after the party we took one of his friends with us to IKEA. We were on the hunt for a new (and smaller) KALLAX storage shelf for the basement and a storage cabinet for the basement bathroom.

As you might remember, the bathroom downstairs used to have a tiny shower in the corner that we only used as storage. No one had showered in it for over 10 years. It held our steam mop, wood floor mop, and some folding chairs.

The shower itself was tiny but still managed to take up a ton of room. The dryer door would hit the wall that housed all the shower’s plumbing. You couldn’t maneuver at all in the space.

The dream had always been to remove that shower at some point to open up the room and make it more functional. The washing machine flood made that dream a reality, though I still desperately wish that the flood had never happened. It is what it is.

While the shower is gone, the drain from it remains in the floor. This was Troy’s brilliant idea, and it’s a good one! Should the washer ever flood again, the water has a place to go that isn’t into the rest of the house.

We still do need storage in the bathroom, and I looked at lots of different options. I finally settled on this really basic wardrobe from IKEA. It’s deep enough to store what we need and in an organized manner (yay!), but not big enough to take up a lot of the newly opened space. Hopefully, we’ll be building it this week.

We also replaced our giant 5×5 Kallax shelf with this 3×4 version. The 5×5 went to the classroom of Bennett’s beloved kindergarten teacher. We would have first offered it to his lovely first-grade teacher so it didn’t look like we were playing favorites, but she is on maternity leave.

His kindergarten teacher was so excited and said she had been thinking about getting something for a while now. And the shelf fit exactly where she wanted it to go, and you couldn’t beat the price of free-ninety-nine.

Troy and I delivered it the week before spring break, and Troy spent a long time securing it to the wall so that the little ankle-biters wouldn’t climb it. She was so happy and couldn’t wait to organize it after we left. I feel this so hard.

The new shelf will fit our needs a lot better and will also free up a ton of space in this small 11×11 room. I did a huge purge of books and toys before the flood, and I have a feeling that I’ll be getting rid of even more once we start unpacking. You know I love a purge of stuff.

In the Garden This Week

Hey, it’s the first garden update in at least six months – huzzah! With my surgery in mid-October last year, there was no fall garden. Zero. I had planted lettuce, covered it with plastic and straight up ignored it.

This week found me weeding the raised beds that were a hot freaking mess, and starting to tackle the raspberry patch. I have a long road ahead of me to get the garden remotely ready for spring/summer planting.

I hauled weeds out from the raised beds and gave them to the very eager chickens. With each trip to the chicken yard, I brought back a 5-gallon bucket full of their composted waste. And they also poop my breakfast. It’s a beautiful closed-loop system.

We now have 18 butter lettuce starts in one of the raised beds, and will have 6 more next week. Once I get through all the Easter prep and survive spring break, it’s time to go hard at the other two beds.

I also cleared out some of the old dead raspberry canes (sticks) from about one-third of the raspberry bed. I will work on that more in the coming weeks and will try to remove as much morning glory from this bed as I can. It’s a losing battle. I’m not sure why I even bother each year.

READER SPOTLIGHT OF THE WEEK

Long-time reader, Andree, left this five-star review on our brand spanking new, Ham and Cheese Pinwheels {Pin this recipe}:

Made these for dinner. Ate the first one, looked at my husband and said ‘you know what this tastes like? Another one’. Light. Fluffy. Delicious. 

ON SUSTAINABLE COOKS THIS WEEK

Margherita Flatbread – This Margherita Flatbread Pizza is a simple dinner of pure delicious homemade comfort food. Crispy flatbread, homemade pizza sauce, basil, and creamy mozzarella cheese come together in a tasty quick homemade pizza recipe. {Pin this recipe}

How to Dry Sage – Learn how to dry sage four ways – in a food dehydrator, in the oven, in the microwave, or air drying. Drying sage is a simple way to preserve this delicious pantry staple! {Pin this recipe}

Chocolate Peanut Butter Overnight Oats – These Chocolate Peanut Butter Overnight Oats are a healthy and simple make-ahead breakfast. Packed with chocolate flavor, they’re made without yogurt and are vegan by default. {Pin this recipe}