Long Term Water Storage

I've been interested in storing water in my home incase of an emergency.  

You see, if our electricity goes out, so does the pump to our well.  If the pump in the well goes out, no water. If the wires to the well go bad - no water (just ask my neighbor). If we have a serious earthquake the well could be permanently damaged. This means no flushing toilets, no washing dishes, you get the idea.

We are NOT on city water.  

I've looked at several types of containers such as the 55 gallon drum, aqua paks, and these water bricks.  

55 gallon drum 

 Impossible to move once it is filled with water

Difficult to store several in our small mechanical room

Awkward shape

huge mess if it spills

But it would have some water pressure if we used the attachable hose

$50 at Smithfield Implement 

aqua pak

7.5 gallon size or 5 gallon size would be easier to carry

Easier to rotate the water supply

you can only stack them 2 high or they will split

$13.95 for 5 gallon at beprepared.com

water brick

heavy duty and bpa free

can also be used to store grains and legumes

3.5 gallon - even I could carry that and rotate the water supplied in them

stack them 10 feet up and they hold up  - you can even make a house out of them - I thought you'd get a laugh out of that one

small enough to stick anywhere

I don't have to store them all in the mechanical room - I can put a couple under the sink in each bathroom.

$16.95 at Shelf Reliance

Check it out - it even comes in CAMO - perfect for camping and we love camping!

What have you used in the past to store water?  I could store water in soda bottle - but we really don't drink that much soda.  And they don't stack. 

So what do you think of these bricks?  Have you seen any other great ideas you could share with me? The price makes my heart skip a beat but I think that maybe it means they will last longer, they are made with a more environmentally friendly material, and well, they use space efficiently. Am I jumping the gun here? Or do these really make sense?

Happy Birthday Tyler!

My husband had a birthday recently.  He's getting old but he'll never be as old and wise as I am - hah!

We spoiled him with a birthday cake, cream puffs, ice cream and root beer. 

In addition we got him movie treats - kettle corn, movie candy, cookies, gift certificate to Hastings, and two movie tickets.

He was feeling pretty ill at the time - I think this was the only smile we got out of him in a week.

Skiing with my 5 year old

Me going super slow behind my son who was on the big slope for the first time and carrying my ski poles and my husband's ski poles while he did photo and video.

You can see that we don't have much snow yet this year.  

Harvest Monday - 2012 Garden Plans

I've never been good at planning my garden ahead of time but this year I want things to be different.  I have found this great site thanks to another awesome gardener.  It's called Gardeners.com and here is the Kitchen Garden planning area of the site.

3x10

Here it is when we first put it together

This is my small west garden - just a few steps from the master bedroom.  I am planting Baby Bok Choi, Green Onions, Big Daddy Onions, Little Finger Carrots, Michihili Chinese Cabbage, Dutch Round Cabbage, Romaine Lettuce, Summertime Lettuce, and Spinach. Everything can be secured under a row cover because none of it needs to pollinate or go to seed and I desperately need to keep out the grasshoppers and cabbage loopers and shade it for a longer growing season. Now to figure out an economical way to keep out the slugs.

And here is the 4x16 foot garden

In it will be red potato, victory freezer pea (a bush pea), Utah celery, cilantro, cayenne pepper, serrano pepper, jalapeno, keystone bell, and jade bush green bean.

And this is my 16 x 40 foot row garden with the 4x16 foot square foot garden you just saw. I placed the square foot garden at the very end. 

#3 and #4 are Snow Peas and they back up to the property line.

5,6,7,8,9,10 is going to be popcorn.  I haven't had any luck with sweet corn.  So this is the last chance to see if I can be successful with corn. 

13,14, 15, 16, 19, 20 are tomatoes.  Right now the plans are for Cherokee Purple -1 , Red Beefsteak -3, Pink Brandywine - 4, and Early Girl - 8.

And row 17 & 18 is my garlic row which I planted in the fall.

Pumpkins will be added as a filler in the upper tier of the backyard flower bed.  I can't do too much with that spot this year since we are wanting to add several trees back there.  We are located on what used to be an alfalfa field and before that, sage brush and scrub maple. I might be able to tuck some of the extra cabbage I've got sprouted into the entry way flower beds. And last of all I am not sure where I want to plant the zucchini and yellow crook neck. Really, I just need to double the garden so that it's 32 feet wide and 40 feet long instead of 16 feet wide.  I dream about putting a sort of ground level cement wall around it since it is on a slope and then a fence above that.  I would convert it all to raised beds at that point.  The nice thing is that right now it's easy to just plow the row garden with a tractor.

Harvest Monday - February 20, 2012 - vegetable gardening in Utah

Outside my garden looks like this:

Inside my garden looks like this:

I love that my children keep referring to the lights as stairs.

And since I can't spend anytime outside I am slowly but surely getting everything ready inside.  These are the domes I purchased at Anderson's Seed and Garden a few years ago.  They are still in fantastic shape. 

If you happen to Like their facebook page just let them know that I sent you in a comment.  They are giving away a something free on Fridays (to anywhere in the USA).

The peat pots are actually Jiffy Brand but the seed trays are from Andersons

I labelled all of the popsicle sticks and placed the corresponding seed packets with them.

Next year I think I will move them into the spare bedroom. This year they are out where I can see even if it is the basement. How many of you have basements?

This is the Michihili Cabbage - a type of chinese cabbage.  I purchased the seeds at Andersons but not in the bulk seed section.  I love stir fry and kimchee.  We ate a lot of it as kids because my Dad was stationed in Korea right before I was born.

This is the Dutch Ball Head cabbage.  I need to thin soon.

All of my Pink Brandywine and Red Beefsteak tomatoes are doing well.  I thinned them a lot.  I'm just glad to see the seeds I gathered actually sprouted. Lovely heirlooms.  I love them!

And my Utah Celery:  

This will be interesting but I think that because I have a drip irrigation system on a timer that they will do well. You can't ever let it dry out and you can't overwater (black heart).

 I'm not sure how the blanching part will go. But I love trying new things in the garden.

And I finally got a few sprouts from my Correnta Spinach.

I love this Big Daddy Onions.  They are doing well - including those in storage.

And the green onions from seed I collected are in serious need of being thinned.  I just dumped the bag in the pot.  Next time I will put a 1/3 of the seeds in a pot this size. 

Here is the link to my gardening board at Pinterest.

And here is the link to the Pinterest Gardening Board.

Silhouette Cameo Valentine Pillow Boxes

Happy Heart Day!

These turned out super cute.  I downloaded the pillow box shape with the $10 gift card that came with my Silhouette Cameo. I cut them from the cutest polka dot embossed scrapbook paper.  

Then I created the shape and added the text all in the Silhouette Designer Software. In that software I was able to send it to the printer and then put it on the cutting mat and it cut all of the shapes out in the Silhouette Cameo.

Uhm seriously so cute! My daughter tied them to the little purse handle with fine crochet thread.

We cut the pieces ahead of time and then my daughter easily tied them all together.

All 34 right here!

Girl Valentine Box - American Girl that is...

The children in my daughter's class at school decided they wanted to have a contest for Valentine Boxes.  My daughter asked for an American Girl Shaved Ice Stand.  

We used the most outside boxes from the bulk Ziploc brand sandwich bags that we purchased at Sam's Club.  

We purchased Berry Spray Paint from Home Depot. 

We used some self stick hearts we got off the clearance rack at Michael's craft store plus some American Girl 3D flowers purchased there months ago.

And I used Adobe Illustrator to create the SVG file for the word ALOHA because I wanted to make a swoop that went all the way under the word. Please don't ask me which font I used - I think it's by Autumn Leaves.

I used my 40% off coupon on my iphone Michael's app and purchased the rafia.  I sewed it on my White sewing machine.  I thought I'd have plenty to cover up the stitching, maybe if I'd purchased the large bag. It was fun sewing it all together while my daughter talked with me.  She was busy finishing up her 33 Valentines.

With my Silhouette Cameo I cut out the hibiscus flowers in white vinyl.

And I cut a small version of Aloha for her box.

On the back I added the sign "Flavor of the Day".  I wish I had orange vinyl on hand.  I need to make another order soon.

I had to hot glue these on here.

Pink Pink Pink and Aloha Valentine! 

Fresh and clean and ready to pose with her American Girl doll Lanie, girl of the year 2010. I'll share more about her valentines in the next post.

Valentine 's for boys

My son is bringing Valentine's to school to share with his classmates tomorrow.  He wanted a race car box.  So I made a race car graphic and cut that and his name out of vinyl using my handy dandy little Silhouette Cameo.  Love that thing. 

My son painted the box, can you tell? I love it. It will remind me of a little boy who spent the afternoon having fun with paint while putting off homework as long as possible.  His smile made it all worth it.  And yes, he got all of his homework done.

Here are the pillow box dinosaur Valentines.

We just cut the dinosaurs out of scrapbook paper from the Babysaurus line from Little Yellow Bicycle.

We made the labels and cut them out using the Silhouette Cameo.  I love the print and cut feature.

You can see these are actually quite big.  Next year I will cut them down by 30% - between his and hers we used a lot of candy.