Green Juice

Have you heard of Green Juice?  Our family is taking small steps to live healthier lives.  Darrick and I decided to kick off our campaign with green juice.  If you search anywhere on the Internet, they just praise the health benefits of green juice.


The first thing that you need to make green juice is a juicer.  We have a Jack Lalanne juicer that we bought back when we lived in Hawaii.  We use it every once in a while and it is still in good shape.

The second thing that you need is greens.  The best kind to get is organic, but if you don't just be sure to clean them well.  We are so blessed to have a beautiful garden right now.  It is going crazy-it has to be the chicken poop!  For this juice we used cilantro, rainbow Swiss chard, spinach and a variety of lettuces.

Then you put them in the juicer and start juicing!

To help balance out the taste, you can add more fruits and veggies.  We added apples, carrots, lemon, celery, and radishes.

Cheers! Here's to our health!

We have been drinking at least two of these a day, and the kids are too.  It takes time getting use to because our taste buds are so accustomed to artificial flavors, but it is so so worth it!

4215 & Chickens

 When we moved into our house 2 years ago we found this large rock near the garage.  But I did not just see a rock, I saw an art project!  There was one side that was pretty flat so I thought it would be perfect to paint our house numbers on.  Now that we are having some sunny days I thought it would be a good idea to get started on my project.  The first thing I did was to wash the rock with dish soap and water and then let the sun dry it.

After it was completely dry I painted a base coat of white.  Then I sat down to sketch out my ideas.

 I decided on painting our three chickens: Oreo, Lily and Buttercup around the house number.  To add a bit more detail I added hearts and little chicken foot prints. Then I started the painting.  I did a few coats on everything to make it dark and make it stand out.  I used acrylic paints.

How do you think it tuned out?

Hatching

 Our friends, the Sharkey's, invited us over last Sunday to watch the hatching of their chicks.  It was a slow process but we were able to see 3 of the chicks hatch before we had to go home.  We had never seen chicks hatch from eggs, it was exciting and amazing!

Solving our chicken problem

BEFORE

 Here is the garden last week.  It was ready to be planted except for one thing...see those chickens in the third garden box?  Well, they were tearing things up!

So Darrick came up with a temporary solution, so we can plant our garden, until we build them a new chicken run.

 The boys were all excited when Darrick started bringing all the power tools out and they were right there helping him each step of the way.  In this picture you can still see the chickens trying to have their way with the garden box!  They wanted us to know that they were not giving up the garden boxes without a fight!

 The front part is hinged on the left side so that we can just open the whole panel when we need to garden and then we just close it back up when we are done.

 The girls were not happy!  They kept walking around each box trying to figure out a way in! 

AFTER

Didn't Darrick and the boys do a great job?

Chicken Love

From chicks to chickens

 It is so hard to believe that it was only one year ago these sweet little balls of fluff entered our family.  We absolutely adore our girls and their distinct personalities. People often tell us how dumb chickens are but we do not believe them!  Our girls are smart!  We have handled our chicks from day one and they are now so tame. 

 And here they are today!

Buttercup

Lily

Oreo

 As much as we love our girls, we have discovered a problem.  When we are home we let them free range in the back yard.  But now that Spring has arrived, they want to spend most of their time in our garden beds!  Three of the four are empty so it doesn't really matter but in the last one we have our strawberry plants from last year and they are tearing them up!

They are eating the new baby plants, digging huge holes and taking their dust baths, ugh!  We hope this summer to build them a better area with a nice big chicken run.  But until then Darrick has come up with a brilliant temporary solution so we can get our garden started!  Stay tuned to find out what it is!