Whoa Folks!

Hey!
Long time no read right? Can I just admit that I've been supremely lazy? Is that okay? I've been battling the fleas that are destroying my home! Four animals in 500 sq ft of space makes for an insane me. I can't stand the scratching, licking and biting! So I've been flea combing, bathing, sprinkling things in corners, flea treating and scrubbing my home in any and all spare time.

Besides my family's nightly cleaning schedule we've started to find some time for ourselves ( Jason and I) to read in the evening after the little one has decided that it is indeed time to rest.

*Mind you- my child used to fall asleep at 8:30 and now had decided that he would LOOOOOVE to stay up until around midnight and then wake up at least every hour to check and make sure I've still not gone anywhere.

My book of choice as of the last few days has been one called "Folks this ain't right". It has me thinking, which I love. This book discusses current day food trends and how unprepared we really are. We praise ourselves for all of our scientific advances when it comes to shelf life but do we really think about what we are putting in our body?

If you're like me, you've been thankful for all those things that didn't rot right away because you were too lazy to cook, or just didn't want to cook so you grabbed that delicious bag of potato chips only to come to the sad conclusion 15 minutes later that you devoured the entire bag.....

I want to be healthy people. I want to have good habits to pass on to my children and to share with my some day husband. A healthy family is a happy family. I want to have good, nutritional food in our home that gives energy not takes it.

The author talks about our lack of pantry these days. I get it- I have next to nothing stored in my house. I thought I did- until Hurricane Sandy came and blew all the power out of our neighbor hood and I couldn't go to the grocery store. Was this some kind of cosmic wake up call? Here I am reading about the dangers of not having your very own grocery store in your basement and BAM no power, no grocery store and I've got one can of tomato sauce I bought back in 2001 that has expired. Imagine my surprise.

We (Jason and I) have been talking a lot lately about finding a place that we can start getting some roots of our very own. And how we would very much like to have enough space to not only have a garden that can feed us year round but to also have some space to store said vegetables.

Our current living space doesn't leave much to the imagination. It's tiny guys. I mean SUPER small. There are no closets to "hide" things in and all of the living space is occupied by the seven living things running around it all day. The basement is a shared space, so no real room to start a stock pile. We planted a garden this summer, a little late and weren't able to really save much of it. AND I don't know how to can anything.

I'm unprepared and I wasn't even aware. Now, I don't want to go crazy and have 18 years worth of stock piled food in place. But it would be nice to just run to the basement and grab a jar of beans instead of getting in the car, driving to Heinen's, fighting the crowds and grumpy people, checking out, using a wasteful bag, coming home, opening said can of green beans, making waste with the can and pouring in lord knows what has kept them good since they were canned in the earlier part of the decade.

SO-  for the sake of this guy  I've got some new priorities.

I want to learn how to can and start doing it. Just because I'm a slacker and didn't plant winter things doesn't mean I can't still frequent the farmer's markets and buy them out!

Let's say my five year plan is to have our own place, have our own plentiful garden and have a mini mart in my basement.

Easy enough, right?

And just for good measure here are some pictures of my little man, my sister and myself!