Are your kids out of school yet where you are? Kids get out of school early here in Arizona (because for some reason they have to start school at the BEGINNING of AUGUST). My husband and I both work from home, but we don't want our oldest, Emily, to sit around watching TV or playing games all day.

It can be hard to keep to a schedule for a summer that'll keep your kids engaged. For Emily I decided to come up with a chart. It has a list of things she has to get done before she can sit and watch TV or play a game on her tablet. I'm hoping in conjunction with everything we have planned out of the house as well this will make for a fun and productive summer for her.

​I've decided to share this chart with you. I've left the first page blank. The second page has a list of ideas you can use with your kids, or come up with your own! There is also a page of pictures for younger kids who can't read yet. You can attach the pictures to the page and they can remove them as they finish each one. Who doesn't love checking things off their to do list?

​I hope this chart can help you with your kids this summer as well!

     I am delighted to bring awareness to World Plant a Vegetable Garden Day today!  I have been having so much fun in my own garden this year.  Of course, my garden went in in January, living in desert of Arizona like I do, but for those of you in cooler climates, I'm sure that this is a great time to plant your gardens. 

     This past week, my husband and I took an unscheduled trip to California to visit my family. My mother had taken a fall and the doctors weren't sure if a 99 year old woman could survive some broken ribs.  They under estimated my mom's  strength and determination because she is back at home and doing very well!  It was a very nice visit, seeing her and my other siblings, plus going up to see Alicia and her family.  
     While we were away, Maddy was in charge of taking care of my garden in Phoenix.  She didn't kill too many things, ha ha, and the day before we came home she told me that she thought there was a large zucchini on my zucchini plant.  This is the beast I picked Tuesday morning.  It was so heavy in my harvest apron!

The yellow squash were a little weird. I plucked those to see if it would help the others still on the vine to have more energy. I had to hand pollinate a bit, so I don't know that these got pollinated because of how they look. I did cut open the smoother one and it did have seeds inside, so I used it in the stir fry I made for dinner last night. I also harvested what is probably about the last of my peas, some smaller zucchini, and some carrots. My zucchini plant is huge, my strawberries are still blooming, hopefully I can keep the dog and birds from eating them this time. I have only a few beets still growing and a couple of my tomatoes are turning red! Life is good!
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      Everyone knows that zucchini aren't really great to eat when they get that large, I have some plans for this one that involves dehydrating.  That is a spoiler alert for a future post! 

     For Wednesday night dinner, I threw together a stir fry that included  carrots,   peas and squash from my garden and green onions from my window sill.     

I just love being able to feed my family with the produce I've grown.  For one thing, it tastes so much better.   Since Plant a Vegetable Garden Day was created to feed a hungry world, I'm glad that I can feed my family with it.  What a blessing!  I went to the grocery store to pick up a few things and it was great to say to myself, " Don't need carrots! I already have peas!"  And I didn't buy tomatoes because mine are so close to being ripe that I couldn't bring myself to buy them.  Garden tomatoes are so much better than the ones in the store.

     We were in California just in time to enjoy the fruits of other people's gardens.  There were fruit stands all over the place selling freshly picked strawberries, boysenberries, and cherries.  What a difference being able to taste what ripe strawberries are supposed to taste like rather than the treated ones packed for selling in stores. The fresh strawberries I purchased in California were the same price or less than the normal price in a grocery store and they were so much better!  In Arizona, we don't have as many fruit and vegetable stands like they do over there.  But, I have done a little research and found one or two that I am going to check out.  I am spoiled now by the freshness of the produce and the taste that is 1000 times better! 

      Oh! Here is another future post spoiler alert!  I was able to get hold of 40 pounds of potatoes!  I'll be processing those soon and letting you know the fun I'll be having!  Since I'm getting lots of carrots from my garden now, I will probably can some potatoes and carrots combined.  Those will be great for throwing a quick stew together. 

     Where Alicia and Lindsey live, they are just getting their gardens going.  (We checked out Alicia's garden when we visited this past week!) I hope that they enjoy their gardens as much as I have enjoyed mine this year.  I also hope that you guys will give gardening a try if you haven't been doing it already.  Start with just one or two things and the bug will bite you! Let me know of your success or failures and maybe we can share tips.  I am no master gardener, but I love to try and reap the benefits of the harvest.  
      Here are some other posts we have shared about our gardening adventures:

• ​Regrowing Grocery Store Vegetables
• Easy Practical Urban Gardening Tips
• First Beets From My Garden and a Lovely Salad
• 6 Favorite Recipes That Use Zucchini
• Wood Burned Garden Markers

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There are few universally hated chores including packing, unpacking, and of course menu planning. I know menu planning is really a great way to save money and sanity, but actually sitting down to menu plan can feel very overwhelming. When we first got married I came up with something to end the dreaded question of “What do you want for dinner?” once 4:30 rolled around. I’ve also learned a few other methods that friends use that make it easy for them.

I guess you could argue that this is the easiest way to menu plan. Whether it’s through a fitness guru or another blogger, copying someone else’s menu is totally legit. I’ve done this before but I got bored of the lack of variety in the meals. But not all pre-planned menus have that same dilemma. You might even decide to order meal kits from Blue Apron or a similar meal kit program. This way you don’t even have to do the grocery shopping. You just need to decide the cost effectiveness of this method for your situation.

This is a method that some of my friends use. They know that every Monday will be a pasta dish, Tuesday will be with rice, Wednesday a salad of some kind etc etc. They feel this offers the best of both worlds slight variety within specific parameters. The con of this method is that I feel like I would probably end up making the same type of pasta dish every Monday. Dinner time would roll around and I would still be looking in the freezer thinking “what can I cook with the pasta tonight?” I feel this method can work great for you if you like routine and have a rotation of dishes your family loves.

It doesn’t really have to be from a hat, it can be a baggy or a cup. Essentially I have my family sit down together and write down meals they love on little slips of paper. We do enough so we have at least 30 (to cover a month). They can even write multiples of the same meal if they like it that much. Then I put the slips of paper in a container and draw them out one at a time and fill in my calendar. I use a large desk calendar that I hung on my kitchen wall. Using a pencil I’ll write in the meals on every day of the month. And that’s it!

I can move meals around so we’re not having too similar of dinners in the same week or swap based on grocery sales. If I find a new recipe I want to try, I pin it on Pinterest and add a slip of paper to my baggy with the recipe name. At the beginning of each week I make a list of produce/groceries I need for the week. I can put in orders and save money by not wandering the aisles of the grocery store.
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The thing I love most about this method is that all the heavy lifting is done at the very beginning and shared by the whole family. If any of us want to add a new meal, we just put it on a slip of paper and put it in the baggy. Then next month it will be put into the rotation. If there was a meal that didn’t go over well we can just toss the slip of paper and not worry about it. With this method I actually planned three months of meals at one time! Imagine that- 3 months of meals where none were repeated. It was fun for me and saved us money. And because I knew I had stuff to make dinner at home I ordered out way less (which you can include eating out in your slips of paper).

How do you menu plan? Will you be trying this method in your home? Let us know below!

     I've got a million Strawberry ideas to share with you.  I mean, when you buy 8 cases of strawberries, you gather a few recipes or at least ways to store them! 
​     When I brought home all of those strawberries, I also had a couple of half pints of blueberries that I needed to use.  So, I incorporated them into this jam and I am delighted with the results! 

     I actually made this jam the same day that I made the Strawberry Ginger Ale recipe that I shared here.  I also made labels that you can print for your jars.  Just click the button for the pdf. 

    You will be able to edit the date on your labels.  You can also center them better than I did! 

     The recipe tells you that this recipe will make about 8 jars of jam.  It depends on the size of your jars of course, you could end up with 9 or 10 jars.  This recipe makes a big batch of delicious jam! And, it is super easy to do. 

  Enjoy!