Homesteading – The Beginning of a Garden

If you’re new here, welcome! My name is Katie and my husband and I purchased our 1st home last year. I have dreams of having an amazing garden and being able to provide fresh vegetables and fruits for our family. I started my homesteading journey by picking up a Vego 3.5’x5′ metal raised garden bed that can be purchased here. Keep an eye out as they usually go on a lightning sale for $144! This bed is 17″ tall and a good height for me to not have to be on my hands and feet planting.

It took me awhile to figure out where I wanted to setup the raised garden bed. I had to check daily to see where the sun was rising and setting and see if the pine tree would block the bed from the sun. I ended up picking this spot as it had the most sun throughout the day. Plus it was out of the way of the shop so that we could still move cars in and out without hitting the raised bed.

Once I got the bed situated, we went to Walmart and picked up a roll of hardware cloth. I wanted to put this down before adding stuff to the bed so that rodents wouldn’t come up through the bottom and eat my plants. Once that was installed, we moved forward with filling the bed with cardboard, soaking that, and then adding yard waste aka pine needles, sticks and leaves. We’re going off the Hugelkultur method which includes using cardboard, sticks, leaves, basically any yard waste you have and filling the bed almost to the top. Then once it’s settled, adding compost and top soil to fill the rest of the bed. This way you’re not having to fill the entire bed with compost/soil and you’re using up any yard waste you have sitting around. For us especially, we have a LOT of pine needles and leaves. I think we have around 10 pine trees in our front and back yard. So we are never short on pine cones, needles and leaves here.

But wait! There’s more! I tend to get a bit carried away when it comes to new hobbies and dreams. So when I saw that Amazon was having another lightning deal on the Vego garden beds, I couldn’t resist and purchased another. They’re super easy to put together! So if you’re wondering if you should get one or not, do it! Not only do they look super high quality, but it ended up being cheaper than making them out of wood from Lowe’s. That’s a double win, in my opinion!

We ended up repeating the same process for the second bed. With help from my lovely in laws, both beds were finished with 50/50 compost soil and the beds were ready for plants.

If you didn’t already see the plants behind the raised beds, we planted three blueberry bushes. We picked up two powder blue and one tiff blueberry bushes. I love baking with blueberries and haven’t wanted to have blueberry bushes for years now. We just had to make sure we positioned the raised beds about 4 feet away from the blueberries to give them space to grow bushy.

Powder blue on the outer right and left and tiff is in the middle

Next we’ll move onto planting. But before I get into that, I had started some vegetables by seed. It was more or less so I could see if I could get something to grow. I wanted to test my green thumb and see how well I could do. I ended up planting around 18 Jalapeno’s, Bell peppers and Anaheims. Ambitious, I know. I ended up starting carrots from seed but those ended up dying as I didn’t know beforehand that they really need to be direct sewn. Ooops! I also started some cilantro, green onions and zinnias from seed. The zinnia’s took off quick!

I’m excited to see so many seeds taking off and thriving. I have had to teach myself about watering and when to water and to not over water. But it’s a journey right!

We ended up not planting any of the seeds I have started as the seedlings are not big enough yet for me to transplant (in my opinion) and it’s more or less an experiment to see if I can get them to be bigger and not kill over. If I end up with 33 pepper plants, so be it. The cool thing about it is, if I end up with too many, I can just sell or give them away. This year will be all about learning. Learning to grow from seed, learning to keep things alive, learning when to water and how much, learning to prune and transplant. I know I’ll end up with more failures this year but it’s all a learning curve and I’m excited either way.

Over the weekend, Steven and I headed to my new favorite nursery, Big Bloomers here in Sanford. Their nursery is absolutely stunning. They have flowers, fruits, veggies, herbs etc. Their pricing is fair and they have a wonderful selection of plants. We purchased our three blueberry bushes from there and went back to get our vegetables and flowers for the raised beds. I know what you’re thinking, “Katie, you have all of these seedlings, why not plant those in the raised beds?”. That’s a great question. The seedlings are my test subjects and I wanted to go with already established starters for the raised bed. If I end up having some seedlings survive my trial period, then I’ll plant some in extra pots I have but for now, I wanted to have starters planted in the raised beds to kind of jump start my gardening season.

I did both raised beds kind of the same because we ended up buying too many plants at the nursery. It was only $57 worth of plants but going off of the advice I received from Epic Gardening, there was no way I was going to be able to fit all of the pepper plants and tomatoes in both beds.

Here’s was we got from the nursery:

• Mini cherry tomatoes
• Regular tomatoes
• Hot Anaheims
• Hot Banana peppers
• Marigolds
• Zinnias
• Sweet Alyssum
• Dahlias
• Cosmos
• Green Basil
• Purple Basil

I ended up planting the flowers along the perimeter in the first bed and repeating it for the second bed. For the second bed I also included two marigolds toward the center of the bed. I may have been a bit ambitious with the layout, but I’m hoping I gave everything enough room to grow fully. I had originally planned to plant two rows of 5 peppers and do the other bed with two rows of tomatoes but quickly realized that everything would be way over crowded once it got bigger.

Want to know something funny? The raised garden beds went back on sale after finishing up these two. So what’s a girl to do but buy another bed. And that’s just what I did. It arrived last night and I need to get it built before the weekend as it’s supposed to rain and I’d like to get the hardware cloth and cardboard laid prior to the rain coming in. Plus I’m tired of seeing piles of pine needles and sticks in the yard, so the yard waste has got to go!

Are you interested in starting a homestead and gardening? Be sure to follow my blog because I plan to take y’all on a journey through my process. Plus you’ll get to see how I am transforming our property over the new few years.

Till next time!

-Katie

Homestead Adventures: Bread Making

Are you getting tired of buying the overly processed bread from the Supermarket? Do you want to try to make your own bread? Well, you’ve reached the right blog!

I’m going to show you how you can make your own artisan rustic bread loaf. It’s super easy and only four ingredients and a dutch oven. I will share the recipe I use, below.

2023 is definitely my year for trying new things. A year or two ago, I had been making sandwich bread. Though it was edible and amazing for grilled cheese sandwiches, I wanted the really good loaf of bread. The one you smear butter on and just inhale the entire loaf in one sitting (obviously not speaking from experience lol). It’s even more delicious with some blackberry jelly added on top!

The recipe I use calls for four ingredients: 3 cups of flour, 2 tsp of active yeast, 1 1/2 tsp of salt and 1 1/2 cups of warm water. Mix until combined and throw into a greased bowl. I cover mine with greased plastic wrap and cover with a towel and set it aside in my cabinet (away from the cats) and wait 12-18 hours before putting it into the oven to bake. You know your dough is ready when it has doubled in size.

How the dough should look after you’ve mixed it together

Your dough will look like this after 12-18 hours

Recipe from https://100krecipes.com/easy-dutch-oven-no-knead-bread/

There really is nothing better than pulling the dutch oven out and releasing the aroma of fresh baked bread into your house. It seriously is the best! Once you make one loaf, you’ll be hooked and making bread weekly. Trust me!

After the first 30 minutes of baking, you’ll remove the lid and continue baking it for 15 more minutes. Once the timer goes off, your bread should look like this. But remember, it’s not quite ready to eat. The bread is still actively baking even after being pulled out of the oven. Let it sit out for 30+ minutes before slicing into it.

There really is nothing better than pulling the dutch oven out and releasing the aroma of fresh baked bread into your house. It seriously is the best! Once you make one loaf, you’ll be hooked and making bread weekly. Trust me!

And just like that, you’ve made a rustic loaf of delicious homemade bread. The best part is that you know everything that went into making that loaf. Trust me, once you make a loaf, it’s really really hard to go back to the store bought bread.

Next on my list to try making:

• Cinnamon rolls
• Hamburger buns
• Pretzels

If you decide to try the recipe, let me know how it turns out! Now, back to baking I go!

-Katie

Homesteading – The Mini Adventure

Welcome back to my blog! It’s been awhile since my last post and a lot has changed since that last post. In October 2022, Steven and I purchased our first home! We were starting to lose hope that we would ever get ourselves into a house but after I contacted a friend of ours about starting the process, we just took off running. We moved in right after closing and have settled in nicely.

We’ve been in our house now for about 3 months. This little house is our dream house. The minute we saw the ad online, we knew this was the house for us. When our offer was accepted, I couldn’t believe it. Our dreams of owning a home together came true! Our property is on 0.51 acres. Our front yard is quite big and our house sits back on the property some. The backyard is just as big as the front yard and we have a huge shop (Steven’s favorite part of this property). When it came to looking for houses, I knew in my heart that I wanted to live in the country but not too far into the country. I wanted to be able to have some land but not a ton of land. This house was the perfect combination. We’re only 12 minutes from town and we have a bit of land to do stuff with.

I don’t know if it roots back to both of my grandpa’s being really big into having a garden/farming but I have always wanted to be in the country and start a garden. My grandpa Abshier always loved his little garden and would grow everything with ease. I was always amazed at how big his corn grew and how successful he was with keeping vegetable plants alive. I’ve never really been a green thumb but there’s always time to learn new tricks, right? Even my grandpa Farris loved his garden. Him and my grandma used to live on 3/4 of an acre and had walnut trees. He loved peppers and would grow some peppers, tomatoes and corn. He’s who I got my love of pepperoncinis from.

This year, 2023, I plan to start making use of our land to not only benefit us, but to benefit nature as well. I have been reading up on gardening, permaculture and growing our own food. I had originally wanted to have this oasis of a backyard. The green grass, fire pit, nice landscaping etc. But now I want to make the best of the space and have a big vegetable garden and lots of flowers to attract pollinators.

Raised metal bed from epic gardening

After doing much research and going to Lowe’s multiple times to check pricing on wood, hardware cloth, etc, I decided to start out my gardening adventure with the cheaper option, metal raised garden beds. Due to the fact that we live in an area where the soil is, well, sand, I figured it was best to get a raised bed so I could put proper, nutrient filled soil in it vs trying to figure out how to build up the sandy ground. Though I have heard that some plants love sandy soil such as: blueberries, sunflowers, lemon trees.

I’m really hoping I am successful with gardening and I can make this work because I really want to be more self sufficient. I want to be able to live off the land and provide vegetables and fruits for my family as well as our friends. I’d love to be part of a community that grows food, makes fresh bread, jams, jellies and gives them to friends/family in tough times. I want to be part of a community that cares. Not a community of people who are too entitled, who only care about materialistic items, who want to continue to pay hundreds of dollars at the grocery stores. I want to be part of something bigger. I want to take a step back in time when people used to actually grow their own fruits and veggies and live off the land. Now, with that being said, I’m definitely not the person to be a cattle rancher or have meat birds. I couldn’t do it. Nope, no way. I appreciate those who can do that task but I cannot. I however, think I have the ability to make a garden possible.

photo by sweet16farm.com/flowers

Before Spring hits, I will acquire the first of what I hope to be, many raised beds. I’ve researched companion plants for peppers, which is what we want to first start growing, despite my father questioning why we want to grow so many peppers first. 1. Even if we have an over abundance of peppers (which I don’t know that it will happen our first year), we can cut them up and freeze them. 2. I can always give some away to friends/family and 3. I am a huge fan of salsa, so I’m sure once my mother in law moves closer, she’ll be able to teach me how to make and can salsa. So in short, I’m not worried about having an over abundance of peppers. They won’t go to waste.

I plan to buy a bag of 3000+ Zinnia seeds and fill up our two planters by our gate. I found out this morning that two of the plants in front of our porch will bloom in the Spring and those will also help attract pollinators. When it comes time to plant the peppers, I’m going to also plant Marigolds as I’ve read that they are an excellent companion plant. If you don’t know what companion plants are, they’re plants that will help benefit the other plants. For example, attract pests to them vs the vegetables, attract pollinators so the vegetables get pollinated and can grow and some help shade the other plants from getting too much sun. I found a lot of helpful information on https://www.almanac.com/planning-companion-planting-garden. Not only do they have a ton of information on companion planting, they have information on growing flowers, gardening with raised beds and information on when to start planting.

Only a portion of our front yard space

As you can tell from the photo above, this is only a portion of our front yard. Look at the amount of space I have to grow even more lovely things! We do have some trees at the front of the property that I’ll be interested in seeing how they look in the Spring time. If they do not attract pollinators, then we will likely remove them and possibly put in some crape mrytles. I do have a lot of plans for this space up front. Ideally I would love to have a small flower farm. I’ve always loved the idea of having fresh cut flowers in my house. However, I will only be able to have flowers indoors if they’re non-toxic to cats/dogs because their well-being and health is more important to me than having flowers inside. Good thing about Zinnias is they are non-toxic and are easy to grow. I would like to use some of this place for some blueberry bushes, but I’m worried I will have random critters enjoying them more than me vs if I put them in the backyard behind the fence. We have time to think about the best plan for the front area. For now we will focus on the backyard.

Looking out at the backyard from the screened in porch

There is quite a bit of space for a garden I’d say! The current plan is to start the raised beds off to the right side, along the fence, spaced out some. Ideally I think I could fit maybe 8 or more raised beds from the porch toward the beginning of the shop. I’d like to have our fire pit go somewhere off to the left side but that is to be decided later on. We have a couple of random trees in the backyard that I will need to see what they look like come Spring to decide if they stay or not. One off to the left has little berries on it and I have not determined yet if those berries are poisonous to dogs. It the tree does not serve a purpose, it must go and something that will serve a purpose will take it’s place.

Here’s a list of all of the possible fruit/veggies/flowers I want to grow:

• Zinnias
• Nasturtiums
• Lupines
• Marigolds
• Peonies
• Dahlia
• Peppers
• Zucchini
• Broccoli
• Tomatoes
• Brussel Sprouts
• Corn
• Carrots
• Pumpkins
• Lemons
• Apples
• Blueberries
• Thornless Blackberries
• Thornless Roses
• Basil as a companion plant to Tomatoes
• Cilantro for salsa and as a companion plant to Tomatoes

It’s quite the list I will say. But I have big plans. This will obviously take more than a few years to start as I want to start with one bed for vegetables and start growing more flowers. I’m definitely not jumping into doing a ton of raised beds and plants till I know I can keep everything healthy and alive.

I cannot wait to start this journey with y’all. I plan to revive my blog and be able to share my progress, failures and success here. So if you’d like to follow along while I turn our land into something better than just Bermuda grass and pine trees, give me a follow and comment below!

Xoxo Katie

To Maine and back | A rally adventure

Steven and I got invited to go to Maine for the New England Forest Rally July 13th-18th with the Rally for the Troops team. I personally, have never been to Maine and the furthest North I have been is to New York. I was excited for this journey, minus the excruciating 17 hour drive.

It took Steven and I basically the entire 17 hours (give or take) to make it up to Maine. We left first thing in the morning at 4AM to start the trip and ended up arriving in Newry, Maine around 10:30PM. We arrived at the airbnb and got settled into our room while we waited for the guys to come back from the RV. The airbnb was awesome! It was at a ski rental that I believe people own as condos. Ours had three bedrooms and two bathrooms. The first bathroom was by the main entrance and then leads into the first bedroom which comes with two bunk beds (sleeps 4). Then onto the living room/dining room/kitchen area. Then you make your way to the rest of the airbnb to the second bedroom which has two full size beds and a futon. Then the remaining bedroom with the queen sized bed was our room. Each room came with AC units, so you know we turned that thing to the lowest setting. “Ice ice baby!”. Then the second bathroom was just off our bedroom, along with another entrance into the airbnb. I unfortunately did not take any photos of the airbnb, just a video tour that was posted on Instagram. Sorry!

Thursday morning we got up and started prepping the rally car. We also had to head over to tech so they could make sure it would pass and be ready for the race on Friday.

Steven had quite the list to tackle before we went to tech and before the race the following morning, which included:

• Installing the co-drivers seat
• Adjusting the harness
• Painting the team dynamics wheels
• Applying the stickers
• Making sure all of the driver/co-driver gear was in the vehicle

We headed over to tech and got our favorite tech guy. There are a couple of things we need to address, like a new skid plate for the gas tank and making sure the fire suppressant system tag is visible. Not terrible fixes, just a bit pricey for a new gas tank skid plate.

Friday morning we made our way over to the Sunday River Resort to set up service and do parc expose. Parc expose is where all of the drivers/co-drivers bring the rally cars out and mingle with spectators and other drivers/co-drivers. It’s awesome to see so many cars in one spot.

Friday they had, I believe, one stage to do and that was it for the day. The majority of the race took place on Saturday.

What was awesome about being at the New England Forest Rally and being in Maine is that not only were we somewhere new but we also got to announce the new partnership for the rally car. We are now partnering with Black Rifle Coffee Company and this event was our debut of the rally car and the new livery.

Tony, our rally driver and owner of the Rally for the Troops rally car pictured, also got to be interviewed by the Black Rifle media team at the event.

The first day went great! No issues with the car at all. It honestly was probably one of our more relaxed rallies as we weren’t all running around like maniacs the entire time. Though the one downfall of the day was that John Lawson and myself were supposed to meet up with some folks to head out to the stage and be able to get some media but we weren’t sure who we were supposed to meet up with. We ended up spending our time documenting the service area.

Our day ended with a not-so-amazing dinner at one of the restaurants down the lot from service. I ended up getting fish and chips because I figured it was a safe bet. Well, I guess I didn’t realize that Haddock is thin fish, so when it came out it was thin and way over cooked. It was expensive as well. The kicker of this restaurant was that they barely had any type of beverages besides alcohol and mixers. No tea because I guess Northerners don’t drink tea? Weird. So I just got water. Then we all headed back to the airbnb to relax. I didn’t get much relaxing in because I was also having to do remote work for my 9-5 job. So I popped on the laptop and got a few estimates finished up and sent, emailed a few customers back and then ended up heading to bed.

The next morning we had to get to the first service area and pack up everything to head to the new service area which was in a different town. This second service area was in a grass lot and they gave us plenty of room to park the RV and the trailer. Down the street was a really cool gas station/shop that we ended up going to later that afternoon to pick up food for everyone.

John and I had a game plan that we weren’t going to sit at service this go around and miss out on getting some awesome action photos. So we packed up some drinks, snacks and our gear and headed out to find the spectator areas. Boy did that not go as planned. We drove up and down the street trying to find one but it was closed because we took too long to make it out there. So we figured we’d head to the next spot. We did the same thing again, drove up and down the road numerous times trying to find where we were supposed to go. Pulled off the road, looked at maps, started driving, pulled off the road again. Rinse, wash and repeat. We found one spot where all of the rally cars were lined up ready to start, so we stopped and watched them for a bit and then headed out again to try to find where we were supposed to be. We had no luck but we ended up seeing one car go down the road we were on, so we stopped and waited for each car to come by and grabbed rolling shots.

It was quite awhile of waiting before Tony and Steven drove past, so I’ll include a couple extra photos I got.

I would be lying if I said I didn’t think about picking wild blueberries. I just wasn’t sure if wild blueberries are the same as what’s grown out on farms. I know that’s probably a dumb thought but I did think about picking some while we were waiting for the cars to roll by because the bush that I was next to was pretty plentiful.

After all of the cars made it past, we hopped back into the rental Rav4 and headed back to service to snap some shots of the guys servicing the vehicle. That’s when we met some locals that were out spectating and they told us that they would direct us to the last spectator location so we could get our action photos.

While the guys were servicing the vehicle, a lady with a heap of children walked up and got Tony to sign their shirts. They had been stopping by each service area to get all of the driver’s and co-drivers to sign their shirts.

Once the guys were ready to head back out, we loaded up again and followed Adam and his wife out to the last stage. We waited what seemed like forever before they started the stage and released the cars to go. Then it was a waiting game till Tony drove past. The location wasn’t the most ideal as there were no cool turns or jumps, just a straight away but at least we were able to get our action shots.

Overall the rally was a great experience. We really enjoyed seeing the beautiful landscape that Maine has to offer. There were a lot of amazing spots to do portraits and if we had more time for the visit, we would have likely went out exploring but seeing as how we all had to be back at work on Monday (well Steven and I had Monday off just in case we got home late), we couldn’t stay and hang out longer.

Sunday we packed up everything and got in our rental Corolla and headed back to North Carolina with our friend Steven in tow. He didn’t want to sit in the RV and endure another long, slow drive home. We ended up taking a quicker route and with three of us alternating driving, we made it home around 1AM Monday morning. Talk about being exhausted. I’m glad we had Monday off so we could relax and get some extra sleep in. I also forgot to mention one thing that happened during our trip. While we were out looking for the fuel service area on day two, I ended up getting stung by a yellow jacket. Steven (not hubby) had the windows cracked and as we were pulled off the road to figure out where we needed to go, a yellow jacket flew in and stung me on the inside of my left arm. I screamed because it hurt really bad and Steven (hubby) was able to stomp it to death after having hit it with his phone. I still think I took one for the team because Steven is highly allergic and we didn’t have an EPI pen on us. I did kind of go into panic mode though because I haven’t been stung by anything before and I was nervous that I would have a reaction like my dad has when he gets stung by bees, but I got lucky and didn’t. The area around the sting spot puffed up a little and then spread out. It ended up being bruised for about a week. The mark is mostly gone now but you can still slightly see it.

That concludes our trip to the New England Forest Rally in Maine. Hope you all enjoy this entry!

-Katie

Why I’m not celebrating Christmas 2020

It’s December 9th, 2020. This year has already been a complete nightmare between the pandemic causing chaos around the world and people struggling financially all year. Let’s be real, 2020 needs to just be over. We need to get through this pandemic and get back to normal life.

When the pandemic hit, I didn’t think much of it. I actually thought, cool, maybe I’ll get some much needed time off from work so I can de-stress. Little did I know, work would be slow for 3 weeks and I would be required to still be at work, even though there was absolute NOTHING to do. I spent most of my days watching TV on my computer, coloring pages I printed off the internet or just video chatting with whoever would listen. Then work slowly started picking back up. Now it’s busy but I haven’t had any time off to de-stress besides a four day weekend back in November for Thanksgiving, and let’s be real, that was still pretty stressful. I’m anxiously counting down the days to Christmas, not to celebrate, but to get out of North Carolina and spend another couple of days at my parents house with them (and to of course hit Southern Craft for some delicious BBQ).

I know you’re probably like, “Katie, you haven’t explained why you’re not celebrating Christmas this year”. With all of the stress I’ve had this year, I just don’t feel like decorating the apartment, getting a Christmas tree, decorating it or really doing much of anything Christmas related. Plus even if I did, the kittens would destroy the tree and probably break ornaments, chew on the lights and who knows what else. To recap on this year, I have spent about $1000+ on three kittens I rescued (I did have some help thanks to some awesome friends), $2500+ on Sissy’s emergency vet and on going vet bills and have basically drained my entire savings account that I was stacking up to save for a house. So in short, I’m not celebrating Christmas this year because I have pretty much drained my savings account and instead of buying people presents, I’d rather be a little bit selfish and save money for a house. To be a bit real, neither my family or Steven’s family actually need anything. I know it’s not great to be selfish but I really want to save for a house. I’m almost 34 years old and still don’t own a house. I know I shouldn’t compare my life to others but I really want to be a home owner. I’ve held off on doing any painting, installing shelves or anything of that nature in our apartment because I didn’t want to ruin the walls or have to change/fix things before moving out. I had spent most of 2019 saving as much money as I possibly could so that we could have an “okay” down payment on a house and to have most of the money wiped away due to vet bills and having to pay off credit cards that we’ve used to help us in between paychecks, I just can’t see myself spending $100s of dollars on presents this year. I even told Steven that he didn’t need to get me anything for Christmas or my birthday which is December 29th.

Honestly, this year I would prefer to just have experiences over material possessions. Since I’ve gotten older, material items don’t mean nearly as much to me as experiences do. For example, back in November, Steven and I drove to Gatlinburg, TN and did the sky bridge and sky lift which is something I normally would have NEVER done. I’m afraid of heights but I wanted the experience. I honestly would be completely fine just baking cookies with mom this Christmas and if it’s snowing, watching the snow fall.

It does make me a bit sad to not be celebrating Christmas this year but the thought of the kittens messing up the tree, lights, ornaments etc stresses me out, so I’ll just pass on that lol.

Anyway, I hope you all have a Merry Christmas and an amazing New Years!

Stress – Why me?

For the past few years I have struggled immensely with stress. It has taken over my life. I’ve tried to not be stressed but let’s be frank, it doesn’t work. Telling yourself not to stress out does absolutely nothing. You’ll stop stressing for a minute or two and then go right back to the stressful situation you were trying to stop thinking about. It’s hard.

I work at a performance shop and as many people think it’s this awesome place to be because I’m surrounded by cars 24/7. It’s not. I have to deal with scheduling around multiple people, including the folks at the dyno and when things don’t work out, then you have super angry customers yelling at you, whether it was actually something you did or one of the techs did. It’s tough.

On top of stressful work life, I barely have any friends here in North Carolina. I’ve started missing my friends I had in California. I miss taking photos for them and watching their families grow. One of my friends, Debra, allowed me to do their family photos for two years till we moved away. I got to see her give birth to her baby boy and watch her older kids grow up. I miss it. I miss taking photos of friends/family and just having fun.

I’m sure at this point you’re thinking, “Why don’t you just go make some friends or try to take photos of people where you live?”. I wish it was that easy. Since moving here and dealing with stress non-stop, I’ve kind of stopped doing photography. I’ve been trying to get back into it but because I’m an Introvert and kind of shy, it’s taken me awhile to want to get back out there in the photography community.

I told myself at the beginning of the year that I was going to worry less, stress less and have more fun. I told Steven we would plan more trips and just do more fun, enjoyable things together to relieve a lot of the stress we have on our shoulders. Sad thing is…we haven’t done anything yet. I’ve been so worried about money and making sure we’re financially stable that I haven’t had time to plan a trip for us. Plus I get in my head a lot on not wanting to spend money but I have to keep telling myself that it’s fine to spend some money. It’s fine to splurge and go have fun with your husband. Go on a trip. Go see new things. Enjoy new foods. Just live life.

It’s time for me to stop letting stress run my life. It’s time to go out, enjoy life and have some fun. This weekend I’ll be attending a local cars and coffee meet up and then going to check out two different dog parks to see if either will work for my 2020 paws 4 a cause event. Should be fun!

 

xoxo Katie

 

Goodbye 2019, Hello 2020!

It has been a hot minute since I even opened up word press to start a new blog post. I keep telling myself that I am going to write more but at times I feel like I am not that great of a writer, so I just don’t do it.

2020 is coming up soon…like real soon, and I’m not entirely sure what I am doing (in life, in general). I know when we get off work today we will just relax with the pup and cat and most likely watch “The Marvelous Mrs Maisel” because it’s my favorite show currently. If you haven’t seen it, check it out. It’s on Amazon Prime video and is hilarious!

Let’s talk about 2020 and resolutions/goals. I tend to make the common “I’m going to work out and lose weight” goal but let’s be real, it never happens. I’ll make it a full week, maybe two if I’m lucky and then back to old ways. This year I will be focusing on more realistic goals and if I happen to start working out and lose weight, cool but that is not going to be my main focus this year.

I’ve already started writing out a list of “goals” for myself to do throughout 2020.

1. Bing everyday to get tons of amazon gift cards to use on the animal shelters – Bing is a search engine that you can earn points through and then use the points on gift cards. So I plan to stack up as many gift cards as possible to be able to donate to the animals shelters I help out every year.
2. Use Ambassador $$’s to stock up on doggy supplies for 2020 stockings – Every year I put together stockings for the Fayetteville Animal Protection Society Animal Shelter in, you guessed it, Fayetteville. I started doing that back in 2016 as a way to give to the doggies who get adopted, just a little something something they can take with them to their new home/family.
3. Pay off both credit cards – I’ve been working on this but not nearly as hard as I should be to get this debt taken care of. I don’t like having debt and I’m tired of being stressed out over it. So this year, I will have both credit cards paid off!
4. Do more social media posts – this is more so in regards to the Subaru Ladies instagram, my photography instagram and Nardi’s instagram account.
5. Do more photoshoots, don’t hold back! – 2019 I did maybe 5 photoshoots total and they were all of my lovely friend Rachel and her son. So I would like to be able to do more in 2020 and get my confidence back.
6. Donate/Do good things more! – This is something that sparks joy for me. Being able to give back to the community and help people/animals who need assistance. 2019 I helped out with our 5th (I think that’s right) annual paws 4 a cause event, helped a friend who needed a bit of financial assistance, made sandwiches and put together lunch bags with a group of amazing women for a women’s shelter and put together stockings for the animal shelter. I want to do even more in 2020.
7. Do fun things with the Subaru Ladies Group – I’ve been talking and talking about doing giveaways and just can’t decide on what I want to do or how I want to run it but 2020 is going to be the year to give back to the group. There are so many wonderful ladies on the group and I want to be able to do giveaways to give back.
8. Go on fun trips with Steven – This one is huge. We took some trips this year and I’ve loved it but next year I want to take even more. I want us to be able to travel into TN and check out Nashville and explore. Plus meet my instagram friend, Jillian. I want to go to South Carolina to go to Charleston and eventually go to Florida. There are more states I want to mark off my list of states visited.

What are some goals you’re working toward for 2020? Share in a comment below! I’d love to read them!

-Katie

 

 

Saving Money

Saving money isn’t about going without the fun things in life. It’s about being able to provide and not worry about how you’re going to afford emergencies, extra expenses and such. I know for most it’s hard to save money especially if you’re just scraping by. But honestly, it’s not that hard. You have to prioritize your spending.

 

For me personally, I love using a planner. I jot down when every bill is due and try to coordinate bill paying with pay day. Then once we get paid, I go through and add up all of the bills that need to be paid before the next pay day. I pay all of the bills and then whatever is left over is gas, food, etc. Usually when it’s rent check time, I don’t put a lot aside for savings. I’ll usually wait till the next pay check and whatever left over from the rent pay period, I’ll put that toward savings. Basically if I have money left over from a check and it’s a new pay period, I will just put whatever’s left, aside.

 

I am like a budget queen, per say. I love setting money aside for bills and seeing what’s left and making that amount work till the next pay period. When it comes down to grocery shopping, I check all of the ads and see where the best place is to go shop at. I check for coupons to help me out and if the store has a loyalty card. Then I go online – usually Pinterest – and find meals that we’ll both eat and jot down the recipes so I can start making a grocery list. I try really hard to stick to that list (though that doesn’t always work lol). 

How do you make a little extra money on the side? That’s a good question. I have been doing activities (watching videos, answering surveys) on this website called Swagbucks now for almost 9 years. It’s so easy to use and not time consuming, unless you’re doing surveys which I hardly ever do by the way. There are a few apps I use too like Receipt Hog where you simply upload your grocery, shopping, gas station receipts and it gives you coins based on how much you spent. You can then use the coins to cash out for Amazon or Paypal. It takes awhile but it’s simple and adds up over time. Who doesn’t want some extra cash? Another app I use is Ibotta. You get cash back on things you buy at the store and all you have to do is scan the item and then scan your receipt. You do have to wait till you have hit $20 to cash out though. Another app/website I use that I have been using for years now is Bing. Bing has a rewards program for simply doing searches on their site. You can do desktop searches, mobile, microsoft edge and they have activities to do to get extra points. I believe it’s 5,250 points for a $5 amazon card but well worth it for 10 minutes of your day. I am currently over $10 in amazon gift cards from them that I still need to cash out.

If you’re determined to save money and to better your life and you need help or guidance, let me know. I’m always here to help when I can. Just in the past two-ish weeks, I have put aside $1500! It’s crazy to even think about that since before it was more of a living pay check to pay check situation.

I feel like I’m dying #overdramatic

I know, I know. I’m over dramatic about stuff. But that’s okay!

Let’s start with Sunday as I am not two days behind on writing this blog post. Actually, let’s start with Saturday. So Saturday I told myself that I would find my gym card so I could go to the office and get it fixed because since we moved in back in 2017, the gym card has not worked. I don’t know if Ivan gave me the wrong card or a non-activated card or what. Well I searched high and low Saturday, had Steven help me look, cleaned off my desk and table and couldn’t find it. I gave up. Then Saturday night I was cleaning dishes and looked at my little crate on the bar and saw it standing up. I had moved stuff around in that little crate but didn’t think to actually turn it over to see the card standing up. Whoops! At that point it was way too late to go to the office, so I decided I HAD to go Sunday.

Now it was Sunday. I checked and the office wasn’t going to open till 1PM and they’d only be open till 5PM. I think Nardi & I went to the office around 1:15PM but of course there was one lady waiting and a couple that were going to go on a tour of the complex. She did let me in the gym though and told me to come back later. So Sunday I ended up doing about an hour work out.

I then went back into the office to have her fix my card which she proceeded to tell me that it wasn’t registered to any device and she’s not sure how I had a card that wasn’t registered. Like I don’t know lady, just give me one that works.

After my workout, I came home and made dinner which consisted of Dave’s Killer Bread English muffin with tuna, some pineapple and a handful of hippea puffs. Yum!!

After dinner I got spirited and decided to make some banana, blueberry muffins using almond flour that I’ve had left over from doing Nardi’s birthday cake. They actually turned out really good!

Now let’s forward to Monday. Work was meh and I wasn’t sure if I would get home and the gym would be unoccupied or not because with my anxiety I can’t just walk into the gym if other people are using it first. If no one is there, then I’ll walk in use it and then others can come and go as they please. We got home from work and as we were walking to the house, I saw that the gym was empty and lights were off. SCORE! So I ran inside, put shorts on and grabbed my stuff and headed to the gym. It was so nice because I was by myself for almost the entire work out. I ended up walking/running on the treadmill for the first part, then got bored and did this back machine that I guess…helps…your back? Who knows. I got tired of that machine and went back to using the treadmill.

So overall, not bad!
Holy tomato face Batman! Definitely was a good workout. I ended up feeling it a LOT once I got in the house and started to rest. For dinner I ended up cooking chicken tenders and brussell sprouts for dinner, however, the chicken I over cooked and the brussell sprouts I forgot to cut into halves and so they weren’t entirely cooked to tender soft goodness. Whomp whomp.

But you know what? I got up off my ass and hit the gym. Tonight though I passed on the gym because I needed to go to the bank, get bills paid and then there were like 6 people in the gym working out. (One was a guy with no shirt on). So I just ended up staying in tonight.

Well, I’m off ladies and gents! Night!

xoxo Katie

Re-write

 

Today started off pretty good. Managed to do an in home workout. The first video I watched was a little much. The lady was like, “We’re going to start with some cardio and then 50 burpees” and I was like oh hell no. So I continued on to find another video which I did half of because it started out good and then went into stuff I can’t do. Obviously I have to work at this stuff cause eventually I’ll need to do what everyone else does in the videos but till then, I’ll modify my work outs. At the end, I just started watching videos of “what I eat in a day” and usually the people I’m watching will do a work out with their vlog. So I took out our 10lb weight and started doing some lifts with that and some cardio. Wasn’t too bad actually but I’m honestly rather go to the gym and walk/run on the treadmill and lift weights.

For breakfast this morning I had two pieces of Naan bread (try it!) with half an avocado, some black bean hummus, two eggs and some cheese. Yum! Lunch consisted of Naan personal pizzas which were pretty good but the pepperoni made them really greasy. So that was the only downfall to that. For dinner the plan was to have stir fry from Trader Joe’s with some chicken tenders mixed in but…..Steven burned it. SO, I decided to make Trader Joe’s orange chicken and fried rice and honestly, it was damn good! I liked the chicken more than the fried rice but would definitely buy both again.

Anyway, I need to cut this short as the laptop I’m typing this on is dying and I need to plug it in. Whoops! We’ll see you all again tomorrow!

xoxo
Katie