About Tricia

I am Tricia. Momma of nine, homeschooler, artist, foodie and maker of all kinds of things. It's a pleasure to share here our family homesteading adventures, the things we make, and what inspires our days. Read more about my family and work here. Thanks for visiting!

Author Archive | Tricia

These Days…My Weekly Journal

By on January 30, 2013 in Weekly Journal

For an explanation on each picture, scroll down to the bottom of this post.


This week we:

: :  Enjoying our new Little Womens group that the girls have recently joined.  It has been great to get together with lots of old friends again and even Livie gets into the crafting action.

: :  Eating quite a bit of homemade macaroni and cheese because it is a fast filling meal in our very busy days

: :  Popping lots and lots of popcorn for take along and eating just because snacks.  This particular one was inspired by Amanda’s Cheesy Herb Popcorn

: :  Spending most of our time outside since winter has decided that it has better things to do than stick around here

: :  Making lots and lots of bad for you, fried apple fritters dusted in powdered sugar, since the price is so good this time of year

: :  Taking advantage of our windy cool days to hang out the wash for as long as this winter reprieve will stick around 

: :  Getting the pleasant surprise of finding little boys bringing in the diapers from the line and exclaiming how they love hanging laundry to dry

: :  Starting many different types of seedlings in recycled cups for the spring garden

: : Reseeding many a bed of baby arugula, kale and spinach which the chickens turned into lunch and left none for us

: :  Enjoying our solar cooker and the added science experiment of checking the temperature all through the day

: :  Enjoying baby snuggles on the run


Gotta get back to work, I have a birthday girl tomorrow whose present is not finished and another birthday girl the day after that..phew!  See you tomorrow here for Stash Bash

If you enjoyed this post, please consider leaving a comment or follow me by email at the top right hand of the screen to have future posts sent to you. Tricia (Crunchy Catholic Momma)

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Stash Bash – New garden beds

By on January 24, 2013 in Farm and Garden, Stash Bash

I’ve never met a crafter without a stash of some kind. This year my goal is to use up all the craft supplies I have spent money on that are taking up mental and physical space in my life. enclosed the barn for the wedding, I have been thinking of ways to use the other half of the barn which will be used for farm stuff.  It dawned on me that the backside of the barn is not seeable (I just made it a word, OK?) from the rest of our land and so it is a perfect place to do something and since the roof of the barn drips water there every morning, I decided to use it for planting.

There is a pile of wood planks leftover from another project done two years ago which has been sitting in a pile and in order to not buy anything and use up what we have, Eddie and I thought up a way to use those planks and whatever posts we could find.  Since we are using up leftover 4 foot planks, it was hard to keep it straight and after all, neither of us is experienced in any way with things like this but it felt really good to use up some of that wood and make something useful with it.  It is wood that we paid for years ago and using what was leftover not only saves money but it uses resources that are already here.   It isn’t perfect, it’s a little wonky but it will work great.  We meausured, cut, nailed and this is what we came up with.  It is about 16 feet long and did not cost one penny to create.


I am so proud of Eddie, he has become indispensable around here.  He is one of my children who will never say no to a request for help.  He rolls up his sleeves and jumps in with me whatever the project is.  

I received some play money for my birthday from my momma and I will be buying lots of new seeds and plan to grow lots of perennials here intermingled with greens.  The next step is to fill it with layers of newspaper, hay, peat moss, compost and repeat.  This is how I fill my beds, it’s called layer gardening.  It is fast, easy and lots cheaper on the wallet since we try to use materials from here on our farm.

So what have you been up to? I love to see what you come up with. I have added the Mr Linky to the bottom of this post for you to link up your Stash Bash projects.

Here’s what to do. There are no rules. 
Just use what you have and try to not buy new supplies, unless you need it to complete a project that you are making from stuff you already have in your stash. 
Take a 

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