Composting, Gardening more to the Hobbies

So my goal for the year was plain and simple..... SIMPLIFY!
What do I do?? Add some more hobbies to my life! But these are good hobbies really! :) Gardening will benefit the family... we'll eat fresher food, we'll spend more time outside sweltering in the summer heat, it'll be fun, digging in the dirt is theraputic, getting dirty is fun!!

The first thing I did was got a compost bin (and a book to go with it!) Its been years since I thought about composting, but I figure its good for the environment, its good for our garden and a good place to start a decent biological lesson for the kids! M is going to make a homemade see through compost bin out of soda/pop bottles so we can all learn what is going on in our big black bin outside (and so I can learn through osmosis! since I have no clue what the heck will actually be happening the big black bin outside!!) So there we'll all benefit! Then on giving back to the environment we'll be using soil that is made from the waste that we would have dumped in the landfill. I mean dh and I dump a ton of grass and garden clippings in the garbage every summer when mowing season is here, and this way we can put it back to good use. Anyway I'm excited and so are the girls they can't wait to help put the bin together and start collecting daddy's cooking scraps.

In the mean time we're opting for a slightly larger garden entrance this year. Last year we attempted to grow, grew 3 tomatoes and 3 pepper plants that did horribly, I'm hoping this year to add some herbs, and other veggies that might be fun! We have a decent sized lot but none of it is ideal for growing food as it doesn't get enough light or is on too much of a hill, so we're limited to what can be grown in containers and the limited skill of our growers (me and the kids! LOL!)

I can't wait to get started. Feel free to join us in our adventures and if you have ideas to share we're all ears! :)