Bringing the outside in

We are so tired of this winter. It was warming up nicely and Ciaran was having fun playing outside in the yard a lot. But then the winter storm came again, and he hasn't been outside in almost a week. He was wailing "Spring is NEVER going to come!". So I decided to bring the outside in to him, with an indoor sandbox! G thinks I'm nuts, but I think a little mess is worth not having Ciaran burn his eyeballs out in front of the television. He's been playing with it for over 30min now, and every few minutes saying "Thank you so much for my playset, I LOVE it!!". Awwwww! Thats worth the mess!





So I got a bin from Walmart ($5.67), 3 bags of cornmeal ($4.50), added a half bag of lentils I had in the cupboard, some scoops and spoons and assorted stuff, and for about $10 he has a great activity. He's even added his dinosaurs and is having so much fun! When he's done (when Roan wakes from his nap, he's still a bit young and I don't have that much time to clean it all up), we'll snap the lid back on and its ready for next time!

Srpouts - the final result!

So I should totally know better than to try and commit to posting everyday. Its not going to happen. But I did continue to take pictures, and growing our own sprouts was a huge success. Within a day or two, we could see all the little sprouts sprouting. We rinsed every morning and every night, and otherwise totally forgot about them. And in a week, we had a ton of sprouts! They were so green, and fresh and crunchy! We celebrated with a tuna sandwich, and were in heaven :)




I will be making more, and even bought a 'starter kit' that includes two screens (the nylon worked, but was a little dense and made rinsing a little harder then it needed to be, I'm all about 'easy') and lots of seeds. And I got a package of mixed seeds that I will also be trying. YUM!!!

Sprouts - Day 2

So we woke with great excitement about our sprouts. At first, the yucky water wasn't that pleasing



We covered the top with a nylon and drained and rinsed the sprouts






Even at this stage, we could see the tiniest of beginnings of what soon will be our alfalfa sprouts.
Then we tipped the jar over a tea towel, and let it continue to drain for the day. We repeated these steps again before bed, and again the tiny bits of sprouts were popping out all over!



This morning, again we were excited to see what was happening. And wow! Sprouts are sprouting! Enough I even tried to get a picture




So we'll keep rinsing and draining, and I'll post pics of the progress, and in the not too distant future I'll post pics of the delicious sandwich we'll be enjoying for lunch, with our yummy sprouts!!

Sprouts

Ciaran and I are making our own sprouts! I'm really exciting about spring this year and can't wait to get into the garden. But we're still a ways off, so in the meantime I thought making our own sprouts would be fun for Ciaran and get him interested for the impending growing season. Apparently its super easy. I've done my research (hah, google and youtube). And now I'm going to do a little day by day, step by step, recap.

Starting with tonight, Day 1.

We needed some seeds (from our local greenhouse), a tablespoon and a jar.


Then we poured about 1.5 - 2 Tb of seeds into the jar (Ciaran did it, so its a little off measure, but thats the fun part!)





Then we put about 1.5c of cold water in the jar





We scooped out the few that stayed floating on the top (read a tip that these could be 'yucky' or even have bug eggs in them).

And thats it! Tomorrow morning when we get up, we'll rinse and drain them.

More pics to come tomorrow!