Rain Garden Planning

What kind of hippy mom would I be if I didn't have at least one rain garden? What is a rain garden? A rain garden is a sunken garden bed designed to catch storm water and filter water back into the ground naturally. Rain gardens have many benefits. They are a simple way to protect our streams and rivers, provide food and habitat for birds and butterflies, and best of all, are planted with hardy low-maintenance plants.

 I have been taking rain garden workshops from East Multnomah Soil & Water Conservation District, so I like to think I sort of know what I am doing. My yard is more or less a blank canvas of weeds and crab grass. Sounds terrible? Not at all! This is an opportunity to let my imagination run wild. My first project will be a couple of rain barrels plumbed into rain gardens. There is actually a lot of planning that goes into engineering a rain garden. First, I drew a layout of my house and property and calculated the area (sq/ft) of roof draining into each down spout. Then, I took 10% of the total area and that is how many square feet my rain garden will have to be.

After drawing everything out we dug a one foot by one foot hole and filled it with water a couple of times and timed how fast the water drained out. If it drains out too slowly or not at all then a rain garden is not for you. To our luck the soil was fabulous draining at about an 6 inches an hour in the back yard and  12 inches an hour in the front yard. That is fast draining soil! However, in an actual Pacific Northwest rain event complete soil saturation will likely cause a slower drainage rate.

My goal is to have the gardens finished by the end of February. I will post the progress over the next couple of months. The next step is to draw out the individual beds and select the plants. 

Surprise! It is Pink!

As many of you know every year at Christmas I make soap. Some years the soap turns out better than others. This year we added Shea Butter which required a whole new recipe. The soap this year is 40% olive oil, 30% coconut oil, 20% palm oil, and 10% Shea butter. We chose to do a spicy scent of clove and cinnamon oil. To dress it up we decided to add some green shimmer to make it festive. So we set out to mix our oils and lye.

The shimmer is where things got interesting. We poured the soap into our molds and let is sit for 24 hours. It was then when we removed the molds that we got a surprise. There was no green to be had! The shimmer triggered some sort of chemical reaction with the oils that turned the soap pink. Yes, pink!

I always test my soap on myself first and the soap is safe to use, so I went ahead and cut and trimmed the soap. 2012 the year of the pink soap! Hope folks enjoy it.

Bags to Wrapping Paper

Since we were in grade school we have heard the words "reduce, reuse, recycle!" So with that said I make it a point to never buy wrapping paper. With the plastic bag ban movement in Portland growing I have accumulated many paper bags (with a baby I often forget my reusable shopping bags). Why not use those paper bags to wrap presents.

Items you will need:

• Paper Bags
• Festive Colored Ink Pad
• Festive Rubber Stamps
• Festive Ribbon

1.) Start with your paper bag.

2.) Cut down one corner and around the bottom leaving the sides

3.) The take your ink and stamps and stamp away

4.) Wrap and ribbon!

Then deliver your beautiful reused and recyclable wrapped presents! Santa approved!

Mommy Running Time

Since Lyra was born last January it has been a struggle to find time to do anything outside the house. I have attended mom groups and taken Lyra to the zoo, but nothing on my own, until now. Through meetup.com I found a mama running group that meets about three miles from our home three times a week. So, three times a week at 5:30 AM I drag myself out of bed and head off to a 3-4 mile run. This may sound brutal, but this has been a life saver for me. These runs have help my energy level increase, and a short baby break to remind myself my body needs some attention too. This also gives Cody some daddy-daughter time before he goes to work as well. Each run ends at a coffee shop which is a nice reward for getting up and running on a cold dark morning. I always get a coffee big enough to hand off to Cody when I get home. Cody has grown to enjoy this routine and will pout if I get a plain coffee, "What?! No pumpkin spice or chocolate?!" He has become very much a northwest coffee snob as a result.

This coming Sunday I am doing the Holiday 5k, a local road race. I am looking forward to seeing how I do at a relaxed race pace. My goal is to run the Shamrock 15k in March. I will be adding a long run on Saturdays to help me reach this goal. All this aside the best part of running is coming home and seeing how happy Lyra is to see me.