Our Mushroom "Farm"

If you haven't figured out from my recipe blogs, we eat a lot of mushrooms in our household. I often use them as a low protein substitute for meat. For Christmas this year, my creative and thoughtful father bought us mushroom kits.

For the past few months, we have grown our own white button mushrooms. It was fairly easy to "assemble" (mix the dirt/spores). We water it every now and then and have fresh mushrooms every couple of days. The mushrooms were WHITE...I didn' t know they actually came in real white...but they do. They last a long time since they are much more fresh than store-bought, and they tasted great.

If you want to try this at home, I will warn you- you MUST harvest on a regular basis. We left the kit alone in our guest bedroom for a few days and had 2 lbs. of mushrooms that had grown past the appropriate harvest time. It was sad to toss them, but we still had plenty more left.

Mushrooms grow in a bag inside a box
(sorry the picture is fuzzy)

Our second kit, the portabellas, did not produce much...so far we have 3. But the first kit provided plenty of mushrooms (I can't imagine what we would have done if we had double the mushroom harvest...we already have much more than we need! )

I'm not entirely sure where my father purchased our kit, but there seem to be many available online. For those of you that like mushrooms, they taste so much better and were so easy to grow. We may have to get another kit and start growing year-round.

First harvest, very large fresh mushrooms

I'd love to figure out how to make our own "kits" (aka mix our own spores/dirt/compost) to save money...if anyone reading knows how, feel free to share. Meanwhile, we will stick to the kit!

My own backyard

One of my favorite things about a house in a small-town neighborhood is that we have REAL trees. I loved the city, but most my friends who lived in houses had only a few trees in their yard if any, and most trees were not even 10 ft tall. Our yard has huge trees and a few smaller trees. We loved this when we bought the house last summer. This summer, now that there is no insane drought, we learned how great our trees really are...all our smaller trees are flowering trees and we even have some rose bushes. I love going out to our back yard and seeing all these beautiful flowers! We truly are blessed.

Enjoy the pictures.

Crape Myrtle - light pink

Rose of Sharon Close up

Rose of Sharon tree

Crape Myrtle - darker pink

Red roses...they smell great too

Pink roses too- my hubby picked this one for me :)

Taming the Frizz

Anyone of you who actually knows me knows I have crazy thick hair, wavy - not curly, not straight. It's been a struggle my entire life to tame my crazy mane. I have tried so many different products throughout the years and finally settled on the amazing. I found S Factor smoothing lusterizer for my straight hair. Now here is the problem...$$$$$$$$$$

Living in a small town I have found quickly that its hard to find my hair stuff and good deals. I used to buy via Ulta buy one get one free sales. Walmart has no such deals. Not to mention our budget has changed a lot, so pricey products are no longer an option. I went on a hunt for the perfect CHEAP product, a scary adventure considering the many bad hair days and wasted partly-used bottles these trials to. But it was all worth it.

Pantene Medium-Thick Straighten and Smooth Creme

Pros: price is a lot less and tames frizz well, doesn't leave glittery-looking stuff on your hands like S Factor does
Cons: Does not smell nearly as wonderful as S Factor (but it doesn't smell bad either)

The best of small town living

So I was all ready to blog every single day...or close to it. I already have the next blog or two half written.But the holidays distracted me. And then I got sick. It was a nice reminder of how much my life has changed. I had text messages pouring in from family and friends asking if I was pregnant. It seems from now on, instead of compassion, any sickness I feel will now be met with excitement. (For the record, it was food poisoning, not a baby)

Married life has lead to many changes. Most have been easy to adjust to. The most difficult has been moving to a small town. But here are my favorite things about small town life.

5. High School Football - We only managed to go to one game this year, but the entire town seemed to be there. It's not just football too. We can go to any game, concert, play, etc and see tons of people we know. The kids are treated like celebrities in our small town paper.

4. Parades - My first weekend here was the 4th of July parade. I was actually in the parade! Since then, we have had many events. The school homecoming parade drew out a huge chunk of the town. The most recent, Christmas Stroll and Parade featured floats and shops with free hot chocolate and cookies. I can definitely get used to this. Each parade we head to the square just us and then run into tons of people we know. It's a great time to say hi to everyone and just enjoy a change in activities.

3. Quiet - The first night I lived in the house by myself, I just laid in bed amazed at the sound of...NOTHING. Literally, I could hear nothing. It was so strange. It was hard to sleep. I lived by the train tracks in the city for 10 years and no longer even noticed the train whistles. Car alarms constantly went off in my apartment complex parking lot. How on earth can one sleep in silence? Luckily, our ceiling fan makes a low ticking sound that helps for now. But I've now become accustomed to the quiet. We live in a cul-de-sac and hear no cars other than the neighbors. No headlights shine in our windows ever. We live close enough to the small airport that we actually hear more small airplanes overhead than we ever hear cars in a day.

2. Traffic - I have hit a few traffic jams since moving here in July (aka 4 cars in a line at a stop sign during "rush hour"). It is amazing how I used to be able to only travel from my apartment to the mall only a mile away in 30 minutes during the Christmas holiday. Here in my small town life, I can travel across town in 10 minutes even during "rush hour". The nearest mall may be an hour away, but that's only 30 minutes more than traffic in the city was.

1. The Sky - "The stars at night are big and bright..." deep in not-really-the-heart of Texas. Not even sure where the heart of Texas is, but I do know where I am the sky is amazing. We received a pair of binoculars for a wedding gift and learned that we are actually able to see Jupiter and its moons clearly almost every night. Thanks to star-guide apps for our phones, we have been able to see the Andromeda galaxy and other great things as well. With the help of our neighbors telescope, we have been able to see all the clear details on the moon (and even take this photo through the telescope). It's been a while since we ventured out with the telescope, but even with the naked eye we see amazing things in the sky each night - it is simply beautiful.