Earn Extra Box Tops for Education!

We are officially 'Back to School'!! That means back to school shopping, getting up early, packing lunches and snacks.

Our school is always encouraging parents to save the Box Tops for Education. i never really realized how quickly these add up, and how much it really does help out the school. In our school newsletter they list the amount they raise throughout the year with boxtops and what it was used on...likes sports equipment, art supplies, teacher supplies etc.




When we get the school supply lists, i'm always a bit surprised by the amount of supplies we need to bring. The kids are not only required to bring in their own individual supplies, but we also purchase many of the teacher and classroom supplies.

You probably know that you can find boxtops on snack items like General Mills, Cascadian farms, yoplait and Nature Valley items, but did you know you can also find them on children’s school supplies?!! You can click this link to print up a list of participating items. The list includes many of the school supplies we needed to purchase like Ziplock bags, Kleenex tissues, Hi-Liters and Avery brand office supplies.

Starting in mid July, Walmart will have over 70 participating products that each have 4 Box Tops each!

• Look for the Box Tops display at your local Walmart to earn 4 Box Tops on more than 100 of your family’s favorite items including Cheerios, Nature Valley and Totinos
• By liking Walmart on Facebook you can earn more Box Tops from General Mills
• Check out the Box Tops For Education website to learn more about the Box Tops Program and how you can help your school reach its goal for the 2012-2013 school year
• Like the Box Tops for Education on Facebook to learn how to earn more boxtops for your school.
  
• Visit EarnMoreForMySchool.com to find out how you can earn even more for your school with eBox Tops.

Box Tops really do make a difference to your schools. A few cents may not seem like a big deal, but those dimes add up really quickly! So take the time to gather Box Tops for your school, and check out the different ways to grab even more Box Tops this school year!

“Disclosure: The Walmart gift card, information, and an additional gift pack have been provided by General Mills and Walmart through MyBlogSpark.”

More tomato woes..

Yes, another post about my tomatoes. So a couple weeks ago i posted about getting hit by late blight. It pretty much wiped out almost all of my tomatoes within just a couple of weeks. i've never seen a plant disease spread so rapidly, and kill so quickly. When the plants really started dying back i picked all the green ones and brought them inside to ripen. Many of them developed the brown blight spots anyway and had to be thrown out. It was so disappointing. :(

So you can imagine my surprise when this patch of tomatoes in my main garden appeared to be blight resistant.


Blight hit this garden, and i pulled a ton of tomatoes that were surrounding these...and yet these show no sign of blight. This photo was taken yesterday, the plants look healthy and perfect. They are loaded with bloom and baby tomatoes are just beginning to appear.

i was really starting to feel optimistic, after all the devastation of losing my tomatoes to this retched blight... it looks like i may actually get some tomatoes after all.



So i poked around in the foliage looking for tomatoes, and found this. :( All the new tomatoes are coming like this. Brown, hard and rotting. Every single one.


So i have a garden full of beautiful, perfect looking tomatoes plants...and still no edible tomatoes. i have searched online and can not figure out what is wrong with my tomatoes. Is this still the late blight? Everything i've seen about the blight is that it affects the foliage first, and then later appears on the fruit. So why do these plants show no sign of blight on the foliage, but the fruit is all coming in diseased???

If anyone can tell me what is going on with my tomatoes i would be so grateful.

Monarch hunting!

It's that time of year again when we start hunting for Monarch caterpillars. The county mower come through and mow down the milkweed along the sides of the roads. So we collect as many monarch eggs and caterpillars as we can find before they come. Monarch caterpillars eat only milkweed, and the butterfly population is+ declining because so much of the milkweed is removed/destroyed by people who think it's 'just' a weed.

We love to raise monarchs inside, watch them transform and release them after they emerge as butterflies.



The first Milkweed plants we came across were covered with they guys. These are Milkweed Tussock moth caterpillars. They also love to feed on milkweed and can commonly be found devouring the leaves.



i lifted up another leaf and found this little snail hanging upside down. Milkweed is poisonous and very few critters can eat it, so i don't think the snail was munching on it..although i'm really not sure what it was doing.


i checked another leaf and found what we had come looking for! That tiny white egg belongs to the Monarch butterfly. :) We brought the entire leaf back home with us and stood the end up in some water so that it didn't just dry up.



After a few days we spotted this tiny newly hatched caterpillar beginning to munch. It is about 1/8" long.


Munch, crunch. Munch, crunch. It's getting bigger!



each day i replace the milkweed with a few fresh leaves. Yesterday when i picked a leaf there was a tiny caterpillar on it. So i brought it home to raise too. This weekend i'll take the kids hiking up the road and we'll bring back any that we find. i'll be sure to show pictures of their transformation and release.

Peep peep!!

This morning when i checked on my broody hens i heard peeping!!


Yay! Another baby chick!! This is number two so far this summer. Mama hen is still sitting on about 5 eggs, so i'm hoping we'll get a couple more in the next day or two.



It's so cute! It has a dark gray/black body with a reddish face. i'm not sure what kind it is...it came from a medium brown egg. i'm guessing mama was a Buff Orpington or Delaware and this little one looks more like papa, who is a dark brown/red banty.

i still have two other setting hens, so after all our chicken drama with missing eggs, missing chicks, egg swapping and chick stealing...i really hope we end up with a few more chicks this summer.

We're having a party!

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This next weekend we are having a craft party at our house!! This party is sponsored by Momselect and Creativity for kids. i really like hosting the sponsored parties, because it's like a party in a box! Almost everything you need is included to have a fantastic party, plus we get to send our guests home with lots of fun goodies!!

We'll be providing some simple healthy snacks and cupcakes to decorate. We'll have a few games, but most of our time will be spend creating personalized headbands, jewelry and tote bags.



We were so excited when the box came!! It was packed full of fun craft sets that we'll get to do during our party.


The next day we received two more giant boxes!!!! These contained the mini kits, and other items that will be included in each guests goody bag!! These kits are really neat!



Here is an example of some of the fun crafts that we'll be doing during our party. The girls will each get to decorate a headband, bracelet, tote bag and make pop art necklaces. The goody bags will include one of the mini sets, either tie-dye headbands or feather trinket boxes. They will also get their choice of coloring/activity book (these are awesome!) . i already picked up some boxes of crayons from the 'Back to School' sales, so they will get a box of 24 crayons as well, and i'll add a few more goodies.

This will be Sage's first party and she is extremely excited!! i will be sure to post a few pictures and blog after the party! i know it's going to be a big hit!