I took this picture while back on instagram (over the summer). It was of the BFF’s new (old) dining table and some fruit she put in a bowl for me to eat. It happened to look like a smiley face, so I took a picture. I love the editing that instagram allows you to do and how the picture came out. Though for those who follow me (@rubyellenbratcher) and wonder, I most often use vsco for my editing app.

My best friend has pretty much given me free reign to decorate her house, so whatever I tell her to buy (within reason), she buys. It’s a nice arrangement. She’s got a house to fill and I like to shop for house stuff, so I get to shop while not spending my own money. I love decorating! Anyways, she keeps telling me she needs wall art, so for Christmas I gifted to her (and John) this piece to put up in their home. It’s pretty large, I think it’s 24″ wide and whatever the coordinating measurement in height. I really love how the colors came out and I’m thinking about getting one printed for our home. I think it makes for such a fun print! Makes me wish I had time to have a little print shop of sorts because I think it would be fun to sell cute prints of pretty things.

While we’re at iphone apps, there’s this new one called vine and it’s like instagram, but it’s sharing little 6 second video clips. So fun and dangerous! If you wanna follow my videos just check out @rubyellenbratcher on vine! See my first little video here.

Well, we’re stepping into new territory and learning (Ben’s learning) all about how to cultivate a backyard orchard culture. Say what?!! Basically, it’s all about how to grow an orchard in a small space…

We live in your regular suburban neighborhood, in a tract home that we love (and are slowly infusing our own personality into), so while we have a decent size yard for being in Southern California, it’s still not that big. One side of it is already dedicated to our vegetable gardening (this side gets the most sun), but we wanted to venture out and start growing our own fruit trees too. Ben’s the lead on this project and honestly, I just have him tell me what it’s going to cost and what trees are going in, all the other stuff, it’s on him.

He’s been spending hours (and I probably should say days!) of research into this project and even with all his research, we have hit a few snags that has cost us more time (and money) to figure things out. He’s spoken to master gardeners, professionals, emailed people with questions, there’s just so much to learn and know that Ben really tries hard to do all he can to make sure he’s doing things correctly. First things first though, and we had to get all the grass ripped off from the side that was going to hold our mini orchard. Next, we had to go in and remove some dirt so that Ben could amend the soil. Here’s where the first snag came in, after we all have spent a day or so removing dirt, he did a drain test on the dirt and turns out we have really bad drainage even with the amended soil. After going back and forth for a solution that was going to be the most time efficient and cost effective, we decided to dig 2 feet deep and get all that dirt removed. OYE! Of course, that giant hole was going to be filled up with good dirt with better drainage and that’s what happened.

We found a company that came with a little bobcat to dig deep (can you imagine if we had to do that all ourselves?!) and then they hauled all that dirt out (we tried doing it ourselves first, but I’m glad we didn’t finish the job alone). While we were at it, we decided to rip up the rest of the grass in that area since we were doing such a major overhaul. We figured, might as well go all the way at this point and just take out all the grass since we had wanted to do that eventually. We had to buy giant trucks full of soil, which got dumped in our driveway, and Ben (and John, BFF’s husband) with another guy we hired to help, moved all that dirt to the back and filled up the hole. This beginning has been such an ordeal and has taken so much out of us already, but we know that the investment will definitely be worth it.

Now, we have good dirt in and so comes the tree planting. Last I thought, 23 trees were going in. Yes, I said 23!!! Ben informed me today that the number has been upped a little bit. Oh my world! Now, here’s the thing with a backyard orchard culture… you don’t let trees grow more than 5-7 feet tall and some holes have multiple trees in it. Sounds crazy, I know. This is just the beginning of our journey, so you can be sure there will be many posts to come and I will share more info soon. If you want to start reading about it, Dave Wilson has a plethora of information to get you started.

Do you grow any fruit trees in your yard? Any tips for us beginners?

This week we had a couple sunny, warm days in the 80’s and now it’s back to being cold and very rainy. I actually got to clean the big girls’ room and toss stuff. Then, I conquered our beast of a bedroom and really cleaned up (and tossed more stuff!). We tend to let clothes pile up and papers collect, so it was good to tend to these large, crazy piles of ours. It feels good to have a clean bedroom. I feel like I can think now and actually have some peace in my room. It probably won’t last long, but I will enjoy it while I have it. This weekend, I’m going to try and tackle the bathrooms. Wish me luck…

This week’s learned, links, and thankfulness…

Soul and Glow are slowly becoming partners. They’re starting to play more together… it’s quite a cute spectacle!

You know Brave is sick when she is no longer doing cartwheels, but I’m glad she’s back to doing cartwheels today.

Yes, I like wearing overalls. These were mine from highschool and I just altered the leg to a more narrow straight fit rather than baggy and I’m back to wearing them. I always wondered when I would don overalls again.

Avocado pasta is amazing! So quick and easy to make. I can’t wait to try different variations of it.

Excited for Danni’s shop opening. If you’re in the area, definitely go and check it out!

These DIY tights are funny and quirky!

I’m behind in emails (again!), so I will try to get some this weekend, so if you’re waiting for one, please stay tuned!

Thankful quiet mornings reading my Bible and listening to music that stirs my soul.

Enjoy your weekend friends! Ben and I have been knee deep in projects over the weekends and we both can’t wait until we’re done to actually do some adventuring with the girls again. It’s been way too long!

The big girls are sick over here and I’m trying to convince myself that I’m alright. We cancelled teacher meetings and dance class for today and this morning while we were all feeling icky and yucky, I made a chocolate loaf. Thanks to Trader Joe’s, I just put in the eggs, oil, and water and then we had something yummy to eat. Well, there were a few other steps, but box mixes are so wonderfully easy like that. This particular one was a peppermint chocolate one and it was, “Eh.” True and Soul liked it, but Brave and I weren’t crazy about it. I’m thinking if you warm it up and put a dollop of mint ice cream on top, it would be a whole lot better. Too bad I don’t have mint ice cream.

And just so you know, chocolate loaf doesn’t really work in curing whatever it is we have. I was kind of hoping it would. Here’s to trying to taking it easy, though I feel like I have a million things to do and there is no time for a break.

We love to read books over here and we love to make projects inspired from the books we read. True and I read this book together (Brave is sick and Soul was napping) and after, True wanted to make pom poms just like the one on the top of the boy’s hat. I taught True how to make poms and she did it! She got tired of wrapping the yarn around, so she stopped at 4 and then we connected them together and hung it up! We would have eaten an orange too, but I hate peeling oranges (I don’t mind cuties though!). Oranges make my fingers feel funny.

When we told Ben what the hanging pom poms were inspired by, he said the book would have inspired him to buy an orange tree. I seriously believe he would seeing how he is planning on planting 23 trees in our backyard, but that’s another post for another day. I’m excited about this little series because reading does stir up a whole slew of inspiration. We love reading and making over here, especially that True, she’s total craft (and reading) queen in our house! Seriously, if she isn’t reading, she’s probably making something. Brave, on the other hand, is the dancing, cartwheeling queen.

Tuesday was a very productive day, but maybe that’s because I woke up at 3:30am and couldn’t go back to sleep, so I had breakfast, spent some quiet time reading my Bible (encouraged by this post to start at the beginning of your day), then started working and doing stuff around the house. I put on pandora and had the Crystal Lewis station on all day and it felt good. I was able to clean some parts of the house and work on other things that needed to get done.  All the messes aren’t gone, but it just feels a little bit better to sort through some of them. We have tons of messes everywhere, so I don’t think the messes will ever completely disappear.

The big girls were off at school and it was just me and the babies. I had two cups of tea to keep me going, lunch at 9am, and was singing all day long. I almost wish I would wake up that early everyday to get things done because it’s hard to get things done once the girls are awake and fighting. Realistically though, I love my sleep. Typically, Ben and I wake up between 5:30-6am to work out, which I think is still pretty early.

Are you an early riser or can you sleep well into the afternoon if that were allowed? I never really slept past 9am when I was in college, sleeping in more than necessary always made me more tired. My motto was wake up early, get everything done that needs to get done early in the day, and then you have the rest of the time to play.