Katiebird's Garden & Wildcraft

  I created a new website! It has my blog and the herbal products that I'm creating from the home grown herbs and flowers that I grow. Please come on over and follow me at: www.katiebirdsgarden.com        Recent events have encouraged—and maybe forced—many people to grow their own food. This isn’t new to humans, but since people started living in cities, residential lots became smaller, time has become sparse, not many people were growing their own food. Grocery stores are abundant in most places, home delivery enables us to order things and receive them almost instantly. But people seem to be feeling the need to come back to the “roots” of supporting themselves, at least a little bit.      So, you feel the need to garden.   Before going out and buying all the seeds, you should think about why you actually want or need to do it. Some things that pop into mind could be, wanting to eat fresh (or maybe clean/more organic) food, reducing gro...

 Well Hello! I created a new website! It has my blog and the herbal products that I'm creating from the home grown herbs and flowers that I grow. Please come on over and follow me at: www.katiebirdsgarden.com   I think its been years...yes it has. We've done a lot of things: our son is 9, I've had a couple different jobs, we own a home. But I still feel the need to create and write about it.  This blog started with the garden and I'm going to continue with the garden!  I now have a raised bed garden in our back yard, made up of 12, 3x4' steel beds. It looks really nice and produces well also. I started them last year with 8 beds. This year I added 4 more and also surrounded the garden with a flower garden! Its so beautiful, so full of pollinators and also the rogue critters.  Since it was a lot of cubic feet to fill, I chose to follow the hügelkultur route. I filled the bottoms with 6" of dead tree logs, sticks and bits. Topped that with tons of decomposing lea...

I created a new website! It has my blog and the herbal products that I'm creating from the home grown herbs and flowers that I grow. Please come on over and follow me at: www.katiebirdsgarden.com   My husband loves loaded baked and mashed potatoes.  I decided to create a soup based on his slight obsession.  He loves this too.   Loaded Baked Potato Soup 2 Yukon Gold potatoes, diced 1 rib of celery, diced 2 small carrots, finely diced (adds a bit of sweetness, but aren't totally necessary) Small yellow onion, diced 1/3-1/2 c. bacon bits/pieces (REAL bacon, not the fake kind) 2-3 green onions/scallions, chopped 2 T butter 1 c.-1 1/2 c. (more or less) chicken broth  1/2 quart cream (skim milk if you want to make this sorta healthy, but it's just not the same) 1 can cheddar cheese soup Pepper Melt the butter at med-high heat, add yellow onions and cook until almost translucent, then toss in the bacon during this to warm up the flav...

I've been a little busy since my last post!  Only 6 days after my last post, we welcomed our son into this world!  He arrived 12/11/12 at 4:37 in the morning.  He's a true joy and is a wonderful baby.  I will be working on some better posts soon, but as most of you know babies keep you busy!  

So after the scary appointment and hours in the L&D triage on Tuesday, I had my normally scheduled BPP appt on Thursday.  My hubby met me at the front of my office building as usual at 2-ish and we went to my appt.  Well, my blood pressure was in the 150s...which is bad.  So they let me sit and rest a bit and did the other normal appt. things like measure my belly, etc.  and then at the end it was even higher.   My OB was not smiling or sugar-coating anything when she said we need to go to the hospital ASAP and get monitored for 24 hours and I am in no way going back to work.  Bedrest for sure.  We were a little freaked out, as she said if my BP didn't go down and stayed around 160 as it was, they may have to induce!  Eek, I was only at 34 weeks!  We went quickly back to my office so I could grab my laptop, cords and clean my space up a bit, since I probably wouldn't be back until April!  Also told everyone that I wouldn't be back ...

As I read over my last post back in mid-November...I was happy to have no BP issues or protein in the urine...blah blah blah.  Well, the shit hit the fan, starting on my birthday (the 27th) of all days!  I was 33w5d. I had a regularly scheduled endo appointment and my blood pressure was elevated, which it had been just a couple random times at previous appts.  But never continuous.  I thought it was from the longer hike from the parking garage to the office, but guess not.  We then were looking at my insulin dosages and told my Dr. that the total daily dosage had gone waaay down the past couple days.  That worried her.  Other than that, my BG numbers had been pretty darn perfect the past months.  A1c was still at a 6.  She said she'll send an IM to my OB doc to discuss me.  I went on my merry way to head home around 4:00 pm.   Then, I had a thought to check my work voicemail   just in case  I had any messages.  I ...

Sorry I've been gone!  We've been working on getting lots of projects done around the house and my pregnancy brain is trying to stay focused on working, house stuff and cooking a healthy baby!   The diabetes has been terrific still, the A1c was a 6 at my last appt and my BG averages for 7-14-30 days have been in the 120s.  I am poofing up though and my cankles are disgusting!  No BP issues  or protein, just poof!  I will start my NSTs (non-stress tests) twice a week with an u/s thrown in each week for good measure, on the 15th.  So things will really start moving along!  Baby is doing wonderfully and at our growth scan he was at the 60th percentile.  I'm happy with that!   The nursery is getting gorgeous, the crib was put together the other night.  I will be posting pictures when we are done with the room.  Shouldn't be too long!  My Hoosier cabinet is also finally in the kitchen!  We're using it without the doors...