From our home to yours, Merry Christmas, and happy holidays!

I hope you and your family are having a wonderful Thanksgiving.

I’m excited to announce I accepted a position with b5media to blog for Mother Earth’s Garden there. I’ll continue to post home and garden ideas, products, tips and tricks, etc., but I’ll also be posting some great gardening information over there. So hop on over and check it out, then let me know what you think.

I truly am excited to be a part of the b5media team, they have a great group of blogs, and bloggers. Several of them were already in my reader, and since I’ve started blogging there several more have been added.

I love kids, and planning birthday parties. My sister and I plan several a year for our own children, and for others. We also run the Create-A-Friend website. I’m usually bursting with party planning ideas, so I started a party planning blog, The Kid’s Birthday Party Fun Review. Check it out when you get a chance, and forward the information to anyone you know who may be planning a party in the near future.

I plan to offer information on party activities, party themes, food, fun, cake decorating and more.

Don’t worry, I still love gardening so I’ll still be here too!

As an avid gardener preserving the earth and the environment is something I try hard to do. When I garden I only use organic fertilizers and pest control methods. I also try hard to leave the soil better at the end of the gardening season than it was in the Spring.

How do I do this? I compost everything I can, create habitats that encourage beneficial insects like the Praying Mantis pictured above. I also create a habitat around my home to encourage birds, rabbits, deer, squirrels, and other creatures to thrive. They may munch a little on my garden, but if they have other food available to them they tend to leave it alone.

We help encourage these creatures by planting plenty of trees and shrubs, we also have several nut and berry trees on our property to help provide food long into the fall months. Through the winter we have bird feeders, and even drop food out for some of the other animals if the winter is unusually harsh.

We try to conserve water, electricity, and gasoline whenever possible to save some of these resources for future generations. I love nothing more than sitting outside on a sunny day, or starry night and enjoying the world around me. I want my son to be able to do the same when he’s my age. That’s a huge motivation to do whatever I can to help improve our environment.

As part of my pact to interact more with other bloggers this month, I’ve been commenting on the b5media Family and Relationships Channel. They’re having a Blogtoberfest and giving away fun prizes for commenting on the blogs in the channel.

I commented on several of the blogs last week, and Gayla from www.supernannyrules.com e-mailed me to let me know I won! I won a gift from the Your Child Can Read collection.

The contest is still on through this week, so head on over there and see if you can win a prize.

Here are the rules according to Super Nanny Rules.

1. Watch for sponsored prize winning posts wearing the official Blogtoberfest button shown above.

2. Leave a comment on that exact post. Your comment IS your entry.

3. Check back with that post within a week and see what the prize is and if you’re the lucky winner.

Good luck!

Thank you B5 Media

I will be participating in Blog Action Day on October 15th. What is Blog Action Day? On October 15th bloggers from around the world will unite and post about the environment. Want to learn more check out this Youtube video about Blog Action Day 2007.

October is American Humane Association’s Adopt-A-Dog Month®, to help get the word out, Affurmation is having a blog carnival. The topic is stories about adopted dogs, or pets.

This is a topic that is near and dear to my heart. About two years ago we had to say goodbye to our beloved Australian Shepherd who we adopted about 14 years earlier. She was a wonderful member of our family, and I was never sorry she came to live with us.

A year and a half ago we adopted Emily, a beautiful Border Collie from Buckeye Border Collie Rescue. Emily is a wonderful dog, and tries very hard to please us. She doesn’t like to be scolded. You usually only have to tell her she’s doing something wrong once, and she won’t do it again. Her only vice is her fear of thunderstorms. She knows when one is coming before you can see it or hear it. She’s a very good weather dog.

I can’t imagine why anyone would give her up. But I want to say thank you to whoever did. She is a wonderful member of our family and we feel blessed to have her.

Our latest family addition is a Shih-tzu named Lilly, we adopted her this summer from a relative. She is barely a year old, and very ornery, but we love her fun attitude. Nothing upsets her she’s always happy (unfortunately even after you scold her for doing something wrong)!

I have to say puppies are overrated, adopting an older dog has many great perks.
1. Most are already house trained.
2. Many puppies go through a destructive chewing stage (this is when many cute little puppies lose their home). If you adopt an older dog, it will save your furniture.
3. They sleep through the night without accidents.
4. There are many older dogs out there who desperately need a home.

Instead of encouraging people to breed their dogs and have more puppies, adopt an older dog. They’ll be glad you did, and so will you.

My philosophy in life is to always try to be as kind (or kinder) to others as I would want them to be to me. I’m a firm believer in karma, and I believe you receive what you give. I was bloghopping this morning ( a really bad habit of mine), and I saw a post on this very subject. The post is called The Power of Nice Challenge.

So I am planning to make an extra effort to be nice in the next few weeks. I have my moments where irritation gets to me, and I’m not as nice as I could be. I’m going to make myself stop, take a step back, put a smile on my face and say a kind word wherever possible. Even if I’ve been on hold with the phone company (etc.) for an hour, I will be as polite as possible to the poor soul who finally takes the call.

My other goal this month is to interact with other blogs, and bloggers as much as possible, so I will be posting several posts this month for blog carnivals, and linking to posts and blogs I enjoy. I hope you all enjoy them as much as I do.

Are you up for the Nice Challenge? If we all join in just think how much kinder the world could be.

Leaves are great for the fall garden. There are many ways you can incorporate them into your soil. The simplest and most direct is to rake them up and spread them out on the garden. Work them slightly into the soil now to keep them from blowing away, then let them rot until spring.

You can also add leaves to your compost pile, just make sure you add the right combination of “green” items to balance the pile out and keep it heated up through these cooler fall days. Check out my earlier post on composting.

If you have finished compost available now is a great time to spread it on the garden, let the freezing and thawing of winter work the finished compost and nutrients into the soil.

You can also pile your leaves up and let them sit. The leaves will mold and rot by themselves, and by spring you will have a great additive for your flower beds.