Growing is FUN

I am a mother to a beautiful daughter who is inquisitive and loves to explore.  I include her in everything I do around the house and love teaching her new things.  I am a firm believer in keeping kids involved and treating them like they are smart enough to do important things too.  They will live up to your standards you set for them. 
Gardening is a fun and easy starter family project.  It's relatively cheap, especially when you use seeds like me.  However, the best part about gardening is, it happens to be really fun :) 

Bella was only one year old when we started our adorable garden.  She was a good helper even at such a young age.  She was interested in helping Mommy plant some seeds, so I took off her shoes and set her right in the dirt.  She dug right in and began nourishing her love of gardening. 

She would walk out to the garden everyday and help me water the plants or pick fresh produce.  Think about all the wonderful things she was learning about our food and where it comes from.  She really respects living things and is so cute making sure her friends are careful around her flowers. 

Check out some pictures of our grand opening this year (2012)

Check out her gardening tools and bag. 

Prepping the soil for new seeds. 

She was trying to do exactly what I was doing.  She is my little "helper" and I love having her here to share these memories with.  Sure it would be so much easier to wait until she takes a nap but why rush and rob her of that fun experience?  This is something that she will always look forward to doing together. 

After we got the ground ready for seeds, we had to organize the layout and make sure everything had plenty of room.  By the way, my raised garden was purchased at Sam's Club but they are everywhere now.  The product is made of recycled materials and is very reasonably priced.  It's easier to make a raised garden and keep it clean.  It's also easier to access when it's at a raised level.  We actually stacked two on top each other and made a taller setup.  This garden doesn't look very big but it sure does produce enough for our little family. 

Then, we had to make labels for all our veggies and herbs.  This year we used Popsicle sticks but next year I will use something larger so she can decorate them herself.  She's just a little too young to keep her attention long enough to decorate ten sticks. Paint sticks are the perfect size to make each label unique and colorful.  My pop sticks are different colors coordinating with veggies or herbs and my lettuce!!!! 

After everything has it's place, it's time to start planting.  Bella was waiting patiently for this moment and loved planting the seeds all by herself. 

She was so careful and showed great fine motor skills.  Like I said before, they learn so much just by playing in the dirt.

Precious:)  It's moments like these that really make me appreciate the little things. 

After everything was done and ready to go, we stood back and admired our work.  We were sooo Proud!

I will keep posting on produce and fun, simple recipes.