terriks, There are lots of great recipes at the joe cross website. These are some of my favorites: Carrot Apple Lemon Juice This recipe makes 2 servings. Ingredients: 4 apples 4 carrots 2 lemons, peeled Directions: Rinse all ingredients and cut to size for your juicer. Add ingredients to juicer. Enjoy! A lot of times I sub a grapefruit for one of the apples Green Lemonade Juice Ingredients: 6-8 kale leaves (Australian Tuscan Cabbage) 3 handfuls spinach 1 green apple 1 cucumber 2 celery stalks 1 lemon Directions: Rinse all ingredients and cut to size for your juicer. Add ingredients to juicer. Enjoy! Green Citrus Juice This recipe makes 2 servings. Ingredients: 2 green apples 2 oranges, peeled 6 big handfuls of leafy greens (kale, chard, spinach, romaine, etc.) Directions: Rinse all ingredients and cut to size for your juicer. Add ingredients to juicer. Enjoy! I usually sub out an orange for a grapefruit in that too. Mostly those make about 32oz. Gazpacho Juice 4 plum tomatoes ( I usually use 2 tomatoes and 2 carrots) 1 large cucumber 2 celery stalks 1 red bell pepper 1 small red onion 2 cups parsley (leaves and stems, roughly chopped) 1 lime the site below is also great. you can plug in your ingredients and it will give you recipes. I started out buying a juice a couple times a week from a juice cafe, then every day, then I got a juicer. trying it out when someone else makes it is easier and cheaper at first. :) there are also a lot of juicers out there and you have to figure out your goals before you buy one. We have two. a centrifugal and a masticating. one is MUCH easier and faster to use than the other. once you start making them every day you start subbing and come up with your own recipes. I try to use cabbage, kale, bock choy, broccoli, romaine, spinach, swiss chard, etc in the green lemonade. I just use two each day and switch it up. I usually have two 32 oz of the green lemonade a day. Here is a link that might be useful: recipe site

biggest stresses have always been the deep cleaning (you know, under the furniture, wash the blinds, wash the walls, vaccuum corners, etc), followed by getting the "extra" theme-oriented decorations done. Last year we did a little better, and managed to get done cleaning about 2 hours before the party. But this year, I'd really like to just have the whole day of the party to do nothing but a quick vaccuum (to get the dog hair right before people show up) Sounds like you need some other way to deal w/ the deep cleaning--maybe you do one of those things every month, or something. But even the deep-cleaning is easier when you don't have to move the clutter, or the week's accumulated chores, out of the way first. Word to the new moms out there . . . be careful of what traditions you get your family used to. It may turn around and bite you some day! Hoo, boy, is that true--I invented a tradition where the stuffed bunny turns into the Easter Bunny and brings the basket--and I've had to go searching high and low for the stupid bunnies! (every kid has their own individual Easter Bunny, in our house) And it doesn't matter now that they don't believe it anymore; we've still got to have the stuffed bunnies!

Flylady isn't someone someone incubating houseflies. She's a lady who offers advice and assistance along the line of getting organized, especailly regarding housework ... sorry, I don't know her website (and a visit to this house would confirm that). As for my routine ... I try to get most things done, about once or twice a year. A few weeks ago when I thought that I'd either have to buy some more underwear (and how much more than over half a dozen or more with tired elastic waistband and half a dozen fairly new ones does one need, as one approaches 80?) or do a small wash and either hang on basement line or start up the dryer ... we had a mild spell and I was able to do some washing to hang the clothes on the outside line. My friend of over 30 years (who's offered to drive me around) came to bring her income tax, the other day, and commented that some straightening seemed to be needed. How right she is! I only had to move a couple of things to give all three a place to sit. I have a number of dried-out tomatoes still left in cardboard trays from the time that I was ripening them in here that should be dropped back on the garden plot - there were 25 trays, in the beginning. Still some in the basement. I hope that you're all enjoying spring ... after this about-the-earliest-ever Easter (with snow on the ground). ole joyful

We live in Northern Virginia (7b) and leave our pond (900 g) going all year long. The pond covers the width of the backyard of a townhome overlooking a golf course. We use a pump to move the water from the pond to the top water fall where it spills into a bifurcated stream that then meets in a small ponding area and drops from another waterfall into the large pond. So, for maintenance in the spring and fall we check to make sure vegetation hasn't started growing into the pond. From time to time, tree roots will try to invade by growing along side the liner and then into the stream. We clean the settled leaves from the bottom of the pond with a skimmer, the excess mud out of the stream and then with a scrub brush clean the filter on the end of the pump. I also thin out the irises that grow in the ponding area as they can completely take over. This takes about a half day in spring and again in the fall. Once or twice a month I check the vegetation and check for algae growth. Weekly I check the water levels and the PH once or twice in the summer. This weekend it was in the 60s so I did all of this in a Sunday afternoon. In winter, the water movement keeps the pond from completely freezing over. It may look frozen on top but the water continues to move underneath. Often an ice layer forms over the pond but there's a cushion of air between the pond water and ice layer so it stays insulated, it doesn't get cold enough for the pond to freeze completely over. Over the years we've used a pond heater, an air exchanger and bubblers which helps keep the pond from freezing over and also helps to aerate the pond. I find that the bubblers proved to be one of our best assets and we now keep them going all year long. Hard to believe they have lasted so many years in all kinds of weather. We also put a mesh screen across the pond in the fall to capture the leaves; it also helps to keep critters out during especially cold winters. Raccoons are crafty, they devastated our pond one year when we weren't careful about how we laid down the screen. We didn't want it to get all caught up with the ice that formed along the waterfall. That was a mistake! Let me know if you have any other questions. Am glad to help! It's really such a wonderful addition to our life and has been fairly easy to maintain. It's a natural part of the landscape and has worked out so well for us. FYI, keep koi, fantail goldfish, shubunkins, tadpoles/frogs, snails and other aquatic plants so that there is a natural balance. The pond has attracted a significant amount of wildlife from visiting turtles, birds, skinks, and the occasional snake and/or raptor (the small birds seem to attract the winter raptors). Since water flows regularly we've never had problems with mosquitoes though we did also purchase mosquito fish just in case.