Bio

   My name is Claire Bonnstetter, I'm 19 and I love gardening, cooking (especially baking!), sewing, my sheltie, Snickers, Jesus and, like any good, Catholic girl, my Mama Mary! I guess I'm just your all around old-fashioned, domestic kind of girl! I also really, really like coffee...

   My family has had a garden as long as I can remember!

I suppose you could say it's in my blood. My great grandma taught my dad how to garden and now my dad has taught me pretty much everything I know. We try to grow everything as organically and GMO-free as we can, and I like to start a lot of my plants from seed.

   About two years ago my family went completely grain-free and mostly paleo, so it has been an adventure coming up with recipes and learning the ins and outs of grain-free baking! (You will see some recipes on here that I posted a while ago in our pre-grain-free days. Someday I hope to come up with grain free versions of them and I will definitely post them if/when I do!)

   One thing you need to know is that I LOVE growing (and cooking with) herbs! Every year in early spring, when it feels like winter will hang on forever, I love going to my favorite seed websites (go to my resources page for more info on my favorites!) and pouring over seed catalogs. It's fun to pick out which veggies will grow in our garden and which herbs I will use to fill the lovely milk crate herb garden that my Daddy built for me. (See Milk Crate Gardening for instructions on how to build your own! It's super easy, I promise!)

   I also love growing heirloom veggies, especially tomatoes, which I am starting to save my own seeds from! And I am super excited about a new gardening adventure this year - winter squash!

   I hope you enjoy the recipes, and hopefully you'll learn some new gardening tricks and tips that my family and I have stumbled upon over the years.

One of my senior pictures (spring 2014)

"Why are you anxious about clothes? 
Learn from the way the wild flowers grow. They do not work or spin.

But I tell you that not even Solomon in all his splendor was clothed like one of them.

If God so clothes the grass of the field, which grows today and is thrown into the oven tomorrow, will he not much more provide for you, O you of little faith?"

- Matthew 6:28-30