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Chaos & Compost, Fredericksburg, TX (2026)

07/08/2026

🌿☕ Morning, friends…

We may have been a little out of touch the last few days…

Pretty sure the Texas mosquitoes carried us off like some kind of alien abduction. We’re assuming they needed us for highly classified mosquito science experiments. We escaped with minimal emotional damage… and approximately three pints of blood missing. 🛸🦟

But we’re back.

The coffee’s hot. ☕
The garden’s happy. 🌿
The chickens are already judging our life choices. 🐓

Now…let’s find the ignition to our souls in the bottom of this cup of coffee. 🤪 ☕️

🖤 Stay wonderfully wild,
— Chaos & Compost
Minimum Space. Maximum Mayhem. 🌿🌙

07/06/2026

This weekend’s accomplishments include:
✔️ Surviving.
✔️ Forgetting what day it was at least twice.
✔️ Running almost entirely on caffeine, stubbornness, and emotional support animals.
✔️ Somehow still adding a few new recipes to the collection.

Honestly, we’ll take the win. 😂

Some weeks are for building garden beds and crossing everything off the to-do list. Other weeks are for listening to your body, moving a little slower, and celebrating the fact that you still showed up—even if it looked different than you planned.

Progress doesn’t always happen at full speed. Sometimes it looks like resting when you don’t want to, trying again tomorrow, and sharing a meal made with love anyway.

Thank you for hanging out with our wonderfully chaotic little family. We hope one of these new recipes finds a spot around your table this week. ❤️

With love, laughter, and a little compost,
🌿 Ashley & the Chaos Crew 🐓🐾🌙

07/04/2026

🇺🇸 Happy 4th of July from our little corner of chaos. ❤️🤍💙

Today we’re celebrating freedom, family, dirty hands, feathered drama queens, muddy paws, purring supervisors, garden victories, and all the beautifully imperfect moments in between.

Whether your day is filled with fireworks or you’re spending it quietly at home with the critters (our favorite kind of celebration), we hope you find a little peace, a lot of laughter, and at least one moment that reminds you life is pretty darn good.

Thank you for being here, cheering on our little homestead, laughing at our daily disasters, and reminding us that this tiny corner of the internet feels a whole lot like home.

Stay safe, hug your people (and your animals), and don’t forget to save a snack for the chickens.

❤️🤍💙

With love, laughter, and a little compost,
🌿 Ashley & the Chaos Crew 🐓🐾🌙

07/02/2026

🌙 Tonight’s Takeaway comes a little early this evening. ✨

Some days, living with chronic illness feel like you’re constantly negotiating with your own body and battling guilt the entire day.

You wake up with a whole list of plans… clean the house, tend the garden, play outside with the chickens, catch up on everything you’ve been putting off.

Then your body politely (or not so politely) says, “Yeah… we’re not doing that today.”

Those days are mentally exhausting.

Not because you’re lazy.
Not because you don’t care.
But because your heart still wants to do everything your body simply can’t.

Today was one of those days.

I spent most of it curled up on the couch feeling defeated, wondering if I’d let my family down by not accomplishing everything I had planned.

And then Salem happened.

She spent nearly the entire day tucked into my arm, completely content just existing with me. No expectations. No agenda. Just tiny purrs and warm little kitten snores.

Which is saying something…

Because Salem is, without question, a Daddy’s Girl.

Normally, if my hubby walks into the room, I’m immediately demoted to “acceptable temporary furniture.”

But today?

She chose to stay with me.

Meanwhile, Milo—our giant orange cloud disguised as a cat—was stretched across me like the world’s fluffiest weighted blanket, snoozing away without a care in the world.

Apparently the official household diagnosis was:

“Mom requires approximately 18 pounds of emotional support floof.”

And honestly…

Maybe they were right.

The laundry can wait.
The dishes can wait.
The chores will still be there tomorrow.

But moments like this…

Those are the reminders I need when my mind starts convincing me my worth is tied to my productivity.

To these little souls, I wasn’t failing.

I wasn’t behind.

I wasn’t disappointing anyone.

I was simply their safe place.

Sometimes love doesn’t show up by fixing everything.

Sometimes it curls up beside you, falls asleep on your arm, and quietly reminds you that you’re already enough.

If today wasn’t your most productive day…

I hope you remember that someone, somewhere, is grateful simply because you exist.

And that’s more than enough. ❤️

🌱 Until next time…

Keep chasing big dreams in small spaces, laugh at the chaos, celebrate every little victory, and remember…

Perfection isn’t required to grow something beautiful.

With love, laughter, and a little compost,

— Ashley & the Chaos Crew 🖤🐓🐈🐕🌿

Chaos & Compost
More Dreams Than Square Footage. 🌙

07/02/2026

Today, I offer you…
☕️🤣 COMEDY WITH YOUR COFFEE🤣☕️

Once again, the humorous humility villain has struck my life!!

📖 STORY TIME 📖

Last night I went out to tuck the girls in.

Simple enough, right?

Wrong.

Apparently the wind had other plans and blew their coop door shut before bedtime.

So instead of finding four sleepy little hens tucked safely inside…

…I found four feathery idiots stacked on TOP of the coop like they were waiting for the last helicopter out of a disaster movie.

So I start scooping chickens.

“Come on girls… bedtime.”

One by one they march into the coop…

Except Nyx.

Nyx had apparently decided she was no longer a chicken.

She was a confused Canadian Goose.

She wandered.

She stared into space.

She contemplated life.

She walked everywhere except toward the coop.

Meanwhile…It’s pitch black.

There’s something making weird noises out in the field behind my yard.

I’m trying very hard to be a brave adult because, for those new here…

I am ridiculously jumpy in the dark.

Eventually…

After approximately 47 years…

Nyx FINALLY decides the ramp looks acceptable.

She starts walking toward the coop.

I breathe the biggest sigh of relief and think

“Finally… bedtime.”

That’s when Willow—our tiny Head of Security —apparently decided this was the perfect moment to check on me.

Without making a SINGLE sound…

…she snuck up behind me…

…and gently brushed her cold, wet little nose across the back of my leg.

At the EXACT. SAME. MOMENT…as if plotted against me…

Nyx proudly announced what I can only assume was her first-ever egg song.

“BUH-GAAAAWK!!”

😳
Friends…

I experienced an out-of-body event.

I don’t know whether I screamed.

I don’t know if I levitated.

But I do know my soul briefly separated from my body and is probably still somewhere out in the yard.

Needless to say…

I’m doing a little extra laundry today.

And I’m pretty sure the chickens laughed themselves to sleep.

🌿 This mornings magic:

Sometimes the garden teaches patience.

Sometimes the animals teach humility.

And sometimes…

they all get together and see if they can make you p**p your pants.

Welcome to Chaos & Compost. 🤎🌿🐔🤣

07/02/2026

🍅 Tonight’s Takeaway…

This morning I walked outside feeling pretty proud of my garden.

I spotted a gorgeous, perfectly ripe tomato and thought, “YES! Finally!”

I picked it up…
Turned it over…

…and immediately said,

“Wellllll… shiiiit.” 😂

Turns out something else had beaten me to breakfast.

For about five seconds I was convinced my tomatoes and I were both having “one of those days.”

But this evening I wandered back out to the garden…

…and there they were.

Six more beautiful tomatoes, all ripening on the vine like nothing had happened.

Funny how life (and gardening) works like that.

Sometimes the first thing you find is the one with the hole in it.

Sometimes you only notice what went wrong because it’s right in front of you.

But if you keep looking, you’ll usually find there was a whole lot going right all along.

So today’s takeaway is this:

Don’t let one tomato convince you your whole garden is a failure.

Keep watering.
Keep planting.
Keep showing up.

Because tomorrow might have six more waiting for you.

Now if you’ll excuse me, I have a score to settle with whatever tiny tomato thief thought they were invited to dinner. 🍅🐛😂

07/01/2026

✨ Tonight’s Takeaway ✨

Confession…

I’ve been faithfully harvesting green beans every couple of days for the last two weeks.

This evening I proudly marched them over to the freezer…

…to add them to the rest of my harvest.

Friends.

Do you know what two weeks of green beans from a tiny backyard garden looks like?

A freezer bag full of hopes, dreams…

…and approximately 27 green beans. 😂

I actually laughed out loud.

Because if you measured success by quantity alone, you’d probably look at that bag and think,

“Well…that wasn’t worth it.”

But then I remembered something.

Those little beans aren’t just vegetables.

They’re proof.

Proof that tiny things become bigger things.

Proof that showing up—even when the progress feels almost invisible—is still progress.

Because life rarely rewards us overnight.

It rewards us after we keep watering.

After we keep weeding.

After we keep believing something is happening beneath the surface, even when all we can see is a freezer bag that isn’t even close to dinner yet.

Maybe your “green beans” aren’t actually green beans.

Maybe they’re paying off debt.

Learning a new skill.

Healing.

Losing weight.

Growing a business.

Being a better parent.

Whatever you’re working toward…

Don’t quit because today’s harvest looks small.

Every handful is building toward something bigger.

🌱 Tonight’s Takeaway:

The magic isn’t found in how much you’ve gathered.

It’s found in the fact that you kept showing up long enough to gather anything at all.

So keep watering.

Keep weeding.

Keep loving what you’re growing.

One day you’ll look back and realize…

The harvest didn’t happen all at once.

It happened one tiny green bean at a time.

🌿✨

— Chaos & Compost
More Dreams Than Square Footage

06/30/2026

“Alright, Team Spears won by a landslide…or maybe Chips staged a comeback. 😂 Time to put these cucumbers to work. Here’s the dill pickle recipe we’ve been talking about…and as an added bonus, a couple flavor variations too 😘 ”

06/30/2026

✨ Morning Magic from Chaos & Compost ✨

This morning’s harvest wasn’t overflowing.

No giant baskets.
No wheelbarrows.
No “feed the whole neighborhood” kind of garden haul.

Just…

One pepper.
One cucumber.
One tomato.
A handful of beans.
A little okra.
A few moody little tomatoes that insist on looking dramatic before they ripen.

And honestly?

I couldn’t stop smiling.

Because every single thing on this table started as a tiny seed that looked like absolutely nothing.

It spent weeks fighting Texas heat, surprise storms, bugs with personal vendettas, and at least three occasions where I was convinced I’d accidentally loved it to death.

Yet here we are.

A harvest.

Maybe not a magazine cover harvest…

But a real life harvest.

I think we forget sometimes that beautiful things don’t have to arrive all at once.

Sometimes they’re one tomato at a time.
One lesson.
One tiny win.
One ordinary Tuesday.

The funny part?

While I was admiring today’s little collection, Miss Abby was supervising from the background like she personally planted every single vegetable.

Management is exhausting, apparently. 😂🐶

✨ Today’s Magic:

You don’t have to harvest an entire garden to feel successful.

Sometimes the magic is simply realizing…

Yesterday, these were still growing.

Today, they’ll feed someone I love.

And that’s more than enough.

🌱💚

Now for the important question…

After yesterday’s flying cucumber fiasco, I think these little guys have officially earned their destiny.

🥒 Pickles.

I’m planning to share my favorite homemade dill pickle recipe later today, but first I have to know…

Team Spears or Team Chips?

Or…am I about to be influenced into trying something completely different? 👀

Tell me your favorite way to pickle cucumbers—I might just have to try it.

— Chaos & Compost
More Dreams Than Square Footage

Chaos & Compost

07/08/2026

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