Make Something Monday #12

Today, I wanted to share these two little owls that I made for a swap. These are made from yet another adorable Bit of Whimsy Dolls pattern. They sewed up so quickly, I think I had two completely made in about an hour. Well, take that back. Everything that I needed to do to them in the sewing room. I still had to add their faces and sew them shut after stuffing. Still--they went together so quickly and easily. I loved this pattern. Holly and Finn each grabbed an owl when I brought them out of the sewing room for finishing touches, and I considered just letting them have them and whipping together a couple more. But the deadline for the swap was close, so I finished them and snuck them away from the kids when they weren't paying attention. I'll make a couple up really soon for them. I think I will use flannel when I make theirs to make them extra soft and snuggly!

Far out...

What type of Mother Hen Are You?
by Montessorimom.com: Educational Resource

Do you like to take those little "personality" quizzes? Some of them are pretty silly, but it seems like I just can't pass others up. Have to watch them because they can be time suckers, too. Does it really matter what flavor of ice cream I am? This one looked fun because it was about being a mother (I am!) and chickens (I have!) so I went along for the ride. I think the answers like, letting my kids wear whatever makes them happy even if it's tutus and fireman hats to the grocery store got me the groovy mama label. Go figure. Pretty far out, huh?

So what kind of Mother Hen are you?

Wordless Wednesday #7

"Tree vs. Barn"
Score: Tree-1, Barn-0

Tie One On!

Heads up for another great giveaway over at The Apron Goddesses. This week you can win a copy of The Kitchen Linens Book or The Apron Book by EllynAnne Geisel. You can also visit EllyAnne's blog here. The Apron Book is actually already on my wishlist in my craft books club. I've just been waiting for a good sale and extra pocket money to coincide so I could get it. Maybe I can win it instead! The Linens book is just out and although they say not to judge a book by its cover, I just can't help loving that little teacup!

It worked!

Shutting Heckle up for the night did the trick. Nobody was crying in the morning, and Bella had a nice full udder. It was so satisfying to get more than a few streams of milk. I didn't measure it, but it looked like around a quart. I know the most accurate way of knowing how much you are getting is by weighing the milk, but I just strained it into a container and chilled it. And don't you think she's smiling just a little in that picture?

Here's little Heckle, who seems to get bigger by the day. He's a heavy little armful now and not so easy to hold onto.

And for fun, here's a couple pictures of our cats who I don't think I've ever shown before. They are named Salt and Pepper. I'm sure you can figure out who is who. We adopted them as kittens from the Humane Society, which was actually cheaper than getting a free kitten somewhere and having to take it to the vet for first shots and spay/neutering. They are about a year old now.

And while we're at it, here is our neighbor's bull. He runs along the fence and scares me. I look at those few strands of wire and know he could come straight through if he wanted to. He is so huge!

Enter Milkmaid

Tomorrow I'm going to milk Bella and hopefully get some actual milk to show for it instead of the two teaspoons I dump in the cats' bowl on the way back into the house. Although I have been milking Bella, I have been getting almost nothing from her. This is apparently because Heckle is taking all the milk for himself. So one way of dealing with this is shutting the baby away from the mama at night so you can milk the mama first thing in the morning and then let the baby go with her during the day. That was my plan from the start, but when we lost Jeckle, I felt bad shutting Heckle by himself. I thought about leaving Heckle out with Betty Bob and Bambi and shutting Bella up for the night, but Betty Bob is sort of bossy and I didn't want her to butt him without his mama around to protect him. So I thought of shutting Bambi up with Heckle because she seems to like him. They will play together in the yard some, and Bambi has fallen to the bottom of the pecking order among the adult goats. But I felt bad splitting up Betty Bob and Bambi because they are very close. They sleep cuddled up together at night, and although Betty Bob is the boss, she doesn't try to keep Bambi in place like she does Bella. I think this is because Bambi knows her place and doesn't present a threat to Betty Bob. So in the end, I just put Heckle into the pen by himself when I fed them this evening. The crying from the goat barn almost broke me when we got home from eating dinner out. Bella and Heckle were both in the barn making a ruckus. She was standing right by the door to the pen maaing for him, and he was inside crying his head off. The goats are right outside our window, and I don't hear anything now. So I'm hoping they've all settled down to bed. I feel so guilty...

Arghh...apparently he felt my guilt vibes because he's crying again. Obviously I have never let my kids cry it out because I can hardly manage to let a goat do it! I'm not going out there...Be strong.

First Day of Spring!

Spring has sprung
The grass has ris'
I wonder where the flowers is.

Daffodils have been spotted waving their lovely yellow heads. Yesterday we traveled an hour south and saw pretty flowering trees in bloom. Things were greening up!

We planted 15 raspberry bushes this afternoon. When I say we, I mean I took the twisty ties off the plants that were in bundles of three and carefully separated each root and placed them with the utmost care in the holes that Paul had dug. While I was doing this, Paul was putting Quikrete around the bottom of posts he had cut down from small trees and put into holes he had dug. Then I supervised while he crawled around on the ground packing the dirt in around the bushes. Then I took some water and gave each new plant a tiny little drink because the soil was already very damp. Tomorrow we are going to put fencing around the berries in the hopes of keeping the deer away from them. Meaning, I will cheer Paul along while he does the majority of the work.

raspberries, originally uploaded by Caramdir.

Just Bead It!

I just found a great giveaway going on over at Diana Rambles. She is giving away a set of pink beads from Kristin of My Art and the Mom in Me. As usual, I am skidding in just under the deadline which is at midnight central time today! I have bought from Kristin before and these beads are just so neat. They are made from newspaper--what a great way to recycle! I knew they were made of paper mache, but they still surprised me when they arrived. They are so light! One of the sets I bought had the sweetest little flowers painted on them. They will soon be gracing the tail of a Purple Dotee doll I am going to be making. I'll be sure to post a shot of her when I have made her. So hurry over to Diana's and enter the contest and be sure to check out Kristin's Etsy shop, Paper Mache Beads.

Wordless Wednesday #6

"Here's a box of trouble..."

Happy Blogiversary to Jillybean!

Jillybean over at The Post-it Place is celebrating her first year of blogging with a bunch of giveaways! Head over there to check it out and wish her a happy blogiversary! (I was a bit finding out ab out this due to recent computer troubles--so hurry because the deadline is tomorrow at 5pm.)

Make Something Monday #11

Since joining Swapbot, I have found myself practically unable to pass up any Dotee doll swaps. Dotees are little dolls (from 4-6 inches) with a hanger and a tail. They are usually embellished and often the swaps have some kind of theme. I have acquired a darling collection of the little hanging dolls for my sewing room. They hang sweetly from the edge of a high shelf over my sewing machine. I posted a picture a while back of the first Dotee I received in a swap, but I haven't posted any pictures of the Dotee's that I have made. So here is the little army of Dotees that I have sent out to places as far as Israel and Canada and quite a few states.

Back on the Net Again!

We're finally connected again. Not really sure why our other router crashed, but crash it did. We hoped it might be able to be reset so we didn't rush right out and buy a new one. But it took a while to find time to check it out because it's more complicated than I feel like going into and presumably nobody really cares anyhow! But I'm back now. Yay!

Things have been going well here. The baby is growing a bunch, but he's taking all the milk. I have been getting so little that I've been just dumping the couple tablespoons into the cats bowl before I come in the house! The plan was to shut up the babies from the mama overnight and milk her in the morning. But when the one baby died, I didn't have the heart to shut the remaining one up all by himself. He's a little bigger now and the weather is a little warmer, so I think I'm going to give it a shot this week. From what I've read, babies on the mama can actually take more milk than they really need. So I know that's why I'm getting so little from her right now, he's just taking every last drop! I'm anxious to see how much I will get with him off her for the night, though. And we settled on names for them. (Or I rather I did!) We're calling the mama Bella and the little guy Heckle. I was calling both babies Heckle and Jeckle after those two old cartoon crows, and it just stuck even when there was only one. (And thanks to those who added their condolences on the loss.)

And if you were wondering about the picture at the beginning of the post, Paul bought 30 pounds of seed potatoes to plant. I was like 30 pounds?! And he said, oh, it's not that much--only three little bags. It will be our first time planting potatoes, and I didn't even know he was planning to until he bought them! He got three different varieties, but with a typical male attention to detail doesn't know what varieties he bought. He's planning to get them planted this coming weekend. I have no idea how many potatoes we'll get from them, but I guess we'll have a better idea after this year! And here's a fascinating link to a page of potato myths. I found the last one particularly amusing and thought they should have prefaced the answer with, Potatoes taste best when prepared in fattening ways, but...(lead into healthy potato habits.)

He also set posts for our rabbit shelter. He decided to make it half for rabbits and half for greenhouse. He is just having them share a common wall between. So one side will be his greenhouse and the other side will be my bunnies. Hopefully we'll be able to get some next month. I've seen someone advertising New Zealand rabbits with regularity in our local Trader's Guide, so I think they probably breed them. I haven't called about them yet since we aren't ready for them and usually when I do something like that, we wind up deciding to get them and then scrambling to get living quarters together! So I'm trying my best to hold off and not wind up doing that again, since I am normally the one who winds up talking him into taking these things on.

Well, I should wrap up now, but I'll be back tomorrow for Make Something Monday--which I've missed participating in for the last couple weeks and am so glad I can participate again!

Sad Day on the Farm

This morning when I went out to feed the goats, one of the babies had died during the night. I don't have any idea what could have happened to him. Yesterday we cleaned the barn and put all fresh bedding down. Both babies were jumping around and acting fine. I was totally shocked to find him this morning already cold and gone. Tears were shed at our house this morning.

On a side note, our internet access is down at our house right now, so we can only connect by taking the laptops from the house to where we can get access. Which is slightly inconvenient to say the least. So that accounts for my lack of recent posts. Hope to get things sorted soon, but there's always a list of higher priorities to make it through first!