WIP

Here's another Work In Progress that I have going on, among the many other WIPs I have!

I have had this idea rolling around in my head for some time--taking a frame and putting cork in place of the glass, then covering it in fabric, so that I can display some of my vintage flower pins. I have more around here somewhere. I tried to part with some and sell them on ebay, but I just couldn't bear to let them go, so they got swept into a box in the big office clean-up we did a couple months back. I need to dig them out so I can choose from some of my favorites and then hang them up in that blank space I have by the bed above my new lamp.

They haven't been pinned on yet, I'm still figuring out the placement and I still gotta find the other ones first. That blue and white one with the red center on the bottom? That's the very first one I ever bought, way back in high school, when I fell in love with all things "hippie" and that whole "make love, not war" era. Right towards the end of my senior year, I started going hippie and wore the long baby doll dresses, the big cloth headbands, birkenstocks, and scoured thrift shops for those cool vintage/retro clothes. When I signed my name, I would always add a peace sign, smiley face, heart and daisy beneath it. Sort of became my logo for a few years.

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Things are getting busy here, as if they aren't already. Andrew finally tilled the garden the other day and got most of it done before he ran out of gas. Found a few lost potatoes in the freshly-turned dirt, some of them sprouting roots, so they'll be replanted. Andrew has a day off on Thursday, so we'll try and finish the tilling and then play with his new chainsaw. So much we need/want to do and very hard to find the time to squeeze everything in. I have strawberry plants and asparagus crowns I need to find a home for and I need to go egg-hunting. The hens have not been laying eggs in the coop lately and eggs are not in the usual spots in the pole barn, so that means they are laying in the woods. sigh. I need to watch where they hang out so I can try and figure out where they are laying, or fence them in to force them to lay in the coop. Just another thing to add to our already long list of things to do.

I won't complain too much, I'm glad Spring is here and there is a garden to work in, children to play with, a home to live in and a husband that loves me. Life is good.
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Reprieve

This fella got lucky--

it rained all weekend, so I was not able to set up the propane to boil water and prepare for butchering. I'll try again next weekend.

I have 2 roosters, both as different as they can be.

This one is mean and ornery and if you turn your back on him and walk away,

he chases you and pecks you.

The kids fear this one.

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He attacked Peter a few days ago.

Peter usually stays close to me when the chickens are nearby, but they weren't around and Peter wandered by the chicken coop. The rooster came up from behind the coop and jumped poor Peter. Pecked his arms and jumped on him so that his claws raked Peter's face, back and neck. I felt terrible that I wasn't able to get there fast enough to prevent it, but it will not happen again-- He's going to be dinner now.

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The other rooster is a sweetheart. I'm sure he'll be happy to see his competition gone.

Just like I'm sure the hens will breathe a sigh of relief when there are no longer 2 roosters mating with them.
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Lighting Up My Corner

Yard sale season is starting up around here and I am raring to go! We didn't get out much last summer-- money, gas, money; but this year promises to be a little bit better and I have plans to go yard sale-ing! I already had some good finds at the yard sales last Saturday, and I found this little gem of a lamp:

It's the nicest glass lamp I've seen in a while and I just love it! It was in a box all jumbled together with other stuff and when I pulled it out, it had $3.00 written on a piece of tape stuck to it. I picked out something else and asked the guy how much, and he shrugged and said "a dollar?" Sold!!

Not bad for 50 cents, eh? Look at the pretty detail in the base.. I thought I might need to rewire it, but the cord is sound and it looks like someone else rewired it 20 years ago or so... So all I needed to do was find a shade for it.



Perfect! I have been looking for just the right lamp for my nightstand, and have been changing out the lamps for quite some time now. I think I must have gone through 6 or 7 of them so far, none of them feeling quite right.

Here's a corner shot.. I think it looks perfect!

It takes me quite a while to decorate, I have to live with the space to get a feel for it and then I can decide what I want to put there. I still have a couple of items I want to hang on the wall, but I need to finish them first. It is slowly getting there!

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Find anything good lately?

Lingering

Last Saturday, the 10th, I thought most of us were mostly better and we all went to the birthday party/easter gathering. Andrew and I were still sniffling, but the kids seemed to be alright.

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More than a week later, most of us are still down with the sickies. I am so sad that my children look like this most of the time:

Poor Sylvia.

There have been lots of early nights, much napping, lots of wadded tissues found here and there, cough drops to ease those sore throats, and extra blankets on these nice Spring days.

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Poor Andrew is hit the hardest, I think. He has chills and lots of sinus troubles and I think it may be a combination of the sickies and the pollen around here. Our local paper says it's the first time in nearly 100 years that apple and peach trees have blossoms at the same time and also a first is redbuds and forsythias blooming together. It's an explosion of colors and flowers here and oh so pretty to look at when we drive out.

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Nearly all our flowering trees are blooming, or have already bloomed-- the lilacs, dogwoods, azaleas, redbuds, rhododendrons, peach, pears, and cherries.

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Hopefully, we'll all soon be completely done with the sickies. I'm sick of being sick.

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Poor Tooth Fairy!

The Tooth Fairy has been extra busy this month! Gretchen lost her 2nd tooth on Monday!!

At least I didn't have to struggle with her to pull it out this time. She was playing on the swings with Evelyn and the swing bonked her and knocked her tooth out! It was already really loose, the permanent tooth was breaking through, and I was getting ready to pull it out anyway. So it saved me the trouble!

She came in all excited after her tooth came out and promptly put her tooth under her pillow for later. Good thing we're all not so sick anymore, so the Tooth Fairy was prompt this time around!

I just love those missing teeth smiles!

Have a good weekend!!
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Home Is Where The Heart Is

Even when life moves fast, things stay still. Like this picture of our van in the hub of a trucker's wheel, taken while we were driving 70 mph!

Today marks 5 years we have lived in our house. A date that is kind of hard to forget, considering it's the deadline for filing taxes (have you done yours yet??).

5 years of making this house a home-- our family growing from 4 members to 6 members; adding chickens and a dog; another cat.

I've never been one of those 'instant decorators'. The ones who as soon as they move, the whole place is painted and decorated within a month. There are still a lot of blank walls in this house, spots we have designated for family pictures, but have yet to take and frame said pictures.

We have only just found the best arrangement for our living room, a large rectangle that could easily fit our old living room 3 times over. We had the couch on each of the 3 available walls, even in the middle to divide up the room, but nothing felt right. We had the TV here, there, over there, how about here, maybe there, no, back over here again. We had the shelves on every wall, either side-by-side or split up on either side of the room. We've had area rugs, no rugs. And then, shortly after Christmas, the moving bug bit and we moved the room around again, and we have finally, finally found the perfect fit for everything. 4 shelves side-by-side all along one of the short walls and it looks so good! The couch is back in front of the window, the TV opposite. The chairs are always being pushed around by kids who can't seem to settle in just one chair or fight to share another chair. But by golly! We did it! The room feels right.

5 years of coming home to a house we enjoy living in. 5 years of tucking our children to bed and waking up to another sunshiny day. 5 years of gathering around the table to say grace and eat our meals together. 5 years of a life made better by living in a home full of love. It's been a joy to live here, to share this house with Andrew and the kids, and now my Mom as well. It's not the perfect house, we still dream of a different house, sometimes, and a different location, but for right now, at this time of our lives, it's a great house and it fits us. But most importantly, I'm so happy that it's with my family-- my husband and my children; because without them, there's no home.

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Gone to Chicken Heaven

Poor baby chick has gone on to chicken heaven.

We'll be having a little funeral in the afternoon.

I'm sorry, baby chick. Wish I could have done more.

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Nothing Stops

With all of us laid up with the sickies, life doesn't slow down. The kids are mostly better by now, though Peter still has a bit of a runny nose. Andrew and I are still rough but slowly getting there. My ears are all stuffed and I can't hear a thing, and I already have it hard enough with lipreading children that like to talk with fingers or toys in their mouths.

Things still have to get done around here, tummies still need to be filled, diapers changed, clothes washed... Soup was on the menu for several meals straight and I hoped we'd all feel better by Saturday for that triple birthday/ easter get together. We mostly were, so we went and had a good time, then afterwards on the way home, we stopped at our old haunts and shopped at the used bookstore and international food store.


Miss Evelyn lost her 8th tooth and 2 nights in a row the tooth fairy forgot to take it and leave money under her pillow. Blame the sickies, but luckily, while Evelyn was getting dressed, the tooth fairy must have flown in and did a quick exchange before we left on Saturday morning. Tooth Fairy must have been running late and was lucky not to get caught or he would have turned to fairy dust!

We are taking care of a injured chick... I'm not too sure how it happened and the who, what, where or why it happened, but a couple of days ago, checking on the chicks in their box, one of them was laying on its side with the others walking over it. I picked it up and while it was still alive and breathing, it was in a weird position and couldn't stand up. I separated it from the others and keep it in a warm box and I admit, I didn't have much hope for it. I searched and searched online for how to help an injured chick and there isn't much out there.. mostly for injured wild birds or a chick with a bad leg and one of the three comments to that one was "eat it!"

I have been giving her (I'm not sure of the sex, but we refer to it as a 'she') warm water with sugar mixed in, as it seems to be the standard for sickly birds, and she is still drinking, so that's hopeful right there. I thought maybe it was a broken neck because the position of her head is bent back to the side and upside down and she tries to stand but falls and kind of scoots herself around and around.

I wake each morning holding my breath as I check her, fearing the worse and am relieved that I find her alive, yet wondering what am I going to do if she doesn't improve? This morning was the best of all, she seems to be better somewhat, she is able to stand and walk and has had her first bit of food in a couple of days. I think maybe she has a broken wing, but I am no expert, so I can't really say. Her head still twists around in that funny position, but when she walks it looks almost normal again. She is so little though, compared to the others.

She's the little one in front, I brought up the other one for comparison. They are the same age.

She can't seem to hold her head straight and sort of angles it downwards to see where she is going. But she can feed herself now and drink water on her own, so that's a good thing!

This is her resting, you are looking at the top of her but her head is turned upside down. I don't know what to think or do. Time will tell. I keep her separated from the others and she is warm and the upside down bowl you see is to keep her from falling into the water.. I don't have an extra waterer and need to get one, I didn't expect her to live past the first night when I found her like that several days ago.

If any of you have any advice on what to do, I'd be glad to hear it.

Sick

50 percent of the people in this house are sick and two of them are the people that are supposed to take care of the other little people in here. Then before bedtime, 2 more little people said their throats hurt, so make that 83% of the people that live here are sick.

Can you believe I'm doing percentages while I have snot running out of my nose??? I must be really sick!

I hope we get better before Saturday.. we have a triple-birthday/belated Easter gathering to go to. The kids would be very disappointed if we didn't go.

I'm off to bed, don't be surprised if it's quiet around here for a few days... With my pounding head, stuffy/runny nose, scratchy-hard-to-swallow throat, I'm going to be conserving what energy I have to run after snotty-nosed Peter with a tissue!

Later, dudes.
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Grounded!

Remember these bottles?

I had a few more of these old glass bottles in the pole barn, waiting to be washed out

and used for more peach wine. I had maybe 5 or 6 more, along with some old brown clorox glass bottles and some other vintage glass jars.

They were in a milk crate and I was thinking about them last week;

thinking it was time to go and get them to wash out and get ready to separate out the peach wine into smaller bottles.

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My girls did this:

..smashed every single glass bottle and jar I had in there.
Ooooh! I was so mad!

This is where I suspect being able to hear would have come in handy::

I would have heard them dropping a heavy brick onto glass and hear it shattering.

They were grounded for 3 days and they are not allowed in the pole barn until I say so.

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It's all Karma come back to bite me in the butt.

When I was about 6, my mom had some canning jars in the basement and I wanted to poke a few holes in the lid of one to catch fireflies in. I didn't think to take the lid off the jar first, so every time I brought the hammer down on the nail, the jar shattered. I think I went through 8 or 9 jars before my mom caught me. She was so mad! At the time, I didn't understand why she was so mad, they were just jars. Now, 30 years later, I understand:: they were canning jars; they were blue canning jars; they were my Grandma's blue canning jars. Oops.

Grounding the kids is harder on me than the kids, I suspect. I was tempted several times to shoo them outside when they started driving me up the wall. When I threatened to send them to their individual rooms for the rest of the day, that settled them down for a bit. Maybe next time I ground them (hopefully there won't be a next time!), I'll make sure Andrew is home to help me play referee!

oh happy day!

First, check out the temperature it was today:

Yeah! 80 degrees! Oh! It was so nice out! Too bad the girls were grounded. More about that in another post.

And look! The bunnies have come to town!

Ok, seriously, have you seen the finger puppet tutorial over at Purl Bee??
You have got to check it out! It's so easy and good thing, too, 'cause I found out about it only on Thursday. I cut out a bunch of these in an hour, then it took me about 15 minutes apiece to stitch each one up. These are going to be in the Easter baskets for the kids!


All I have left to do is the noses and their eyes. I'm skipping the tails because I know my kids, and any pom-pom on there is going to get ripped off. I think they look cute as they are!

I made 5 so far... I'll be making a few more for my nieces and nephews.

We're getting together with other family a week later for an Easter/Birthday party, so I have time to do those later.

Aren't they cute?! How can you look at these and not be happy?

The brown ones are chocolate bunnies, of course!

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Happy Easter!

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