Meet our sweet 4th little daisy, Miss Meadow

Meet our beautiful little blessing named Meadow, born in November 2011. Her birth was not an easy one, but I am so grateful she is finally here. I am so much in love.

Doll hats

Today Raven wanted to try out the knitting loom. She got the hang of it pretty quickly and made some winter hats for her dolls. So cute! :)

Hats for Miss Meadow

Today I decided to break out the little knitting loom and make some tiny hats for Miss Meadow since she is due in December and she will needs lots of little warm hats for her sweet baby head. :) I haven't used my knitting looms in over a year (maybe two) and apparently I couldn't remember quite all the steps involved. So my first attempt at a baby hat resulted in what looked like a tiny pink fuzzy nest too small for a head...not quite what I was going for. lol Luckily hats number 2 and 3 turned out fine after I got the hang of it again.

Blackberry, our new kitten, helped assist. ;)

Fairy Gardens

Inspired by an adorable fairy garden that Karen, a friend of mine, made for her daughter I decided to make one for the girls to play with. Karen graciously gave us a wee fairy house to paint to get started with our fairy garden. :) Here are the finished results.

After seeing the Fairy Garden I made Raven decided she wanted to make one too. Here's hers. :)

While Googling ideas for Fairy Gardens for inspiration I saw that one of my favorite blogs The Magic Onions was hosting a Fairy Garden competition. Talk about perfect timing! :)

Baby Bantam

One of our bantam hens went broody recently, so just for fun we asked my Dad if he could maybe get us a few fertilized eggs for her to sit on so the girls could see our little bantam hens become Mamas. :D He got us a mix of 6 fertilized hamburg and seabright bantam eggs from my cousin Jim.

Yesterday one of the eggs hatched. :) We're hoping at least a few of the others will hatch too since both our hens are both intent to be a Mama to the one lone chick. They both cram their butts into one nestbox to protect their baby. LOL

Gwen's Platypus

Miss Gwen has been taking a pottery class and has been having a lot of fun learning about sculpting clay, using the pottery wheel and glazing pieces. This week she brought home one of her first creations a clay platypus. :)

Say hello to Sunshine and Buttercup

My Dad brought us two new bantam hens this weekend from a swap meet he attended recently. The girls named them Sunshine and Buttercup (Buttercup is the blackish one in case you were wondering LOL). So now we once again have fresh (although tiny) eggs! Yay! :)

Big News...

:)

More Sock Animals

The girls have been having so much fun digging through their sock drawers and turning all the mismatched odd socks that no longer have mates into stuffed sock animals. Raven made Ella a sock octopus which Ella decided she needed hair, a hat, and a scarf and set out to make the octopus a bright orange wig made out of pipe cleaners. lol Raven made a brown puppy and Ella also made a purple cat (also with a wig). lmbo

Soap Making

Raven's best friend spent the night and today they wanted a craft to do. So we decided to make soap using melt and pour glycerin. It's super easy to do. Just lightly oil the soap molds with a little bit of vegetable oil. Then melt the blocks of clear glycerin in a microwave safe glass bowl covered loosely with plastic wrap for about a minute or until all the soap is melted but not boiling. Add color and fragrance drops if desired. Stir and then pour the glycerin into the greased soap molds. Let them cool and harden for about 2 hours or until set and then remove from the molds and voila you have soap! :)

They made sunflower, sun, and bee shaped soaps.We only had a few molds and more glycerin than we had molds, so we used a few silicone muffin cups to make "Reese" cup shaped soaps as well. They turned out really cute. :)

Sock Bunnies

Today we made sock bunnies at our friend Karen's house. She found the idea online at Family Fun. (You can click the Family Fun link for complete "how to" directions). We used stuffing in our bunnies rather than the dried lentils it suggested to make our bunnies softer and cuddlier. The girls had so much fun making their Easter sock bunnies and they turned out really cute. :)

Our Homeschool Room

It's amazing how many homeschool supplies, art supplies, craft supplies, chemistry sets, books, and assorted educational stuff you can accumulate in just a few years of homeschooling. They were beginning to take over our tiny livingroom. Not that I mind having globes and oodles of books and maps in our livingroom, I really don't, but we were just running out of room for everything. So we decided to clean out the back room of our house that used to be my craft studio years ago (but has for the past few years just been a catch all room for assorted junk no one knew where to put *rolling eyes*) and turned it into a homeschool room to store the majority of our supplies. It took me a few days of cleaning, organizing, decluttering, and moving around stuff but we finally finished it. The kids love it and apparently so do our cats. LOL :)

Look what I found in my garden...

The first daffodil this Spring! :)

Mindfulness & Finding Joy in the Everyday

Today I spent the day spring cleaning. :) With the weather so warm, so lovely, and so spring like it totally energized me. So I decided to give the kids a spring break day off from homeschooling, cranked up the radio, opened all the windows to let in the fresh air, and pulled out everything in the kitchen a drawer or a cupboard at a time and sorted, organized, purged, and cleaned, all the while singing at the top of my lungs praises to God and focusing on the ways I could bless my family with a clean (or at least cleaner....I still have a long way to go lol) house. :)

It felt so good. So cathartic. So healing and best of all we can actually find things and nothing falls out now when you open a cupboard. Bonus.


"If I am incapable of washing dishes joyfully, if I want to finish them quickly so I can go and have a cup of tea, then I will be incapable of drinking the tea joyfully."

-Thich Nhat Hanh

Thought for the day...

Plant kindness,

Harvest love.

A Lovely Poem

A friend of mine posted this poem on fb the other day. It really hit home with me about how I feel being a Christian and I wanted to share it with you.

When I Say

When I say, “I am a Christian”
I’m not shouting, “I’ve been saved!”
I’m whispering, “I get lost!
That’s why I chose this way”

When I say, “I am a Christian”
I don’t speak with human pride
I’m confessing that I stumble -
needing God to be my guide

When I say, “I am a Christian”
I’m not trying to be strong
I’m professing that I’m weak
and pray for strength to carry on

When I say, “I am a Christian”
I’m not bragging of success
I’m admitting that I’ve failed
and cannot ever pay the debt

When I say, “I am a Christian”
I don’t think I know it all
I submit to my confusion
asking humbly to be taught

When I say, “I am a Christian”
I’m not claiming to be perfect
My flaws are far too visible
but God believes I’m worth it

When I say, “I am a Christian”
I still feel the sting of pain
I have my share of heartache
which is why I seek His name

When I say, “I am a Christian”
I do not wish to judge
I have no authority
I only know I’m loved

Copyright 1988 Carol Wimmer

Talk to the paw

I thought I would share some cute pictures of our pets I recently took. The one with Raven and our Siamese cat Daisy is my favorite. It totally cracks me up every time I look at it.

Signs of Spring

Today was a beautiful day. The sun was out in full force. Oh how I have missed the beautiful sunshine! It was pretty windy, but that just made it the perfect weather for breaking out the kite we found thrifting a couple weeks ago. :)

Raven also got a chance to try out her "new" digital camera. She has been really interested in wanting to learn more about photography. We had so much fun taking photos around the yard of all the little signs of Spring that are beginning to show themselves....the tiny crocuses, the daffodils just beginning to wake up from their long winter slumber, and the little lacy Love-in-a-mist plants that are beginning to sprout in the garden.

Grandma came over with her new puppy for a walk and Ella picked tiny bouquets of flowers and we sat in the wooden swing magazines in hand and soaked up the sunshine.