Questions Answered and Daily Update

Yesterday, I spent my sewing time working on a quilt. My Mom gave me all the material to make a lap quilt for Christmas (my first big quilting project). I finally started on it. So far I got 3 blocks put together and then sewed them together into the first strip. I have 9 more blocks to make and sew into 3 more strips. Then I can sew them together into the quilt top (minus the bindings and borders). I’m really excited at how it’s turning out so far. I’d post a picture, but my camera needs batteries. I’ll get Marty to bring some home this evening and take pictures to post then.

Today, I plan on working some more on the quilt and I’d also like to work on making one of the grocery sacks into a purse. I have a few ideas I’d like to try, I’d love to make myself a super cute purse! I also got an order to make 4 of the grocery bags for one of my blog readers, as soon as I can get to the store and buy the fabric, I’ll get them made and sent off.

One of the pigs got out again (Bucket). That darn pig has gotten out 4-5 times this past week! He’s easy to get back into the pen, luckily. I think he likes to escape to to give us some extra exercise! We just fill a bucket with feed and he always just follows us back into the pen.

This is the pig that’s going into the freezer :-). The other pig (Packer) is perfectly happy to stay in the pen. We’re looking for a female so we can start having piglets, but no luck so far in finding one. The chicks are all doing well, although we lost one of the older black/white ones to a preditor. Something dug under the chicken tractor it looks like and we’re missing one. We got that fixed, so it should be much more preditor proof. We now have 15 chickens :-). We’d like to have about 100, so I imagine we’ll be ordering more in the near future. We really want to have a wide range of animals, we’re buying them as we can afford them. Right now we’re really looking for a female pig, and cheap goats (to use for grass control –lawn mowers– mainly). We eventually would like to have cows (especially a milk cow!, but also for meat), milk goats, sheep (something with fleece that would make goood yarn), all sorts of poultry (turkeys, ducks, geese), Marty wants quail, and we’d like some horses/mules. We really want this place to provide the majority of what we need to eat. We’ve actually been tossing around the idea of getting a horse and buggy for making trips to the town closest to us (7 miles), especially since gas prices keep goin up. Marty’s even thought about riding a horse to work (6 miles). Of course we’d have to save up for a horse, can’t afford one right now (not to mention all the stuff to go along with a horse…saddle, etc) 🙂

Question: I LOVE the new blouse you made for yourself…can you tell me what pattern you used? I am not the greatest at sewing, but that blouse is so cute I might just have to get better! The possibilities are endless, but I would love on in black, brown, turquoise…love it! ~Anne

Answer: I used the McCall’s Easy Stitch ‘n Save pattern #M5451

Well, I need to get off here and eat lunch. Then it will be nap time for Riley and school time for Colt. I’ll do a bit of sewing during that time as well. Have a great day everyone!

Country Sunflowers by T.C. Chiu Available at AllPosters.com

Chicks & Random Stuff…

Today, Colt, Riley and I moved the small chick brooder to the back porch. The Americana chicks seem to like their new home. This will make it so much easier to take care of the chicks! Plus, it makes it where Riley can go out and watch them as often as he likes unsupervised 🙂 He sure does love his chickies!

And for the random stuff…

Today, Colt and I were playing around thinking of new ideas for Veggie Tale movies…I know…we’re weird 🙂 Anyway, he just came up with one that was so funny! The Veggie Tales in “The Cukes of Hashbrown” (a take-off of “The Dukes of Hazzard”.) The car would be called the “General Leek” instead of the “General Lee”. Colt is just so creative sometimes! Just had to share that bit of randomness from our life!

Weekend Update

We had a pretty busy weekend. Friday, we went to the feed store and bought 6 americana chicks. They were nearly out of chicks, or we would have bought more. I guess we’ll just have to mail order some from Ideal. We cam home and Colt got them all set up in the brooder. We als0 stopped at a couple of garage sales, there wasn’t much, but I got several skeins of cotton yarn (with 2 crochet hooks), “First Steps in the Bible” by Ruth Graham Dienert (looks like a family devotional book), and a plastic shoe box full of little booklets about natural health/herbs/nutrition. I also found a cute skirt with sunflowers all over it and a bunch of underwear for Riley (NEW!!). I spent a whopping $7.

I also finished up an apron I’ve been working on….

Have any of you bought one of the new digital conversion boxes for your TVs? We bought one on Friday and I can’t believe the difference. We live in the boonies and don’t pick up TV channels really clearly. With this thing we’re pickig up channels crystal clear, plus there are some new channels you can only get using the digital box…including a great PBS channel called “Create”. It shows all those home improvement, cooking, and hobby shows….I could watch it all day!! (But I won’t! HEHEHE). It is a big improvement over the reception we use to get from bunny ears!

Saturday, Marty had to work, so we visited a couple more garage sales. One garage sale had a deal where you could fill up a plastic grocery sack for $3. So I stuffed it full with 2 tubular pyrex bread pans, a wash board, drafting lead, and drafting pens.

This is what the bread pans look like. I thought it would be a fun way to bake bread 🙂 Plus, the price was right, since I paid $3 for both of them and the other things in the bag.

Colt put in the new starter for the Jeep…

Riley played with his new toy tools….

I modeled my new blouse that Marty bought me as a late birthday present…

Riley modeled his new shoes we bought at the Children’s Place outlet. They were on sale for $12 and they had another sale where you got 50% off all sale prices, so we got them for $6! Aren’t they cute!

Saturday night, we watched a REALLY good movie. It’s called “The Ultimate Gift”. I can HIGHLY recommend this movie. It has Drew Fuller, Bill Cobbs, Abigail Breslin, Brian Dennehy and James Garner. It’s about this young man who come from a wealthy family, he’s a bit spoiled and walks around life as if it’s just a big party (funded by his wealth). His grandfather dies and leaves him 12 “gifts”….tasks that challenge him to become a better person. It’s rated PG and is one of the “Fox Faith” movies. Anyway, this was an excellent movie that I can’t recommend enough! Marty thought this was one of the best movies he’s seen in a LONG time. It’s based on the book of the same name by Jim Stovall. We got it at Walmart for $13.

Now I’m going to try to find the book, when I get some extra money 🙂

Last weekend, we also watched another good movie. It was a Hallmark movie called “Thicker Than Water”. It had Melissa Gilbert and Lindsay Wagner. Melissa Gilbert finds out that her father (a wealthy judge) was married to a rodeo queen before he married her mother and discovers that she may have a sister (Lindsay Wagner). She helps her sister save some wild horses, learns about herself, and finds love. It was touching movie that was really enjoyable (even Marty liked it!). I got it at Walmart out of the $5 bin.

Sunday, Marty took a nice long nap (he had to work a ton of overtime this past week and he was TIRED!). While he was napping I made me a new blouse….

Then Sunday night we settle down to watch a little TV, when we saw a bunch of lights shining in our windows from the street. Kind of scared us! We stepped out and it was the Sherrif’s office. Some one had reported our wood fired hot water heater, they thought it was suspicious looking 🙂 I think the sherrif’s got a pretty good chuckle over the whole thing, especially when they saw what it really was! Gave us a good scare though, it was nearly 10 at night and we were getting ready to go to bed!

Well, that was our fun (and a bit exciting) weekend! Today, it’s back to the usual…housekeeping, homeschool and taking care of farm chores! Have a great day everyone!!

Today’s Projects

I took the bag pattern I’ve been using and altered it a bit. I gave it longer straps and shortened the bag a bit. I was hoping to get a purse. It turned out really cute, but I need to make the straps a bit longer for me. Other than that, it turned out great!

The purse/bag straps fit the kids really well, so I will probably use the altered patten for them as is and just lengthen the straps for the one I plan on making myself. I will probably make some of these for the Etsy shop.

This is a dish cloth I crocheted yesterday. I plan on making several of these for the Etsy store 🙂

Gardening Fun

Marty’s been slowly but surely getting our garden going. Last week he planted red black-eyed peas. Yesterday he planted corn and watermelon. We’re going to be having a small garden this year, not as big as years past. Here’s some pictures I took of what’s going on in our garden yesterday.

this is one of the red black-eyed peas coming up

Riley helping Dad rake the garden

Another Bag Finished

I finished up another grocery bag today! I really like this one, as sunflowers are my FAVORITE! My sewing machine is giving me fits, so I need to have Marty take a look at it again. Something’s going on with the bobbin, I keep getting “rat’s nests” on the bobbin side. So to say the least, this bag isn’t the neatest, but it will do for me.

I would have finished this one in about 1 hour, if my sewing machine hadn’t been giving me trouble. These are so fun to make and could easily become addicting. Both of the boys want one to carry their library books and stuff in. Riley’s is going to be made with this cute “Bob The Builder” fabric I found, but I need to get some fabric for the lining. Colt’s is going to be made with this flame/dragon fabric, but I need to get some lining for it too. I couln’t find anything in my stash that would work.

Well, I’m out of here! I’ve got to get some more laundry done and I’d like to start on another knitted dish cloth.

Organic Food Coupons

You don’t often find coupons for organic food brands so when I do find them, I gotta pass them along

Muir Glen/Cascadian Farms Coupons
Go HERE and register. Then log in and click on coupons. You can then download these coupons in PDF format which means you can print as many as you want. Coupons expire 09/30/08!

Stonyfield Farms Organics Coupons
Go HERE and enter your email address. That will take you to a page with lots of coupons ranging in value from $.50 to $1 off many of their products

Earth’s Best Organic Baby Food Coupons
Go HERE to receive a coupon for $1 off 10 jars
Go HERE to receive a coupon for $1.00 Off Any 2 Earth’s Best Sesame Street Products

Seventh Generation Coupons
Go HERE and register. After you register and sign in, go back to the first page and get your coupons which range form $1-$2 off Seventh Generation products

Yogi Tea Free Samples
Go HERE and receive free samples of Yogi Tea

Yesterday’s Projects

Yesterday, I received a fun package from my sweet friend Kelly. She sent me the cutest fabric grocery bag that she made (which I TOTALLY forgot to take a picture of!). What’s more, she sent me a pattern so I could make my own!! I’ve been wanting to make this grocery sack for a while. I did pretty well until I got to the handles, the instructions were a bit confusing to me, so I ended up doing it a different way. Here is the bag I made…

The chicken fabric, I picket up as a remnet from Walwart. I lined the inside with a dark teal fabric that my SIL gave me. The lining fabric was a bit thick, so this bag was a little more bulky that I would have liked. But, I still LOVE it. It is so roomy! I filled it up with a carton of oatmeal and about 8 cans of tomatoes and there was still plenty of room for other stuff! This is a great pattern! I highly recommend it if you want to make your own grocery sacks! The next time I make one of these bags though, I’m going to only do it with one layer. I think that they will still hold up to regular grocery bagging use and by using only one layer, they will be less expensive to make. I’m also going to extend the handles on one of them and make a bag that can be carried on your shoulders, I think it would make a really cute purse!

I also finished up another knitted dish cloth.

Again, it was just a simple one. I need to buy some smaller needles this weekend and more cotton yarn. I also want to get some crochet projects done. I’ve got to start getting some stuff built up so I have some things ready when we open our Etsy store in a few weeks.

So, after I get homeschool finished up, I’ve got several projects to work on 🙂 Have a wonderful day everyone!!

Pretty Flowers

On the way back from dropping Marty off at the lake for his canoe trip, I saw the most gorgeous patch of bluebonnets and yellow flowers. I just love blue and yellow together! I just had to stop and snap a picture!

We’re Going to Survive

Well, Colt and I are feeling much better today…I think we will survive (GRIN!) We’re still feeling a little yucky, but no more fever!

Today we’re going to be meeting Marty for lunch, then run a few errands and hit a few garage sales. Hopefully we’ll come home with a lot of good deals! If we do, you know I’ll post some pictures. Tomorrow, Marty is going on his canoe/fishing trip. He’ll be back around lunch time, so we’ll probably do some more garage sale-ing and some general errand running. Tonight, we’re going to Walmart so I can pick up some cotton and wool yarn. I’m still on my knitted wash rag kick. I just ordered the cutest knitted wash cloth pattern that has a tractor on it. I’m just dying to give it a whirl! I’m also going to make some felted pot holders I think. I want to make some large ones that can be set on the table to hold hot pots and the like.

I’ve got a couple of projects I want to do this weekend as well. I’m going to make homemade toothpaste and I’d like to give making soap from scratch a try….depends on the weather and what else may pop up this weekend. I’m also going to try to get some family pictures taken in the bluebonnets, but that may have to happen on another weekend, as we had a pretty good rain storm last night and the ground it pretty wet.

Well, I need to get busy, I’ve got a lot of laundry to catch up on because I’ve been sick. I’ll make another post later if I find any good stuff at garage sales!