Catch Up

Here are some pictures of what's been happening around here lately.

We got a few inches of snow the first weekend in March.  It was a wet snow and clung to everything. Very pretty!

I got my hair partially dyed blue!  I wanted something fun, and figured a pop of color would be fun!  It's hidden under the top layer of hair, so it's not super obvious right away.  I love it. It's been about 3 weeks now, and it's starting to fade a bit, so I will probably have it dyed again in a couple weeks. I may add some purple in next time!

I hadn't made a cake in a while, so I made a rainbow cake. Fun with food coloring!

Elmer loves to follow the sun beam around and lay in the warmth, even if that means he has to lay on boots!  Silly boy.

My brother and his fiance just bought a house, so we went for a visit and helped them get some work done before they moved in.  David and Chris worked on patching drywall, and I primed one of the bedrooms.  Devin and Kylee helped with a little bit of everything.

Peppa, one of the New Zealand does (rabbit doe, not goat doe) had a litter of kits.  She had 9, and 7 are still with us.  This is her second litter, although she didn't make a nest for the first litter and they all froze.  She's doing a great job so far with this litter.

We dyed eggs yesterday, and Angie, Isaac, and Ernest came over.  David and Ernest stayed outside talking to David's Aunt Nancy, and the rest of us got to work.  I forgot to get pictures of the finished eggs!

I was making deviled eggs, and I saw how some people put the hard boiled egg white in dye, and then they have Easter colored deviled eggs, so we tried it with a few of the eggs. It looked neat, but I prefer my deviled eggs white I think.

We had lots of dye left over, so I put it to good use. I got some white roving and had some fun making some rainbow roving.

I'll have to get a better picture of the dry roving.  I'm surprised at how bright the colors turned out!  Now that I look back at these pictures, I notice a theme.  I guess I've been a little tired of the dreary winter, because I have been loving lots of color lately!

Kylee helped me make some egg rolls today.  We baked them, instead of frying them. They were pretty good, but I added too much ginger to the filling. I'll have to tweak my recipe (no recipe, just a little of this and that tossed in a bowl) and try again.

Shoveled-Out Sunday

We finally started to thaw out a bit today.  The sun was shining bright and warm enough to start melting some of the shoveled areas, so moving around isn't as difficult.  My neighbor surprised me again by bringing over his snowblower, and he cleared our entire driveway and up near my car, plus gave me a little pathway around to the side of the barn.  It took him about 20 minutes...and would have taken me forever to shovel!

The dogs were SO excited (well, Buford especially) to be out and have a clear area to walk in.  I took this little video of Buford, who wouldn't contain his excitement.

The dogs think the paths are their own racetracks.

I finally got paths shoveled out to the animal areas. It makes it so much easier to feed instead of trying to walk through all the deep snow. 

I cleared around the sheep gate so I could open it, instead of climbing over it.  Plus I cleared a path for them to get to the waterer.  They haven't been drinking much, and I even put a bucket of water right in their shelter. I saw Bean eating snow, so that explains it. I guess they'd rather eat snow than drink.  

I heard a bunch of geese landing in the field next door, so I walked allll the way out there to see if I could get some pictures.  The snow geese landed first. 

Then I heard a bunch of upset geese and the Canada geese landed.  By the time I got out there to take pictures, there were only about 50 Canada geese left. They saw me and didn't stick around.  I did get some pretty snowy farm field pictures though.

And a few of our place.

Kylee had some snuggle time with the dogs.  Mutual love!

 Devin and Kylee spent some time with the sheep. Devin will be showing a lamb for 4-H this year, so he's going to start working with his lamb early.

We spent a good part of the weekend stripping our porch posts.  They had layers of nasty peeling paint.


We are using a a combination of scrapers, a sander, and a heat gun.  It's slow going, so David just picked up a chemical stripper (not that kind) so hopefully it'll go faster.
























It's going to look so much better after they're painted!

Another thing I'd like to do to improve curb appeal is replace the hideous porch light!  I hate that thing!

My Silly Dog

My dog is so silly.  He has dog toys, but he prefers to carry around these little stuffed mouse cat toys.   Sometimes you can barely see it in his mouth.
















The dogs recently pulled the stuffing out of their dog bed (I guess they got bored when we were at work one day) and we had to throw it away. They were bed-less for a while, and they thought the idea of laying on the actual floor was beyond terrible. One day Kylee got out of her beanbag, and while she was gone Buford stole her seat.

We have a soft fleece blanket on the couch, which Buford loves very much.  He tries to lay on it whenever he can, but the other night Elmer stole his spot.  Buford was so desperate to lay by me on the blanket, he squeezed in between Elmer and me.  He didn't look very comfortable.  He stayed there for a while before he finally gave up and went to another spot on the couch.

Even though we got a new dog bed, it's made of durable material, not soft fleece, so they think they can't lay on it.  Their preferred spot is on top of us, on the couch.  Elmer lays on David, and Buford lays on me.  Not that they're spoiled or anything.

Here are some random things that have been going on around here.  I need to blog about the rest of our Florida trip, but I'm procrastinating.  :-)

We've had some strong storms lately, and there have been some very neat looking clouds.

The kids got a color stick for campfires, and we tried it out one evening.  You put the stick in the fire and the flames change colors.  I couldn't get a great picture, but you can see the blue flame in the center of the picture, near the top. 

I cast on the Three Tams pattern and have been making fairly good progress on it.  Using 2 yarns slows my knitting down a bit, but I've been able to knit several rows each night. 

Kylee is going to sew a dress to enter in our county fair, so we started working on it the other day.  I helped out with cutting out the pattern pieces.

I'll post pics of the progress on the dress.  I love the fabric, she did a great job picking it out!

I painted her nails to look like strawberries.  I used red nail polish, and the green and black are just acrylic paint.  I covered everything with a coat of clear so it'd hopefully stay around longer.

I'll end with a picture of Elmer, taken by David.

New Camera Testing

I recently turned 33 and my birthday present was a splurge.  It's double duty, mostly for taking pictures of soap and other Purl & June products, but also a camera for family pictures.  David did some researching and one of the cameras he found was the Canon EOS Rebel t3i.  It got great reviews as an entry level DSLR, but still is capable of professional work too.  I got a kit that came with a camera and 2 different lenses.

The camera came in the mail on Wednesday (yay for Amazon Prime and 2 day shipping!) and I charged the battery right away but was too intimidated to do anything else but look at the camera sitting in the box.  Yesterday I got brave and turned the camera on and took some shots.  Most of the shots are of the dogs, and of items on the coffee table.  I can't wait to use it more and try really hard to read the manual.  My ADD comes out when I have to try to read long instructions, but I really want to learn about what this bad boy can do!

Here's a sample picture. I hope to be posting lots more pictures, and hopefully I'll be worthy of this camera's potential!

I can already tell is a huge, huge improvement over my $40 Black Friday special camera!

The Weekend in Pictures

I finally separated my doe #2 from her son, because she's due next week (not bred by her son). 

Doe #1 is due any day now.

The goats are still in the barn, at least for a few more days. 

Got another round bale.  Foolishly thought I could unwrap it and pile loose hay (all 1500lbs) in the barn.  Ended up with a horrible allergic reaction and half the bale still outside.

The "feed wagon" for the sheep.  Taking wagon loads of hay to feed, and piling on grain or whatever else needs to go that way. 

Buford had fun in the snow.

And so did Elmer...