Turkey Day Decorations

A few years ago I went to a fantastic fabric store in downtown Rochester, which has since gone out of business. It was when I was just starting to do crafty/sewing "stuff"so in my naivete I didn't realize just how totally awesome the store was. Too bad, because I would have bought a lot more stuff! I did grab up some of these mattress springs, without a clue as to what I would do with them when I got home, but they looked fun.
Inspiration struck, and I made springy-turkey decorations, or as my friend Sue calls them "boingy things".

I traced each of my kids hands onto brown felt and then made a stuffed turkey out of it... sort of like what is happening over at Bella Dia, then sort of slid them onto the spring (the wire goes right through the body of the turkey). I love getting these out every year. My children seem to be growing up so quickly (don't you hate how that happens?) and this is a nice reminder of when they were smaller. The very first year I had these on display I had a bundle of wheat stalks inside each one. It looked pretty neat that way. Maybe I'll have to go get some more.

The next year I saw a great Thanksgiving banner at pottery barn kids (the link may not be the actual one as it was a few years ago and they don't make it any more- but it's close). Of course after looking at the gazillion dollar price tag, I thought, "Hey I can make that! And so I did. I think this is year three with the banner and year four with the boingy things.

I also made a funky-looking turkey table decoration. But since I don't have a nice table to put this on he gets hung on the door. (Don't you just love the little baby sock lying there? It belongs to the wee one who is sleeping in my lap right now.)
I love that the Thanksgiving decorations are somewhat sparse and simple- just like I think the holiday should be. OK, well, maybe not sparse... I do love a nice big Thanksgiving meal, but I like how Thanksgiving brings me back to what is really important... the small stuff, right? (I wrote the post in the link in 2006)

And speaking of small stuff, check this out....

our hen's very first egg!!! Discovered last night by a very excited 11 year old! Oh- and don't forget to leave me a comment, any comment, just say "Hi" and you'll be entered into my making amends drawing.

Beautiful Day

Yesterday was great. The kids had the day off from school and the weather was gorgeous! We had planned on going with a group of friends to Stokoe Farms but since we had gone to Long Acre Farm the day before with family, we were pretty burned out on corn mazes and such.... and we were still recovering from Hudson's 9th birthday party extravaganza... so we hung around at home instead. Hudson spent nearly all day putting together his new Lego sets. He got a lot of new Lego's for his birthday.

Ethan spent a good deal of the afternoon creating his "masterpiece" in chalk on the cement slab that we call our side porch.

He said he was finished, so I took a picture... then he changed his mind and went back to work. I love this version of it though. It looks like a Picasso face, doesn't it?

Cate and I feed the chickens a huge feast! Soy beans and corn from the farmer's fields, tomatoes, a huge zucchini, a rotten pepper, apple slices, carrot greens.... just about anything we could find that they might ingest.
Alex asked me to make her a leaf crown. There is probably a better way to do this, but I just braid the stems together and add a new stem every third "twist" or so... kind of like french braiding.

She and Cate dressed up like "fall fairies" (I made Cate's crown from flowers) and played in the leaves. Alexandra seems so mature sometimes for her nearly 11 years, so it is so nice when she acts childish and lets go and does something like this!

Then to top it all off, when I went out to the compost heap I saw this on a tree. Alex's doing.... warmed my heart!

More Freezer Paper Stencils

We used the freezer paper stencil technique to create peace sign shirts for our children's choir to wear as they sang "Imagine". The project moved along pretty well... I cut the stencils, another mom ironed them on and we let the kids go nuts with the paints. IMO the negative images turned out better (where the peace sign is white)...but they all looked pretty darn cool. After service a man came over and asked my sister and I how we made the shirts, so I gave him a quick tutorial and a big sheet of freezer paper (it was still in my van from the night before when we all got together to paint them). Sometimes it's nice to feel like the craft boy-scout...always prepared.

Cate gave it a try too. I cut out a large butterfly for her and set her up with some paints. I did have to help a little... mostly to make sure she painted right up to the edge of the paper to make a nice clean line. I'm a little anal like that.

She was quite pleased with the results.

And remember this picture from the other day?? See the pile of zucchini?

This is what happened to it today.....

Today

Look at what I picked this morning!

I need to make some more sauce or these babies will go bad I'm guessing. My husband and I are good for about one tomato a day each- unless we make a pizza or something, which we will probably do tonight- but the kiddos just are not tomato eaters. I can't really fault them. I didn't like tomatoes until I was an adult. I think it was a texture thing.

We are having some chicken drama around here... the two boys are making everyone CRAZY! They are such beautiful birds and for the most part not a real problem at all. But the crowing, oh God. The crowing, or as I call it, the cock-a-doodle-doing, is making for some tired people around these parts. I do not have a problem sleeping through the noise, but my husband does. And we used to let the birds roam free, so one morning when Justin went out to go "kick the damn birds" (he really can't kick them because we can't catch them) and he stood in door of the back porch and was scared half to death when one crowed from BEHIND him... it was already on our porch.... our enclosed porch... like a stalker. I thought it was pretty hilarious! He did not. And, during their free-roaming days, they would go up on my great aunt and uncle's front porch and crow at 5am. Not a good thing for 75+ year old people. So every night we have been waiting until they (the roosters) fall asleep and then we sneak up on them, catch them and stick them in their coop. This seems to keep the crowing down a bit- or at least muffle it enough that we can all sleep. But now, to make up for it, after being released from their coop they crow ALL FREAKIN' DAY LONG!

We called our local humane society as we know they accept farm animals, but the lady said that they have too many roosters already and that they would just euthanize them. That's not ok. If they are going to be killed, they should at least be eaten. And honestly, I just feel too bad to do that to them. I mean, they are kind of our pets, and I'm not planning on eating my dog any time soon.

So if you know anyone who wants a loud but pretty rooster, let me know!!

Well, hello...

Yes... I have disappeared again. The end of summer is upon us and I am trying to take it easy (which is just not happening) while getting ready for the school year to start up again... but I thought I should stop in here and say hello... especially because we are leaving on Saturday for our annual trip to the Adirondacks, so I won't be around here for a week.

Now, this is what I have been up to (and why I am not here writing so much lately) and just some other cool stuff I thought you'd like to know:

• We got another chicken. Introducing Amigo! She was from the same group of eggs that were hatched at the school where my sister teaches, where we got McNugget and Fries. My sister felt bad that the two chickens she brought gave to us originally ended up being males, so she brought us a little girl. Her kids had already named her... I know, it doesn't make any sense... but we kept the name. We usually call her "MeeGee" anyway.
She is very affectionate (can chickens be affectionate?) and loves to be held. Maybe because she is terrified of "the boys" (whom I have taken to calling Dip and Dab because they are so dumb and do everything together). The kids LOVE her.

Speaking if the kids... here is a rare picture of the 3 of mine all together... each with a chicken friend. This may have been the last time "the boys" let us hold them. They don't like to be held.

Sometimes MeeGee does weird things like jump up on my uncle's back....

....or find her way onto our enclosed porch and try to roost on a shelf.

This is what the two dumbies are usually doing.

Ok... other non-chicken related "stuff"...

What we have up to lately:

•Watching the Olympics.... I just love them. Winter, summer, doesn't matter... I love the Olympics.

•Ethan is taking an art class at The Mill... the same place Hudson took one a few weeks ago. This one is a week long deal for little guys. He is enjoying it, but I am thinking that, my god, I could offer classes like that for kids out of my house next summer!! But maybe not... do I really want more kids here???

•My parent's put in a pool and we have been swimming like crazy people over there. It's awesome. They put it in as an alternative to taking the entire family (which would be all my siblings and their husbands and all of our children- so like 26 people in total) on a trip to celebrate their 40th anniversary that will take place on the 14th of December. The kids swam for about 4 hours today.

•We have been letterboxing some more. We are even getting ready to plant our own box... our very first!!

•We are all a little sick... Hudson threw up today (then he felt GREAT and swam for 4 hours... crazy kid). Ethan and I have runny noses and red eyes. Hope we feel better before we leave on Saturday.

•I picked about 10lbs of tomatoes out of my garden today and so far have made one big batch of sauce. I am too afraid to try canning, but I will freeze it instead. Also have been picking lots of zucchini. Made two delicious loaves of zucchini bread yesterday, and also have been grating and freezing zucchini so I can make it all winter long. We may need to invest in a chest freezer.

• Ok... not about me, but also cool... my sister hung out with Ty Pennington last night... fer real! The Extreme Makeover Home Edition crew is in a nearby town doing a house and my sister ran into Ty in a bar last night! They played some video game together. She said he's really really skinny.... and kind of dumb.

Enjoy your last weeks of summer.... see you when I get back!!

Random

Today my sister and I put on a little treasure hunt as a Sunday School lesson prior to our church's annual Service in the Park. This was designed for a mixed-age group of kids, and the kids who participated were from 5 to 12 years old. I think it worked out well because there were some easy clues that they all got, and some harder ones that the "big" kids helped the younger ones with.

Here is an older child helping her younger brother read a clue.

I printed the clues on my printer and then attached random keys I found laying around my house. Only 1 key would open the treasure box. (One child wanted to keep his key and I had to say no because one of the keys was to my back door!)

We started by handing them a clue, which led to the hiding place of another clue and so on and so forth. The kids had to figure things out like, "Head toward the rising sun" which would be east, or "Find the twelfth word in Mathew 14:13 and locate that object." (This could work for a birthday party too, but since we needed it to be a Sunday school lesson we tied biblical passages into it.)Here the clue said, "Face North. Pretend you are looking at number 12 on a clock. Now point to where 10 would be..." Its was easier for some than for others!

Reading more clues.

After all the clues were found they lined up to see if their key was the special one that would unlock the treasure! (Also, we had 14 kids doing this and only 9 clues and it worked out fine... there were no hard feelings if someone did not have a clue card and key, and lots of swapping and sharing going on.)

Once opened, there were final instructions and a treat. Inside the box they found a small treasure box for each child to decorate and take home. In each small treasure box were Smarties, because they were so smart to have figured out all the clues, a compass necklace to decorate and wear to remind them to always be on the right path, and some small gold coins. One small box had a treasure chest shaped trinket. The lucky finder of the trinket got to keep the big treasure box!

My sister and I set up a table for painting and decorating the boxes and the necklaces. We really didn't offer much, just paint, glue, glitter and beads, but the kids loved it! It all worked out really well and we were super pleased with the lesson and the resulting creativity.

Here are a couple of the necklaces. I got the idea from Jean at The Artful Parent to use Sculpey to create them. I stamped an actual stamp (that you would normally use with ink) into each one before I baked them.And this is my son Hudson's finished box. I wish I had taken pictures of the other kids' too.

Ok... moving on.... here is a bag I made for my daughter's friend's birthday. I guided Alex in the fabric choices, but she made the final decision. We also made a freezer paper stenciled shirt for the birthday girl, but I forgot to get a picture of it :( Also in the bag was a cool lip balm, a little notebook with the b-day girl's initial on it and a bag of potato chips. (I know...strange selection of items, but Alex picked it all out.)

Now, just for fun... you've seen this picture before... it is of my neice Gabby with one of our chickens, McNugget, on May 27th.
And here is Gabby holding McNugget just the other day! Let's just say chickens grow fast! (And poor Gabby broke her elbow the other day, but it doesn't slow her down one bit!)

Chicken Update

My how they have grown!And I'm pretty sure that at least one (McNugget) is a rooster...he cock-a-doodle-do-ed today. Crap.

This is their "play pen" or as my brother-in-law calls it the "chicken tractor", because we can move it around the yard and the chickens till up whatever area they are in. We've moved it about 6 times in the 2 months we have had them and they have done no permanent damage to the yard (not that I really care if they did). The top has two removable pieces, one solid, to give them a little sun protection, then other is screened to make it lighter. We can easily slide the tops around or take them right off, to feed and water them, or hop inside if need be!

They love to roost on the edge of this little barn. My husband made this for my daughter to play with when she was 2 and in a "nay-nay" (horsey) stage. It was her Christmas gift, along with some Beyer horses that year. She outgrew it very quickly, and we had a handful of legless horses laying around for a while, but I was really reluctant to get rid of the barn. It has been a book receptacle, a toy box and most recently it sat empty on our back porch...until the chickens arrived. Now it is their sun shelter and their perch.

And isn't this the cutest little chicken house ever? My husband made it. It's nearly finished- just need to paint the white x's on the doors per my daughter Alex's instructions. The slanty part on the left lifts open to reveal a storage area for their feed and bedding. The other side opens up to the hutch itself, so that we can get the chickens in and out. There are two screened in windows for ventilation, and there is a perch inside. Because it is warm out we don't put them "to bed" every night, but when it starts to get colder we will. It is pretty comical watching the chicken get wrangled up out of the play pen and transported to the coop!