2010 End of Year Teacher Gifts

The end of the year snuck up on me this year, but I managed to put together 4 teacher gifts at the last minute. Like literally, the night before. I went with a strawberry/lime pink/green theme.

First I made strawberry and lime solid sugar scrub cubes.

Next I made some pink and green stamped goat's milk soap. I am just learning how to make stamped soap and this was my first attempt at using 3 colors. It was touch and go and I really didn't think it would turn out, but it they actually didn't look too bad!

And then I had already made some strawberry jelly, but had to raid my May hole in the wall, but that's ok since it's June and it's overdue for a change.

Finally I just had to put it all together...

The kids had great teachers and TA's this year, I hope they enjoy these and have a good summer!

Redneck Chic -Extreme Porch Makeover

Over the winter our porch got a little, how should I say this, redneck chic. It was out of control to the point I couldn't even look at it. The dogs and kids had completely claimed it as their own. It was beyond time to do something about it.

So we completely cleared everything off.
We gave away or sold the all the furniture on Craigslist.

I found some awesome metal chairs on Craigslist that rock (literally). When we got there to get the chairs, the lady mentioned that they had a matching glider. I fainted. I've wanted a glider for so long, and to find one that matched these chairs, I was giddy with excitement! Of course we had to run to a cash machine, but I wasn't leaving without that glider!

These are the springs that make the chairs bounce. I found another 1950-1960's style glider on Craigslist too that needs to be restored. Jason says it needs to be sandblasted so who knows when it will be ready for the porch.

I found some pillows at a thrift store to add some color.

And I found this at a thrift store too. I thought it went well with the furniture.

Then we added our ferns, which I hopefully will be able to keep alive until the fall thanks to the automatic watering system my dad installed a few years ago. Last year I decided to buy hanging petunias for some color. Even with the watering system I think they lasted only a month or 2. Ferns are much easier and hardier.

The landscaping left much to be desired as well.

I'll cover that in my next post.

May Hole in the Wall

I thought I should post pics of my May hole in the wall before the month is completely over. I haven't had too much time to blog this month since it's strawberry season and I've already had numerous "Jam" sessions. I made strawberry jelly, strawberry jalapeno jelly (yum!), strawberry lime jelly and strawberry lime jam.

Which brings me to my hole in the wall theme for May: Strawberries!

Several members of my family and I hit the thrift stores looking for anything strawberry related. It was harder than I thought it would be to find strawberry items, but we managed to find a few. My mom had a few things I borrowed and I filled the rest of the space up with strawberry jam and jelly.

I got this coffee mug for my mom when I took a behind the scenes tour of Wimbledon. Did you know that Strawberries and Cream is the traditional food to eat during Wimbledon?

I got these dessert cups at a thrift store and filled them with red and green marbles. They are up high so only the colors show through. We also added some walnuts painted red.

June hole in the wall coming soon!

Ghetto Chickens

It's official. We have ghetto chickens. We build them the Taj Mahal of chicken houses which you can read about here and and they prefer to slum it. The kids thought the chickens would like an old tire in their pen, little did we know they'd go and move into it. All 8 almost full grown chickens pile into the tire every night. I'm not sure how they even fit in there, the tire is not very big. I finally got some shots of the process tonight.

7 chickens in a tire, and the little one said move over, move over.

So they all moved over, one jumped in and one jumped out...

7 chickens in a tire, and the little one said move over, move over.

So they all moved over and one jumped in....

8 chickens in a tire and the red one said, move over, move over.

So on and so forth. I think you get the idea.

Believe it or not there are 8 chickens in there! They snuggle down completely in the tire and you wouldn't even know they were in there, until one, I guess the designated lookout, pops his head up.

Jason says if they don't use the chicken house when they start laying eggs they are going to be in BIG TROUBLE.

Crazy ghetto chickens!

Chick Check

I thought it was about time for a Chick Check. Our Silkie chicks are growing up and have real feathers, where has the time gone. We have 5 chicks left. Two have gone to a new home. We think but are not sure that we have 3 roosters and 2 hens. We were planning to keep only the hens, but out of 7 we only got 2 hens. Lucky us!

They are not quite sure they know all they need to know about the crazy 2 leggers that keep looking at them.

Any quick moves, they huddle up.

Then they climb all over each other....

... and make a Silkie Pyramid.

Hole in the Wall

We used to love to watch the show "Hole in the Wall" where a moving wall with various shaped holes in it would move toward contestants who would contort their bodies into the same shape to avoid being knocked by the wall into a pool. Is that show still on? If not, what a shame, another brainless show bites the dust.

Luckily, we have our own hole in the wall in our house above the fireplace.


These are popular in newer homes and I believe they were designed for TVs but our TV would never fit up there and it just makes my neck hurt thinking about having to look up at the TV. Even if the TV did fit up there, I never could figure out how to hook up a DVD player and satellite receiver without cords running everywhere? I assume there is a way, it's just beyond my very limited electronics knowledge.

So over the years it's turned into a collection of misfit items with no clear inspiration. We have plans to fill in the hole to make a stone fireplace (someday) so lately it's been really neglected and has turned into this mess.

The vases of flowers were for a something else completely but somehow ended up here. My parents brought the geodes rock for JW to see and ended up here. There are 3 really good portraits of the kids that can't be seen, various birthday cards from months ago, school artwork, a 75% dead cactus, JW's Cubscout stuff that now that I've moved it elsewhere we will never find it, so on a so forth...

So this weekend I got inspired to do something, well, inspirational with this hole in the wall. I thought it would be fun to create seasonal or monthly themes with this space. I figured since it is spring and the azaleas are in full bloom, I would do a garden/azalea theme.

So I headed out to town to visit some local thrift stores.


These are 2 of my favorites and right here in our hometown. Our town doesn't have much, but it is not lacking in thrift stores. They are full of interesting things and it is fun to look through it all, especially with a theme in mind.

Here is what I came up with. It was harder than I thought it would be to figure out where everything should go.

I got the watering cans, the chair and the yellow flowers/vine at the thrift stores, the hat at the dollar store. Most everything was in the $2-3 range, so the overall cost of this was minimal.

I filled in the gaps with pretty quilted canning jelly jars filled with real azalea flowers. I got these jars a few years back. When I use them for canning, if I ever give them away, they always go with a sterner than normal warning to bring them back when empty.

I found this little bench at a thrift store too.
I like how the little doll makes the bench look huge. That was Casey's idea.

It was so much fun doing this, I may reconsider my plans for the new fireplace. I'm already thinking about what to do for my next theme.

Our Easter Bunnies

On Palm Sunday, we were all in the barn cleaning stalls. As I was workin' my pitch fork through a stall, I turned over a pile of something that was furry and moving. I got the Sam out of there, as JW likes to say. I'm pretty sure there was screaming involved, but if asked I will deny it.

Jason came to my rescue and discovered it was a nest full of 4 bunnies (man eating ones I'm sure). They were probably about a week old, their eyes were still shut. How they survived that long sharing a stall with LuLu our pony, is just a miracle. They were buried pretty deep in the shavings in an area of the stall that we don't normally have to clean. We moved the nest to the next vacant stall over, and were careful not to touch them with our bare hands for fear mama bunny would reject them.

The following pictures were taken with my cell phone camera so please excuse the poor quality and tiny size. But you should clearly see why I was so frightened by these glow in the dark alien bunnies. I mean, really, who wouldn't be? They were glowing, for the love of Pete!




The next weekend, they were out hopping around, much to my dismay as I'm always on "snake alert" and aware of any unexpected movement in the barn. I about jumped out of my skin. The little guys got me again. Who knew baby bunnies could be so terrorizing?


They were still naive enough to let us pick them up, though one was smart enough to make an ear piercing shreaking noise, probably a rescue call to their UFO mother ship.

Since our barn is attached to Jason's shop, they now come right up to the door to check out the action in the shop. They are onto our game though and are smart enough to not let us pick them up anymore. And I'm onto their game too, they won't get me again, the menacing little devils from outerspace.