Ummm...Suprise!

Well, I wasn't really planning on doing the blog change until New Year's day, but I was messing around with the computer and was wondering if I was sure that I wanted this look....So I tried it. :D

And guess what happened then. Silly me, I couldn't figure out how to get back to my old look [rolls eyes].

So what do you think of it?
One reason that this particular look was chosen was because I am now letting my sisters join in. It was really hard choosing the new look because we all have different tastes. I naturally leaned for a feminine look, S#2, who will now be revealed as Megan, wanted a "Chronicles of Narnia" look (she adores reading about Scotland, knights and battles) and S#3, AKA Emily, really liked the blue and brown/pink and brown options.
We searched that website for what seemed like ages. Then....We found it. Yep, we found this look. It was pretty enough for my tastes, "medieval-ish" [smiles] enough for Megan and it had the blue and brown colors that Emily loved.

We're pondering on changing the name to 'King's Daughters' but we haven't set anything in concrete yet. :D Well, I hope I didn't shock you too much with all this. LOL.

Just a note to say....

Just a note to say that I am in the process of changing this blog, so you may not here from me for a couple of days. Hopefully I will be done by January first or second.

Until next time.....

Lions, tigers and bears, OH MY!!

The days just keep on getting better and better.

Today our neighbor stopped by our house to warn us that he had just seen a full grown Cougar prowling around in his pasture!
Aaack!
I guess there must not be enough game up where they usually stay, so now he's eyeing people's livestock....I'm making sure I have have a camera and a shovel with me at all times now! LOL.

Whee! It's a Wii!

This year for Christmas, we were suprised to find, of all possible things, a Wii underneath the Christmas tree!!

Normally I am not really a nintendo playing fan, because I find it a little boring to just sit there. But the Wii is a whole different ball game! You actually have to move around to play! Observe:

Even mom likes it! I will admit that most of us are sore from playing it. :)

The gift of giving

I think every year we say that it's been the best Christmas ever; I guess they just keep getting better. :D

This Christmas has been really fun for us all. We all got really nice gifts from each other as well as from our relatives. Since I could not knit my gifts I had to go to plan #B.

For Jessica, I gave her a dozen homemade paper doll horses, some spurs that I don't use anymore, an old horse magazine that she could cut up and a glass horse figurine.

I gave Jacob a story. Last year my sisters and I each wrote a story about himself for him. He was ecstatic getting to read about himself going on adventures, so we decided to do it again this year. In all he has a story about him being a fire fighter, a hunter, a scuba diver, a sea captain, a skier and a detective. We'll do more stories next Christmas. :)

Emily got a turquoise bracelet that she's been eyeing for a while. It was mine but I never wore it so I gave it to her.

Megan was interesting to do. I knew exactly what she wanted and I had both of the items in my closet....but, I also really liked them myself. Nevertheless, I gave them up willingly and it was so much fun watching her open them on Christmas morning. So what was it? I gave her my second favorite skirt that I had, a beautiful, dark blue, plaid skirt....And, my leather journal that had been handmade in India. I had only written a few entries in the journal before I broke my wrist, so I just tore those pages out.

I couldn't think of anything for Chris or for dad so I just gave them a heartfelt 'Merry Christmas!'

I was soooo excited about mom's gift. I've been working on it since late October.

As kind of a hobby, I enjoy making 'collage cans'. I take those really, really big cans that tomatoes come in, then I glue pictures all over it (which is harder than it sounds). After that comes the most tedious part; I then have to apply five coats of Modge Podge...Do one coat, wait twenty minutes...do another coat, wait another twenty minutes.... You get the idea. ;)

So for mom, I made a chocolate/coffee collage can. In the can I put a cute Ghirardelli coffee mug, a coffee card, three homemade coffee jackets and lots of Ghirardelli chocolates. Mmmmm. :D

Oh yeah, I gave little Carver a pint-sized broom and mop. He's so cute to watch, going around the house sweeping. LOL.

Definitely a white Christmas

Wow.... We were just listening to the weather report on the radio and apparently we are in for a heavy winter storm with snow up to fourteen inches!! The broadcast person said that traveling will become extremely dangerous and warned everyone to stay home; If traveling is imperative, he advised to bring a well-stocked emergency kit, a cell phone and flashlights.

Over here, we are stocking up on water and collecting candles. Some friends up the road from us have already lost their power, so we're just waiting for our turn. Along the lines of lost power, if we do lose it we will have to bring Emily's baby rabbits inside. Fun, fun, fun.

A white Christmas? Most definitely. A Christmas without power? Probably. :D
I guess we'll see what happens....

Four and a wake-up

I'm sure most normal people would say that there are "five days till Christmas", but we prefer to say that it's "four and a wake-up" till Christmas. I'm not sure why we do that, but, that's the way we've always done it. :)

The snow is thick on the ground outside; almost five inches deep! Okay, so perhaps some of you have seen snow waaaay deeper, but for us, five inches is deep. And yes those pipes out in the barn are still frozen solid so we have to use water from our other well, which is not frozen (yet).

With Christmas stealthily creeping closer, I have been "mad-dashing" all around trying to finish everybody's presents. Since I obviously am not able to knit, I am doing the back up plans that I had. Sorry, but I can't let you in on the secret until after Christmas because they might come to my blog and [gasps in horror] might find out what their presents are. :D

The baby rabbits are all doing well. We no longer have a runt though; he caught up with his siblings in both weight and size! All of our rabbits are roly poly and healthy on their all-grain diet, which has been so encouraging for me! I will try and get a picture of the babies really soon for y'all so you can see how cute they are now that they are fully furred; actually maybe I'll wait a couple more days....So you can see them with their eyes open! Entirely too cute. :D

Well, I should probably go and start on Jacob's present now.

Merry Christmas!!

A random post

GLOBAL WARMING.

Velvet Shoes

Come, let us walk in the quiet snow
In a soundless space;
With footsteps quiet and slow,
At a tranquil pace,
Under veils of white lace.

I shall go shod in silk,
And you in wool,
White as a white cow's milk,
More beautiful
Than the breast of a gull.

We shall walk through the still town
In a windless peace;
We shall step upon white down,
Upon silver fleece,
Upon softer than these.

We shall walk in velvet shoes:
Wherever we go
Silence falls like dews
On white silence below.
We shall walk in the snow.

--By Elinor Wylie

Snow in the countyside

Girl on a mission

Maybe, just maybe, we will get a white Christmas over here.

As for now, we do have snow!! It looks so pretty outside; everything is covered with a sparkling, pearly white blanket. The snow fairies must have been busy last night! :) LOL.

It started snowing lightly on Saturday night but it didn't stick that much. Sunday brought colder temperatures and fun snow flurries all throughout the day; this time the snow stuck.
This morning I woke up to two inches worth of snow outside of my window. "Hurray!" I thought to myself. Hee, hee, my excitement was short lived.

Megan and Emily came inside after barn chores were done and informed me that the pipes in the barn were frozen.....And Peaches was out of water.

So what did we do? We left Peaches to die of dehydration. I'm just kidding. :D Instead we armed ourselves with buckets filled with water from the bathtub and began the trek outside.

Naturally, Peaches was thirsty and was only too willing to drink the water right out of our buckets rather than letting us dump it in her big water bucket....12 gallons of water later..... Peaches finally slaked her thirst and allowed us to begin filling her very large bucket.

"What's that dad? Oh, you want us to stop getting our water from inside because we're letting cold air in, tracking snow on the floor and because Emily's bucket has a big leak in it? Okay."

Plan #B. Time to thaw out those pipes. I put our well loved and used kettle on to boil and when it began singing merrily I knew it was time to start my mission.

With a look of grim determination I took the kettle and a bucket out with me into the "tundra". The wind had picked up considerably so the snow flurries stung my eyes. At first eveything was going fine until out of the corner of my eye, I noticed something moving, then eveything went downhill from there.

"Oh no! My bucket is flying away! Come back here! Gotcha!
Hey, what am I doing with an oven mitt on my hand? I thought for sure I had put my glove back on.
What's that I hear? Oh great, a car is coming. Well maybe the driver needed a smile anyway.
Youch, that water is hot! This mitt doesn't offer much protection."

You get the idea I'm sure. :D

But, Peaches now has a full water bucket and I am still alive to tell the story. :)

A thrilling morning

Woohoo! I got to take a close-up look at Izzy's babies this morning. Boy did those little things grunt when my icy fingers touched them! Last night I made a guess of how many there were and their colors. I guessed that there were six, broken black babies in there, but guess what! There's actually nine!! :D



Five of them are broken blues, and four are broken blacks. (Thank you Andrea for giving me Domino! He finally threw blue in my litters!)



The babies will be fully furred at three days old, then they'll open their eyes and ears at ten to twelve days old. By the time they are three weeks old they will be wobbling around their nest box. I love it when they're about four weeks old; that's when they are at their cutest!

Yeah, they probably look like little pink rats to you in this picture, but, really they are very cute. :)

There's a little runt in the litter too. He's only two inches long while his siblings range from three inches to a whopping 3 1/2 inches!! He's stolen my heart too. ;) You see, not only is he itty bitty, he's also a broken blue [grins sheepishly]. Blue rabbit have always been a favorite of mine. :)

Cap'n, We've got bunnies!

Hurray! Izzy finally kindled! Sorry if this post is brief, but I literally just found out so I'm too excited to sit still right now (you understand right?).

There's somewhere around six kits (rabbiter's term for "bunny") and as far as I could tell, they are all broken blacks. They look soooo cute, nestled down in their fluffy nest filled with their mama's warm fur. :D

I'll try and get some pics tomorrow for y'all.

So here's to the end of the "morning jitters"! [sighs with relief] :)

Rabbit breeders have all the fun

My title bears much truth; only we experience a different sort of "fun" in our hobby.

Whenever you breed your rabbits for a winter litter you can always expect something to happen. For example, today dear mom informed me that the temperature is supposed to drop to around 10 degrees either tonight or tomorrow night and possibly dip lower than 10.

Naturally, being the cool, calm and collected person that I am [grins] I replied: OH MY GOODNESS, IT'S GOING TO DROP TO 10 DEGREES!?! I HAVE A DOE THAT'S GOING TO KINDLE SOON!!! THE BABIES WILL FREEZE!!!

Yes, I am very dependable during emergencies. :D [laughs]

So Emily and I are going to attempt hanging a heat lamp over the nest and giving Izzy (that's the doe's name) some more bedding for the nest.

Then there is always the morning jitters. When you're expecting a litter you always leap out of bed and hurry outside into the arctic tundra [slight exaggeration] to see if your doe has kindled (given birth). By the time you get to her pen, you find yourself trembling, half with excitement of finding a litter of live squirmy newborns, and half with fear that you might find a dead litter.

All rabbit breeders go through this every morning until....HURRAY!! She finally had the babies!!

[poor us] :)

Well,Emily and I are still waiting for those little bunnies. And we're still going through the morning jitters. [groans and rolls eyes]. Oh when will it end??

Rabbit breeders definitely have all the fun.

I will keep you posted on the rabbits. So don't stay away too long. :D

P.S. The picture is of three, 12 day old, Holland Lops from our very first litter, three years ago. I found the pic buried amongst dad's files on the computer and just thought I would add it to my post.

Even the little things

I had a very nice reminder yesterday that God does indeed listen to your tiniest cares. :)

Some of you may or may not know this, but, Emily's rabbit is heavily pregnant and is due any day now. You also probably know how we have moved them onto an all-grain diet.

So the story starts like this:

We were unable to get the oats from our Azure order so the rabbits have been eating just barley until I could get something more. I was really depending on those oats to come because barley alone will not provide enough protein or fiber for them. What's worse, they also needed Alfalfa in their diet, but it's been a bad hay year so there is no such thing as "cheap" hay right now.

I decided that if I could just get a bale of Alfalfa then they would probably be fine until my oats came (if they ever come). I called around comparing prices of hay bales; the cheapest I could find was close to thirteen dollars, which is too much for me to pay. In my frustration I prayed to the Lord and told Him my dilemma.

"Lord, I need help!
I can't afford this hay but my rabbits need it.
What should I do?
I still need 100 more pounds of feed in order to raise this up coming litter if rabbits.
I can afford the grain dear Lord, but not if I have to buy a bale of hay too.
but, you say that you care "for even the sparrows" (Matt. 6:26) so I will trust you to provide for this small need."

A couple of days later, Miss Jennifer (Peaches' owner) came by with some more horse stuff and while she was there she asked if we would by any chance be interested in a bucket of alfalfa cubes that she had but didn't need!! I quickly told her yes, and with that she showed me a huge bucket, packed full of sweet smelling alfalfa cubes. I was so happy and excited! So now the rabbits are all contentedly munching in their cages and S#3 and I are eagerly awaiting the litter of rabbits due soon.

How sweet it is to be able to trust our Saviour for even the little things. :D

A walk through the woods

The weather was beautiful today, crisp and cool with the sun shining brilliantly. So I took full advantage of it by doing my daily herb collecting in the 98 acres. Naturally, since I am one- handed, I had to bring somebody along to carry all of my stuff (okay, so maybe just a little basket). My victim this time was poor, unsuspecting Emily. ;)

She got over it once she remembered her camera though. :rolls eyes:

We took our time while hiking. We stopped once to look for the spot where I fell, and to look at one of the beaver dams, oh, and to smell the wild spearmint.

The blackberries are dying now. But the leaves turn a stunning scarlet color right before they drop off.

This is Teasel. It doesn't have very many medicinal uses but it is great for carding wool and using for arrangements.

Here's me, coming back from collecting a bit of spearmint.

Deer prints in the mud. They were sniffing around our barn early this morning. :)

And, of course, Octavia had to accompany us. Whenever We go up to the 98 acres, one of the cats follow us. What more does one need on a hiking trip? A sister, a camera, a pocket knife, a basket of herbs and a cat! Oh yeah, the chickens started following us up too; but mom and the younger ones herded them back. :D

All-in-all it was an enjoyable trip. And I have some Mullein leaves and some Alder bark drying for later use. :)

Praise the Lord for His mercy endures forever

Hurray!! The Hospital called and confirmed that I DO NOT need surgery on my wrist!!
I cannot begin to describe the relief I feel now that the impending danger is passed. :)
Maybe these verses can help me explain my joy. :D

"Praise the Lord for His mercies endure forever."
2 Chronicles 20:21 b


Praise the Lord!
For it is good to sing praises to our God;
For it is pleasent, and praise is beautiful.
Psalm 147:1


Praise the Lord!

Praise God in his sanctuary;
Praise Him in His mighty firmament!

Praise Him for His mighty acts;
Praise Him according to His excellent greatness!

Praise Him with the sound of the trumpet;
Praise Him with the lute and harp!

Praise Him with timbrel and dance;
Praise Him with stringed instruments and flutes!


Praise Him with loud cymbals;
Praise Him with clashing cymbals!

Let everything that breathes praise the Lord.

Praise the Lord!
Psalm 150

The Curiosity Shop

Emily, got this neat shot from a book by Charles Dickens. 'The Old Curiosity shop'. In this painting the focus is on 'Little Nell' who is walking through London with her aged grandfather.

The beginning

Okay just one more post and then I'll get off this computer.

I just wanted to really quickly mention that our Cuckoo Maran rooster is now crowing!

He was actually supposed to be a hen but, lo and behold, a rooster he turned out to be (not that I mind)

Isn't he pretty? And I absolutely love his little, tiny, adorable baby crow that he does. But, He's getting better, he just needs a bit of time.

Oh yeah, I forgot to mention that his name is Walter. :D We have three Maran chickens, two hens and one rooster. Willamina, Winnifred and Walter are their names. ;)

How the days seem to fly by

I can't believe it's almost Christmas. Where did the days go?

Can you relate to this phrase?

The days have been busy, mostly trips into town for doctor appointments, but still there's all those hours left in the day. Where did they go? Lets take a closer look and see what we have been doing all week...

Oh, yeah. First off there is my daily wildcrafting. Meaning my daily collecting of herbs. :)

We moved the rabbits comepletely onto their all-grain diet yesterday so I've been giving them daily doses of specific herbs that I feel they need each day. It's so much fun looking closely at my animals to see what they might be needing and then going out and getting the exact plant that will help them! Today my dear rabbits got a scrumptious selection of Plantain, apple leaves, fruit and bark, dandelions, blackberry, rose leaves, Rosemary, willow, orange, fescue and then a heaping handful of hay. For me, the highlight of all this is watching them devour it all. :D

Then there is always copper to play with (and clean mud off, feed and groom)

Copper is our two year old, male Golden Retreiver. He really isn't the brightest dog, but he makes up for it by being cute. Of course that's pretty much the only thing he has going for him. LOL. :D

These next pictures explain what I mean.

See what I mean? In the top picture, our darling dog is gopher hunting. To Copper's mind there is no need for cunning and stealth when hunting. If ya' just dig deep enough you'll eventually get that pesky critter. In the second picture, he is waiting for "the other dog" to grab his ball and run. Hee, hee. It's hilarious watching him stare at his reflection and wonder why "the other dog" won't play with him. (the poor guy needs a playmate so bad)

And there's always Chess to play when it's raining.

Hmmm...Well I guess the rest of the day kind of just fills up with chores, school, meals, reading and just doing whatever else happens that particular day!

Okay, so maybe I did do this post only so I could put these pictures up. But you enjoyed them, right?

Busy days

Since Sunday the 30th, the days have been very busy and painful. Everything was going "swimmingly" until Sunday when I tripped and fell during church, landing right on my broken wrist. Yikes, did that ever hurt!! The pain was pretty intense until early Tuesday. I knew the pain would come back shortly because I had an appointment at the hospital later and those always hurt. :Scowls:
On Tuesday, the doctor put my permanent cast on which has been pretty nice because it stops at my elbow, rather than covering it like my first cast, so it's easier for me to maneuver now. It was really creepy when the doctor took my first cast off. After just three weeks of being in a cast, my arm has lost almost all its muscle so it looked itty-bitty and just--well--creepy! I thought I was going to throw up when I saw it. :( The doctor said my wrist isn't quite healing up like it should be and that it will probably be permanently crooked. He also said that there is a possibility that I won't be able to properly rotate my wrist and do things with the same dexterity that I used to.

After that, the doctor showed dad and me the latest x-rays (I'm beginning to really hate those x-rays :grrr:) While explaining the x-rays, the doctor noticed something he hadn't before; it looked to him like I had a ruptured ligament right above the broken bone causing some of the other bones to slip. So guess what... He scheduled me for am MRI at 8:30 the next morning.

Before I could have the MRI done, they had to put a dye in my wrist so they could see in the new x-rays whether or not I did have a ruptured ligament and needed surgery. Now, I can give shots to animals just fine, I can do the sub-Q's and IM's, but I cannot stand getting a shot myself. I shudder just thinking about it.

I also had no idea as to what an MRI was, so that was an interesting learning experience. :-/
An MRI is basically a different way to do x-rays only they use a magnetic field rather than radiation. So, I had to lay down on a little bed and then they rolled it underneath this huge dome thingy that took the x-rays. My nose was literally six inches away from the ceiling. The machine is sooo loud that you have to wear headphones while its going. Lucky for me I got to listen to music during the 20 minutes worth of x-raying. My choice? A CD by Loreena Mckennit, She's my favorite singer.

The people said they would call us when they decided if I needed surgery or not. So every phone call is picked up hurriedly. I have my fingers crossed that I won't need surgery. :sigh: