Bird Sanctuary…

No, it’s just my house & I love it.  It’s just another day of National Geographic at our humble abode.  Lots of animals including squirrels (and you know me and my Bob,) deer, lizards, birds…  Yes there are a lot of birds and after this spring there are even more flying around thanks to what we have lovingly dubbed the maternity ward.

Here we have an overflowing nest of baby Titmouse birds (strange name I know) that was strategically placed in the trussing of our back deck.  I had been asking Damyn to get a picture of the baby birds for a week or so & I finally convinced him to do it.  Needless to say about .01 seconds after this picture was taken 5 little birds took their 1st flight scaring Damyn half to death and really irritating the momma bird that was perched on a nearby branch.  I laughed so hard I almost peed my pants!


Next up was a nest of Cardinals in our blueberry bush.  Luckily they left the nest before the berries ripened & we were disturbing them too much.  These guys were only a few days old, still bald & not opening their eyes.


And last but not least, the Blue Birds.  And yes, that is my mailbox!  So the door to the mailbox doesn’t shut and momma Blue Bird was busy stuffing all sorts of pine straw in the mailbox for her nest.  We pulled the nest out to the front of the mailbox to catch this picture.  I felt so bad for momma bird though.  Every time we got to a certain point in our driveway she would fly out AND whenever we got to a certain point in the road to turn into the driveway, out she would come.  We did come to a great agreement with our very understanding mail-lady.  She hung our mail in a bag on our flag until the maternity ward that was our mailbox was vacant.
 

Needless to say, a mailbox that closes & birdhouses are on our to-do lists before next spring.

Our first Spring in Monroe, GA

If you’ve followed Rinse or this blog at all over the last year you know that we moved last July from Woodstock, GA to Monroe, GA (about 75 miles) from suburbia to rural’ia.  Now I’m a city girl, always have been & always will have a good piece of it in me, but there’s nothing like a country spring.


At the top are the little yellow wildflowers (alright, they’re probably weeds but wildflowers just sound so much better) that covered our front yard (also big enough that it is lovingly known as the pasture & hence not mowed quite as much as a yard would be.)
Then from left to right are:

• Blooming grapevines (that produced grapes so sour last season that we didn’t do anything but look at how cool they looked)
• Fig leaves budding & little baby figs (what we didn’t know was that this first batch of itty bitty figs would quickly die off.  We felt like horrible fig parents, but then a month or so later more baby figs than ever showed up… success!)
• Raspberry blooms

We were very blessed that all of the above were here when we moved in & that we’ve been able to keep everything alive & thriving.  I’m learning to be a country girl quickly while weeding, watering & nurturing all of these little baby fruits to maturity… all for us to eat them!  Figgy Pudding anyone???

Strawberries Ripe for the Picking

As much as I wanted to keep up with blogging in “real time” we’re just going to have to settle for a slight delayed reaction/recap of our Spring. 

About 6 weeks ago the red goodness of strawberries were in full swing.  We’re lucky enough to have Washington Farms (in Loganville, GA) just right up the road from us & they have acres upon acres of the sweet berry goodness.  We just had to get us some and here’s how it went…

     
Here’s what we accomplished.  These 2 buckets turned into 12 jars of homemade jam & lots of frozen little treats for smoothies & snacking.










My favorite pictures are those that contain little red berry stained fingers.

I Love my DODO!!!

 I got my iPad (first generation) a couple of months ago... and surprise surprise, I love it!  I don't know what I would do without it.  Actually I would just have to put up with my soon to be bombed laptop more.

Even though I love my iPad, I needed something to keep it undercover for many reasons.  1.  The 5 year old that lives with me.  2.  There's a reason none of our products are packaged in glass... I'm a klutz.  3.  I hate being "that girl walking around with her iPad."

Enter the DODOCase (with an awesome name too.)  It turned my iPad into a book.  Being a texture girl, it feels great & is super easy to carry.  It turns my iPad into a subtle accessory.  And well, I just love it!

Top 5: Chickens cont. – The Flock

So many chickens, so many different colors of eggs, so little space in the coop.  With the additions that we made to the coop plans, we should be able to comfortably house 5 chickens (my plan was to start out with 3 but I wanted to make sure they had plenty of space.)

I found a woman literally a mile up the road that has a backyard flock and she was selling baby chicks so I loaded up the family to pick out some chickens. 

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We got three little peeps (Ameraucana, Buff Orpington & a Black Australorp.)  If you look and count closely, you’ll see that there are four little peeps in some of the pictures.  That’s because 2 days after picking up our three, I was instructed by my dear husband that we should check to see if the Silkies had hatched.  They did, and we loaded up again to pick up our fourth chick.  Here is the family portrait.

Mud & Crud – Now these kids could have used some soap

I warned you a while back that my dear hubby has a camera & shoots some pretty cool (at times slightly irrelevant) things.  And you can bet money if there is a light pole around it’ll be in one of his pictures.

He’s been exploring the world of action photography a little these days, but not your typical baseball or football types of sports.  Keeping in-line with what we do and where we came from, he chose to practice on what else other than mud.  Yes, mud.

Our church’s youth group had a fantastically fun & very muddy event this past week named Mud & Crud (very fitting) in Loganville.  Since the event is a little hard to explain I’ll let the action pictures do the talking.

The mud courtesy of the Walton County Fire Department:

Just making sure it’s deep enough:

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The rest of the good clean fun (tug o’ war, shaving cream, flour…)

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The Walton County Fire Department cleaning up their mess:

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Hmmm… maybe we should look at sponsoring this event next year.

Top 5: Chickens cont. - Coops

It all comes down to packaging, and when it comes to packaging your backyard flocks there are a ton of options to choose from.

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A lot of searching came up with even more options.  The world of Chicken Coops in Google Imges is a vast one.  Luckily I found a couple of sites with lots of coop candy like:  Digginfood and Mother Nature Network.

We settled, and by settling I mean that my husband talked me into a smaller “trial” coop for our first go around, with using plans from The Garden Coop to start with.  Of course I wanted to go with the Garden Coop (on left), but I compromised with the slightly smaller and portable Garden Ark (on right.)


After several trips to our local Home Depot (which by the way we are now known as the young couple building the chicken coop by more than 1 employee), a lot of patience on my husband’s behalf and some slight alterations to the plans (we added a barn roof, loft & exterior nesting boxes) we have a coop.  We still have to figure out the paint scheme (which is going to be bright, something I wouldn’t paint our house) & trim out the rest of it, but we have time.  The flock isn’t due into the coop for a few more weeks.

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Boot Scootin'

Stompers by Occasionally Made

It sure didn't take me very long - less than a year living in somewhat rural Georgia I already have chickens & cowboy boots.  I had to have something to slip into in order to go out into the yard on dewy mornings.  I found the perfect boots (which also fulfill my need for rain boots) at Boss Brothers in Loganville, GA (our feed store - outside of the grocery store, my most frequented shopping spot.)

My sights are set on my next purchase for dewy days...

Skimmers by Occasionally Made

 

Introducing a Top 5: Chickens

As if you didn’t see this one coming!  I have to blame it on our neighbors and they’re free-to-range in our yard chickens to put me over the edge.  They are so much fun to watch, and I really don’t mind them as an alarm clock.  From research (I told you I like to do my research) I have found that they can make good pets, can help with pest control & can even make you breakfast (that one I didn’t have to look-up.)

For me it all started last September with this posting on the Design*Sponge Blog.  And even more so this picture…  Yes, it is an adorable coop with an even more amazing roof made of succulents (spoiler alert… they may or may not be in an upcoming top 5.)  Leave it to me for my obsession of chickens to begin with their packaging (a little known fact is that more than a couple of our products have been created to fill awesome containers that I have found.)

What I didn’t realize is that there are a whole lot of people like me being intrigued by chickens these days, and they’re not all chicken farmers.  Backyard flocks are more popular than ever.  And of course, there are a ton of websites out there.  I’ve used Backyard Chickens to help with flock selection & coop designs (which you’ll see more of… I promise.)

“Do you think it will be friendly?”

While clearing out an old pile of firewood in our backyard we discovered “this cute little fella.”  Luckily it was catch and release rather than catch and keep as a pet.

"Maybe they will come visit."

Yes, that is a trail of corn leading to the “Jackpot of Corn” at our front door.
The chickens caught on after a little while, so they did not end up at the door.  The Jackpot is no longer there so who knows what was brave enough to be at the door.  I think I’m ok not finding out.

Not exactly what I expected to show up

When we installed the bird feeder this isn't the kind of bird we thought we would get.

He belongs next door but he free ranges to our house. And yes, he cocka-doodle-dos for us to get up every morning. And just in case we don't hear him from his starting point he struts around the house to make sure all angles are covered.

This just may have been the start to one of my Top 5's.

My Top Five...

I tend to have interests that go in waves and those waves are usually pretty big and pretty intense. I dive in head first and whatever has peaked my interest can't run or hide. I will research, purchase, gather, research some more and try and try again until I either perfect it, get over it or get distracted from it. I should have a bumper sticker that states "Shiny things distract me."

A lot of things have been on my top 5 interests. Soap... Yep, it was there and we all pretty much know what happened with that. And that one has kept the top 5 list pretty short, if not even nonexistent for a while. But it's back and it's better than ever.

I'll introduce you to the list as it grows, and I'll even warn you that it may or may not contain 5 at any given moment. But until then, here are some items that have made the list in the past and what has happened to them.

Screen Printing - oh I could print t-shirts, stationery, soap labels... I bought the kit. Let's just say I still have the kit and, well, I still have the kit.

Knitting - you may know this is what got me into soap. I taught myself to knit, but could only knit rectangles. One only needs so many scarves so I had to switch my hobby focus (enter soap.). Ironically enough I'm back to knitting and I'm still not good at it. But I got a new coat and I need a new scarf.

Sewing - I got the machine, a bunch of patterns and even the fabric. I'm all setup ready to sew my first stitches. Here I go, there a little crooked but they'll work. Enter Damyn. Here, let me show you. I haven't touched the sewing machine since. D is the sewer in this family.