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.)