a number of things

Hello?

Well, I seem to have forgotten all about this little corner of the interwebs. :) Life has been full and busy. You will have to excuse the not-so-crisp pics in this post as they are from Instagram, a little community that I am enjoying much more than I ever thought I would.

We are coming to the end of an unusually cool spring down here in the deep south, that has the bees a little behind last year in their honey production, but doing well.We have started participating in our local farmer's market, which has been so much fun! One of our ducks hatched out 2 ducklings of her own and two more are setting on eggs. I caught a swarm the day after Easter and brought my hive total up to three. :) And so much more!

A very happy spring & summer to you all!

more from the Smokies

A few more shots from our Tennessee trip:

~ Looking down from Newfound Gap between Tennessee & North Carolina.

~ We found a bit of snow still on the ground in the Newfound Gap area. Totally amazing to these south Louisiana kids who have never seen any at all. (Well, except for Noah, when he was 1yo. But that hardly counts.)

~ A quick and easy hike up to Laurel Falls. (And yes, I have a very firm grip on her other arm.)

~ Caleb taking a shot of the John Oliver cabin interior.

~ The sweet Cades Cove horses.

~ One of the many amazing cantilever barns of the Smokies and surrounding area.

~ And oh, those rows of blue mountains.

merry making

So much making going on! Most of it, unfortunately, I cannot divulge (Like the sweet dresses I made up with this pattern! Oh, my.). Last night we had our second truffle making session of the season and we packaged them up today. I also bundled up some copies of a perpetual gardening calendar I made (for our deep south zone 8b) for a few of our friends and we had such fun making a little pile of these little stick Santa's (as we are calling them) to attach to gifts. The super simple tutorial can be found here at Garden Mama. Aren't they the sweetest? The 10 and up crowd carved them and then we added a bit of paint.

Tomorrow is going to be another full day of friends and festivities, but I just wanted to pop in for a minute and wish everyone a very merry Christmas!

(Chip snapped the shot below on his phone of some of the non-stop making that was happening in the kitchen today. Yes, Lilly had snagged yet another truffle and was nibbling away.:) )

 

Happy Thanksgiving!

Doesn't everyone make a compressed air powered, PVC potato cannon on Thanksgiving?

I am told that the last photo of the potato flying through the air was one of their "worst shots" and only went about 250 feet. After a few tweaks, they were getting 400+ feet for every spud.  :)

Hope your day was a fun one!

 

the doll's Christmas

In the last post I mentioned that I was stocking a "shop" for the dolls. This post gives a bit more info for those who asked (and those who didn't). Now as much as I would like our "doll's Christmas" to resemble Tasha Tudor's, it does not. It is entirely of the kids (the 4 middle ones) creation and has become something of a mini tradition as this is the third year they have celebrated it.

The kids (the 4 middle ones again) collect Breyer horses (mostly from my old 70's-80's collection) and each has one or two "riders" to ride and care for those horses. The boys have the cowboys and such, and the girls have well, the girls. They came up with the idea a while back for the dolls (the boys don't care for that word, they prefer the term "Breyers") to pull names among themselves and give gifts at the "Breyer Christmas party".

Last year I noticed that this gift giving involved a whole lot of Mama being called upon to make in mini at the last possible moment. This year, I decided to head off those requests and open a "doll shop" for the Breyers to make their holiday purchases.

The inventory included festive garland made from catalog pages, blank notebooks, bottle caps, a mini zine on coyotes (important info for those cowboys, you know), items constructed from the printable minis site, various mini wood items and even a Breyer sized haversack made out of felt. The "shop" itself is in a plastic sectioned box that I found in the boy's room.

I even made a currency... doll dollars. Each child got $20 to begin with but could earn more by trading re-salable minis (such as nice walnut shell halves and mini pencils made from toothpicks) back to the store.

So far it has been great fun, the kids are really into it and the doll's trees have many surprises tucked under them in anticipation of the big day. :)

 

good busy

These days are busy ones indeed, but oh such a good kind of busy. The tree went up yesterday and tonight is our little St. Lucy's Day celebration.

 

Everyone is getting into the season with secrets and surprises being plotted and planned.

A little shop for the dolls is being stocked, because they must have somewhere to buy their gifts.

And gifts are being finished up and packaged for mailing or giving. Tomorrow there are candies to be made and parties to plan. Oh yes, it is a very good kind of busy.

Hope you are having a lovely Advent with plots and plans of your own!

 

weekending

Why, isn't canoe-jumping a regular sport at your house?

Hope everyone is having a fabulous weekend!

 

a book trailer of sorts

Yes, it's another stop motion movie. I have to give all the credit for this idea to my 11 year old, Caleb. When I was looking through the hundreds of photos that were taken for this book he said, "Mom, we really need to make a stop motion video to advertise the book." Ah, my little marketing man. :)

All of the reviewer copies have been mailed and I have opened up a little Big Cartel shop for selling a few books. (You will see a little text link under "About" in the top right sidebar.) My copies will not be in until the 8th of October, but it will (hopefully) be available on Amazon before that. (I'll be sure to let you know!) I really like the whole Big Cartel format and am thinking seriously about moving my Etsy things over there. (Like I need another project.)

Have a fabulous day!

 

PS ~ The music ("Final Reel") is once again from Scythian's Immigrant Road Show Album (Used with permission.). Love those guys.

 

getting there

For some time now I have been wanting to play around with making a stop motion movie. So, since I had nothing much else to do on the drive up to Tennessee, I decided to give it a try. :)

The music is "Highway 81" by Scythian (used with permission) from their Immigrant Road Show album (which we love).

 

Tennessee

We have just returned from another trip to the beautiful Smoky Mountains of east Tennessee to visit Chip's family who all live in the Gatlinburg area.

 

It was a beautiful time spent enjoying the area and much missed family. We seemed to need to find water (to play in) nearly every day to keep cool, but that only added to the fun. 

I'll be adding more photos of the trip over the next few days to Flickr, but for the most part I've got my nose to the proverbial grindstone and I am trying to finish this book. Having the first proof in my little hand is quite effective motivation, I must say.

Stay cool, autumn is coming yet!

 

my favorite popsicle molds... ever

Well, there is no debating the fact that around here, with summer comes popsicles. Now I've tried a few different molds in my day (the "real" Tupperware ones and then a myriad of knock-offs) and I have to say, I have finally found my favorites.

Not only do these puppies make 10 at a time (and I bought 3 sets for my troops and their frequent guests), but they are also made of BPA-free, non-leaching plastic (#5). The biggest plus to me however, were the sticks! Yes they can be rinsed and re-used, but when they are inevitably left outside and chewed up by the dogs, they are totally replaceable.

Each set comes with 24 sticks of its own, but the pack of 1,000 for 4 bucks down at the craft store are the exact same sticks. I also really like the one-solid-piece aluminum top as it is so easy to clean. My only caution would be to make sure all of your sticks are tilting the same direction in the molds before freezing (they float and sort of want to tilt). Because if they are frozen pointing opposite directions, the aluminum lid is sort of "locked" onto the molds. Does that make sense?

The first place that I stumbled upon these was Greenfeet, but they have been out of them for a while now (and I was impatient) so I ended up just getting them from Amazon. (I think they can be found a few other places also.) I see that they have gotten a few negative reviews over on Amazon, but every other mold we have ever had has required a bit of running water over it to release the pops, so I really don't see what the big deal is. Anyway, we love them!

Happy popsicle making, whatever you use!
  

blueberries!

Do any of you remember the blueberry bushes we planted 3 years ago? Each year they have given us a few more than the year before, but this year is amazing. The kids picked three of these bowls full this afternoon alone and several others before it. Lilly now knows where in the yard they come from and as soon as we let her little 18 month old self outside, she heads straight for them. Rose is requesting blueberry pie, so I'll have to see what I can do about that. :)

On another note entirely, I uploaded a few new postcards to the Etsy shop this evening along with a fun printable. I hope to continue to slowly add to that little space.

Hope you are having a fabulous early summer!