Thursday, January 31, 2013

Life on the Prairie

I've been crafting this week, but don't have things ready to share with you just yet.  We've had some excitement this week on the Prairie - Turkeys!  We've had about 17 turkeys coming daily to our yard and eating from the cherry tree out front.  Two to three of them go up into the cherry tree and shake it down, while the rest scramble for what falls (hopefully next year, we will get those cherries before they spoil, and the turkeys will be out of business.)After they check out the cherry tree, then they line up and make a trip around our house and eat under one of the trees in the back yard.  They are usually here for about an hour each day, but the give the entire family a lot of excitement for the day!


They've gotten brave enough, they go just outside the patio door in the back of the house.  That is, they go there until our very dumb dog discovers them and barks.  Then, they are headed for the hills, literally.  My oldest is plotting and planning which one will be his for the turkey season - not soon enough for him!

Wednesday, January 23, 2013

No More Perfect Moms - Book Review

"No More Perfect Moms: Learn to Love Your Real Life"  is so packed with practical information for the everyday Mom, that I struggled to finish it.  Not because it's too long, or wordy, or uninteresting, but because I wanted to read each and every word, hold onto it, make it a part of my life and really chew on all the details from cover-to-cover.  This book is so good, that I didn't want to miss a single thing.  I wanted to read one chapter at a time, and not only process it for my life, but also implement the advice and challenges in it, one by one.

Jill Savage brings to the forefront, what, for today's mom is such a struggle to recover from - the "Perfection Infection" that our society has created in motherhood.  This "Perfection Infection" is the need to compare ourselves to every other "perfect" Mom out there, and live up to that expectation.  Moms tend to look at other's perfection on the outside, but expect ourselves to be the same on the inside.  Savage calls moms to start to compare insides to insides, instead.  "No More Perfect Moms" covers the issues at hand for moms in all the areas of today's mom: Kids, Bodies, Marriage, Friends, Days, Homes, Homemaking, and God.  She writes at the level of every mom's heart and gives the solutions for making those areas the best a mom can be, but not perfect.

This book, "No More Perfect Moms: Learn to Love Your Real Life" by Jill Savage comes with my highest of recommendations to every mom in America!   It is a must read for all women!  I did receive a copy of the book as a member of the Launch Team for "No More Perfect Moms," but all opinions in this review are my own.

Sunday, January 20, 2013

Our First Chickens

We have wanted to have chickens for eggs and meat for a very long time now.  Back in WI, we were quite sure we couldn't have them in our within-city-limit backyard (although we were pretty sure we could get away with it.)  Well, we now have a chicken coop on the side of our barn, so we've been plotting and planning on getting chickens as soon as we possibly could.  Well, a few times, I found them for free either on Craigslist or a homeschool list, but I've always been one person late.  I just can't bring myself to buy a laying hen for $7-$10 each, so I've been patiently waiting for my opportunity.

Mr. Right told me to look on Craigslist this morning for something else, and low and behold!  Bingo!  We got some!
Aren't they gorgeous?  Of course, there are some downfalls to getting 2 year old hens and a rooster that is 1 year old, but, we also have a chance at getting eggs right away.  We won't have to wait as long as the chicks take to get to laying, either.  Usually, they will lay for about 3-5 years, so hopefully, these have a few more years on them.  Of course if not, we can always have chicken dinner!

The only cost to us was the drive out to pick them up and then of course, we will need the feed and some hay for their nests.  Everything else we needed to raise chickens were already in the coop.  Now we just hope they'll be warm enough and protected from predators.  The coop seems secure to us, so I guess time will tell.

We got five hens and a rooster.  The two orange ones are Rhode Island Reds as well as the rooster.  The whites are Leghorns and the black one is an Araucana.   Funny how our 8 year old claims the rooster as his own!  He is already named King.  Not sure what the rest will be, but we'll keep you posted with our new adventure in Chicken Farming!

Monday, January 14, 2013

Crafting Christmas in the Midst of Chaos

Ok - I've been a very bad blogger over the holidays!  After the craft show, I just couldn't catch up before the holidays, and decided to just spend some time with my family!  It was our first Christmas here on the Prairie, so we were attempting to find our way with no family and "old" friends around.  Never fear, I have been crafting and scrapping, though!

I wanted to share one of the projects we worked on as a family.  When I say we, I really mean Mr. Right was put to work.  We made a Ladder Ball set for my in-laws.  We got all the directions on the internet on Just Build Stuff Here.  Isn't the internet a wonderful place?  I'm not going to show you all the details for that project here, because they did such a wonderful job over on their site.
After making the set, I wanted to make a bag to carry it all in, but boy was this bag a heavy one!  I originally thought I could just transform the leg of a pair of jeans into the bag, but had to split two legs open, piece them together and make the bag much wider than the jeans.  Once this all got done, I then made a pocket to put rope through and then went on a search for those little pincher slide clasps.  (Sorry, I have no real name for those!)
Close up look at the pincher slide clasps (PSC)

I know that craft and fabric stores sell these, PSC's, but I couldn't' find any in our little Prairie Town in a "pinch." (I'm cracking myself up this morning! lol)  

Then, my daughter and I tried to make a long handle from jeans, but couldn't get it to reverse for the life of us!  That jean material was too thick to turn on itself easily, and because we were trying to do it last minute, of course it just wouldn't work! (Note to Self: Do not do projects at the last minute!)

As a back up plan, I used the rope to macrame a handle from a piece that was really long!  It actually was probably more sturdy in the long run, and if my in-laws every need survival rope and happen to have the ladder ball with them, they will have a good 30 feet of it!
Anyway, we also used the same rope for the bolas (fancy name for two golf balls on the ends of a string!).  We spray painted half the golf balls black using Rustoleum spray paint for plastic.  It turned out looking really professional.

Needless to say, I think my in-laws really liked it, since their last one was destroyed by children.  Those store versions are not nearly as sturdy as these are, and parts can easily be replaced at a hardware store!

Don't forget to check out those blogs in the right column that I love to link up to.