Busy, busy ... as a bee

This fall has found us pretty busy and we had put off taking the honey off the hives. We leave a lot of honey for the bees but have to compact the hives by removing the supers (top thinner boxes) so the bees can manage to keep the hive warm enough all winter. The poor things have to generate a lot of heat to keep warm. But cold weather is not good for honey harvesting because it doesn't flow and the extraction process is slow and frustrating. The cold weather did allow us to do this on our porch with out the bees around though.




My chore for the week will be bottling the honey and getting the wax ready for candle making.




Speaking about busy....Wow, things have really picked up in my Etsy shop this past week. I sold all my pottery rooster recipe/card holders! I will be making more of these as time allows and may have some ready in time for Christmas too.



Obviously everyone is busy getting ready for the holidays now. I am spending a lot of time working on my custom orders and trying to fit in some new things for the shop too. I finished up this cute pair of owls as a custom order.



And I finished up this adorable little baby penguin.



Another sweet bird treasury on Etsy to share...

Fresh Hatching

Fresh from the kiln ... are these little pottery chickens. These are pretty much all singles and each are painted with their own unique colors. I will be adding these to my etsy shop gradually within the next two weeks.





I also wanted to share my lucky find of vintage lily of the valley flowers. I can't believe that I was able to get each bundle for 75 cents. I have seen them online for nearly $5 each. Of course I couldn't help getting much too many but I hope I can finish up some nice wedding birds with these.



Tonight we enjoyed our Halloween tricking and treating too. We carved our own home grown pumpkins!



And these are my "little" monsters and a friend.

The eve of Halloween

This has been the weekend for kids birthday and Halloween parties. The rainy day has us indoors and catching up on a few things (and watching the leaves fall outside in the wind). The hot water heater leak all over the basement floor was not a fun clean up and we finally moved a dehumidifier in there.

Another Etsy treasury to share...

Bird's nests

I have never been interested in planning for Christmas until after Thanksgiving. My only exception to that rule is that we start working out the details on our own homemade holiday cards towards the middle of November. I have always hated seeing Christmas stuff even before Halloween is over.

This year though I realized that if I want to sell any Christmas things in my shop I am going to have to get an earlier start. And so I have been thinking on this a little and came up with these little bird's nests on tiny clothespin clips for the tree. The majority of our own tree decorations are birds though we include all the special vintage ornaments that we have treasured over the years. Last year's tree falling disaster really destroyed quite a few of our ornaments so I am determined to make a few more this year.

So here is my first set of ornaments for the holidays which I am selling in my shop...



Our school canoe trip which I chaperoned was a lot of fun. The wind was crazy though and made the canoing a little difficult. I can't include the pictures though because there were so many school children in them. But I think the kids learned a lot and had fun too.

Enjoying the colors

The trees outside are so beautiful this year. Every time I look outside I am stunned at the colors. Even rainy days look bright and warm.



I am off to chaperone a school canoe trip this morning. It should be a fun and wet day! We should have fun exploring the river banks and discovering all sorts of interesting things.

I finished up on these two birds yesterday. It was supposed to be my day to run errands but the hot water heater had leaked all over the basement floor so I was "hostage" to my home again -- waiting for a plumber that might or might not show up. Luckily he did and its all fixed now -- just a bit of a mess for me to clean up.





And finally I wanted to share this cute little treasury on etsy that includes my little bird by wildlifer78.



Another wedding treasury called "Going to the Chapel" by beadgaldesigns includes a pair of my wedding birds.

Fall is here!

I was reluctant to let go of summer but starting to enjoy our cooler fall weather. We haven't had a killing frost yet -- just enough to kill the basil and pumpkins. But the morning glories are lingering on. Yesterday was so cool in the house that I finally made my way to the thermostat and crossed my fingers that the furnace would start up. We are still keeping the temps down but the kids are complaining of the cold.

I finished up these little wedding birds and wanted to share them






I am always amazed when they are finished and enjoy their sweet little faces.


I also finished up these two birds while traveling over the weekend



Which reminds me.... We had our tenth anniversary/reunion with the other families that traveled to China to adopt their daughters. It was so much fun to see them together and they really enjoyed our short visit together. I can't believe how fast the years go by.

A nice rainy day.

One of my new little hand sewn birds is included in an Animal Friend Treasury on Etsy by PatriciasPalette.