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.

Chicken love

I finished up this little garden sculpture/ornament that I have been thinking of. I found the blue hen at a flea market store and since it was missing its base it was so inexpensive. The little cement eggs are just cast from plastic easter eggs. The bowl is just from left over cement just cast in the sand (pretty rough). And the rusty barbed wire was found on one of our railroad track walks. I might make a cement column base at some point but the small granite stone is fine for now.

Caught off guard...

Every year around this time I am always surprised by that first threat of frost (the days seem so comfortably warm). We live near a river and our vegetable garden is down a hill in a low lying area. So we get a rather early frost compared to our neighboring towns. So (this year being no exception) last night I was running around "like a crazy chicken" covering all the plants I wanted to keep a bit longer. Just when the morning glories are so beautiful along comes a frost to kill them and turn them in to a brown tangle of vines. But for the most part it looks like the last night's temps stayed above the frost mark and we are given a brief respite before fall is here and winter comes marching along.

We have some huge pumpkins in the garden this year and I would love them to get even bigger. We have never had such big ones and after last year I was almost going to give up on them. The kids were so excited when they found them yesterday. I made a VERY tall stick trellis out of branches we cut. This week I will work on a second one. I also spent a few hours on Sunday with my hands in a bin of cement to make a few cement mushrooms. I also took two popped balls to fill with cement too. I basically took over my kids sand pile to do this project. This summer I had no time to do this since any free time was consumed by my custom orders from my shop.

I started up a list of links on my blog side bar called "who loves chickens". I would love to add more links too so if anyone has any to share please let me know. I found several last night and added the awesome flickr groups I love.

Toasting marshmallows

Last night we enjoyed our third Friday night craft get together. I brought a bottle of homemade blackberry/blueberry mead (made by my friend's husband). This was perfect with the chocolate brownies and chocolate covered strawberries that other friends brought.

The cut backs in school funding and the upcoming (next Tuesday) tax override vote was discussed as we worked. None of my children have teacher assignments -- nor will they get them until sometime in August when the final cuts in teachers are made. This whole process is so frustrating. I only hope that the town votes in the override or we will suffer with cuts in the town budget and fire and police. The class sizes are already going to go up and they are losing many teachers.

We spent most of the day outside doing yard work. The weather and the temperature were perfect. I mulched the vegetable garden pathways with relatively fresh stinky chicken manure and covered this with pine needles to hide the smell a bit. Next year when this has aged a bit I will shovel this mulch onto the raised beds as fertilizer. The older girls returned from a sleep over and I gave them some outdoor chores to help with. My sister and her children will visit next weekend and we need to get a so much done before they come. We also set up our replacement pool that my husband brought home from a friend at work. They no longer used this pool so I think this is perfect solution for us this summer. I think the older girls are a bit disappointed because it is only 42 inches deep but I promised them a deeper one next year.

We ended the day with a fire in our little fire ring. We toasted marshmallows and tiny hot dogs on sticks for dinner. Then the girls played a little softball with dad. My youngest was looking out for fireflies but we didn't spot any. I was surprised when she announced that this was our summer solstice party and of course there should be fireflies. It was probably a bit too cool for them yet.

Summertime.

We enjoyed a quiet morning puttering around the yard. My husband made breakfast and espresso while I watered a few gardens and planted a few new plants in some hanging baskets. The kids found the water balloons and played with them for a while. We made one last attempt to see if we could find the leak in our pool without any luck. My youngest was fascinated with the mosquito larvae that were now swimming in what should have been our pool. Yuck! I finally picked up the utility knife and sliced it up for the trash draining all the small wigglies.

Meanwhile my husband donned the bee suit and added "supers" to the hives. Supers are shallower hive boxes that the bees will fill with honey that we will collect in late summer/early fall. The queen is prevented from going into these supers by a screen called a "queen excluder". That way we don't have bee eggs or larvae in our honey frames. I am sure my husband was a bit hot in his bee suit even on a cool day like today. I love the smell of the smoker as he puffs the smoke into the hives. The hive we positioned to get the morning sun is doing much better. We talked about moving the two other hives. As my husband says you can only move them 2 feet or 2 miles. In between the bees will get confused and be unable to return to the hive. With the honey in the hives and the bees this would be quite an undertaking to move them week after week until we finally positioned them better.

One of my mother hen and chick is featured on an Etsy treasury called Nifty Neato by cutegirlcreations.



We headed out to a friend's barbecue for the afternoon. We all had a lot of fun. All the children played together and enjoyed themselves.



Our little chicks continue to do well. They enjoyed a little blanket play outside in the sun. The occasional ant running across the blanket created quite a stir as each scurried to get it first.

Here is the sleep inducing tilt of the hand guaranteed to put your chick to sleep.

A few peaceful mornings...

Yes... that's what I need. The girls will finish up with school on Friday so these are the last few mornings I will have to myself until next fall. I have thoroughly enjoyed these past two whirlwind weeks and weekends (busy with the girls' recitals), but I am a little frazzled to say the least. I think the stressful part is getting everyone from point A to point B. And when there are timing issues involved too with three ... well it takes its toll. My husband just goes on oblivious to these issues but honestly I feel like an air-traffic controller here. So I am going to take a break for a few days and catch up on some much needed gardening and house cleaning. Its difficult to attend to these with guests visiting. And gardening outdoors and enjoying the warm sun is so calming to me.

I want to share a beautiful new treasury on Etsy called Nesting: Home sweet home by sheridesthelion includes my little bluebird in a nest.



I listed my hen and chick pairs yesterday. The sky was overcast and bright so I ran down to the field out back to photograph them. I guess it was a good thing I have been too busy to mow the field because the yellow flowers were beautiful. The bees are enjoying them too so I will probably hold off on mowing for another week. The mother hens are basically the same pattern I made several years ago but I have been modifying the chick pattern a bit with some successes. My family likes one pattern and I the other so I will probably solicit more opinions on this. If any of you have any opinions let me know! I love how they display in baskets.



And while we are on the subject of chicks I have to confess that I signed up to get 3 little bantam chicks when I was last visiting the Farmers Exchange. I had every intention of resisting temptation this year and look its already June and I have seen several batches of chicks come in and leave. I haven't mentioned this yet to my husband to avoid getting the "rolling eyes" look but the kids know now and are excited.

Ice from the sky

We had a surprise hail storm yesterday afternoon. It was so noisy outside and in the house my youngest was terrified and I was a bit surprised too. I just looked out the window at the plants getting pummelled by the 1/2 inch balls of ice. There wasn't much I could do to save them because the lightening was very close. Thunderstorms kept rolling through all afternoon so I opened up the sewing machine and started a few sewing projects. I am working on some stuffed fabric hens and chicks. I have sold the hens locally in a few shops and at fairs. I have a basket of them in my living room that makes me smile too. I made up the pattern myself but I am having a little trouble getting the little chicks to look cute enough. I want their heads to be larger and round but they aren't quite coming out like I am imagining them. I guess a few trials will be in order.

I finally finished painting the wooden base for this handsome rooster so he could be ready for the shop. I love the black and white coloring on him. Mounting him to the base was a bit of a trick but I have a tiny drill that worked out fine with a little patience. I loosely modeled him after a photo of a Fresian rooster that I saw on Flickr and loved. I am thoroughly enjoying all the beautiful pictures shared on Flickr.

Ahhhh! The sun.

I am enjoying the sun shining through the windows cheering me up. After a few morning chores I will make my way out to get my hands dirty a bit in the garden. I finished photos of this needle felted rooster and bee this morning and listed them in my Etsy store.



This little bee looks more like a bumble bee than our dear honey bees. Our honey bees were out this morning enjoying the sun and flowers. While waiting for the school bus we watched them gathering nectar and collecting pollen on their legs. They seemed to be humming happily.

We haven't heard any word from the sheep shearer that didn't show up so maybe today will be the today. He never did show up on Friday or over the weekend. I am looking forward to seeing the silly faces on those adorable sheep. Maybe someday we can get two to keep out in the field. We only have a single acre so I'm not sure if that is enough space for them.

One of my little birds was included in another Etsy treasury today. This treasury is called So Precious by cynmb.

Chicken girl

I have been wanting to make a few little dolls for my shop but only managed to get this little one done.


I guess I am a bit rusty on doing this. I have made so many over the years as birthday gifts, party favors, Christmas decorations, but its been a while since I had the opportunity to do this again. I dreamed of this little chicken girl a few days ago and wanted to try it. I couldn't decide whether to make the precious hen black or white but settled on black in the end.

A set of my little pottery chickens is in another Etsy Treasury called Big Cocks by poorlulu

I have my hands full the next few days trying to get the house cleaned up for visitors. Both sets of grandparents will be here later in the week. It is always a struggle to get all this done since nothing stays clean for long. Even the grass won't cooperate. I try to get help from the girls but only small self contained tasks seem to work. Cleaning their room definetly won't get anything productive done.

Earlier this spring Scoutie Girl included some of my etsy items in her blog in March.. At that time I had almost no clue what a blog actually was. But I was thrilled to have someone actually find my shop.



One of my needle felted birds is included in an Etsy treasury called Sing a Song by ayeyet.

Another rainy day...

I finished this little french hen or "la poule" today. Craft night with my friends is tomorrow night and I'm really looking forward to it. I started work on another wedding couple and I may be doing a custom order for an upcoming wedding. Exciting! Anything to do with weddings is so much fun.

Well it looks like rain in the forecast for the next few days too. I think this will mean the end of the lilacs for us. My beautiful white crab apple only had 2 days before the rain spoiled the flowers. Here is the last photo of the lilacs I took while the sun was out. The deep purple is already fading.

Getting through the week...

I am getting dizzy driving my kids to and from activities. With three of them there always seems to be some overlap of activities so its difficult to work this out. With my husband now working so much farther away I can't count on him for "pick ups". This will all be over in another month and then we can relax a bit, I hope. In the mean time I am more than a little stressed.

I finished up my little hen and chicks that I had been working on for a while. On Monday me and my youngest took a walk over to the nearby antique store and found the base for this. An antique salt container missing its chicken top was perfect. My daughter also collected a few little glass figures there too. It is difficult to shop with a child who would rather talk a walk outside. She pestered me CONSTANTLY. But once she picked up her little trinkets she was quiet.


My needle felted penguins are featured on another Etsy treasury. This one is for felted items and was put together by kraftymomma.


My daughter and I checked up on the lilacs and they are really so beautiful. We cut some and put them in water to bring inside. I wish I could do this everyday of the year. I suppose since these things are so temporary we treasure them more.

The Hen House

I really like the name "The Hen House" and may just make a sign for our little hen house with just those words on it. The french word for this would be Le Poulailler and this would be cute too. There is a group on flickr called the Le Poulailler or The Henhouse and I joined this group very soon after first uploading pictures to my flickr account. I love looking at pictures of chickens and even shared a few of my photos with that group. My little hen illustration was just voted picture of the month for April. I'm glad they like it. I named it "Did I do that?". And I know that is how I sometimes feel about many things.


My flickr account
http://www.flickr.com/photos/rainsend/

Le Poulailler flickr group
http://www.flickr.com/groups/henhouse/

This little ACEO is still for sale in my shop.
http://www.etsy.com/view_listing.php?listing_id=5456496


I finished and mailed out this custom ordered bluebird this morning too.

Rainy day project

I have been thinking about doing a little advertising locally with a few t-shirts for my kids (I know -- shameless) and maybe a canvas bag for myself. On the canvas bag I wanted to have my Etsy shop info on one side and the Etsy logo on the other. I had a package of T-shirt transfer paper and I designed the logos on my computer -- remembering to flip the image so the text came out readable on the transfer.



I put a piece of flat (with out ridges) cardboard inside the canvas bag to keep it flat and protect the other side of the bag. I placed the transfer right side up and face down on the fabric and with the iron on its hottest setting without steam I ironed for close to 3 minutes. You have to be careful to get the edges to because when you peel off the paper once it cools they might not be adhered properly. I iron on the transfers for both sides before I peel off the paper or I will have problems with the transfer coming off while I iron the other side.



Once all my transfers are ironed on I let the bag cool a bit. When it is still warm to the touch I begin to carefully peel off the paper part.



Looks pretty good but I think I over did it on the ironing and it seems to have yellowed a bit.



Here is the t-shirt I did for my daughter.

May Day

After yesterday's craziness running errands, today will seem so much calmer. My husband started a new job yesterday and it seems to be going well. My youngest has no school today again and will have a friend visit for the day. They play so well together and are so intent on their play too. It is really fun to see them playing so nicely -- unlike siblings which seem to have so much conflict.

I just sold this little pair of pottery chickens and they are off to Australia. I would like to think I could travel around the world in a little box. It would be so much easier. As it is, with 3 kids we don't get much travelling done.

I picked up some relatively inexpensive rolls of 1 inch ribbon yesterday for the May Pole. They were more difficult to find than I expected. The ribbons that we had used for years were so frayed and tangled that I finally got rid of them. I am hoping to set it up for the girls today. We started doing this when my oldest was about 4 and have kept it up every year. Those first years we usually invited a group of kids over for a little May Day party. It was so cute.

Monday

My little bluebird and nest of eggs was included in an Etsy Treasury called "Bye Bye Birdie" by shanasays. I love birds and am quite happy that my little bird was included with such a cute grouping of birds.



I finally took a few pictures of my workspace that I "organized" over the weekend. Of course its not really as neat as it should be but most creative people I know dont tend to be very organized -- so I will use that as my excuse.

These are some of the IKEA shelves we purchased a while ago to organize my art and craft stuff. I really like the simple bare wood and how easy to assemble it was. A few more baskets or plastic bins to sort some of the smaller items are needed.
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This is the cool expanding/folding card table of my grandmothers that we recently moved out of storage. It works perfect so I can stash some of the larger boxes underneath. It may not be sturdy enough to work on but as far as organizing my materials I think it will do fine.

Here you can see the two drafting tables. The smaller one is an antique and the other I have had for some time now. I love the cool standing lamp of my grandmother's.

Town Earth Day

Our town is celebrating Earth Day this weekend and will have a bunch of interesting things at the Town Common. I decided not to do a craft table this year which means I am much less stressed but I will miss it. The girls had fun and enjoyed meeting up with their friends. It was perfect weather and very crowded. With all this rainy cold weather everyone is anxious to get out and enjoy the sun.


Last night my friend organized a crafting night at a town owned building that can be rented out for $45 an evening. The building is called the Reading Room and I believe was donated by Winslow Homer's sister for a local girls seminary school in the later 1800's. We had 7 women come and it was such a wonderful time. It has been so long since I enjoyed an evening out away from children and husband. Everyone brought something of their own to work on and the conversations were fun.


After thinking over the dilemma of a decent work area I decided to move everything back up to the new "attic". The walls are finished nice and painted and the ceilings are high. The floor is just plywood with an old rug over it but its fine. I will just have to share half the room with boxes of stuff stored there. I moved the small drafting table and brought up the expandable card table of my grandmother's and placed these against the wall. Boxes of materials and things went under the table. I am also going to move the larger drafting table from my adjacent bedroom into this room as well. I think this arrangement will go a long way towards getting myself more organized. Then when we finally finish the floors in that room downstairs I can move again. Meanwhile our new kitchen dining area won't be cluttered with my stuff. I feel a whole lot better already!

Later in the day I let the chickens and ducks out of their pen to enjoy the green grass. They made a bit of a mess in my gardens though.

Rainy Friday

Another rainy spring day. Every thing outside is greening up so pretty. Soon the trees and lilacs will be blooming. This is my favorite time of year but it passes so quickly.


I spent my morning working on my needle felt projects while my youngest was off at kindergarten. Right now I set up everything on our little used (for eating that is) dining table. The lighting in that room is so nice and I can look out the window and enjoy the backyard. Eventually I will have everything set up in the room that was our original kitchen. We are waiting to save up some money to remove the old flooring in that room. Once that is done I will set up my art work area in there. That part of the house is over 200 years old and the lighting and ceiling height are not very good. But it really is the best place for my art studio in the house.

I finally finished this little orange bird. My youngest daughter and I dyed the wool with orange Kool-aid. It was a fun project for both of us. She of course wants this little bird but will settle for a hat just like hers. I'm not sure how I will manage that though!

This is also my husband's last day home since he starts a new job on Monday. He was laid off in March and it has been longer than anticipated for finding a new job. It will be nice to have the house to myself again though I will miss him. Under different circumstances it would be fun to have him home. But being unemployed is just too stressful on everyone. My car also died during that time and we survived with one car for several weeks. This created additional stress as well.