Animals, garden update and a few crafts

The morning began a bit dark and dreary.  Our storms usually happen in the afternoon but we had unusual weather today with a morning storm and small tornado touching down just east of us. It didn't stay long and no one was hurt, thank goodness. 

Spent some time with the birds this morning. The turkeys are growing.

Our visiting / resident wandering turkey is looking good. She gives us eggs daily so we can't complain of her mooching. 

Someone needs to be brushed! Such a dirty face. 

Molly is tattling on Prudence who is behind her in with the chickens. 

Oh Prudence, no matter how small you are you are not a chicken. 

I went in the greenhouse... it was so muggy it steamed up my glasses and the camera lens. 

I needed this beauty for supper. 

Supper was all home grown... lamb, tomatoes and peppers grown here. 

Spinach salad and soft corn tacos. 

Then it was craft time. I was going to spend the early evening with my grandson so I knew he would want to create something. I found an old board in the scrap pile.

Spray painted it. 

And drew a quick shark on it. I packed up my Mary Poppins style back with all my supplies and took to the road to make the hour trek to town.

We got right to it, crafting that is. Painting was first.

The X on the shark, he explained , is an ouwie .  

He wanted to take a picture. He said the shark is green due to algae in the ocean and sometimes it turns red. This is another of his photos he took standing on the chair. 

Next craft … shark bombs. 

We cut sponges in strips. 

And banded them with hair ties. 

Then outside to play with our new crafts. 

The target is set up. 

We got a bowl of water and put our bombs in the bowl. 

Then... shark attack!

We had a grand time and every so often ran around the yard.. the shark aka dog...was chasing us. 

Last craft was a card... kind of an end of summer card. I cut these out last night and this morning - have an old Cricut machine.  Today I put them together. 

It is great to know we had a grand time without television, computers or video games. 

peace 

Recycling feedbags, mugs, and what to do with apples.

A rainy muggy Sunday

We try to recycle whatever we can on the homestead.  To do what we can in our own tiny section of the world is important to us. A point was made today...you go to the grocery store and get your goods in a plastic bag to bring home to use only once for that purpose.  We need to carry our store bought goods in another way.  We will recycle the plastic bags.  Today I recycled feedbags for groceries, carrying stuff to work and family .  Dude saves them for me after feeding the animals. We have lots of them and we need to reduce our carbon footprint. Today, I , again, began to sew them up. If we have Thanksgiving here this year, (we have enough turkeys growing) these bags can be used to carry home leftovers. 

I used another bag to plant potatoes. 

I put cuts in the bottom for drainage. 

Made some cuts down the sides a bit. 

Put dirt in the bottom 1/8 of the bag.  Put in cut potatoes (red) eyes down and covered with dirt. Potatoes like the dark.  As the potato vine grows I will put more dirt and straw over it until the bag is full and ready to harvest potatoes. 

Back to the bags... yes, this is how my scattered brain was working today. 

I got to work and began to focus.

I didn't wash the bags (you really need to and I did with the second batch) and the animals seemed to really like me today. The cats sewed with me, the dog licked the bag as I turned it and the lambs wanted to hang around when I went out to feed the chickens. 

Tada!

This was one of my favorite mugs... until it got a crack in it. My aloe is reproducing like crazy... again, so , I use the mug as a planter. Filled the bottom with gravel and the rest with dirt. 

Look! He has hair!

My son gave me a coleus plant. Today it got a trim to make 3 new plants.  I can't wait until it roots in the water so I can transplant it to dirt. 

Someone at work gave me a bunch of nonsprayed apples from their trees.  Apples do not like to touch each other so I had sort out the bad apples and spread them on the counter until I used them. 

Look how happy that apple is!  Organic produce are like us... the look beautiful without anything added, pretend or covering up.  The flaws life creates makes it attractive.

Today I made apple crumble. I had to make the pie filling and the crumble. 

It baked up nicely (needs ice cream - smile). The "white" bits you see is melted butter. 

Happy Sunday. 

peace