Four Old Hens

I have four old hens from my first flock of twelve.  All of my original hens had names.  My favorite is Esther who is in the below pictures taking a dust bath.

Dottie

Tilly

Garnet

These are some of the 15 newbies, they are nameless.  There are a couple that stand out from the others that I might give a name but at this time there were just to many and they are so similar to name this time around.

The newbies are keeping up their job of laying eggs.  I do miss the blue eggs we have had in the past.  Dottie will lay 2 or 3 times a week for a few short weeks and then take many weeks off so the blue eggs put a smile on my face when they show up. 

Since we have quite a few more hens then before hubs added another roost in the hen house.  He also built shelves under the roosts to catch some of the droppings that I can scrape off and throw in the raised garden beds now that the gardening season is done.  We are hoping it will help keep the hen house cleaner this winter. 

Tonight I am working on sewing up some hot pads out of this fabric for some Christmas gifts.

Blessings from our home in the woods!

Brenda

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Red Paint!

I have a lot of painting projects stacking up and decided a couple of weeks ago to start tackling them.  My daughter gave me an old ad with a Scottie dog in it a couple of years ago and I have a number of old frames I have picked up cheap to choose from, so I got busy with a new can of Country Chic chalk paint.  Lovin this red!

I took a picture before I put the glass in the frame because I always have problems with glare.  I just mounted the ad on a board that I painted black then added the glass.

On the wall.

I see so many Knockoffs on every one's blog and Pinterest so I thought I would share one that my woodworking hubs created and I painted.  It is not a Knockoff from some high end shop, but I am always pulling out pictures of things I think my hubs can build from magazines.  He has a stack of them in his shop stashed away in a drawer.  This is one that I probably tore out quite some time ago.

This is my hubs first attempt at bending wood.  The handle was made by gluing together 7 very thin pieces of wood and clamping it around a form to dry.

 

I used the same red paint that I used on frame above.

I used a tinted wax on both the frame and the table.

Loved how it turned out.

The woodworker built this table as a surprise for me.  He thinks it will be perfect for my dream Glamper, that I hope to have sometime in the future, and I think he is so right!

Thanks for stopping by!

Blessings from our home in the woods.

Brenda

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My Life As It Is

My life as it is.  I know my posting here on my little blog has been so sporadic that you all must wonder if I should just close it down.  I am not one to share every little thing that is going on in my life, here, or on my Facebook page.  I just think we all have our own troubles and wonder if I really need to share mine to weigh others down.  But I have decided that I am going to mention this once and move on.  I have three wonderful daughters whom I love so much that it breaks my heart when they hurt in anyway.  Two of those daughters each have 4 children whom I love just as much.  I know this is not a new story for any of you with children or grandchildren.  But my second daughter has been in a mentally and physically abusive marriage now for many years and this past June it finally came to a point that she has accepted that she cannot continue that marriage.  We have now had this daughter and her 4 sons living with us since the end of June and our lives have been somewhat out of balance.  The boys are now enrolled in our school system and seem to be doing well and we are adjusting.  That all being said I am going to post some of my favorite summer pictures and move on to fall.

Brothers, sisters, cousins, our grandchildren!

I have a couple more posts that I have pictures picked out for and plan on posting more often.  I will start sharing my creative projects again and hope to catch up with everyone as much as possible.  I hope this fall is bringing you joy.  Blessings from our home in the woods!

Brenda

Sunday Praise "I Shall Not Want" - Audrey Assad

Catching Up-Vacation

Here we are, Fall is moving in and I have not shared much at all about our summer.  So I am going to try and get a few posts in and do just that.  Hubs and I only had a short three day vacation this year but we enjoyed every bit of it.  We stayed on the Leelanau Peninsula here in our home state of Michigan.  We  have stayed on the Peninsula before outside of Sutton's Bay, this year we stayed in the Northport area.

 This is an older motel and somewhat dated but it was comfortable and had everything we needed including a small kitchen area and small living room.  Outside was a large yard with picnic tables and grills available for all the visitors.  Also a path down  to a small beach area.

We spent a lot of time sitting on the lawn reading and little time down by the water.  The beach area had very large rocks in the water, to large for me to walk on but hubs did manage to make it out a ways before he gave up and said it was just to cold.

The same two chairs at another time of the day looking 

out toward the water.

In the pictures above if you looked out across the bay you can just barely see Gull Island.  I had not heard of Gull Island in the 30 plus years I have lived in Michigan.  A couple that were local gave me a short story about how someone had built a house on the island and tried to live there but the Gulls won the battle and the people finally abandoned their home. If you like history like this you can read about it here.

Only thing left behind on Gull Island are the two chimneys of the home.

These are some children taking sailing lessons.  It was fun to watch them deliberately tip over their boats and have to pull them upright again.

Sutton's Bay have some very colorful shops to browse which we did spend a couple hours doing.

It was a relaxing and enjoyable time for both of us. 

A little windblown selfie with squinty eyes but the hubs always takes a good picture so I will share anyway.  This vacation was in July so I still have over a month to catch you up

 on what I have been up to this summer.

Blessings from our home in the woods.

Brenda

Friday Night With Friends Results

I was working along with all the FNWF  from Gone Stitchin last night and I am late with my post on the results, which is really bad since it has been months since I have signed up to play along.  But I drove an hour away this morning to watch my youngest granddaughter play her first ever game of soccer.  She did great!  Pictures are not great but she is number 10.

No face shots and I see I did not crop the second picture very well.

I got a late start since I worked a full day yesterday and I started out with this pile of yarn.

I have been doing a block a week every Friday night from the Simply Crochet App. You can read about it on their Facebook page here.  You will find the information at the top of the page.  I did not get last weeks downloaded so I had two this week but only finished one, and just started the second one which I hope to finish tonight.

After I finish each they get added to this box in hope of having enough to put together in some way for an afghan.

So although I am late posting and I did not get a lot done I am usually always working on something along with my bloggy friends every Friday night.

Blessing from our home in the woods!

Brenda

Random Things

Seems like summer just slipped away from me this year.  Here are a few random pictures from the last month and a half.

 The view from our motel room on a short vacation that we took mid July.

Time spend with grands. I should write up a post with more about the gardens we were visiting on the day of this picture.

Some canning has been getting done.  This is blueberry butter and salsa.

I have been trying to keep up with monthly projects.  These are the Aurifil QAL blocks above for July and August.  Below are all the blocks up to date.

And here are both colorways of the CAL I am following along with on the Moogly blog.  These are going to be gifts for my mom and mom-in-love.

I have almost finished two more sets and I believe there are three more blocks to do before putting these afghans together.  I am looking forward to finishing them.

I expect your summer has flown by quickly also and I hope it has been a good one!  Blessings from our home in the woods!

Brenda

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Are You Still There?

I have been missing in action here on the blog for so long I will be surprised if any of you are still checking in here.  I would like to say I will post more often but life is somewhat unpredictable for me right now so I won't make that promise.  Over a month ago I shared a birdcage here that I a planted with Sedum.  It hangs in the area the fairy garden is set up in.  I found this little gnome and it sits in the birdcage now. I told the grands that the fairies locked him up.

Then one day I got a note from my good bloggy friend Cindy Bee asking for my address. We met in person a couple of summers ago and I so enjoyed Cindy.  She and her husband are building a lovely home with their own two hands, or should I say four hands?  She sent me this sweet cardinal because she thought it would look good in the birdcage.  Well she is right, it is perfect.  I love it! 

 Thanks again Cindy! You can see the garden tour that Cindy went on  and found this pretty bird made by the artist that owns the gardens on this post by Cindy.  I hope you will visit Cindy at The Bee Lady from Hill Top Farm.

 

Blessings from our home in the woods!

Brenda

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