New neice!

I finally have some good pictures of her! Zoey Ellyn Born Jan. 21st! She is sweet as pie. The kids love her!

Maran Chicks.

I can't believe I forgot to post more about my chicken obsession. I got some Black Copper Maran chicks to go with my big Rooster I already have. I have had these guys about a week now. They are in the house again because they don't have all their feathers. I have 5 of these guys. Hope most are girls. Boys will be sold or dinner.

New King Sized Headboard

We have never had bedroom furniture. My dresser is an antique from my Granny. Massimo has his clothes in closet shelving. So you might have seen a few posts back that I made Cedar Nightstands for our room. They are pictured here in use. We got Espresso colored wicker baskets to hold things on the shelves. Then this week I made this fabric covered headboard. As always I got my plans from Ana White (aka Knock off wood). I covered it with Espresso colored suede fabric. It also has Espresso colored wood trim around that and finally the outside edges I painted a complimentary off white. You can click the picture to get a closer look.

Credit where credit is due: http://ana-white.com/2010/02/plans-king-size-framed-upholstered-headboard.html

Ice Skating

We got invited up to our neighbors house a couple weeks ago to go ice skating. It was super fun. We also stayed, had dinner and great conversation. They have lots of skates in different sizes so we just borrowed for the day. Luca stayed in his boots. By the end of the time Dominic and Gioia were playing ice Hockey. :)

Facebook in Real life.

This is funny as heck because its so true!!

Roosters

Hi everyone! Tired of looking at my chickens yet. LOL! Well I just had to share a couple more of my handsome Roosters. We FINALLY got the new red coop finished and the birds are in! They seem to be really loving the room to move around in there. Its only been one day but I could tell they had been up on the roost I made and also in the nesting boxes. So that is good news.

Here is Francoise, our Maran rooster.


Here is Bunny our Easter Egger/Ameruacana Rooster.

Easter Egger Chicks

Easter Egger birds are basically Ameraucana birds that are mixed with something else. Most times they are almost identical to Ameraucana birds except they have some trait differences. Examples would be wrong leg color, wrong feather color etc. Of course this is all to "breed standard" so it doesn't really matter unless you want to breed your birds or show them. I just want the pretty blue and green eggs. :)

Easter Egger Pullets (females). We actually have two of the yellow/white color and then their is Brownie.


Easter Egger boys. The sent males for warmth during shipping. Its just how Hatcheries get rid of extra boys. :) These are free to a good home if you are needing a Rooster.

Chip and Dale.

Chicks 2011.

Our first batch of chicks for the year. We got 7 meaties, 5 Amerucanas. 3 of the A chicks are girls. Amerucanas will lay blue or green colored eggs.

One day old chicks.




One week old chicks compared side by side. Meat chick on the left (yellow) and Amerucana chick on the right (brown).


Look at that fat belly!

One week old chicks.

Happy 2011!

Yeah. I am a few days late with the greeting but what can I say? We have been pretty busy. We traveled to Iowa to see family. Then we have been busy homeschooling and organizing our house.

My office = Turned Homeschool room. I reclaimed my dining room table and put in shelving. Those are the orange shelves I built.


We had some much fun in Iowa that Dominic fell asleep on his cousin Aaron.

60 degree day in winter!

So we had another of those stellar warm winter days. I think we got up to 67 here today! SWEET!! Can you tell I was really excited? They had been calling for this weather so DH took the day off work so we could get the chicken house closer to finished. He got the tin on the roof finished. Then we got two windows installed. We may do more later but two will work great for now. We put one on the East wall and one on the west wall. We will definitely put a South facing window in later (probably Spring). These are the storm windows from our house. We saved them when we replaced our windows this fall.

Now all we have to do is frame in the top of the wall where the roof meets it and it will be ready for winter chickens. This spring we will do the run and pop doors.

Christmas Day!

Christmas was very nice this year. On Christmas Eve, we went to church and Gioia sang in the childrens choir. Later we came home had dinner and watched The Grinch. Christmas Day we opened presents and played all day. It was very relaxing. Here are some highlights.

Dominic loves to dress up and is sometimes sad when his dad won't let him wear a dress to the hardware store. Our solution, a Kilt. He loves it. He really does, he was just making a silly face.


Gioia got this giant dollhouse. It is big enough for Barbies but she doesn't really play with them. It is also big enough for all her stuffed animals which she plays with constantly. It was a hit!


I made several pairs of pants for the kids. Luca and Dominic got matching brown corduroy pants with Owl print cuffs on them. They are adorable.


Dominic also got these Reindeer Flannel pants. I added a red ric rac to the bottom.


Dominics last pair are the frog and lizards print flannel.

1st Reconciliation

A few weeks ago my daughter had her 1st Reconciliation (aka 1st confession). She and her Catholic friends were all so nervous. She even cried one night all worried about it. She felt much better after we talked in depth and I explained that she would not get in trouble, it was just like talking to someone and feeling better afterward. Her wonderful 2nd grade (school of religion) teacher was so great. They did a fabulous job helping the kids understand and be comfortable.

Afterword she said it went great. She said, I know Father gave my sins to God and God throws them in the trashcan. :) I think thats a great analogy.

New pictures.

I am lame and my scanner is broken right now. So instead of posting the actual picture I will post the link and everyone can see all the pictures we had taken of the kids.

#10 was the one I ordered, of all three kids.

SORRY. the other link didn't work. Try this one. click on the word

PICTURES

Christmas Crafts

The kids have been doing some really fun Christmas crafts lately. One thing we did was make paper Gingerbread Men. We tried making really cookie ones and it was a miserable flop. So paper ones we are better at. On thing that really impressed me was Dominic got into it and even would trace new men on the paper and bring them to me to cut out. That would be why we have diversity in our Gingerbread Men body types. They turned out cute. I will go ahead and mention that they also have butts drawn on the backs of them. Lets face it when you are 5 and 7 butts are super funny.




This craft was really cute and fun. The Reindeer body is made from tracing your foot. The antlers are made from tracing your hands. We even did finger print eyes and thumb print nose on Dominics deer.

Goodbye Oscar.

Last night we lost our old dog. He was the best dog ever. He was almost 11 years old. That is pretty old for a overweight Golden Retriever.

His name was Oscar because I rescued him from a dumpster (oscar the grouch) when he was only only a few weeks old. I bottle fed him and raised him. He was a inside dog for many years. One year DH was working from home and he would take a nap with Oscar every day. One day DH didn't do it and the silly dog was on our bed howling for DH to come up. We affectionately called him Oscar Meier Weiner, The Fat Man and Fatty Maggey. If he wanted you to pet him, he would put his paw on you. Once we took a obedience class and he got certified as a pet therapy dog. It didn't really pan out because he was so big it was hard to bring him in to small nursing home rooms and such.

He was the worlds best dog and will be sadly missed.

I have some really great pictures of him as a baby but my scanner is broken. In fact I can only find a couple pictures on my computer right now.

50 degrees in December!

50 degrees in December is something to celebrate. In honor of this we spent the afternoon outside.

We let the chickens out.


This guy has sure gotten bigger since the summer.


We went out in the woods and cut some wood to fill our pile up before the cold hits tomorrow. The kids had fun.


We also found this small tree has been cut down by a beaver.

Work in Progress.

Every winter I am cooped up inside and get this urge to finish up old projects. So here is a list of what is going on that we are trying to work on finishing.

1. Chocolate Stars quilt - I am 3/4 done with this. Hoping to have it done before the new year.
2. Vintage quilt - This is a quilt top my Great Aunt started. She passed away recently and I am finishing it. The top is done. I need to quilt it now.
3. 2 Pairs pants for the kids for Christmas.
4. Headbands promised to two people. (cut out, almost done)
5. Sort out fabric by color and size so I know what I got.

Non sewing related:
6. Make cedar night stand for hubby side of the bed. (half the wood is bought and cut).
7. Make shelves for kitchen. (wood is already bought).

I also have various projects that I started, didn't get very far and decided I would quit. I would like to go through those and see if I could do something to finish or use it up. I have Major amounts of quilt fabric/scraps and other stuff I need to do some cleaning out.

Things I have gotten done:

1. Photo calendars made for christmas gifts.
2. Christmas cards made and sent out.

And I got a $20 gift card from my Dad and stepmom for Christmas so it will almost buy enough wood to finish the night stand. The wood working is on hold until after Christmas because I think Santa might be bringing me some tools! Yeah!

Christmas Tree is up!

We had a great Thanksgiving weekend. DH's brother came to visit and we had the standard Turkey Dinner. Then the kids and I got the tree out. Always a highlight! Yes, the bottom of the tree has very few ornaments on it. That's because I have small children.

Luca

The other night Luca had this cute stocking hat on. I took a picture of him and he started posing for me. So i kept snapping pictures. Here are a couple super cute ones.

Baby shower.

My sister had the first of her baby showers recently. I thought I would post a couple cute pictures from that day.

Diaper cake with super cute pink boots.

Rory (with vampire teeth) and Gioia (with Rosa the stuffed guinea pig).


Elaine, Melaine and Jaime