December

 December has been a bit of blur. i've been putting in a few hours in the glass shop each week making heart pendants. They have been selling well, so each morning i'm packing and shipping and then trying to balance everything else has left my head spinning. i've several sponsored blog posts to write, and a few product reviews as well. So Suddenly, i'm half way through December and starting to panic a bit.

i'm pretty pleased with my heart pendants, although i still struggle with the shapes a bit. i'm going to keep making them until i feel like i can make the shapes consistently. i feel like i've learned a lot about striking the glass to get the colors i want and my loops are also improving. i sell the pendants for $10 shipped. 

i also made a few leaf pendants this month and the colors on them are fantastic. i have a few of these available for sale as well. So right now, this is the extent of my lamp-working abilities. :) i can make hearts and leaves.  i was planning to focus on dolls this fall, but somehow that never happened. i got started on the glass again, and that seems to be where all my spare time is going. The fall is always so busy from halloween until new years, so hopefully when winter kicks in things will slow down a bit. 

One super exciting thing for me, is that i still had fresh tomatoes the first week of December. :) That was a goal for me with the greenhouse this year, and although my plants didn't survive December i still had a beautiful basket of fresh  tomatoes. Next year, i plan to add a heat lamp and i'm hoping to extend my tomato growing season even longer.

Another fun thing for this year, is that i finally am getting some new colors from my chickens. i have so many barnyard cross, that i really wasn't sure what to expect. Right now i am getting everything from white, to dark olive and all different shades of brown.  So i'm not ready to do my recap on the year, but i do feel like this is definitely progress.  It's nice to start December feeling pretty good about the direction we are heading in with our creative and homesteading goals. 

Blissoma, Holistic Skin care- Handmade Holidaze Feature

Hey folks! i will be posting about different small businesses/artists and crafters over the next few weeks. i love to help promote my fellow artists and small business owners.

Today my feature for #handmadeholidaze is Julie Longyear of Blissoma Holistic Skincare! i've known Julie for years, first connecting through the old Stitchin' Bitches group. Julie's original business was Irie Star patchwork, but her focus turned to Skin care and Blissoma was created. 

  Her products are one of the most effective and purest skin care lines on the market today. Every product in the collection is 100% natural, Certified Vegan, made in-house, and packed with certified organic botanicals, bioavailable vitamins, essential fatty acids, and skin-soothing seed oils. They are also 100% free of artificial chemicals commonly found in beauty products. 

Visit her website for a nice selection of organic cruelty-free skin care products  http://www.blissoma.com/ 

Blissoma on Instagram 

Blissoma on facebook 

i'm will be featuring many other artists and small businesses in the coming day.

#handmadeholiday #promotewhatyoulove #smallbusiness 

Thanksgiving 2016

Playing a little catch up on blog posts again. December already has my head spinning, and i'm feeling completed overwhelmed by all things i still have to do. i know i go through it every year, but it still causes me a bit of panic.

Anyhow, i had started this thanksgiving post on Thanksgiving, but never got around to finishing it.

As always, i pride myself in having a mostly homegrown meal. This year, i don't have leaf greens ready. i was still getting tomatoes, so i was behind in planting my cold crops. Our meal consisted of home grown potatoes, sweet potatoes, pumpkin and squash. We also had green beans that had been canned last year, frozen corn gifted by a neighbor, eggs from my hens, apple sauce i had canned, cherries we picked from another neighbor and fresh tomatoes from my garden! 

As a vegetarian family we don't eat turkey,  So i made a tofu-seitan roast filled with wild rice and portabello mushrooms. i loosely used this recipe by vegan dad. http://vegandad.blogspot.com/2008/09/hickory-smoked-veggie-turkey-lunchmeat.html

A glimpse of our vegetarian feast.  i turned the pumpkin into Pumpkin pasties, and made cauldron cakes out of the squash. i had a bit of  a Harry Potter theme for our Thanksgiving.

i made hot butter beer for dessert using this recipe. http://thetiptoefairy.com/2014/12/harry-potters-hot-butter-beer/ It was so good!!

Afterward dinner, we took a hike to the top Buffalo mountain. Buffalo mountain is the highest point in Floyd county. It was a beautiful day for a hike and perfect end to our day.