Rock Paper Tree- Winner Announced!

i apologize for the delay in picking a winner! My modem was fried by lightening on Friday and we just finally got it back up and running!

Drum roll please....

pink026 said... 6

following on twitter as pink026

Congratulations!!! i'll send an email later today. You will have 48 hours to claim your prize or a new winner will be chosen!

Thank you all who entered!!!

Miranda R. Mueller: Artist feature and giveaway!

i happened upon An Austin Homestead blog about a year ago and quickly added it to my reading list. Miranda's blog is very inspiring, full of delicious recipe, beautiful pictures and good information about urban and small space gardening. Besides writing this fabulous blog, Miranda is also a soap maker and very talented illustrator.


About Miranda R. Mueller: By trade and passion, I am a childrens book illustrator and artist. By passion and frugality, I am an avid gardener and would be homemaker. I grew up in the southern Oregon desert absorbing inspiration from the animals, starry skies and wide-open spaces of the family ranch. While pursuing my bachelors degree at Pacific University, then my Masters at the Savannah College of Art and Design, I traveled the country and the world, each new location and relationship contributing to my love of the environment and the development of my artistic style. I currently live and work in Austin, TX where I’m striving to convert my suburban home into a miniature, urban farm complete with vegetable gardens, 4 lovely hens, a growing Pembroke Welsh Corgi pup, and a marvelous compost heap. I love cooking delicious, usually healthy things utilizing as many homegrown ingredients as I can, and when I'm not filling the kitchen with tantalizing dinner smells I fill it with delightful aromas of freshly made soap. I write recipes, when I remember to. I love teaching people how to live frugally and in sync with the planet and seasons. My passion for sustainable living, respecting nature, and love of gardening all show up in my art and hopefully inspire others to consider their impact on the planet – or at least inspire a
fondness for cute puppies and chickens.

I'm constantly churning out new entrepreneurial efforts to supplement my artist's income, including selling my handcrafted soaps and other body products at local farmers markets and online.
You can find samples of my illustration work at my online portfolio: www.MirandaRMueller.com and more information about my soap at NudeSoap.wordpress.com


About the art:
I create one-of-a-kind, original, signed pieces of artwork specifically for you. Tailored to your exact wishes, I do not use templates or digital reproductions. You receive beautiful custom work at an affordable price!
Create a birth announcement or party invitation that you will hold dear for years to come. Give a gift to a child with their favorite critters, colors, and their very own name! Create a room that your child will love with a hand-painted mural. Choose pink elephants or purple penguins, swimming bears or flying pigs–the sky’s the limit. Match your child’s room or their birthday party theme, you decide!

Create beautiful custom artwork for the most special people in your life! Bring some whimsy to their world with personalized name illustrations, hand-painted wall murals and custom nursery decor. Stand out with unique invitations and announcements, and distinctive baby shower and birthday gifts.
Each piece is made just for you!
No dreams are too big, and neither are the prices. Your family will treasure their original artwork for years to come–whatever your budget.

About the soap:
I am happy to offer my soaps and lotions for sale online with shipping anywhere in the USA. Visit Nude Soap, or contact me directly to place an order or inquire about current availabilities. My soaps are all natural, usually vegetarian, and contain no preservatives or chemical additives. No Sodium Laureth Sulfate or fragrances here! Just good pure ingredients (many botanicals come right from my garden) and soothing essential oils.

Where can you find me?
I currently sell my soaps at the Austin Urban Farmers Market in south Austin TX some Saturdays, HOPE Farmers Market in east Austin TX some Sundays and online.

Now for the GIVEAWAY!!

Miranda has generously offered one reader a fully customized baby shower or other party invitation design. She will completely design the front and back of a (5x7 or 4x7) postcard style invitation or outside/inside of a folded invite according to your specifications. Miranda will provide the winner with print ready files, suitable for you to print on a home printer or at a local print shop.

or

$50 GC towards a larger sized original illustration. (8x10 or 11x14)


*please note: Miranda will keep the rights to use the image for other clients.

MANDATORY ENTRY

Head over to www.mirandarmueller.com and let me know your favorite illustration or your idea for an illustration if you were chosen as the winner!

Please include your e-mail address in the format of Yourname(at)email dot com or make sure it is visible in your blogger profile so i have a way to contact you if you win. Otherwise a new winner will be chosen!

EXTRA ENTRIES (make sure you did the mandatory first!!)
please leave a new comment for each extra entry. You can do as many or as little extra entries as you like! If you qualify for 5 entries, leave 5 separate comments.

1. 'like' Miranda R Mueller child book illustrator on facebook 1 entry
2. Follow An Austin Homestead Blog on GFC 1 entry
3. 'like' An Austin Homestead on facebook 1 entry
4. Subscribe to An Austin Homestead Blog via RSS feed (right column) 1 entry
5. 'like' Nude Soap on facebook. 1 entry

6. Follow my The Enchanted Tree blog via google friend connect. 1 entry
7. Be a fan of The Enchanted Tree on Facebook. 1 entry

8. Share this giveaway with your facebook friends! 1 entry

9. Tweet about the contest and a link back to this post. Leave a link to your tweet.
10. Blog about the giveaway. Include a link to www.mirandarmueller.com and to this post, leave a comment letting me know where to find it. 4 entries
11. Get one extra entry for entering any of my other current giveaways.

**Rules**

• Giveaway ends April 21st. st 11:59pm EST
  
• Winner will be chosen via Random.Org. i will then contact them by email, and post the winners name on my blog.
  
• Winner will have 48 hours to respond to the email or another winner will be chosen
• This giveaway is open to US only.
  

Spring babies. :)

One of my favorite things about this time of year is all the new life that is sprouting up everywhere. It always feels like the world is being given another chance after the long dreary grayness of winter.

Had we bred our goat Delilah last fall we could have been blessed with baby goats right now and fresh goats milk. We didn't breed her though, deciding to wait until she is over a year old which is really better for her. We are also hoping to have the newly cleared pasture fenced in and a small barn/larger shed constructed by then. We planted a mixture of timothy and clover in the area and it is already beginning to come up. If all goes well, next spring i will be looking out my kitchen window to see baby goats frolicking in the pasture.

i'm not good at being patient, but i'm trying.

There has been no shortage of baby goats to play with though. My friend's dwarf Nigerian recently gave birth to quadruplets!! She was a first time mommy, and it really is quite amazing that all 4 of the babies survived. They are already a couple weeks old in this picture, and they are the size of puppies. They were at least half this size at birth! They were so unbelivably adorable, i've never seen such tiny goats before.

The kids enjoyed bottle feeding them.


Sage was content just to carry them around. They were so sweet.


This one is trying to suckle my finger. i blieve my friend said that the mother is producing around a quart and a half of milk per day, which is good for the Dwarf Nigerians. Nigerian goat milk is higher in butterfat and higher in protein than milk from most dairy goat breeds.


Spring also means new peeps. :) Although we usually hatch out our own, this year we purchased some pullets from the local Farm Supply. The winter was hard on our birds, and we lost almost all of our hens to predators. We only have one setting hen left, and she hadn't been broody yet this spring. i'm hoping these new chicks will be good layers and will actually stay within the fencing, so there will be less of a chance of loosing them to predators.

We made a special trip to town for what was advertised as a an 'animal swap meet'. It actually turned out to be one guy with about 12 full size chickens, a box of day old chicks, a pair of turkeys, a dozen piglets and a ewe. That was all. He was selling them out of the back of his truck. i was really disappointed. The chicks he had were Silver Wyandotte, all straight run. i've learned my lesson in the past buying straight run, you are pretty much guarenteed to that 50% or more are roosters. In my case it is always the or more. Our last batch of chicks had 5 roosters and one hen.
Since i had promised the kids we'd be coming home with new peeps, we went into the Farm Supply and bought some of their pullets. They didn't have the breeds i'd been wanting, but at least i knew i'd be getting hens.
We came home with two speckled Sussex, a white leghorn, a red production layer and two Black Australorp.


Or so we thought we had two Black Australorp. As soon as the feather began to come in it was quite obvious that our two black peeps were not the same breed. The one on the left looks like a Black Australorp, the one on the right is getting a lot of red/brown feathers mixed in with the black. i'm guessing it may be a Black Star chick....i guess time will tell. :)

These gals have grown really fast, and have already gotten in most of their feathers. We'll be introducing them to the rest of the flock soon...and finally getting them out of my house!

Adventures in Salamander raising...

About a week or so ago, we went on a hike and came home with frog spawn and salamander spawn. Our tadpoles hatched the day after we came home. i'm guessing the heat of the house helped them along a bit. i'll post some pictures of them soon. They have already quadrupled in size.

We are still waiting for our salamanders to hatch.


This is what our Salamander spawn looked like when we first brought it home on March 20th. Each egg had a very round black dot inside it.


Two days later on March 22nd, the dots have begun to elongate just a little bit. We were able to observe what looked like the heads forming on a few of them.


By March 25th, heads and the beginnings of tails have formed.


March 29th. You can begin to see the heads and tails, and they are starting to look like tadpoles. Some of the eggs in the very center of the jelly mass began to look fuzzy and stopped developing. We found some info online suggesting that sometimes the eggs in the center will die and need to be removed. So i took out the 'bad eggs' and in the process of a few of the living eggs came loose from the protective jelly.

This little egg is 6-7mm, about the size of a pea.


This has really allowed us to observe the some of the details that were difficult to see when the eggs were in the jelly. You can clearly see the head, tail and feathery gills. The Spotted Salamanders usually hatch within 4 to 8 weeks depending on the water temperature.

This is our first time observing them, so we are very excited to see them finally hatch! i will post updates as they begin to hatch and grow.

You can find some info about Salamander lifecycles and a printout at Enchanted Learning.

Wordless Wednesday: Daydream Believer

My 4 year old daughter was being a little too quiet so i went to see what she was up to, and found this. She had been playing dress up in my room, and found my wedding dress in the back of the closet. i grabbed my camera and snapped this shot. :)