Long Winter

It's starting to feel like a long winter.  Most years we have one good snow and that's about it.  This year we've had several snow storms, a few ice storms and we've lost power twice for multiple days.  The first ice storm was in November, and we just had another in February.

These pictures were taken back in January.  One of the few storms where we didn't lose power.  The ice was pretty and only lasted a few days. The melting and refreezing caused the kids to miss quite a few days of school.  Although the main roads were clear, back roads were a mess and most of the county is back roads.

When the sun hit the ice everything was glistening and looked quite magical. It's really hard to capture with a camera though. 

Through snow, ice and freezing conditions our shiitakes still grew. It's really pretty amazing. i never expected that we'd be getting fresh mushrooms all winter. It's usually only a few at a time, but every time we have a warm spell they just start popping again.  This has helped me fulfill my constant need to grow stuff, which is usually pretty impossible in the winter.

Although i don't ever really do New Year's resolutions, i started this year with the strong desire to learn new things. Lots of new things. Although i learned to macrame years ago, typing hemp in my collage days. i wanted to learn this new macrame that i keep seeing. It's done the same way but uses really thing waxed cords.  Learning to wrap a stone was my first goal, now i'm working on re-learning all the different knots.  Most of it has come back pretty easily, but i'm struggling with changing direction while knotting. As soon as i get one knot figured out, i have to do it on the other side of the piece, in a different direction and then my mind just goes blank and i forget how to do it entirely. i never realized how much harder it is to learn things as we get older, but i can attest that it is very true. i'm hoping with enough repetition i'll finally get it to click.

Bread baking is another of my New Year goals.  i've really been enjoying the process of making  (and eating) homemade read. So much so, that's i make at least one loaf a week.  i have a couple favorite recipes, and plan to slowly add a few more.  i'd like to start making sour dough with a starter, but have just been making simple breads like challah and a basic honey white bread so far.

Over the weekend we lost power again due to high winds. It's still dropping down below freezing at night, but we have the woodstove for heat and we have a generator to keep the fridge/freezers going. 

We've a couple nice days giving us a little taste of spring, but March is planning to come in like a lion with lows of 10 degrees and possible snow next week.  

As always i do enjoy the slowing down of the season once we get passed xmas, but am also very eager for spring.

Grandma Morgan's 90th Birthday- Quick Florida Trip

 My grandmother and husband share the same Birthday, Dec. 26th the day after xmas.  This year my Grandma turned 90 and my folks had planned a celebration for her in Florida. So the day after xmas, my folks left our house and headed down to Florida and the day after that we headed down as well. The party was scheduled for the Sat. after xmas, not on her actual birthday which gave us a couple days to make the trip and get settled.

 We do not get to see Grandma very often so it was really nice to be therefor her birthday celebration.  It was held at the park where she lives and there were a ton of people there to celebrate. Although she is 90 she is one of the most active folks at her senior park. She teaches water aerobics and walks at least a mile every day first thing in the morning.

We don't have my pictures of the kids with their grandma, so this one is quite special.

This was a super quick trip we literally drove down for the party, then drove back home a day later but we tried to pan out a few fun things to do while we were there.

We stopped at the Trout Lake Nature Center, which is just down the road from where my grandma lives.  It was small, but nice with a walking trail and indoor exhibits.

On our way home we swung by Dayton beach and spent a couple hours walking the beach, collecting shells and visiting the tourist shops.

 It really wasn't as crowded as i would expect for Daytona, the beach and boardwalk were both fun to walk.

After leaving Daytona, we drove up the coast a bit and made another stop at Flagler beach and then headed toward home. We'd considered driving straight through, but ended up stopping in Orangeburg South Carolina for the night.  i think the whole trip lasted about 3 1/2 days, which is just about perfect for me.  i would probably vacation more often if we could squeeze it into a long weekend. 

The couple days of warm temps and sunshine were a nice respite from cold weather at home, but i worry too much about my animals to be gone much longer than that.  Although i really wasn't thrilled about making the trip, i'm really glad we were able to spend time with my Grandma and parents. As much as i love living where i do, the older i get the more i feel bad about living so far away from family. 

New Year Crafting- Product Review

One of my favorite things about reviewing is getting to try out products i wouldn't normally try. This week i get to play around with a #LeatherWorkDesigns 45 Piece Leather Craft Hand Tools Kit. 

This leather tooling kit is an ideal way to introduce just about anyone to the art of leather crafting. It comes with a wide variety of tools- High detail stamps allow beginners to personalize belts, wallets, saddles, or other leather goods, and grooving tools enable intermediate, expert and professional leather artists to customize their clothes and accessories in high detail.

Leather earrings are really big on my Cameo silhouette group right now, and since i don't wear leather i was looking around for some alternatives. Turns out faux leather works just as good. i made a couple pair just using some scrap i had on hand.   

i already ordered some more faux leather to play around with, i'm not sure if the stamps will work on faux leather, but i watched a tutorial that used them on polymer clay to accessorize the faux leather creations which i thought was a pretty cool idea. 

These are just a few of the faux leather earrings i made using the cricut faux leather.   My next project is going to be a hand sewn pleather dice pouch for my boy. This kit has almost everything you need to get started! Last picture shows everything that's included in the kit, the pliers (first pic) are not included in it, i was using them on the earring wires. 

You can find the full kit here -  http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B07HHD9GN1http://amzn.to/2FBLGv5  #sponsored #productreviewer #DIY #leathercrafts #veganleather #handmade #crafterlife

Holidaze 2018

Our holidays were a bit weird this year. We spent most of December in limbo not sure if we were staying home, going to Michigan or going to Florida.   My grandmother celebrated her 90th birthday on Dec. 26th, so we were originally  planning to be there for her birthday party.  My parents usually stop by our house on their way to Florida and we celebrate xmas with them a little early.  However this year, my dad has undergone several surgeries for Parkinson's treatment and wasn't sure they'd be able to travel down to Florida. 

So we were suddenly looking at driving to Michigan to spend the holiday with my parents, then heading down to Florida to celebrate my grandmother's birthday.  The week before xmas, my dad was cleared for travel and they arrived on Dec. 23.

Stanley has been our Yule tree for the last few years. We always have a live potted tree, but the place where we'd been getting a live tree no longer offers them. So i'd purchased Stanley even though he's too small to really decorate. The kids love him though, and when i brought home an artificial tree i'd gotten from freecyle, i was not expecting the reactions i got. My daughter immediately yelled,  "we can't have a fake tree! We're betraying Stanley!"  When my son saw it, he said "this goes against our Viking heritage!!"  <- didn="" i="" p="" realize="" t="" vikings.="" we="" were="">

Once i began to decorate the tree, they eventually warmed up to the idea. i had to tell them it was just a decoration, we were not replacing Stanley.  Stanley is still our Yule tree. This is just an ornament holder.  It always quickly became out new cat tree as well. 

i had BIG plans for our holiday feast this year. i started off baking lots of treats and then planned a British themed menu with Treacle tarts,  Christmas dinner in a Yorkshire pudding,  pumpkin pasties and more. Then the day before my folks arrived i got sick. It was just a cold, but i felt miserable and didn't really want to be making food for people when i had snot dripping down my face, so my Very English Christmas never happened. Maybe next year.

We had a nice visit with the folks. My dad looked really good for the amount of surgeries he's had this past year. He'd had a DBS implant in the spring for Parkinson's, which almost immediately became infected. This led to several more surgeries removing different parts of the hardware, until he finally had to just have it all removed. Very disappointing, but glad it's over and he can move on.

Since they were able to come down and spend the holidays with us,  we didn't have to worry about that trip to MI.  It was a nice simple holiday with family.

My Grandmother's party was moved to the weekend after her birthday. So on Dec. 26th, my folks left for Florida and on the 27th we headed down that way too.   Although i wasn't thrilled be up and leaving right after xmas, i'm glad we went down and celebrated my grandmother's 90th birthday even though we turned around and drove right back a day later.  i'll post more about our super quick Florida trip on a different post.  Our ornament holder really looked lovely when we finally got it all decorated, even the kids agreed. ;) 

First Snow of the Season

The second week of December we had a major snow storm come through and dump about 20 inches of snow overnight.  This winter has been the snowiest we've seen in a while.  

Just a couple weeks earlier we were hit with an ice storm and lost power for almost 5 days.  Already this is more a winter than we usually see. 

Caring for critters in crappy weather is my least favorite part of homesteading. Although, i think i do prefer the snow to the usual ice and mud.  Our winters typically tend to be 99% mud.  There's not much worse than a muddy chicken coop.

Although our wood was covered in snow, we stayed nice and warm inside while husband kept the fire fed.  Thankfully, he'd brought plenty of wood inside before the storm started, so we had plenty of dry wood to last as long as needed.

Our bees are tucked into their hives for winter, and we are hoping they over winter well. This will be our first winter with bees, and so far it's been a pretty cold one.  We made sure they had plenty of honey/pollen frames to feed them over the winter, and we'll be checking on their food stores on the first warm days we get when temps are over 50 degrees.

 It's been very mild the past few years.  The snow helped me get into a holiday spirit a little quicker than normal.  On years where we get no snow in December, it just doesn't feel very festive. It was nice to hunker down and just enjoy the peacefulness the snow brings.