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.  

Maginon Trail Camera Review- Sponsored

Pretty excited to finally get a #trailcam for our property! i'm always curious to know what is lurking around our property at night!  We've had bear, bobcats, fox and coyotes come through, but have never been able to catch them on camera.  Maginon sent me their WK 30-HD Trail camera to review. 

This Trail cam comes with 8 AA Batteries, Mounting belt, Wall mount, USB cable and Instruction manual. 

It didn't come with the SD card, so you have to provide your own. Once you insert the card, you can set the camera. The camera can be set to take pics or videos or a picture + a video. You can set how many pictures it takes, and how long the video plays.  It was easy to set up, although i still need to change the time/date.

 When i first got it, i set it up in an area where the deer typically come through, but after two days the only thing on the camera was me turning it on. Since i wanted to review it soon, and didn't want to wait days (or weeks) for a critter to show up i decided to set it up in the chicken coop just to see how it captured the images. 

i had fun checking through all the videos that it captured yesterday. Since it was in the chicken coop most of the videos are of the chickens of course, but i also caught my beagle walking past, my husband closing up the chicken coop and a RAT running around in the dark. eek! i'm looking forward to seeing this up in different areas on our land to see what is hanging around. 

According to the description it takes crystal clear day shots in color, black and white shots at night. i wouldn't call the images crystal clear, but  it was raining and hazy yesterday. The images are still good for a trail cam.  i'm going to play around with it some more, and i'm sure i'll be posting lots of videos of the different critters we capture on it.   i set it out again last night on the deer trail, and it took several videos. Although there were no critters in the video,  i could hear something walking around in the leaves so i may have to change the view of my camera.  Tonight i'll be placing it further out in the woods near our creak. i've very curios to see what comes to drink there. 

This is a nice camera, it's durable and waterproof.  It comes with a 3 year warranty.

You can find more information about the #maginon Trail Camera here-  http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B07GDV55DZ  

i did receive the product at no cost and a small compensation for my review, but it did not influence my opinion of the product. My opinions are my own.
#sponsored #referral