October 6, 2012

New Series: Wordless Weekend

So, after last Saturday’s post about houses, i thought it might be fun if i used the weekends, when i’m normally blog-silent, to post updates on our house and homestead search.

As a re-cap: My hubs and i have had an offer on a 17 acre property in Kings Valley since late May. It’s a short sale. It’s frustrating. We just wanna move in already! There are of course some major caviats to the property: siding that hasn’t been treated in 10 years, fencing that needs to be repaired or put in for the first time, questionable water access, etc. It’s huge. It’s retro. It’s awesome…. if you can see past the years and dollars of work we need to do to it. And it may not even become ours, but we imagine and hope that it will.

Apparently there are still a few “tenants” residing in hidden drawers…. gross.

We re-visited the house with our realtor yesterday and got the power turned on. The place looked much nicer with lights on! We even discovered some more awesome, vintage linoleum. This property has dug itself into our hearts, so we hope we get it. Unless the well test pans out bad, in which case we’ll be starting from square one all over again.

In the future these posts will be mostly wordless with updates on our homesteading progress. For now: here it is. A clean slate. Ready for someone to give it some love.

Will that someone be me?

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October 5, 2012

Fiber Fridays: Halloween!

I had planned to post about my finished cowl from last week, but, well: it’s not finished. Instead, i’ll just announce the winners of my prototype baby toys and offer a call out for requests from my Etsy shop. I’ve been felting Halloween themed cuties all week and have fun plans for Thanksgiving and Christmas corgis to come.

Who else remembers Wee Forest Folks? WFF are one of my biggest inspirations: tiny mice dressed in various outfits going about their day to day activities. So cute. I have dozens of them. As far as i know, the mice are sculpted and painted by hand by just a few familiy members in Maine or somewhere else  (Massachusettes, apparently)… i always wanted to work for them “when i grew up” so now, i felt tiny corgis and sheep. Close, right? The wee mice come permanantly dressed in their garb, but i like the idea of keeping my Fiber Friends “naked” with garments added on for the seasons. I might change this idea…. what do you think? Developing a whole collection of seasonal Fiber Friends could be a lot of fun, i suppose. This is still a new business for me, so i’m open to experimentation and customer feedback. Leave me a comment with your inclination.

I’m thinking Halloween is rather furtive, but Christmas lasts all year for some. I’ll keep making the costumes for my Halloween pets detachable, but i’m thinking Christmas themes carry more weight. So, look for some Fiber Friends decked out in sweaters, red noses and reindeer antlers, permanently affixed in a month or so. I’m pretty excited to add ornaments to my corral of critters.

And now: the WINNERS! “Randomly chosen” to receive 1 prototype toy from my workshop are:

FOY! My lovely blog hop co-host has a cute baby girl who just absolutely must get her hands on some felt.

Melissa! A fellow Willamette valley-ite gets a clinch on the win simply due to the fact that i want an excuse to visit her farm in Monroe. 😉

jaime bilyeu! For fairness, i must also pick someone i don’t actually know. 😉

Winners: contact me with your address and look for your prototype in the mail sometime in the next few months. My business plan is currently weak at best. haha! Time to head to work for me. Have a great Friday everyone. Leave me a comment with any ideas or requests for what you’d like to see in my shop!

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October 4, 2012

Eat Make Grow: Blog Hop #10!

Welcome to this week’s Eat Make Grow Blog Hop where you share what you have been eating with your family, growing in your garden or making with all your creative impulses. Eat Make Grow is a collective link party that is shared across three blogs and runs every Thursday-Tuesday. Whichever blog that you choose to link up your post, it will show up on all three sites! Eat Make Grow is a way to share with many people posts about your domestic doings, whether that’s growing veggies, hosting parties, sewing, mixing up cleaning supplies, or trying out a new recipe. We want to learn about it! Every week, we will feature the most popular link, and one chosen by the the host. This week, your host is Foy!

Your Hosts:

Miranda from Pocket Pause
Marigold from Hideous! Dreadful! Stinky!
Foy from Garden. Cook. Write. Repeat.

We’re not big fans of rules so there are just two of them:
No big corporation or business advertising or promotional posts. Let’s not dilute Eat Make Grow with junky posts. We don’t mind helping out the little home grown businesses of independent bloggers or handmade merchants (Etsy, etc.). **We will be deleting any spammy posts**
Please link your posts back to one of the hosting blogs. This is a common blog hop courtesy. This link helps build the Eat Make Grow community by sending your readers to all of the other participant’s posts. We will feature two posts each week and we will only consider posts that have a link back. A text link is fine, or you can grab this button and put it anywhere on your blog:

Grab the code from my sidebar!

Welcome to October!  Did you all see that lovely harvest moon? I’m Foy of Garden. Cook. Write. Repeat., your host for this week.  The leaves are changing colors here in Indiana and my chest freezer is filling with all the good things from the garden.  It was great to see what you all are up to last week.  I can’t wait to see what’s in store this week.I have one little order of business before we get to the featured publishers.  Now that this little hop is on #10 we will be removing any entries that are not how to make something.  A recipe, crafty DIY tutorials or garden instructions are what we are after.  By vetting we hope to make a stronger blog hop.  One that will be come a destination for folks who want inspiration for their families, kitchens and gardens.  Thanks to all of you who are contributing!Our featured posts of the week are *drum roll*:

Green Idea Review’s “Making Your Own Beef Stock or Broth – Is it Worth it? A Real Food Recipe Review“.  This was our clear winner by the most clicks.  Victoria makes an excellent case for why home made broth is better and makes it sound easy with her simple instructions.  She wrote, “Overall, making homemade beef stock was easy, especially with the slow cooker.  The stock yield was good, and the flavor was excellent.  It was much better than any store bought stock I’ve tried, and way more nutritious as well.”

I picked A Life Unprocessed’s “Making Lacto-Fermented Sauerkraut” for the Host’s Choice this week.  This post answered a lot of questions I had about making kraut.  I tried making my own this summer using the Ball Blue Book recipe, but when I got fruit fly maggots growing in it, I threw it out.  I now see my mistake was not covering the jar with a tea towel!  Mellow, you give me the courage to try again!  And I also want to try out making mead after following a link think to this post.

Grab the code from my Sidebar!
And as a reminder, PLEASE remember to add a text link or button for Eat Make Grow to your blog when you link up. We’ve had to pass up lots of great posts to feature because of not having a backlink :(



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October 3, 2012

Wordless Wednesday – Chase!

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