Spring is far away

Since it is February in Idaho, spring is long time from coming. At least for the plants. I went to a workshop at a friend's farm this last weekend and this is what I found. Doesn't this ewe look like the best place to get warm?

 But there is another way to keep warm. Grab a couple of your siblings and cuddle up under a heating lamp.

Secret Obsession

Maybe it isn't so secret.

I want a farm. No really, stop laughing. I want a farm with several acres and lots of animals.

I want a big old faded red barn with lots of noises coming from it.
I have rabbits and will have chickens within a few weeks. That is all that can fit on my current city lot. But I do have a goat. :) He doesn't live with me but at my friend's farm. She has almost 3 acres and I am so grateful to her for allowing my goat to live there with her goat.

I want to add turkeys, geese, ducks, pigs, sheep, more goats, and possibly a pony. My husband thinks I am crazy and he is probably right. But I think it might be a disease and I am not alone.

Barnheart

So much the same

So much is the same around here and yet so much has changed. The children are growing and learning. I can't keep my now 3 year old from leaving the back door wide open after I leave the room despite the 3 inches of snow on the ground.

My 10 year old Pie Girl is growing up to be such an amazing and gorgeous young lady. She is now taking violin lessons and will serenade you with Mary Had a Little Lamb at a moment's notice.

I have started a new direction in my life. I am now raising and breeding German Angora rabbits. They are stunning! I have two REWs (ruby-eyed white) and one chocolate self. The REWs are for my spinning and knitting business and the chocolate will be for my own personal enjoyment of spinning and loving on a gorgeous bunny. I have been blessed with a very thoughtful husband that has indulged my need for more animals and he is so grateful he doesn't have to clean up after them.

My boys are amazing

I didn't want to leave my amazing and gorgeous boys out of the love fest here on the blog. I have two amazing boys. But today I will talk about DuderMan. He is my 5 year old who is also my comic relief.



He is almost always able to make me laugh and even when he is trying to be angry like in this following picture, I am able to make him laugh.



And he always has something on his face. I swear I clean his face after every meal but somehow he finds more and smears it all over his face.

His also my most accident prone boy. He cut my birthday dinner short two years ago when my sister called to say that he tripped in to her rocking chair and split his cheek open and would need stitches. By the time I got there he had a huge gaping wound on his cheek but happy as a lark and he did not want to leave. In the previous picture you can see the scar that was left after the stitches were taken out.

This picture is of him just after he and his older brother decided to hold our two cats at each other and make them scratch each other. What they didn't realize is that they would get scratched too.



Can you see the bandage on his cheek covering his stitches?

He is always willing to be happy and loving. He still loves to come snuggle on my lap first thing in the morning and I take advantage of that as much as I can because once he is off he doesn't stop until he collapses, usually in bed but sometimes on the couch on top of a hot pad.



I don't know how comfortable that hot pad is but he seems perfectly content.

A Few of My Favorite Things

I know that it has been way too long since my last post. Considering that it was about the fair last fall is a sad, sad commentary on my posting skills. So to finally kick off the new year (I know that it is almost March but this is my first post of the year so please forgive me), I am going to share my favorite things of late.

I have finally, with my oldest daughter almost 10 years old, discovered that I like to do my girls' hair. This is an amazing thing considering that usually they look like this...



And yes, that is a goofy hat on backwards.


An online friend posted some pictures of some fantastic curlers that I knew I needed immediately and so I ran to Sally's Beauty supply and bought these spiral curlers that have been an Hallelujah opportunity for me. I'm sure you remember those terrible foam curlers that your mom put in your hair every Saturday night for church the next morning. I don't know about you but always by Sunday morning at least one if not several had fallen out in the night and I was left with stick straight hair in some places and super tight curls that didn't relax until Tuesday in other places. Then I bought these and put them on Doller Heart.




The don't fall out. They are not heavy. And they make amazing curls!



This was without any styling product on her hair. So I decided to do Pie Girl's hair for church and this is what my nonskills were able to do.



I love these things!!!! You must get some.

Now for my final favorite thing of the day, a fantastic website that has me going crazy with all of the things I want to make: www.knockoffwood.com. It is completely brilliant and I can spend hours on here and on the Facebook fan page looking at real projects. I love it!

State Fair

We as a family went to the Idaho State Fair this year. I honestly think this is my favorite thing to do with the family. I don't know if this feeling is left over from my excitement of going when I was a child and now I get to share with my kids or if I am just have a child's simple entertainment need. But I love to go. This year we had everyone dressed in their Utah Jazz shirts that Mr. Edge brought back from his trip to Utah. We had several people congratulate us on raising our kids right. LOL.

We started with the animal barns. I love this part. I love seeing all of the farm animals and their owners who work so hard to make them ready for the fair.







We then work our way through the vendors and get the kids lunch. We let them pick what they want to eat. Buddy loves the foot long corn dogs smothered in mustard. I wish I had a picture of that but he eats so fast that I can never catch him with the camera.



Then after we get through crafts and hobby sheds we find the petting zoo. This year it was HUGE! They had everything from alpacas and donkeys to chickens and turtles. This picture is of the Pie Girl and Duderman petting a turtle.



Doller loved this part of the fair. It was so hard to keep track of her. She would run from one section to the next and squealed over each new animal. She loved the bunnies and came back to them several times.



They had baby pot-bellied pigs that were so cute! The petting zoo was offered by a local animal feed store and all of the animals were for sale. They had an area that was full of cages of about 25 different kinds of puppies. Again, for sale. This section was crowded full of adults holding and cooing over the puppies. I gave this section a wide berth! I don't need any more headaches.

We saved the rides for last. This year we were smart and went on the first day of the fair. They have a promotion that day that you can get these flyers from McDonald's that is worth tickets off each of the young kids' rides. This allowed us to have a lot more fun! Last year we miscalculated and the kids only got to go on one ride.

The boys loved the train ride and Duderman got to ring the bell during the whole ride and let me tell you, HE RANG THE BELL THE WHOLE RIDE.




Doller also loved the rides! She was frantic to get on them and the first time had a fit when we got off. She figured out pretty soon that we would go to a new one so became just all around excited.



I had fun with her too.



It's kind of hard to take a picture of yourself, your daughter and ride an exciting train ride. :)

For additional kicks and giggles, you can go to my husband's version of our trip to the fair by going to his blog at http://edgewriter.wordpress.com/2009/09/06/evil-secrets-of-the-state-fair/

Finished Objects!

I have a whole mess of finished objects to boast about and show off. Unfortunately, I do not have a lot of time to talk about them. So instead of an in depth review of each piece, I will share some photos and update later. Sounds fair?







These are finished and my favorite!