Karla's Cottage

The life cycle of a pumpkin

Last fall, we took a trip to the pumpkin patch, after an extremely LONG time of no regular outings. The grand fairies and I typically had a schedule of getting out and exploring on a regular basis. In the summer, it was the pool, park, zoo, and more. In the fall, we'd go to the pumpkin patch multiple times and host pumpkin craft parties after. 

2020? not quite the same.  But we masked up, and social distanced our way through the punkin patch, and made the most of a day out.  We were pretty happy to be there, too, even with the restrictions and changes that had to be implemented.

 

We probably bought way too many pumpkins, hoping to have a carving party with Fin and Clover, but the weather didn't cooperate, and we couldn't get together outside, so I made use of the gourds as best as I could. 

When the pups were tiny, I liked to do photo shoots with them for their new families, so these were great to use as props for posing puppies.

After Halloween, I spray painted some of them white and added a touch of glitter to the tops, and placed them into flower pots in front of the house.  Others got turned into pies.

(The white pumpkins make the best pies, uhm, not the painted white ones, the REAL white ones.)

Now, it is time to clean up the front porch and get rid of the pumpkins who have seen better days. They are squishy and wrinkled, but instead of tossing them out, they went to the hens.  The birds don't eat the rind, so didn't even bother with the painted exterior. They went right for the tasty seeds inside.

I guess I didn't have too many pumpkins after all! At least the chickens didn't think so. We have been giving them a couple a week and they are pretty happy with the treats.

Cooped Up in a Positive Way

Our coop has been empty for over a while now.  Sadly, each season there was always attrition in the number of birds.  So every spring we would buy more.

Due to my husband’s previous travel schedule for work, then his amped up travel plans for retirement, we decided to not replace the flock a couple of years ago.

As you all know, everyone’s travel plans are different now.  
It looks like we will be home a while....

So we took a trip out to the country and loaded up a dozen hens.

We debated getting more than 12, since all of the raccoons, hawks, and other critters on our land will be every bit as glad to see the hen house fill up as we were.

But, while having a few chickens to keep us entertained and provided with eggs while social distancing, that same confinement means less trips to the feed store.

And 12 can produce a lot of eggs to keep us, our family and friends well supplied.

We already got 4 the first day!

After frying them up, I wondered why on earth we went without chickens for so long.
You really can taste the difference.

 

Welcome, Ladies! The Cinnamon Queens are here

I'd never heard of Cinnamon Queens before.  (The name sounds like a drag show in New Orleans or something).  But once I looked up the name and found out what they really are, I was thrilled to be getting a boxful of them.

These gals are half Rhode Island Red and half Rhode Island White.  

Our first hens were dainty reds, and since then, we have had many other occupants of the coop. But none of the newcomers ever measured up to the sweet nature of the little red hens we started out with.  

(You can see how clean and pretty the coop used to be and how happy we were when the very first red beauties came to live with us here.)

I'd been excited to get some pretty blue eggs and we switched to Ameraucanas for the color.  We also got a few other breeds, including red and black sex links.  None were friendly, no matter how hard I tried.  Each time I'd go into their home, they'd act like I could only be there to butcher them, not feed and pet them.  

They were loud, big, and nervous.  And big hens mean bigger piles to be left behind, so stinkier too.

Here is one of the unfriendly ones. Doesn't she have a look in her eye that says she isn't very trusting??

And here is one of the new girls.  She looks bright, curious, and sweet.  

As we opened the cage and let them out, they didn't make a sound, no screeching in terror (like the other chickens do when anything changes, if feed them, if I look at them, if the door opens, etc), no flapping around and trying to escape, no distrust at all.  Each one started to explore their new space and seemed to be adjusting just fine.

Now, this behavior is not due to the farm they came from.  For the last few years, we have dealt with a nice family who raises birds, and buy a few hens from the same place each time.  The difference seems to be the breed, not the people who bred them.

Not that I'm giving up on the other chickens. They will always have a home here, and I will pet their heads and rub their warm tummies when I get eggs from them.  I keep trying to convince them that I am their friend.  

They don't believe me so far.

I'm keeping my fingers crossed that the Cinnamon Queens will prove to be better pets for me.  If they aren't, well, I hear that they are excellent layers, with extra large eggs, so that isn't so bad.  I'm glad that they are here.

And if they decided that they want to perform some sort of drag show/dance review that suits the name  "Cinnamon Queens", I'm going to be supportive.  If they do, I think they might need some sort of Moulin Rouge style individual names, right?   Here are some from the movie that I think will suit them:

Satine

Baby Doll

La Petite Princesse

Nini

Antionette

Pearly Queen

Production: There are several breeds that are referred to as modern day brown egg laying strains. These are breeds that were developed for their abilities as layers, and each hen will lay between 250-300 eggs annually. Temperament: CinnamonQueens have a reputation as being particularly sweet and docile birds.

https://www.purelypoultry.com/cinnamon-queen-chickens-p-375.html

 

The new hens are settled in

Could there be a more beautiful shade of blue?

Our new ladies in the coop are doing a magnificent job of keeping us supplied in these pretty eggs. Good girls!

Hoppity Hearts and Whammy Time

We've been spending a lot of time outdoors this summer.  Breakfast in the fairy play yard, bubbles in the Food Forest, swimming at the lake, and just plain soaking up some daylight and goofing off.

There has been a lot of side walk chalk involved in our summer fun too.  We have always liked hopscotch, but around here, everything needs to be cranked up a notch.  So, we came up with Hoppity Hearts. It's like hopscotch, but with heart shaped steps. That go on and on and on across the drive way.

And leave it to Sugarwings to add yet another element to a game.  If she isn't making up guidelines, she isn't happy.  So, soon a dress code was added.  Although Dewdrop refused to submit to the dress code, which is why there are no photos of her. All she was wearing was mud.  And lots of it.  While that was pretty cute, I didn't think a totally naked baby was blog material.

Boxes full of blueberry plants had arrived for the Food Forest, and Sugarwings gloms onto any empty box to transform it into part of her games.  And these seemed to be a perfect fit.

The weather has been perfect too. The forest and the work my son and our Gypsy have done is just blowing me away.

There is something tasty to add to our dinner every night, as well as a garden so pretty that I just want to go out and stand there and daydream instead of work.

I love the mix of wildflower seeds in with the veggies.  We have done pretty well bugwise, with the good bugs to eat the bad, and with flowers that keep the nasties away.  It seems to work much better than I'd thought, but we are having trouble now with some squash vine borers.  But pesticides don't work on those anyway, you  have to do surgery on the joints of the vine to cut the varmits out.

I've decided that I'm soaking up the fun, the beauty, and the opportunities around me this summer.  I'm taking some time off and saying YES to adventure.  Even if it is as simple as laying on our backs and seeing fluffy shapes in clouds. I'm also planning on taking the girls out at least once a week for a field trip.  And I'm going to try to travel with my husband more too. 

I swear, that little break from work while my wireless was wonky and my hard drive died, has given me a new outlook. I'm all in for summer now!  A little taste of leisure and I'm hooked. I tend to be a bit of a work-a-holic, but that is on hold for a while.

Summertime, LOOK OUT!  Here comes Whammy!! (Dewdrop can't say Grammie, she calls me Whammy, and I kind of like it, it sounds much more adventuresome than Grams)

 

Waiting for Spring

Hope you had a happy May Day! It's one of my favorite days of the year.  As a kid, it meant it was almost my birthday.  So, that is always nice, but it also means SPRING! At least it should, but this year, I don't know if Spring will ever get here.

Before going out of town, my husband and I had nice day out at the Topeka Zoo with Sugarwing's class. It was soooo chilly, we had to bundle up in lots of layers. I thought I'd be peeling off layers throughout the day, but instead, I was wishing I'd piled on a few more. 

We also made a trip out to the country to pick up some new ladies to join the Coop Group.

We aren't sure what kind of hens they are, only that they produce a pink, a brown and a blue egg.  And that they are very pretty chickens. 

Yes, I did say PINK!!!!!!!!

One of those new ladies is laying pink eggs. What a delightful surprise! We also picked up 6 little red hens who lay brown eggs.  It's a full coop now.

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I've been working on this wire birdcage tutorial, and now have it ready to send to you!  You can get the details here.

 

Romantic Gothic Witch book

I have deleted the sign up page for Romantic Gothic Ghosts so I don't oversell accidently.  We are keeping it limited to a small group. But if you are interested, please email me for info.  karlanathan@sbcglobal.net

Well, no kits are made up yet, but I do have the studio cleaned and decorated for Romantic Gothic Ghosts next weekend. I'm feeling close to being ready.   Maybe I spent a bit too much time on the fun stuff, but the room got cleaned up as I went and its always much more interesting to kind of foof and redo as you clean, isn't it?  That makes me feel like I actually did something other than knock down cobwebs.

Of course, its a Halloween party, so I could have just left those up and gone with that.

I decided that I needed another door prize to give away.  Friends and I swapped prizes for each other's events, but I wanted to make a couple more too.  This is a stack of notebooks glued together and decorated.

All of the covers, inside and out are embellished, and the notebook paper was dipped into coffee to age it a little.

Of course I used "The Good Stuff"!  That is the only way to go.

To hide the seam where the books were stacked and glued, I covered the bindings in vintage black velvet ribbon. 

In the center of the book, is a page filled with envelopes to hide special tidbits in.

Other door prizes are from Karen and Jennifer.

Jennifer is hosting The Gathering this weekend, and I  donated a couple of prizes to it. A wire wrapped nest and the online Three Wire Workshop. 

You can read more about the Gathering on her blog.  My good buddy, Carol. will be the guest speaker and I hope to go to hear her. She is always entertaining and full of info.  Karen's holiday party in Mt Dora, FL is sold out, but she will have another event in Texas in the spring.

If you are wondering why there is nothing new in the Boutique.... well, I've discovered, you just can't do EVERYTHING, no matter how hard you try.

But I get done as much as I can. 

Yesterday I made 20 some paper clay pumpkins with sticks as stems, painted them white and they are ready to drop into the Raven's Tea kits (when I have kits ready, that is).   The students will guild and glitter them and add them to the tableau.

That is probably the first time in my life that I have used the word Tableau.

Anywho, the students will get the walnut dyed, coverless book to wrap in ribbon, goodies to make the rhinestone accented tag, and the pumpkin to finish and set next to the teacup.

I still have TWO spots left for our own party.  If you want to come out to visit the cottage and meet the chickens and the pups, we'd love to have you! 

If you can't come to visit and take the class, but would like some How-to's from me, here is an article coming out in the next Jewelry Affaire. Its always a pleasure to be featured by Stampington in one of their many wonderful publications!

Right now, this is what my kits look like.  I think I'd better step away from the keyboard and get to work!

Beating the heat

Despite the heat, our garden is doing well. We have well water, and live over a deep aquifer, so I use the sprinkler a lot to beat the long string of 100 plus degree days.

I've set the chickens in the garden almost daily to get the bugs for us, and they did pretty good till the squash bugs hit the cukes.  I've had to hand pick the horrid creatures off the plants, but have also used some organic insecticidal soap.

One thing I have not watered is our yard. This is what the ground looks like!  We never did have the best looking grass anyway, so I'm ignoring the lawn and concentrating on keeping the flowers and veggies going. And the poor chickens.  We lost one to what we think was heat stroke. So now, we keep a sprinkler going on low in the flower beds so that they can have a place to cool off.

We thought we were going to lose this gal too.  One of the dogs got ahold of her, and chewed all the feathers off her rump.  No real damage, and I think she looks kind of jaunty with that one tail feather sticking up.

We keep the wading pool full too, mostly for Twinkle. She is very fat and very pregnant and likes to jump in the pool, lay back and relax to cool off.  I'm thinking about getting her a raft for it, she loves the one out on the lake. 

Well, the forecast says we have a few more days coming with no rain, and more heat. Kansas is typically hotter than Hades this time of year, but not quite this hot. Sugarwings has a couple of swimming lessons coming up before back to school time, I hope its not too hot to hit the pool this week!

If its too hot to play in the pool, we'll be back inside playing dress up with Twinkle again. That is how we spent a big chunk of one hot day last week.

Sweet little chicks and cactus flowers

Ever have one of those days when lots of bad or stressful things happen, but you still feel like you had a good day?

Lets see, today I woke up with a sore back and realized that the bed frame had broken and I was sleeping downhill (time to lose some vacation pounds?), then had to go on a opossum hunt through the wild, over grown flower beds in my jammies and high heels (they were the quickest shoes I could grab, since they were still on top of my suitcase from the party and I had to get the critter before it got my chickens!).  The beast didn't get a bird, and I lost its trail, but searched high and low, trying to find where it scurried off to. By the way, I was wearing a vintage cotton night gown, the best of bed head styles, and carrying a big pink shovel.  That opossum was right to run, I looked crazy.

The dogs did nab a hen later today, but didn't harm her, just her feathers. It was quite traumatic.  And its over 100 degrees again today.

Ryan's car broke down, twice. Once, it was out of gas, the second time the battery ran down.  Sugarwings and I missed a movie we were headed to when we had to help him instead.  He pushed his car to work for blocks uphill, in this heat. We drove off thinking all was well, and it wasn't, I don't know why he didn't call us back!

There was a disagreement with a family member and I'm not one to loose my temper, I'm more of a cheek turner. But today I blew.  Not proud of that one.

We made a loaf of bread and the paddle didn't turn, so I had baked flour with wet crusty edges.  Not a big deal, but just one more thing today.  And did I mention that it was 107 degrees again?   The heat is unbearable.

But there was a bloom on our cactus, a gift from a grand child and sits in a pot painted by one of the little fairies.

It kind of stands for the day I've had, lots of problems and cactussy moments, but some how the day bloomed anyway.  Having a happy little Sugarwings by my side all day kept me from feeling bad about all the issues that could have gotten me down.

She's my sunny, little cactus flower.  Its impossible to have a bad day when I'm with her.

Instead, I enjoyed the good parts of the day.   Here are the good points of the day that outweighed the bad ones:

Watching Sugarwings pretend to be in a parade through the grocery store whille holding 2 dozen pink roses on sale for $5.

Dewdrop running into my arms and showing me that she could do all of the motions to Itsy Bitsy Spider.

Seeing Ryan handle his car problems with a good attitude and being proud of the man he grew up to be.  He has lots of LD issues and was a very short tempered, frustrated child. He is a fine man now and I'm proud of him. 

Picking a bag of fresh veggies from the garden, and popping a sun warmed tomato in my mouth

Watching the hens play in the sprinkler to beat the heat.

Taking a meal to a friend who hasn't been feeling well. I wish I saw her more often and I really should try to help more, I'm glad I made time today. 

Laughing with my sister-in-law, Sandy who is living with us.  Its good to have a freind around to share a silly thought with now and then.  I also appreciated having her here to listen to me grumble about all the problems today and to accompany me on the oppossum hunt.

Getting a funny text from my husband who is quite proud of breaking a bed after being married 30 years.

Feeling Twinkle's puppies move for the first time. I love to try to count the bumps in her belly to guess how many will be born.

Seeing how sweet Sugarwings was about missing her movie. She is not a grumbler when things don't go her way.  That made me want to not grumble about my peeves either.

Baking a second loaf of bread that turned out crustily wonderful on the outside and soft and almondy on the inside- just in time to have for dinner.  As a matter of fact, a slice of that would make a nice bedtime snack too.  Except I have no bed, I'll be sleeping on the couch till we get that bed frame repaired.

Oh, and I have a Project Runway recorded and ready to watch, that is the icing on the cake to top off this day.

 

A feathered guest at a fancy wedding

Thanks for all of your visits during the studio tour, I know I've shown the room dozens of times before, so I wondered if anyone would even care to see it again.  I tried to post photos of different parts of the room than in the past, but some of it was a bit repetitive. 

Sugarwings was with me almost every day last week, and luckily we had a break in the weather and were able to enjoy the outdoors for  a change.  Although, I'm not sure if the cooler air was really cool enough for gloves....

We like to sit in the garden, under an archway covered in vines.  In the past, I used to trim them, but now, we let them grow wild and crazy, so that we have an enclosed area to play in. Its shady and cozy.  When we sit under the low hanging branches, we feel like we are hidden away in a world of our own.  Its a good spot for picnics, hiding from ogres, and for weddings.

We had a special guest at this garden wedding.  One of our cuddly, Rhode Island Reds decided to join us in the arbor clubhouse.

These sweet, little hens are becoming part of the family.  Its so fun to have them follow us around the yard, curious about what we might be doing in case it involves crumbs of any kind.

Of course, ask me about mid- January when I have to slosh through drifts of snow to go take care of the birds a couple times a day, if I still love them as much.

The chickens are NOT doing their job of eating enough of the bugs. So far, they've been great with grasshoppers in the flower beds, and we've not had to use any pesticides at all in our veggie garden. But they haven't eaten a single chigger from the yard.  We are all suffering from chigger attacks, and Sugarwings and I have tried to play only on the paved or gravel areas to avoid getting chewed up.

We are hoping to buy some Guinea fowl, they are champion chigger eaters, but we can't find any full grown hens around to buy. 

Every time I wake up at 3am scratching, I swear I'd pay a fortune to own a couple chigger eating birds.  Anyone know where I can find some?

We don't like the idea of spritzing the little fairy grand babies with bug spray at all. Especially since I coat my ankles with it and still get bitten.

But this year is the worst I've ever seen for pests. I suspected it would be when we had such a  glorious, mild winter.  As much as I hate snow and cold, it serves a purpose, and does help keep the bugs down.

So, I'll try to remember that when I feel like complaining about going out to take care of hens in the cold this winter.    It probably won't shut me up, though, I most likely will still grumble about the cold.