Water bottle bag

Yesterday I got sick of the cool weather and parked myself in front of my sewing machine.

I carry a glass tea bottle with me for water but its clumsy to carry and always ends up sitting in my purse. Soooooooo.... I used a little unbleached muslin-ish fabric and made a custom bag/tote for my bottle.

Then, I used my stamps from my very own Earth Keeper rubber stamp sheet to stamp cool and corney quotes all over it. The kids say its "Oh soooooo mom!"

I love it! Its handy dandy and fun!
( oh- you can get these stamps on my site at www.prettyinink.biz ;)

Cloth napkins

Saving the world one cloth napkin at a time :)

One of my new little joys is cloth napkins. We didn't actually switch to cloth from paper.

We have always just used dish towels for napkins. Then one day we were visiting friends and I noticed their pile of varied colored, mismatched, cloth napkins. I thought that was cool.

I started looking at the Salvation Army for some for our house. Since then I have found some there and at yard sales. Now we have quite the collection. Everyone has their favorites. I dont have to be embarrassed to hand company a raggy ol dish towel anymore either.

I have actually become quite spoiled with cloth. Cloth shopping bags, napkins, kitchen towels & rags. When I have had to carry a plastic bag or use a paper napkin I am reminded of how NICE it is to never have to.

Flowers

The tulips are pretty in the back yard.
The spring blooms come and go much too fast.

My favorite flowers are the spring flowers....tulips, daffidils, apple tree blossons and lilacs.

Getting the garden in

We have been busy busy getting the garden in order for the season.

Everything is looking great! Elanee and I put the gate back up. It had fallen down in the winter wind. She went around and tightened all of the fence posts too.

Together we moved 90% of that mulch over to the pathways. I am sure the weeds will win again this year but for now- I WIN!!!!! So there!. LOL ;) The mulch looks amazing. So- this is what the garden is supposed to look like.
The onions are coming up nicely.
We have three really nice beds of strawberries. I transplanted several more. I coved the weak plants up with milk jugs. The transplants are coming along.

So far we have planted asparagus, rhubarb, peas and bush beans.In the newely tilled extended garden we have planted 9 rows of red potatoes. Got smart this year and labled everything using Sharpie markers and sticks.

New chicken pasture

Last summer we fenced out entire garden in to keep the chickens out. Well, that was all good enough until the chickens got bored and decided to visit the neighbors. The stinkin critters spent the entire summer ripping up their plants and dive bombing their fenced dogs. In the end they ended up caged.
But, it just kills me to have to feed them commercial feed when there is a world of plants and bugs for them to eat for free! So we built them this pasture. Its 50'x55'. I plan to create another pasture about the same size and reroute them as needed in order to keep the grass intact.
So far we have had pretty good luck keeping them in. They have found their way into the garden a few times through the compost bins. I am tweaking things each day in the hopes of being smarter than they are.

WOW MULCH!

Here is the awesome mulch pile that was made from all that ugly brush.

Oh the possibilities!

Chipper- OH Chipper

This past winter we asked a contractor to dump a bunch of logs here. It ended up being 3 dump truck loads of free wood......and free brush! Ugh. Well at least UGH-LY.
So a few weeks ago we decided that as a part of our spring clean up efforts we had better rent a chipper. We got a big ol 6" chipper from Finger Lakes Rental and towed it home. This was my first time driving with any kind of trailer. Kindly, our neighbor, Jeff backed it down the drive for me- as Jody was not home to help with this task.
The next day- Fri- Jody took the day off. It was a Holy day anyway so he should be home relaxing. Running the chipper is not relaxing by any means but if "work is worship" as it is stated in the Faith we sure did a good something. The original brush pile is not shown here but it was about 6 feet tall and say 50' x 50' on the ground. It took all day long and into the evening to get it done. After the big branches were pulled out it was just tedious and dirty.
In the end we could see the ground again :) This shows the finished product- before it was all raked clean and before Ben started cutting up the stumps.