Double double

Queen B Survivor's egg was a double yolker! I have no idea why I put the other egg in the bowl. Musta still been half asleep! I sauteed some mushrooms and made me a cheese and mushroom omelette for breakfast. It was yummylicious.

hugs

Took me a little trip "down south" last week to see Jan and John. Jan gave me this pic of the kids while I was there. Couldn't wait to get it scrapped! This is loosely based on "Secret" from Magic and also in the Spring/Summer Idea Book. I used a K*I Memories kit that I was given when I spent eleventybillion dollars at Whim So Doodle when t!m was here. Also used one of the CTMH Kraft Borders that I stitched Juniper Waxy Flax thru. There's an ooolllddd Scenic Route border as well that I inked the edges with CTMH Cocoa ink. "Hug" is the CTMH Irresistables Ecelectic Alpha and I also used CTMH Pennant alpha. "Zone" is part of the K*I Memories kit. Buttons are a combo of CTMH and from my stash.

Eggs, Maters, Peas

Can you say OUCH! I think this egg that Queen Biotch Survivor laid must be the the same as a human having a 13 lb baby! It it huge! And I'm willing to bet that it's a double-yolker as well. You usually get double yolks out of girls when they first start laying. But occasionally, Ma Nature will throw in a zinger on an older hen. I want John to see it before I crack it, so stay tuned to see if it was a double yolker. And yes, the eggs are green. Queen B Survivor is an Americauna and they are the ones that lay the green shelled eggs. They taste the same as a "regular' white shelled egg. No, change that. Mine are BETTER than store-boughten eggs. Because we don't force the girls to lay and they get an all natural diet.

And these are some of the fruits of our labor from our Earth Boxes. One Heirloom tomato and three pear tomatoes. There are more of each coming, but once they start turning red, I have to pick them or the birds peck one hole in them and go to the next one. I might not care so much if they'd eat the whole dad-blamed thing, but no. Peck a hole and move on. I also got two. Yes, two sweet pea pods. That's one each for John and I!! There are loads of bloom on the plants, so maybe, just maybe I might get enough to cook a mess before it's all said and done. But I doubt it. We like 'em raw anyway! And my cuke plants are also loaded in bloom. Hoping to make some pickles if I get enough ripe at the same time.

Suite Rays!

John scored us tickets in the Pepsi Suite again for last Friday night's game against the Orioles. It was a special night on two accounts. Before the game, they had a special presentation of retiring the call signs of Officer Yaslowitz, Sgt. Baitinger and Officer Crawford; the three St Pete officers who lost their lives in the line of duty earlier this year. All three had served as Security for the Rays during games. After the presentation, Officer Yaslowitz's oldest son got to throw out the first pitch. Our young phenom pitcher, 21 year old Jeremy Hellickson pitched his first complete games in the majors, allowing only 4 Oriole hits and we WON!! David Price got the dubious honor of shoving the whipped cream pie in Jeremy's face as he was being interviewed by local TV stations!

The Old Man

He's got a big ol' scar from a fight when he was just a young-un. His nose is all wrinkly. His mouth is caved in from long-gone teeth. He's had a hard life!

'Maters

I was reading one of the local blogs last week and found out there was a U-Pick farm down Ruskin way, about an hour south of me, that had opened their tomato fields for picking. And I got a wild hair and decided to go pick some! I picked about 40 lbs in a bit over 30 minutes. Then after a quick stop at Publix to get the rest of the stuff I needed, I was back home. First thing I did was make me a tomato sammich on white bread with Duke's Mayo and salt and pepper. There is just nothing better in this world! And store boughten tomatoes just do not taste like ones you pick yourself! Then I made two ginormous containers of Sue's World Famous Salsa and then started boiling skins off maters to make homemade spagetti sauce. I ended up getting 6 quart Ziploc bags of sauce to put in the freezer out of the first batch. This batch I made with meatballs. Then the next day, I made another batch of sauce and got another 6 quart Ziploc bags of no-meatball sauce. I lay the bags flat on cookie sheets and once they are frozen, I stack 'em like cordwood in the freezer. So we'll have sauce for a good long while. I kept a few of the ripe tomatoes so we could have BLT's and sliced tomato with salt and pepper. I also picked a few green tomatoes for fried green tomatoes. Yum, yum, yum!

Oh yeah...one more thing!

I BOUGHT A VAGABOND!!! I've been wanting t!m's cutting machine since it came out a year and a half ago. He and Whim So Doodle teamed up and gave us a couldn't be beat price for the weekend. And John said I should just get it since I've wanted one forever. This thing is so awesome! Cuts paper, cardstock, GrungeBoard, chipboard, material. All at the touch of a button. No hand cranking involved. And just like buttah! Oh, and it's signed! t!m signed all of them that were bought over the weeked. So it now has a permament home on the end of my scrap table.

I'ma lucky girl, that's for sure!

More t!m

Day two of the t!m classes. This one's called Creative Blocks. We were each given one of each size 6 x 12, 3 x 3, 2 x 2 and 3.5 x 2 canvases along with a boatload of trinkets, tchotkes and other ephemera to alter. We used t!m's new paper pack, Crowded Attic to cover the largest canvas. Then used a graphite pencil on the lines to soften the edges and blur the lines. Then we used Ranger BeesWax in the melting pot and covered the whole thing in BeesWax! (Ohhh, my NEW. FAVORITE. THING! I want to put beeswax on every.thing!) We then covered the smaller canvasses in old dictionary paper and distressed them and covered them in beeswax as well. Now it was time to assemble! Such fun! Tim told stories and did giveaways while we worked. We all had the exact same product yet every one of our canvasses were different and were reflective of our personalities. Such fun!

My shirt today says, "The t!m and Mario tour 2011." Both t!m and Mario loved it.

Remembering

My dad. Nineteen years later, you are still missed, loved and thought about every. single. day.

Chicken coop Part...who knows?!

Poor John is so O.V.E.R this whole coop thing! What started out to be a simple new 8 x 10 coop has turned into a major undertaking. We ended up having to replace the corner posts on the old coop because after 15 years in the ground, they had rotted and the coop had sunk 3 feet and it was not stable enough for me to be going in and out. So John jacked each corner up, pulled out the old post and re-dug the hole so he could put the new posts in. Now we've just spent the last 2 days getting the old coop re-chicken wired and new doors built. Not one, not two but THREE doors so we can isolate chickens if need be. We have a door going into the new coop. Then we have a door going into the old coop. We have a door at one end of the breezeway and another door between the original old coop and the addition that we put on it 3 months after we built the original coop 15 years ago. John still has to make a roost for the old coop, but other than that, we are done! He let me cut the last few wires on the new coop going into the breezeway. Survivor, who may yet get her name changed again to Queen Biotch if she won't leave the babiez alone was the first one to explore the breezeway. The little girls have been a bit slower to explore. It won't take them long though!

We had to put the new coop off to the side of the old one because of the pine trees and roots. Hence the breezeway! I keep teasing John about laying tile in the breezeway. That's the ONE home improvement job he did once and said never again! You see I look over my glasses when I'm doing up close work! I ended up taking them off. I am "stitching" the chicken wire together with long pieces of wire so the outside kritters can't get thru where it joins together. I thought the little girls were too cute when all but one (either Penguin or Joker, I still can't tell 'em apart!) were up on the pine branch perch that Survivor sleeps on at night. And I had to get one of Survivor when she wasn't chasing and pecking at the little girls. Then there's the bumble bee. The pissed off bumble bee. He/she has a very nice home that they had worked on for a loooong time in the beams of the old coop. Well, we've sprayed it once or twenty times to kill the mites. And the bumble bee can't get to the home because of the spray. But it's determined. It keeps trying. It's been trying to bore a new hole in the new coop, but the cypress is still too wet and he/she can't get good purchase to start the hole. John is getting the last outside door hung. You can kinda see from that angle how close the pine tree is and why we had to jog the new coop back further. Finally I cut the last few wires and the girls get to inspect their new digs!

Mail surprise

Mailman pulls up in the driveway yesterday and blooooooooooows the horn. Heaven forbid he should have to get out of his truck! I go out and there's a package from Jeanne. http://orjustme.blogspot.com What's Jeanne sending me? I can detect a smell coming from the box, and silly me thinks she's baked me cookies. But why would Jeanne be baking ME cookies?! I get the box inside and open it and she's made me one of her fabulous little totes that she started making and I had to be a smart ass (I know...hard to imagine that out of me!) and tell her my favorite colors RE blues and browns. And there's also a bar of handmade Patchouli soap from http://www.hickoryridgeorganics.net/ which has a store over on the East coast of FL close to her. Beings how we are both of the 70's era in our growing up years, we share an affinity of patchouli. Mt bestest friend at the time and I used to burn patchouli incense so as to mask the smell of burning...ahhh...illegal tobacco-ish products in our cars so if the police stopped us, they couldn't smell the...oh nevermind!! I have the soap on one of the shelves in my bathroom and the smell is just heavenly. I almost don't have the heart to use it! Thank you again, my friend! I will enjoy using both of these gifts.

...but it's a good tired!

What a great 2 days with Mah Man t!m at the St Pete Hilton along with 100 of my closest friends being the FIRST classes of the year for all of his new techniques and seeing new lines of product! But boy am I tired! Talk about sensory overload! He taught 4 classes, 2 each day with 100 students in each class. I had already taken 2 of the classes, so I took Creative Outlets where we made 4 different tags and Creative Blocks where we altered and grunged and collaged canvas and stacked them one atop the other and made a beautiful piece of art. I'll share the first day with you now and the second will have to wait! I'm not gonna go thru every technique, but if you have a question, ask away and I'll do my best to answer! I also won a complete set of t!m tools on the first day. Already have all of them! Did I turn it down? Heck no!! They will come in handy when I have people over to craft.

The bags were all lined up in the hallway next to the room we were in. Each one of us had a bag. Inside the bag was a nametag, lovingly made by the Whim So Doodle employees, a number on a paddle so that when t!m was demo-ing, if we wanted that particular item, we held up our paddle and the WSD "Elves" would come over and write down that item and put it in our bag for us. They even had a mini store set up in the hallway for us to shop before the classes started! Then all of our stuff was taken the block and a half over to the store at the end of the day so we could cash out. We didn't have to think about anything!

I made my shirt! It said "Dress 2 Distress" and I schmeared ink and paint and Distress Crackle all over it. I cut out some flowers and added them to it. t!m and Mario both LOVED it!! Just wait'll you see what I wore the second day!!