so many uses...

for an empty altoid tin. these were posted on etsy today. the bird one sold w/in 5 minutes of being listed!

gardener's delight (seeds not included)

for the birds(sold)

pocket meditation kit

i intend to follow up the last post with my new goal list for 009...haven't had time to finish up that yet though.

in the meantime, i love this idea:

tea bag holder

i'm always carrying tea bags because most restaurants don't have herbal tea selections. we don't eat out much so the bags get pretty tattered bouncing around in there. this is a perfect solution!

out with the old...

2008 was a so-so year for goals. i feel like i slacked of on so much this year, bored with the mundane. next years goals are more focused and will hopefully bring back the energy and desire to get. it. done. i had my moments but not as many as i should have.

outdoors:
-grow hay and feed for animals (in progress)
-rain cistern
-gutters on barn for rainwater collection
-pasture for goats completed
-chicken tractor for broilers
-bees
-enlarge pond to incorporate fish

household:
-get back to making more basics: bread, yogurt, etc doing
-root cellar
-continue sewing clothes doing
-focus more on preparedness (in progress)
-preserve more food: can tomatoes (sauce and ketchup); put by potatoes, yams, onions, apples, squash and garlic; freeze okra, green beans and blackberries; make lots of jam (cherry, mulberry, peach, blackberry); applesauce; dry tomatoes, apples, onions; attempt to make fruit leathersas much as crops allowed me to
-keep purging possessions (in progress)
-continue to make majority gifts & cards throughout the year (in progress)
-work on budget, get it down slowly chipping away at it

personal:
-be a better person, more respectful, cheerful, caring (i'm trying!!...trying to follow quaker philosophy)
-contribute articles to herbal magazine (at least 3)
-write to 1 friend each month (real life snail mail)
-revive family game night once a week (played more games towards the fall)
-upload photos to snapfish and order prints(2008 done!)

just listed on etsy!

hooty

invasion of the gnomes

from this...

to this....

it's a gnome party!

now available for sale on my etsy shop.

more handmade holiday gifts

now that the kids have opened their gifts, i can post them!

now with syrup and butter...

jaden set up quite a spread this morning for us, complete with silk napkins! she loves the felt food and i gave her the extra set i had.

i sewed up pats of butter and cut out sploshes of maple syrup to dress up the pancakes with...
they look good enough to eat!


as i was sewing the eggs, i recalled i had already made some for one of our friends so i made him pasta instead...fattoria is farm in italian. it was hard getting that linguini into the bag!

so much to do, so little time...

3 days until solstice!

i have all but 1 present under the tree and i am afraid it's not going to arrive by saturday night so i'll have to wrap a picture of the item. grrr. it's my own fault, i ordered a custom made civil war cap for my stepson not realizing it was custom made and could take 6-8 weeks to arrive. it is supposed to arrive next week though so that's not too bad.

now i'm frantically finishing gifts for friends. i'm halfway through the felt food pancake sets. i am making 6 sets of 3 pancakes, 2 pieces of bacon and 2 fried eggs. all i have left is to finish sewing the yolks on the eggs. alnmost done there. i am also contemplating cutting out some dark brown felt 'syrup' splotches and yellow squares down sewn to make butters pats.

next up is the magic 5 game sets. i am halfway done. i have 5 more sets of the wooden disks to sand, paint and seal and 5 sets of dice. matriarchy gave me a great idea to add to the existing magic 5 game set over in the comments on my women not dabbling in normal post last week. thanks matriarchy for the great idea! i went out and purchased wooden cubes and am painting them as matching dice for the sets. the bags are all sewn and the instruction cards for the 2 games are already printed, laminated and in the bag. the painting will take a few hours to complete, including sealing but i still have to sand 2 sets and that's going to take awhile as well.

other than that, i have a few gifts to finish wrapping but aren't needed until we do the traditional family christmas stuff on christmas eve and day so i'm not worried about that. i also need to whip up a couple batches of fudge by monday, make a couple cute gnomes for a friend's son's b-day party on sunday (he's a solstice baby), make a batch of lotion for a gift order for a friend, make some more peppermint bark and assemble about 20 or 30 gift bags, 14 that will be needed for monday and the rest on wed and thur. oh, and package soaps for all those bags and a set to drop off at the library for the staff there.

other than that, i'm done. ha.

we've all been battling something. diarrhea for some, sore throats, headaches and sinus congestion for others. i fall in the other category, most likely because i fell in the some category earlier this week. tis the season.

time to get some shut eye so i can get up, rinse and repeat.

hey kool aid!

i wouldn't waste my time making kool aid to drink but today, we used a bunch of packets i had purchased years ago to do some silk dying.

we played with some 11 x 11 hankies i had purchased from dharma trading and i love the results. i am going to make a bunch for stuffing into eggs for our annual ostara egg hunt for playgroup...

jaden helped me and it took less than an hour from start to finish.

here's how we did it:

put 3 c. white vinegar in a stock pot with about 1/2 full hot water.

add playsilks to be dyed and allow them to sit for 30 minutes.

mix 1 packet per every 3 hankie play silks (3 packets for a 35 x 35) in 2 c. hot water and 2 c. white vinegar.

add playsilks and stir for up to 5 minutes until color is depleted from dye bath and absorbed into silks.

hang to dry.

rinse in cold water.

hang to dry.

play!