Happy Thanksgiving! I hope you all have a day filled with family and good food. And after you fill up on turkey with all the extras, be sure to check back there later today for a possible sale update....

Happy Thanksgiving

Happy Thanksgiving! I hope you are all having a day filled with family and good food. 

National Wildflower Week

 

  Welcome to National Wildflower Week! With National Wildflower Week taking place the first full week of May, it is the perfect time to get outdoors and have some fun. We have some beautiful flowers growing around here, so I plan to do some knitting outside to enjoy them!      

Trendy Summer Accessories

 

  One of the trendy accessories for this summer is something fun, usable, and affordable. It is the fisherman's net style bag! Perfect for using while shopping, going to the beach, road trips, and much more. One of my favorite parts about this trendy bag is how it is easily packable and takes up very little space when not in use, yet it expands to hold so many things. And with Lion Brand Yarns selling a kit to make the net bag pictured above it is really easy to get in on this trend!    

Lion Brand Crochet-Along ~ Clement Canyon Poncho

    The votes are in, and the next Lion brand Crochet-Along project has just been announced today! I was really excited to hear which pattern would win. And the winner is one of my favorites, the lovely Clement Canyon Poncho! It looks like a lot of fun to make, and reminds me of going on a trip out west.     One of the great things about a Lion brand Crochet-Along project is that there is no need to sign up and the pattern is free. You can just join in by following the Crochet-Along posts on the Lion brand blog, and do the project at your own pace. And you can share pictures of your work in progress, comments, and any questions you may have with everyone else during the Crochet-Along. For more info about it just click here to go to the Lion brand website!  

$1.99 eBook Sale

  For a limited time "The Inn at Ocean's Edge" by Colleen Coble and "After a Fashion" by Jen Turano are both on a eBook sale for only $1.99 each! I have read both of these books and highly recommend them! Click on the cover pictures or book titles above to read more about the books.    

Short Story Contest at the Home School Authors Website

 

  If you have not entered the short story contest hosted by Homeschool Authors yet be sure to check it out soon! It is a great chance to get your story published in print. And you do not have to have been home schooled to enter, this contest is open to all writes. But the deadline is December 31, 2015. So if you are interested be sure to click here to see more details.  

Make Your Own Dry Erase Board

    I love using a dry erase board to make to-do-lists and to write down ideas. But my old store bought dry erase board was so stained and scratched it was no good anymore. So I made my own new one! It works wonderfully and looks so much nicer than the cheap one I had before. So if you are needing a new dry erase board just follow the steps below to easily make one that is beautiful and one of a kind.
To make your own dry erase board all you need to do is find a picture frame you are not using anymore. [That has glass, not plastic, to write on with your dry erase markers.] The frame can be as big or as small as you want.    Cut a piece of blank paper and place it inside the frame. Or if you want to make it fancy you can paint the edges of the paper before putting it in. And since you can change the paper whenever you want you could have seasonal paintings on the paper edges like yellow/red leaves during fall, snowflakes during winter, etc. 
And if you want it extra fancy you could even hot glue some decorations in one of the frame corners, or even all the way around the frame if you want. You could use many different things like shells, silk flowers, small rocks, the possibilities are endless!  

Tip Of The Day ~ Decorating For Thanksgiving

 If you want to decorate this year for Thanksgiving without spending much try this! Take some dried leaves from outside and, with a little paint brush, paint some of the leaf veins with normal school glue. Then just poured some glitter over the glue. You can either use one color of glitter or multiple colors, it just depends on what you want. Turn upside down to dump off any extra glitter then set it aside to dry. And there you go! You just made a beautiful glitter leaf you can tape to where ever you want.
Plus if you have some fox tail plants growing outside they make a lovely bouquet! Just pick a nice little handful and tie them together with a piece of ribbon. I like to use the ribbon with the wire edges so the bow will stand out nicely. Then tape or hang the bouquet anywhere you would like. I normally love to put one on each side of a doorway for a nice touch to the room. And there you have it, fun and easy ways to decorate for Thanksgiving without a lot of cost!   

Tip Of The Day ~ Water Bowls For Hot Rabbits

 As most people who have French Angora rabbits know, they do not like the summer heat. Having special fiber they can do better in the very cold winter than in summer. So one thing you can do to help keep you French Angoras cooler in the summer is to offer them a bowl of cool water when it gets really hot. You can still leave their water bottles on their cage, and just give them a cool bowl of water as extra. You can also put a few ice cubes in their water bowl if you want to help keep it cooler longer.  

 

Tip Of The Day ~ Books For A Great Price

If you love reading then like me you probably love finding books at a good price. I love shopping at http://www.christianbook.com/ because I can get wonderful books at good prices, even brand new books that are just coming out are still sold for less then the retail price!
But even at good prices a lot of  books can still add up. So if you are looking for a even better deal you may want to check out a Library book sale if you find one going on near you.
They do not always only have "old books". You may also find books that came out not long ago and for a amazing price. Recently I got "The Guardian, Home to Hickory Hollow Series #3" at a Library book sale for only 50 cents! It came out this year and normally retails for about $15! I have been really enjoying the books in this series, so I was really happy to have found it for such a good deal!

Tip Of The Day ~ Free Food

This fall why not save up some free food? You can collect persimmons and turn them into lovely sauce, that can be used to make great things like persimmon bread! If you have ever heard that persimmons taste bad you should try them first, the people who say it probably have tried to eat one that was not ready yet. When a persimmon turns a lovely orange color and looks perfect they are not ready yet, they need to look like they are over ripened before they are ready. Like in the photo below the persimmons on the left need more time to ripen, it is the persimmons on the right hand side that are ready to eat. You need to wait until around the first frost or later and only pick up the ones that have already fallen to the ground.

 

If you just use the following steps you can save them as persimmon sauce in the freezer to use whenever you want. And it is so easy to do with no cooking like apple sauce needs!

 

Step 1 ~

Pull all the stems and tops off of the persimmons and put them in a large bowl of some kind. Just be careful while handling them as they are really soft and can be smashed easily.

 

 

Step 2 ~

Fill your bowl with some water and wash the persimmons off by shaking them around carefully. Then drain off all the water.

 

 

Step 3 ~

Just dump the persimmons in a sieve like the one in the photo below, where you can smash the persimmon up. That way you have a beautiful sauce in your bowl below and all the seeds stayed inside the sieve so you can through them away.

 

 

Step 4 ~

Enjoy! That is all there is to it!

 

 

Tip Of The Day ~ Fly Strike

With all this summer heat it is very important to keep a eye out for fly strike. It can happen very fast, and even to well cared for rabbits. A good rule I have found to go by is if you see any fly touch your rabbit at all, even if it lands then seems to just fly away, take you rabbit out and check it over. There is a good chance you could find fly eggs on your rabbit. They normally look like very super tiny grains of rice, and if you find any eggs get them off the rabbit right away. It should not even be put off over night, it needs to be taken care of right away. This can kill a rabbit, I had lost a rabbit to fly strike almost before I even knew what was going on. It had been the first time I had a problem with it and I did not even find out was it was called until afterwards. The eggs seem to normally be on the back, on or around their tail, and on their lower underside. So you need to look for them very carefully.You might find only one place with eggs but keep looking, there could be more places with eggs on them. If you would like more info you should check out the House Rabbit Society, they have a lot of info about it on there site.

Tip Of The Day ~ A Great Goat Supply Company

If you are looking for anything for your goats you should check out Hoegger Supply Co.! It is a wonderful company that has so many goat things. From things for show goats, and cheese making supply's, different kinds of hay racks, feed and water buckets, goat medicine, milking supply's and tons more! They even have a very cute little covered wagon set up for your goats to pull!  Last year some of the things I bought from them were their Utility Pail and the matching Hanging Bucket Holder. I got the holder that goes on a wire fence but they also have one that goes on a 2x4 board! I am very happy with it, it has worked really well!

Tip Of The Day ~ Summer Heat

French Angoras can take the cold weather better then the heat so it is important to keep them from getting to hot. But if your rabbit looks like it may be to hot, one of the best thing to do is just bring the rabbit inside the cool house for awhile. That way it can get a chance to cool off. You do not want to give it a cold bath as that could send it into shock. If you would like more tips on keeping French Angoras cool, you can click here to see the post I made about it last summer.

Tip Of The Day ~ Free Feed Buckets

If you are always running out of feed buckets on your farm this might be just the tip for you! If you buy ice cream in plastic gallon tubs with a handle just wash the tub up when the ice cream is gone, and you just got another bucket! It is amazing how they all add up and you should always have all the feed buckets you need!

Tip Of The Day ~ Workshop Class

Kathy is having some more workshop classes starting soon! And one is called "Two Homestead Socks - tube sock and heeled sock", it looks like a great workshop class! I am thinking about taking it myself! It cost $30 and here is what Kathy says about it... "3 week online workshop that includes patterns and detailed instruction on how to make these sturdy farm-style socks.  Keep those feet warm out there this winter! Perfect for handspun." If you would like to read my review on one of her past workshops click here. This workshop starts on Jan. 6 but since she takes PayPal there should still be time to sign up if you want! To sign up you can email her at hmffarm@fidnet.com

Tip Of The Day ~ Kepping French Angoras Cool

Since French Angora rabbits take the cold better than they do the heat in summer it is important to keep them cool. So here are a few tips to help keep your French Angoras cool this summer...

1. Put soda bottles that you filled with water and froze

in your rabbits cage for them the lay next to.

2. Use a spray bottle to spay your rabbits ears with cool

water.

Tip Of The Day ~ Recycled fun

If you like to recycle stuff you might like to try saving some of the things you would normally recycle and turn them into a art project!You could make jewelry, cookie jars, flower vases, etc! The photo above is a bracelet I had made, in it I had used the "plastic tags" that are off things like bread bags, heads of lettuce etc., that I fancied up with some glitter! And I added some lovely little seed beads with some tiny colorful rubber bands dangling on the bottom! Later I might post some more photos of recycled things that might give you a idea of something you might like to try!

Tip Of The Day ~ Broccoli stalks

If you ever buy broccoli and it still has its stalk you might want to save it!! We fould it works out really great if you save your broccoli stalks and use them when you make soup!! Just cut them into pretty thin [but not to thin] coins, or if it was pretty big around half coins, and add them to your soup!!