Thankful

So much to be thankful for this year... God has given us so much.
I've been blessed with a Husband that has a wonderful sense of humor, even though he is faced each day with some of the worst society has to offer, and it would be so easy for him to become jaded.

My children are fast becoming young men...



I'm thankful for Triangle Love...

For the start of an amazing herd of dairy goats...


For the warm house and roof we have here in the beautiful country.
For family that loves and nurtures us.
For friends that call and check in.
For walks with grammas.
For wood in the fire.
For food in our bellies.

Today, as I was going about the morning stuff outside, I was reminded by these things how much I love it here.
Every time I feed the chickens and they can come out of the coop before I do, there's at least one that gets on the "wrong" side of the coop fencing and can't seem to figure out how to get in for a bit... lol Today it was Nugget.

We had a good freeze last night. The pipes here have frozen in the past... so I piled hay over them before our cold snap. It worked!! This is the grass around one of the areas I covered...

More Ice... it's so beautiful when it's not ruining your daily workings... lol

Tuesday, my mom and I went to my chicken guy's farm to get our Thanksgiving Turkey. I was there from start to finish during the slaughter and processing. I know that not everyone can handle being THAT hands on with the process of obtaining the meat they eat. That's OK. Still, I'm thankful for the new appreciation for the food I eat. Being there first hand makes it impossible not to have a new gratitude and attitude about my food.
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Meeting. In the LADIES room.

SHEEZE!! I forgot to mention the awesome meet up I had with two friends on line!! I got to meet Kathleen Tennant and Pam Deltor, from the book the three of us were published in: Meeting in the Ladies Room
In honor of the woman the three of us met through, we took our picture at Linda Woods' boyfriend's house. :)

The obligatory bathroom shot.

We got to meet because Kathleen ordered a custom order doll, and drove from CANADA to get her from me!! How cool is THAT?! (she was in the states already, but drove a little further to see me and pick up her doll!)
I only had my 50mm lens with me... so arm length self portraits (my fave) were REALLY tight. We had to squish.
Pam and I

Kathleen and I

The DOLL
Inspired by and created to look similar to Coraline, only in the "image" of Kathleen's daughter. I can't wait to see the video of her daughter opening it on Christmas day!!

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Snow Trip and Creativity

We went to the snow with Travis' dad last friday. I almost didn't go, because I have so much STUFF to do... I'm really glad I went. We had so much fun.
Plus, I got this:

Tonight I made a page for the upcoming prompt at A Year in the Life of an Art Journal. Here's a snippet of it!!

This coming week is filling up fast!!
Volunteer tomorrow.
Work training Tuesday.
Animal pen clean up on Wednesday.
MIDNIGHT HARRY POTTER SHOW Thursday night!! (well, technically Friday morning)
Of course we're fitting in a nightly "review" movie until Thursday!! lol
So what's keeping you busy?
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Slide Restoration at Home

When I worked on line for TallyScrapper.com, I posted this tutorial about free slide restoration you can do at home. I thought I may as well move it over here!
My mom came over this weekend. She had found a BUNCH of slides that were of her as a child, and of my grandparents and other relatives. She and I both have a scanner that has the ability to scan slides, and she thought we might work on that while she was here. The scanner, as much as I LOVE LOVE LOVE it for scanning my layouts, and other goodies, DID NOT perform when it came to the slides. They weren't bad quality slides to begin with, and the scanner actually made them look MUCH worse than they are. She and I had just about given up, when I remembered a friend of mine (thank you Maya) who has started taking BEAUTIFUL photos that look old, because she takes the photo with her DIGITAL camera, WHILE THE CAMERA IS LOOKING THROUGH THE VIEW FINDER ON A VINTAGE CAMERA!!! So that's what I decided to try. We had our little slide viewer, why wouldn't that work? So I tried it. Held my camera up to the little hand held slide viewer while I pointed everything at the light. I put my camera in Macro mode, and started shooting. It worked!! (there was a rim around the photo where you could see the slide viewer, but it worked!! THEN I got another idea. I have a home made light box. It's really nice for viewing SLIDES.... hmmmmm anyone see where this is going!?!? Totally. Here's my light box. It's basically, a white piece of plexi glass that is in a frame with a "christmas" light under it.

Next I laid a few of the slides down on the panel.

As you can see, they are really in very good shape!! (the one of my grandpa holding my mom is laying backwards) Next, I put my camera in MACRO mode again, and got close up to the slides. There were still edges of the slide showing, but that was fine.


Next, I loaded the photos onto my computer, and opened Picasa... I used color correction, and cropped the edges of my slide out... and viola!!! RESTORED SLIDES FOR FREE AT HOME!!

My mom and Grandpa when she was a baby.

My mom and a cousin on at Easter. My grandma made my mom's easter dress.
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Putting My Talk Where My Mouth Is.

I've talked a lot about what the purpose of our animals are here on our property. Today, I took another step toward putting my words into action. It is a big leap to talk about killing your own animals for food, and quite another to actually do it. And I grappled with quite a lot when deciding what to do in this case. Today, we butchered one of the goats. It was a really tough decision to make, and I'm not really sure how to explain all that went on...
I guess one of the biggest things when you're raising your own food is that you can't just keep a bunch of animals around just because you gave them a name. Eventually, hens get too old to lay eggs. There just isn't enough room in the world for all the extra animals that don't fit into a food chain farm. Something has to happen to them. It's irresponsible to think that you can breed goats to get milk, and that you'll never have to worry about finding the babies a good home.
In my plan for our property, I've known that this time would come. I planned on this time coming.
I wish that Ganja had been able to fit into my long term goat plans.
I wish that she would have been able to get along with the smaller goats without her size being a danger to them.
I wish that someone had answered my ad on Craigslist and given her the right fit home.
On the other hand, I know that she isn't once again in a home where she's tied up all by herself, and left alone a lot.
On the other hand, I know that she had a great life while she was here, even with the restrictions she had on her interaction with the other goats.
On the other hand, I know that she is better off NOT being alive than living in a state of not fitting.
It's a weird place I'm in today...
I'm happy that we're really doing what I set out to do.
I'm happy that I was able to be there and know what happened.
I'm happy that I had a relationship.
I'm looking forward to tasting.
It's a strange bag of emotions today... but if I am to be the Omnivore I want to model for my kids, I needed to do this. I'm glad that I was able to do it.
I don't even know what the purpose of this post is... I'm swirling with all sort of thoughts about the whole process. It was good. It was hard. It was sad. It was happy. Letting go of what I had hoped to be for Ganja and what was reality was probably the toughest. I wanted to be able to fit her into our farm. I wanted it to work for her. In the end, it didn't, and I know that her death was swift, and that she was happy when it happened. She never knew it was happening. She'll never be lonely or lost again. It's different than I expected, I guess... this relationship with your food thing. Most of it is just as I thought it would be... and at the same time, it's nothing like I thought. I do know that I feel even more strongly that I don't want to eat meat from animals I don't know, or that I don't know the history of.
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