Guinea Genius??!!

Not sure how this relates to crafting but wanted to share this thought while it was fresh in my mind. Maybe by the time I am done typing I will have figured out a way to tie it together! Gotta worn ya it's a little long, but had to write it all down. Leaving part out would lose part of the fun!

Guinea genius!  Well, anyone who has ever raised guineas knows these two words do not generally go together. Guineas are African type chickens that are usually blackish gray with white dots, and have the gift of flight a little better then chickens. Very pretty birds, but apparently not the brightest. They are flock birds that love to be with their buddies, and panic when they are separated, and apparently when they are separated their brain goes with the flock and they are left to manage life brainless!! Not the best situation for the bird, but does bring some funny moments to my life!

I decided we needed guineas this spring when the grasshopper herd in our yard became so bad it was alot like you were parting the red sea of hoppers when you crossed the yard. My oldest daughter figured out quickly that you wanted to be the first person crossing the yard so that all the hoppers you scared up jumped up and landed on the people behind you, not on you! Which of course led to screaming from my son and littlest girl and to me yelling, "Stop screaming! They're just grasshoppers!" But I have to admit when 20 to 30 little beggers are flyin around ya and landing on ya it is hard not to holler! So the guineas were bought.

Raising them up really wasn't too hard. Water, feed, clean cages, water, feed, clean cages etc.. Except for the extreme heat we experienced getting one, and not realizing they could fly getting two (the cage was cracked, two flew the coop, and I chased them with my youngest on my hip through the creek and alfalfa. note to self: guineas are fast next time take a net!) So we had to move them to something a little bigger, which turned out to be the rabbit hutch! Yep guineas in a rabbit hutch. The rabbit was moved to the ground for awhile and she didn't seem to mind. The guinea raising all in all so far was uneventful! Until the first sign that guineas are not so smart.

Went out to feed them in the evening and one little guinea had his head stuck in the feeder. He was panicking and flappin around and raising a lot of ruckus, and of course freaking out the other ones, so I picked up the feeder and guinea and began to wiggle him carefully free. He was very stuck! Not sure how this happened since they were only maybe 3 or 4 weeks old and their heads were tiny and the feeder was plenty big enough???  Anyways, set him free and he seemed fine running around with his buddies happy to be free. But by the next morning he was no more. Guineas babies don't do well with stress.   So in the end we started with 29 guinea babies, and raised up 25 good looking adolescent birds! I was pretty proud!

I wanted the guineas to be caged at night to help cut down on the lose of birds due to predators, so we built a temporary coop. Our chicken coop is still in the planning stage. Now we just had to get 25 half grown birds from the chicken coop, up the yard about 100 feet into a make shift coop with the help of 3 small children, 3 very curious cats, and 2 extremely bird hungry looking dogs! So I grabbed my trusty cat carrier, (you must have one if you live in the country) and stuck my head into the rabbit hutch to grab up some birds. My husband was holding the carrier, and I'm pretty sure he was mumbling something about me being mentally nuts, while I tried to grab flapping, scrambling guineas. I was at first trying to be oh, so careful not to stress them out but that fell by the wayside when the first little sucker pecked the living crap out of my arm!! @#** @#%% is what I said to the bird, and began to grab and shove not go gingerly into the carrier deciding I didn't care if they were stressed. My kids were a little concerned telling me to, "be carefuly mom, their just babies." These little suckers were kinda mean!  We decided to move 1/2 the first night just incase our coop was not so predator proof.

This is were the guineas truly showed what highly intelligent birds they are. ha!  They slowly came out of the carrier, and sat there looking around like "Hey, this is new! Where's Frank, and Tony?" They must of decided their buddies were lost and not coming back so they got their wits about them, huddled into a mass and sat there. Then after 10 min. or so they began to attempt to fly away!!  This is a coop. With a wire top!! Granted maybe they couldn't see the wire on top, but now that I have been around guineas for awhile, I am pretty sure they could, they just didn't care! They would fly up, whack the wire and fall back down, every once in awhile one would grab onto the wire, and it would hang upside down for a moment before plummeting back to the earth. Brilliant!

The next morning proved our guinea coop building abilities to be solid, as all of them were still there, and nothing had burrowed in! Yeah! My husband was at work so I wasn't sure how to get the rest from the hutch to the coop. Lucky me, my parents and sister pulled in for a visit. So I grabbed my sister, handed her the cat carrier and said follow me. She has awhile back decided that I am nuts, so she asked what the carrier was for, listened to the answer, and just said Ok.

We get in the rabbit hutch, I give her instructions on how to hold the carrier up at an angle so they can't fly out, and to keep the door of it shut until I have a bird ready, and we begin!  I will say, this is the one moment when the guineas showed some brain power. They had watched their buddies get taken to who knows where yesterday, so today they were putting up a fight! After several scratches, beakings, and wings in my face the rest were wrangled into the carrier. My sister even got pecked through the holes in the end of the carrier. These birds do have a little fight in them!

We deposited the rest of the guineas with their long lost friends, and this is truly how they reacted. Like it was family they had lost years ago, and they finally got to see again. They rushed to each other and cheeped, and chirped and carried on. They must of been telling the new guineas about the top of the cage, because not a one of the second bunch tried to fly out? But a couple did walk right over to where our dog sat and stuck it's head right out of the chicken wire to get a closer look! Dumb! Luckily we have a hot wire around the cage so the dog was just far enough back not to get a snack, and we quickly decided to add screen around the bottom to avoid this happening again.

They have been happily living in the cage for several weeks now just being released in small amounts in hopes of training our dogs not to attack them. SO far so good except for two casualties! But they have brought me several moments of sheer laughter!  They will come out of the cage in their tightly packed flock, and go out bug hunting. One will almost always have its head down in the grass, not paying attention to the rest and get left behind. It will look up, look around, and when he realizes he is alone he panics! Then he will proceed to run around, truly like a chicken with it's head cut off, squalling for his buddies until they are reunited.  If they get separated by the wire of the chicken coop, meaning some are inside the coop and some are still out, they panic! Instead of working their way around the coop to find the opening, they will continuously run their heads into the wire trying desperately to get in in the same place over and over again! Doesn't hurt them any, since there is nothing in their heads, but is kinda funny to watch. Alot like watching someone walk into a glass door that they think is open. We do always take pity on the little lost guinea and shoo him around to the door!

But the last, and truly funniest thing I have seen them do is fall out of a tree! Yep! They like to roost up in trees so the first day I left them out for awhile unattended I went back later to check and they were all 10 feet or so up in a tree. They were happily roosting and peeking the tree branches and apparently fighting over good spots because right before my eyes, Flumph!! One was pushed off a branch by another and in a flurry of feathers, it landed at my feet. He laid there for a minute stunned, then he fluffed himself up, and looked around like he was saying, "what the crap?" He looked up and saw his buddies, I think they were laughing and hi-fiving the pusher, and he flew right back up. It wasn't 10 minutes later and another bit the dust! It was truly amazing and tear rolling funny to watch. I do believe they are better at roosting now as I haven't seen any fall in a couple of days!

But anyways, that is the story of my guineas! They are weird, fun birds to have that earn their keep in the amount of bugs they eat. 

What I can take away from this story in the world of crafts, and I guess life is, don't be a guinea! Don't follow right along with the herd. It can cause you to beat your head senselessly against the wall, or coop. Think for yourself when you are crafting, find what works best for you.  ANd I guess if you fail, or get shoved out of the tree, pick yourself up, dust yourself off and fly right back up there! 

Okay that was pretty cheesey! But it is so true~!
Hope you enjoyed my oh so true story!
Keep on crafting!

Super Easy Supper with hidden Veggies!!

Super Easy Supper Recipe with Hidden Veggies!!!

Okay! Tonight was one of those nights when supper seems like a serious chore. You know what I'm talking about! You open the fridge hoping the food fairy stopped by and left you this wonderful meal that you pop into the oven and 20 minutes later you have a something that your family will just love. Ha! Ha! Ha! Sure! If there is such a fairy someone please let her know where I live. I would love to have her visit.

Anyways! There wasn't much there so I started to rummage through cupboards, drawers, and such looking for something to throw together.  Two of my kids are a little picky about veggies, as is daddy so I am always sneaking in veggies here and there that usually no ones knows a thing about.  I figure he will probably never read the recipe section of this blog, since he doesn't cook, so hopefully my secrets will be safe and some of his favorite meals won't  be ruined by the thought of eating a cooked veggie! So if you know my husband Mums-the-word! Thanks!

So I managed to come up with this rag-tag group of items and I threw them together, and what do you know!!! RAVE REVIEWS!!!  From all three kids. Daddy was working so he missed out, but probably a good thing since he won't eat chicken (weird) and I haven't found a good way to hide that!  But this is the list of items that presented themselves:  1 tube of crescent rolls, 2 plain boiled chicken breasts, real bacon bits, mozzarella cheese, 1 container of baby food butternut squash, and the remains of a couple ounces of cream cheese.

Sounds yummy right? Well through some trial and error I have found that you can pretty much hide baby food squash, carrots, and sweet potatoes in about anything! I use the baby food for convenience and they just really get it mushed up good. You can do this yourself and save a little money, but I keep these on hand in case the freezer is bare of stored purees! Just a tip though, keep the baby food containers WELL hidden if you don't actually have a baby in your house! Picky eaters will get suspicious!

So this is what I created!

I took the crescent rolls and laid each one out flat and smeared a little cream cheese on the bigger end of the triangle. No real measurement here, just what I knew my kids would eat probably around 1/2 tablespoon.  Then I added a little more then that of the butternut squash and smeared it all over the roll.  Next I sprinkled on a few bacon bits, and some cheese, and I topped it off with the chicken that I had chopped into small cubes. Last fold the pointed end of the crescent roll over your stuff and gently press it down on the point so it will stay! Pop them into the oven at 350 for around 12 to 15 min. or until the rolls looked done and lightly browned.

Presto!! A yummy meal with a hidden veggie that my kids loved!!

As I mentioned before I am always hiding veggies here and there and it's really not that hard.

Here is one other idea you can try out on your family if they are picky.

Home made sloppy joes -  add pureed sweet potatoes- I have found baby food works best. I can't get all the stringy things off the home cooked ones! I have added 1 1/2 baby food containers to 1 1/2 lbs of meat mix and no one noticed! Don't know if this works for store bought sloppy joes, but don't see why it wouldn't.

Well I hope you give this recipe a try and let me know what you and your family thought!

Happy craftin and cookin!

Chicken squash roll-ups

1 tube refrig. crescent rolls

2 cooked chopped chicken breasts (mine were boiled)

1 container butternut squash baby food

real bacon bits

shredded mozz. cheese (maybe 1 cup)

cream cheese ( i had about 1 1/2 ounces)

Lay out crescent rolls individually on greased cookie sheet.

On the wider end smear about 1/2 tbsp. or so cream cheese.

Smear about a tbsp or so of squash over then entire roll.

Sprinkle with desired amount of bacon bits, and cheese

Top with some of the chicken

Fold the pointed end of the roll over the stuffing and press it gently down on the wide end

    of the roll

Place in preheated 350 oven for 12 to 15 minutes. or until rolls are lightly browned!

(no real measurements for this, just add what you think your family would like)

Let cool slightly and ENJOY!

Happy almost Monday!

Happy Almost Monday!

 Sitting here at the computer trying to get a few things done while the little ones are peacefully sleeping and realized it is almost Monday!  Which for us is the first day of the first full week of school. With 2 of my 3 going off to school this year not sure if my house will be quieter, or crazier with only 1 little one left behind! Here's hope'n for quieter!! (ha)

Anyways! Just wanted to share a couple craftin tips!

I have learned through the years that crafting. Wait. I should say successful crafting, is alot about the desire to have a finished product, and the secret tips you know that will help you reach this finished product. Crafting instructions for the most part must all be written by some person out there who thinks we all know everything there is to know about that 1 type of craft!  But we don't!! For us novice crafters we like to have quick, sweet success! Not years of research, trials and failures. And so many projects look like soooo much fun, and they seem to have such a cute end result, but in real life that is soooooo not true! I know I am not the only one out there that has a small, ok big stack of half done, unfinished craft projects that started out with high hopes, and ended in bitter failure!!

Well, here are just a couple tips I have picked up here and there along the way. Maybe they can help you complete a couple long forgotten projects that you have given up on. 

Tip #1 - Hot glue guns are EVIL!!! Yep I said they are Evil. You think well, this will stick right together no problemo, only to find out it has not only slowly leaked onto your work surface but the little crapper has also left a glob of glue on the end of your finger, and is now strung from your project back to the table and possibly all over everything else in its path! ( including your hair) Plus you know have a nice welt burnt into your skin where the glue landed!!!!! EVIL!!

   The trick is to use a Low-Temp gun!! Yep they do make these and I am sure there are some projects out there that these don't work for. But I have yet to find one! You do have to move quicker getting your items laid together because the glue is not as hot so it will set quicker.  But the totally awesome side is you are not burnt or saying potty words that you don't want you kids to hear! Some low temps do string a little bit, but at least it's not burning you when it lands! I have allowed my 7 year old to use a low temp gun (with some supervison) and she walked away with out any bodily harm.

Tip #2 - Okay it is getting late, and my second great tip that I had has temporarily left my brain. Think I will just call it a night and maybe it will return to me in the morning!  Here's for hoping!

Also wanted to tell ya to check back for upcoming recipes! These have been tested, tasted, and loved! Don't miss out. Most are super easy as well!!

Fun with Jewelry making!

Well! I have been fiddling with this site for days now and have accomplished nothing more then making myself angry and mumbling potty words at my computer! (because it is not me, it is my computer! ha)

So, it has been slow getting this set up so you can purchase items off my blog. I have however squeezed in a little time to create some earrings and one necklace. I enjoy making jewelry. It is fairly simple and with a good pair of  pliers and some simple hooks and rings anything is possible.

 If you get the jewelry making bug like I did the first fun step is to dig through your junk drawers, old jewelry boxes, and even your kid's rooms. You never know what might turn up that could work as a fun thing to wear!

I found some old chains that came with a toy that has long been lost and an old fake diamond bracelet thing that could be taking apart to add some sparkle.  I keep on hand jewlery rings, hooks, and other attaching type things, because I have found through trial and serious error that those are best not made at home! Spend a couple dollars and purchase these so you save yourself the mumbling and cussing!

Once you have your pretty pieces and anything else you might want to add, right now I am into feathers, just start laying them out. I have found that an old piece of flat styrofoam, and sewing pins work best for me. You could also use cardboard or a bulletin board to string out and temporarily hook together your pieces to see what you can create!  Once you have things placed where you like them start hooking things together. I don't know if there is a specific way this should be done, but I pretty much just wing it! It's more fun that way! 

Tip #1:  If you have a piece to attach that is flat and you want it to hang facing one way or the other. You have to hook one ring through the pretty, then another ring through the first ring and onto whatever it is going to hang from.  HUH! That seems confusing, but it's not! Below is a picture of the piece that goes through your ear, a big ring, a small ring, and then the pretty. Otherwise the flat object wants to hang sideways and you can't really see it to well!

To attach the pieces of chain I simply added rings to the end, and the old diamond bracelet I used small crimps that you lay your pretty in and then squeeze it shut around it. They look like this and can be bought anywhere you find jewelry making supplies!

Once I fiddled for awhile with how things are going to look I hooked my creation together and ended up with a pair of earrings like this!

Tip #2: When you are attaching things to the styrofoam or cardboard tip it up from time to time to see what it will look like when it is hanging.

Tip #3:  If you are cutting small pieces of chain, pretty stuff etc.. and you are planning on making earrings. Make sure you cut two of them at the same time, or cut the second one before you hook your first earring together! Saves energy because I can never get the same length cut after I hook the first earring together. Just doesn't seem to ever work, and once again creates frustration!!

FINISHED PRODUCTS!

Hope to create a few more pieces from fun objects so check back often!



Flower Clips and Pins

Flower Clips and Bows

Here is our current selection of bows and clips. If you see something you like and it is out of stock please don't hesitate to

contact me. I will do my best to create another one as similar as

possible.  Shipping is calculated by the # of item you purchase.

1 to 3 items $2.00 shipping

4 to 6 items $4.00 shipping

etc.

Happy Shopping!



Small sunflower clippies!

Cute set of dainty clips that are great for adults or kiddos!

They are yellow, burgundy, and brown with jeweled center

attached to alligator clips.

$3.00 for set

headband not included

 

 

Turquoise sunflower clip set!

Another small dainty set of clips.

Attached to alligator clips.

They are turquoise, brown, white, and a little pink with jeweled centers.

$3.00 for set.

Showing size of one of the clips below!



Small pink felt flowers!

Set of two small pink flowers made from felt and other materials.

They are pink and light blue with button centers.

attached to alligator clips

$2.50 for set

 Showing below clip in my hair.

Small purple rose clips with brown accent ribbon.

These are fabric flowers attached to alligator clip.

Small and super cute.

$3.00 for set

Gorgeous small pink flower clip!

The edges of the petals are glittered, and has a pearl looking center.

Shimmer green ribbon accents the leaves.

Attached to alligator clip.

approx. 2 in. wide

$3.00

Hoot Owl and feather clip!

Large ribbon bow. Has loops of hoot owl print ribbon as the base

with brown glittery flower and then turquoise feathers finished off

with a pretty jeweled center!

SUPER cute. attached to alligator clip so it can

go straight into your hair, or attach to headband as shown

headband not included.

$4.25

 Large green and brown flower clip.

These are brown and green fabric flowers attached to an alligator

clip with a pretty jeweled center.

Put straight in hair or attach to headband as shown

headband not included.

$4.00

Big Orange Butterfly clip!

Super fun clip. Bright orange butterfly attached to alligator clip.

Butterfly body is made of jewels, and wings have sequin accents.

headband not included

$2.25 

Small Orange and brown flower!

Very dainty clip!

Orange and brown fabric flowers that are shimmery with an orange bead center and

brown ribbon accents. Attached to alligator clip.

headband not included

$2.50

Yellow Lily with Burgundy dots and yellow feathers.
Small bow 3in. wide including feathers
$2.75

Large black, red, white flower with white feathers.
Approx. 4 in wide
$4.50

Up and Running

Hurray!

Finally getting a blog site set up to showcase the wonderfully cute crafts I have to sell! There will hopefully be items added weekly. They will not all be made by my hands, my mom is an amazing crafter as well, and her items will be listed from time to time. So check often so you don't miss out on new items.  Most of our projects are unique, in that we try not to mass produce items that are exactly alike because I find that boring, and the fun of crafting is lost. So if you see something you like best snatch it up quick because it might be the only one like it!

Not only will I have items to purchase but I will also have tips and ideas along the way.  I am always seeing cute ideas here and there and wonder how I could create that at home with the junk I have in my craft room. Often times it is a total flop, but now and then I get something really cute created! These I will share with you in hopes that you catch the crafting bug as well!

So in short! Thank you for visiting our site, and I hope you find something that you enjoy!!
p.s. just excuse any grammatical or spelling errors that you see. Not a high priority for me! sorry!