Happy Earth Day

 

Making Watercolor Paints from Nature

   I wanted to share an artist I have been following for awhile on her You Tube Channel. I discovered her after we moved to the lake house.  I  may have shared her but don't remember if I did or not. I know there are artists that I follow so wanted to share.

  The artist is Joanne Green

Here is her new book coming out in June

Here is her You Tube channel-she makes it all look so fun and not  too difficult either-just several steps in the process.

Here s one of her videos using calendula flowers 

    I really enjoy watching and learning from her videos  It is a bit of a process but I am anxious to make some watercolor paints this summer.   

   I did a lot of natural dyeing in the past along with eco printing on cloth and papers-so much fun for me. This looks also fun to do.

Update: woke up way too early so browsing on Instagram--here this artist makes sidewalk chalk from her dried watercolor pigments and crushed dyed Easter egg shells   here

Dandelions

   I love seeing the dandelions in the spring-bright yellows popping up in the grass.

This year I have more than last year, thinking it is because I have been picking them and making a healing oil with them the last few years.'

I dried one batch already and just picked another small batch. I am not picking all of them, just those in groups and  just picking a few and move on. I saw a very large bumble bee in one group.

There is a photo of the oil I made last year here in that post.

My go to site for making things with herbs etc is Jan the Nerdy Farm Wife  Here is her post with several recipes to make with dandelions-most very simple. She includes a salve, oil, lotion, soap bars, and more. Here is a link to lots of ideas on Pinterest using dandelions

   In the past - like 30 years ago or more Larry and I went through a phase of making our own wines. The dandelion wine was always good.

I found a poem by Walt Whitman    

The First Dandelion

Simple and fresh and fair from winter's close emerging,
As if no artifice of fashion, business, politics, had ever been,
Forth from its sunny nook of shelter'd grass—innocent, golden, calm
as the dawn,
The spring's first dandelion shows its trustful face.

Passover and Holy Weekend

 

Good Morning

   Just popping in say Hello and Good Morning

(photo found online)

Alternative Laundry Supplies & Redbuds & Frozen Kefir

     Today although pretty cool we have bright full sunshine and so far no wind. Last night the winds were really strong again with at freezing night temperatures.

   The redbuds are still pretty here too even after all the crazy weather. I just took these photos now, this pretty red bud tree sits behind my mailbox. The red roof is our garage

Below photo is me standing on top of our driveway looking at this pretty red bud in our neighbor's yard

Have any of you tried out the new laundry supplies available now-pods-sheets?  With my different allergies I have always needed to go with fragrance free on everything. I had been using the All fragrance free pods for awhile  now. At Sam's Club they were always a good buy opposed to the stores.

  The last couple of years though I have been trying out more earth friendly packaging  I bought when on sale Free the Ocean's laundry sheets. They do a good job but too expensive even on sale. 

  Over a year ago now I tried out Clean People pods for laundry. I love them and their packing is in cardboard little boxes. When they had a big sale last year I stocked up and they were less expensive than All pods were.  Clean People is based in Canada  some products like laundry pods made in America.  

    Instead of liquid bottles of non chlorine bleach-they offer a granular product that works really really well.

 I find the pods or sheets work equally well but I like the pods

Another photo from today  phlox and a few of my bottles with seeds

     I haven't found a ice cream I like---less sugar, less lactose, less fat so I decided to freeze up some peach kefir that I also added organic diced canned peaches to.  So easy turned out perfect. Next time I will add a bit of sweetener

Fish in the Mail

    Ha Ha  Well the little fish painting I fell in love with by Christine in Canada has arrived in my mailbox today.

   I enjoy her little mini paintings and I think this size is such a good idea. She has a site on Ebay so I check her paintings that are for sale once in awhile. Christine's fish painting is perfect for our mantle and lake house and I totally fell in love with this one too.

 When I was trying to paint a couple years ago,  I painted a little sailboat. I found these mini easels online for display.

   I miss painting sometimes, especially with the watercolors. I had gotten frustrated with it as I am not all that good with paints but watching friend Cathy learn I may get motivated to try again soon. My goal was to be able to paint one of our awesome sunrises here on the lake.

Click to enlarge photos for better viewing.

  I have all sorts of items on our mantel-homemade pottery pieces, wood burning, my collection of gnomes and a couple of vintage items

  We had rain all day today 'til just now-3 pm-more on the way for a few days.  I had put my bottle "greenhouses" back out yesterday afternoon so now they got a really good soaking. I just placed them down on the brick walkway next to the house so shouldn't get much more rain inside the bottles. Better for them to be outdoors. The ornamental grass I purchased was supposed to arrive today but looks like it is still in Kansas City

  Stay safe all of you in this storm's path moving towards the east-there will a lot of flooding with this one.

Happy First Day of April & Catch Up

   Wow the wind outdoors is total craziness. I was hoping to get back out and weed eat the grass along the lake front but too cold and very very strong winds out there. The sun is shining though-smiles.

  April Fool's day was my farmer Grandpa's birthday. So I have always thought of him on this day. I remember when I was in college I had written my parents a crazy letter and at the end I wrote April Fools-they were not happy haha. 

  There are some major storms going through the country again this week. Here in Missouri looks like floods will occur down by the rivers as we have 4-5 days of rain and storms. I am hoping you on the east coast will not see even more winter. I know my friend in Montana living on her homestead at the base of a mountain range is getting a rough winter with snow still coming down this year.

  I am mentally preparing myself for a very hot summer-which usually follows after a rough winter here in Missouri.

 I started hand stitching the second bag together today. I am doing it a bit different from the instructions that I followed for my first bag. That had left too much open after turned to stitch closed-including inserting the lining fabric. I just left the big curve open on top of bag this time.  Once this one is finished I will mail off the first bag to my slow mail friend in New York. I want to keep one finished bag for reference when I stitch up the next one.

  The photo to the lower right side shows a seam begun to get stitched.

 

 I have been planting a few more seeds in bottles this week. Chives, garlic chives, and from a very old seed stash poppies-which are tricky and what I think is nasturtiums  

  I found a cool site that you can identify seed pods, seeds and seedlings from here  I was surprised that the seeds in question-I forgot to mark a bunch of different seeds-seem to be nasturtiums but it makes sense to me as I used to plant these a lot-they are an edible flower too.

  With all this rain coming in I will probably bring my bottles indoors. The bee balm and snapdragons have popped up now I don't want them to get too water logged.

   I still have lavender seeds coming in the mail. I am not buying any plants at the nursery going forward. Two years ago I spent way too much money, especially on the nicer and larger petunias that I love for my big pots-but these don't do well during a very hot summer here in Missouri. I have never tried growing petunias from seed-any of you??

  After the cold period in the refrigerator I will have echinacea seeds to start and later the blue bells.

Before Larry's accident he mounded up some black dirt down by the lake front near our neighbor to the right. Once I get the weeds out of that I will plant some ornamental grass. Larry thought this might bring in some nesting ducks.

  I found plugs for this one on Ebay and they should arrive this week  I will plant these in a big pot for now when they come in this week This is variegated silver ornamental grass   I would like to put a bench down in this area. If I do the neighbors may use it-but that would be ok.

I haven't made an angel food cake in a very long time. I usually make two cakes-a wheat cake and a gluten free cake. Yesterday I was just up to making one cake so I baked up the gluten free cake-a little tricky with no gluten but it turned out really good. Served with fresh strawberries.

  I also made us a delicious beef soup yesterday. I don't go by a recipe I just (wing it) haha I start with a carton of no salt beef stock, and this time I added sliced thin leeks, potatoes, a dried veggie mix for soups. Then when those ingredients were cooked added a can of organic no salt three beans, fresh thin sliced cabbage, fresh mushrooms sliced-then at the end a can of usa  beef.

Today I am baking up cornbread to go with the left over soup. I have shared this recipe in the past-only uses corn meal no added white flour-sooo good. If you search there should be a link to the recipe here on my blog.

  Happy Fools Day and Happy April-Spring is nearing.

We have Fish

   Good morning Friday, It was nice to see our friend that stopped by this week.  He is a young man that is  also a chef and works as a bar tender sometimes as well and may soon get a management position. He works in Kansas City Mo and lives nearby in Kansas.

  His family owns a small lake home not too far from us and he loves to fish. Mostly for the challenge of large cats and right now he is here for spoonbill.   We met him when we first moved to the lake. I suggested for Larry to find  a fishing partner as I did not want him fishing alone in the boat with all of his health concerns.  So he put it out there on Facebook and that's how we met our friend.  

  The two of them talked for hours and then he says ok if I go fishing-of course.  Not 5 minutes later he says the crappie are biting do you want some for the freezer? I love fish so Yes I say smiles.   He cleaned them and fileted them and they are now in the freezer. He went back out and caught at least 10 more that he put back in the lake. He suggested that they make great tacos so will look into that.

  The first photo is his before cleaning, and I took a photo of the fish in the bucket

   I am hoping to start the weed eater to cut grass today. Will see how my body handles this task.

   I have been quite ill.  The last month or so I thought my asthma was getting worse but instead I have acid reflux which I have heard of but didn't know what it was.  This issue blocks my airways some how in my throat and esophagus and I can't breath.  So the doctor gave me a month of medicine. I searched online to read more about this-and sigh now even more food restraints.  This morning after a week I finally do not have the severe burning in my chest and stomach. My throat is not back to normal quite yet.

      If not controlled this can turn into cancer-don't want that for sure.  So no spicy foods, tomatoes and acid foods are the worse to eat now-so I read up on what the safe fruits and veggies etc are. No chocolate no caffeine which I knew about before-my body spikes with a high b/p reading if I have any caffeine. I did search on Ebay on this subject and bought a couple of books to read.

  On a more fun note-- Yesterday I finished the slow stitches on my second bag, and will begin to sew it into a bag. 

   Happy Friday and weekend!

Good Morning Tuesday

   Good morning Friends,  

We have a warm up again for a few days before the temps drop again. Loving all the sunshine especially. We had a lot of rain a few days ago-so will be needing to get out the weed trimmer to begin cutting grass soon -ugh.

 I planted the bluebells the other day. The seller was very helpful and said he likes to plant the seeds in a Tupperware container so I had the perfect one. I keep this damp for 4-6 weeks and then place in the frig for another 4-6 weeks and then plant outdoors. This will put me into early June I think to plant outdoors.

  I bought garlic chives and regular chives seeds on Ebay I received the garlic chives in the mail yesterday-such a lovely card to protect the seeds in an envelope-I love it.

   I have almost completed the slow stitching for my second bag-working on the last two handles, and then I will stitch this to the lining and finish up.

  

  Oh and I follow Free the Ocean where they send me a new quiz every day. They raise money with this some how as well. I have been doing it for several years, don't always answer the quiz every day but today I hit 1000 and am now an Explorer  I was in the whale pods for a long time.  here is a link  I enjoy getting their email quiz each day as I am always learning something new. My percentage of correct answers is 53%  Which I find pretty good as I am guessing most of the time  Smiles

 Here is a copy of the page with the different levels

Sea Star

1-25

Seabird

26-75

Fish

76-150

Sea Turtle

151-250

Dolphin

251-350

Whale

351-500

Whale Pod

501-999

(every 100 pieces adds a new whale to your pod)

Explorer

1000 – 1249

Marine Biologist

1250 – 1500

Narwhal

1501 – 1800

Helping make the ocean more magical!

Have a good week everyone