It's waking up!!!!!

 Hello my friends!

I've had my hands full with yet another patient, Rubic, to care for.  He hasn't demanded all of my time, but I try to stay close just in case.  He needs me mostly first thing in the morning; then periodically during the day.  That gives me time to do some things around the house, and also work on more dolls.  The house is falling behind cause I'm doing more doll work.  It's just exciting to get to work on them again, and lets face it, housework is...well....housework.

In addition to inside the house, I've actually managed to get some outside stuff done as well.  I've moved this fence up to the top of our driveway.  Our old neighbor's chain link fence( behind this one) encroaches on our property line.  There is a marker there, but just in case...  Hopefully the new neighbors will see fit to remove their fence that's tangled and over grown.  Our fence is a little high, but it covers their ugly fence so that works for now.  If they move their fence, I may lower ours.  We'll see.

I love this time of year.  Things get pretty dreary starting around November.  The garden is asleep.  We don't get a snow covering; although we did get a snow shower this year.  The hens stop laying.  The days are short.  We don't use supplemental light in the hen house between Nov and end of Jan.   It just gives them a break.  There just isn't much fun to do.  But I did start some seeds.  Cool weather seeds. 

Now.....things are changing.  The days are starting to get longer, we've had some warm days too.  Those days are ones you will find me outside coming up with something to do.  We've again introduced supplemental light into the hen house to encourage laying.  As a result we're up to getting about 8-10 eggs a day.  There is something about the hens laying again that helps me breathe a sigh of relief.  I'm happy to say our frozen eggs and what few we would get from the hens, did manage to get us thru the bare egg season.  We had to use sparingly, but we made it through without having to buy any.  That was a plus.  I'm trying to plant, produce as much as possible.  Things being what they are at the store, anything I don't have to buy is a blessing.  

  We're a week away form what they call Meteorological spring.  That's when nature starts treating things like it's spring.  That's when the transition starts and we start to get a few nicer days.  Still get cold snaps, but still....I'll take the pretty days. 

 I've just come in from the garden.  I've planted Kale, Spinach, Lettuce, Cabbages and Broccoli in the garden.  These are all under floating row cover for now.  There's parsley in the green house and 3 experimental yellow squash plants as well.  I'm experimenting with them to see if they can survive in there and produce.  I'm hopeful by planting them early I can head off squash bugs.  We'll see.  I will say it's 52 degrees outside and 88 degrees in the green house (with the door open!).  I can only experiment with these three plants because we had such a bumper crop last season.  We have plenty of yellow squash canned or dried to use if these three plants die.  I do still have three other plants still in the house, along with 2 zucchini plants.  The parsley should be fine.  It's actually a semi-perennial.  It can survive from year to year as long as it doesn't get crazy cold.  

As you can see I have the plants surrounded by black jugs of water.  They will also be covered with two layers of floating row cover in the green house.  Hopefully that combined with the green house....well we'll just see won't we!

Anyway, as I was working in the garden I started to realize the plants are starting to grow, Blueberry plants are starting to swell with buds, strawberry plants are starting to green up.  It won't be long until we'll have lots of activity in the garden.  Can't wait!  

Do you have any signs of spring where you live?  What excites you this time of year on your homestead?  

Just for fun, back to playing with dolls!

 Hello all!  

With things being a little on the stressful side lately, with having no where to go, and needing to be close by for Rubic; I have finally taken up my poor broken dolls and started the work again to give them new life.  

These dolls will be listed for sale on my Etsy shop when I return to it, hopefully, next year.  I've taken a break this year to address some much needed things at home as well as finish these dolls.  I used to tell people that I didn't collect dolls.  That is until I realized I did collect dolls.  I collect broken dolls.  I'm particularly interested in composition dolls.  Composition dolls were usually made between 1914-1940's.  The earliest composition doll was in 1899, but they really didn't take off until 1914.  They are dolls made from a combination of saw dust and glue molded in the shape of a doll, then painted.  I love these dolls for their history, art form, and they are just so cute!  Well they were cute, and can be again.  

So without further adieu, here is my latest restoration; before and after. 

This little one is around 80 ish years old.  She is circa 1940's.  She has glass sleep eyes that open and close, and two little front teeth!  Above is her before.  Above is what she looked like when I bought her.

Below is the finished project complete with a new dress all her own.

The light was a bit much for that pic, but I wanted a picture of her in her new dress.  Here she is earlier in the day.  Much better lighting.

My plan is to make her some shoes and socks if I can and list her for sale in my shop.  I'm perfectly content to keep her if she doesn't sell.  That's a problem with doing this.  I get attached to them. BUT!  My ultimate goal is to find them a new home and someone to love them.  They were loved once before.  They will be again.   

GO CANADA!

So I'm going to make an assumption here that you all have heard of what's going on in Canada?  It seems there are other countries following suit as well; Italy, Holland, Australia to name a few.  Check out this link, unless Youtube takes it down.  That's not out of the realm of possibility.

World wide!

I've got one thing to say to Canada and other countries following suit.  

I hear tell there's a similar convoy in the works in the U.S slated for March 1st.  Don't know how true it is, but would be awesome if it was true.  

 

Would it add to the supply chain issues?  Probably.  I'd get a few extra things in between now and then if you can; just in case.  

What I'd love to see is this convoy drive to Washington DC and literally block all roads into and out of our nations capital.  How happy would they be to listen to the citizens when their items aren't available or they can't get out of the city.  Gives me a nice warm feeling to think of it.  

I'll tell you this, something's gotta give or we won't have a nation to defend.