Don't weary, be happy!

Sunflower, blue sky, March day

Don't let this crazy time get you down.   Go find some joy!

A pasture with rap

The hooved girls were out in the orchard this afternoon doing what they do every afternoon.....weeding....only today the neighbor was playing some music.  I hope you can hear it.

Lavender wands - so lovely

lavender wands

Lavender wands began in Victorian times to preserve the fragrance and freshen up linens or add a waft of lavender scent into the room.  I found a little tutorial online and decided to try making these gems myself.   

There are so many different varieties of lavender.  My favorite is Angustaforia,  Hidcote.  It is an English lavender used for both fragrance and cooking.  I use lavender quite a bit in my kitchen: lavender ice cream, lavender syrup, lavender lemonade, lavender sugar and salt.  I also use the flowers in sachets: lavender eye pillows and in my heat pillow.  The fragrance from the blossoms or essential oils is very relaxing.  I use a little essential oil on my wrists before I go to bed. 

All in all I LOVE lavender.

So I started with my lavender garden:

lavendula angustaforia, Hidcote. home

I took this pic just yesterday.....January in California.!

cluster of lavender

For one wand you need 18 lavender stems, 30 inches of 3/8 inch ribbon, a bit of floral wire, a dab of glue from a glue gun.

Long long stems are perfect.  It's January.  I picked the longest stems I had but they are a bit short.  The stems will be longer in June.  You want to work with the stems when they are still pliable.  I let the blooms sit on the table a couple of hours so they would become limp.  Waiting too long will result in brittle stems.

a bit of floral wire twisted around the bottom of the cluster

upside down cluster

Turn the cluster upside down to let the stems flop over the blossoms.

Attach the end of a 30" piece of ribbon and wrap 3 times.

Then start to weave the ribbon over and under the stems, two at a time.

When you've covered the blossoms, wrap the ribbon again and seal with a pearl size drop of glue (from a hot glue gun)

pretty ribbons, 3/8" wide

I made a dozen of these this weekend.  I yet need to trim the bottom of the stems to be even.  You can choose any color ribbon, of course but I like this color.

a dozen wands

There are lots of tutorials on how to make these.  It was a fun project except I wanted to take a nap the whole time

single lavender wand

Girls together- JOY!

I was so lucky to have all 4 of my beautiful Granddaughters here for a visit.  They got to meet Charlotte and Poppy and just be on the farm for a bit.  We worked on a jigsaw puzzle and did a little baking in the kitchen ( salted caramel chocolate tart) but my favorite was when we all got on my bed together.

Ella-16, Gabriela-10, Kate-12, Reina-12

This was fun but what they were looking at was even better-pictures of themselves.  The wall opposite the bed is where I keep my family pictures so I can see these beauties first thing when I wake up.

family pics

Time to take some new pics to add:

Charlotte and Ella

Yes Charlotte is getting big ( 9 months)

Poppy and Gabriela

Kate and Charlotte

Reina

Gabriela, me, Sunflower and Poppy

The luncheon of the boating party- Renoir

salted caramel chocolate tart

King Arthur Flour salted caramel chocolate tart

JOY

May you have joy in every day of your life......You don't have to look very far.....it's right in front of you

Puppies in PJs Merry Christmas!

Christmas 2019 Puppies in PJs

Merry Christmas to all!  I wish you joy, happiness and peace in your world and your heart.  Sometimes you just have to make your new puppy the star of the show.  So this year's Christmas theme is Puppies in PJs.  Now I've never dressed a puppy in a pair of pajamas but it is a cute idea.  Charlotte came to the farm in August to learn to be a guardian dog for the rest of the girls.  She didn't come with many skills except a lot of bouncing which scared the goats and chickens instead of bonding with them.  We're all working on it.

The picture above shows the signature Charlotte Christmas ornament.  There's also an ornament of a Dalmation ( that would be Oscar ~ 1984) and a picture frame of Madison ( ~1988).

Charlotte - 4 months

She is too cute, isn't she?  Such a sweet face and she will cuddle with you until you've just had enough.  She is so gentle with the small dogs in the neighborhood but has the will to take on a coyote if it dares come in our yard.

And the other baby in the barnyard is Poppy:

Poppy- 1 hour old

So my farm grew in 2019 and filled me with more love and laughs....well and some work too.

dining room

The table is ready for a fabulous meal

And let us all remember what Christmas really means:

nativity

Cookie day is tomorrow. Sue and I will be busy in the kitchen making tasty treats for our friends.  We'll share stories like this one of my mother creating wooden reindeer and painting them beautifully and with so much love:

reindeer - Mary Whitney

 I'll freshen up my memories of Christmas past and ornaments and gifts from years prior:

A girl and her goat.  Hummel

I'll be both happy and sad when I look at this pic of my 3 generation family and remember that CoCo just passed a few days ago:

CoCo, LuLu, Poppy

Where do goats go after they leave us?

And then cycle back to the newest kid on the farm and be grateful and happy:

Have a Merry Christmas and make sure you hug the ones you love----human and animal!

Soccer: Ella plays in Silverlakes

Ella waits for a pass (Ella is in red)

Lucky me!!!  My sweet Ella had a soccer tournament in Southern California.  She and her Colorado team traveled to Norco on Thanksgiving Day to play the weekend.  I guess they thought it would be warm and sunny in California.  But brrrrrr It was not.  I guess the 50s and 60s are better than the 20s & 30s of Colorado.  It snowed in the local mountains on Thursday so the vista was similar to "home"

local mountains

As soon as the 1st game was over Ella and I ran to see each other.  There were tears of joy, hugs and lots of love.  It was so fun to watch you play soccer again Ella.  You played really really well.  I am so proud of you.

The team had a little time after the last game before their flight home to Denver.     Time to go to Laguna and to the beach.  Time for an In n Out burger.... a must on a visit to California.

Pomegranates Wonderful!

The figs have all been harvested - some by the goats.  The watermelon have been harvested.....sweet and juicy.....well the barnyard animals eat the rinds...nothing wasted around here!....and now the Pomegranates.  Last year, 2 months after I moved in, there were a measly 3 small fruit on the tree.  Some friends had a bounty and shared but this year after the rains and some enrichment of the earth I have a bounty of my own.  I stopped counting at 130.  Well now I have a problem:  what to do with all of these beauties?:

pomegranates 2019

Pom Wonderful

This is what pomegranates look like growing on a tree.  When I was a child my mother would let us pick them but we would definitely have to eat them outside with very few clothes on.  I have a vivid memory of my brother, my cousins and I eating pomegranates while stripped down to our undies and "walking" down the long driveway on homemade stilts.  Oh what fun!

blossoms

They start out as these pretty blossoms

green moms

Then around the middle of summer they start to look like these.

cross section

If you cut a pomegranate exactly in half they expose this beautiful star shape

Poppy

"Poppy, tell me how your nose got so purple"

Arils

 So what to do with this superfood?  Well just eating the arils or drinking the juice is yummy but here are some more suggestions:  (After all I have 100 or so of them and not that many friends)

Pomegranate Margarita

Pomegranate Margarita:

Pomegranate juice

lime juice

agave to sweeten

Tequila

Triple Sec

Jalapeno pepper

These can be addicting.  Try soaking a Jalapeño (pierced but not seeded) in Tequila overnight.  This will add a kick to the Tequila that is powerful.

Pomegranate champagne cocktail

Pomegranate champagne cocktail:

Pomegranate juice

champagne

reserved arils

Pomegranate jelly

Pomegranate Jelly

Time consuming but worth it.

Here's what I harvested today along with my poms.  Now time for my Margarita:

October harvest