The Farm at Castle Argghhh!!!

Eleven years ago today, John and I got married at the Leavenworth County Courthouse.  Andy was our Best Man and our friend, Debbie Carpenter was our other witness.  It was very sparsely attended.  It was January, after all, and snowy.  So none of John's family was able to attend, and I only have one sister, who lives in Buffalo, so she could not attend either.

Secretely, I suspect that some people thought we would not last.  Well, so far, we have proved any and all naysayers wrong.  I still love John with all my heart and soul, and John still loves me, too.

Thank you, John, for putting up with me for the past 11 years.  Happy Anniversary! Things only get better and better every day.

I love you, Handsome!

Today, I'm baking.  First thing - caramel nut rolls.  John is going to take them to work tomorrow to gauge reaction of co-workers.  If they love them, I will make them for the Famers Market, if not, on to a different recipe.

Then, egg noodles - got to use these eggs up - making pasta and dehydrating it is a good way to do that.  I'm going to use my friend's dehydrator.

If I have time, I will make chocolate bread, and I will post the recipe!

I support Israel. I believe Israel has every right to bomb Hamas to Hell.  Hamas is a terrorist organization, despite what too many in the MSM state.  They are not freedom fighters.  Hamas wants to cause the end of Israel.  There is no way anyone should be supporting them.  The US needs to support Israel fully to help them in their fight against terrorism.

I am somewhat concerned about how President Obama is going to try to behave.  He has an awful lot of anti-Semitic friends in his past (Farrakhan and his hateful ex-preacher).  I hope he can rise to the level of moral virtue to understand that the US has a duty to stand besides Israel.

I want to do too much! I want to make pottery stuff, do photography stuff, sewing stuff and fiber stuff.  Oh, and there is cooking stuff and gardenting stuff, and all the animal care stuff.

And on top of all that, I have to at least attempt the housework stuff.

I need to focus, and myabe even make a {shudder} List of stuff to do each day {double shudder}.

So, I have been looking at a lot of my photos, and I think that printing them as blank notecards would be a way to sell my work.  So, I have been checking the prices on several on-line photo developers - from Exposure Manager (where I store all my photos) to Walmart and everything in between.

Basically, unless you want to purchase a full dozen of one design,  the cost per card approaches $1.50 each.  Now, if I want to sell 4 cards (with envelopes) for something like $6.00, there is really not enough profit to make it worthwhile - it is not like I would be selling hundreds of cards or anything!

I’ve been doing some searches trying to discover what other photographers and artists do to sell their work as notecards and I was somewhat surprised that many of them do it themselves with their good ink jet printers on good card stock.  Hmmmm.  I need to research this!

I think these photos would make nice notecards - what do you think?  Honestly, now, don’t pull any punches!

Damn.  Some critter got to Satchmo today and manged to kill him.  Of course, he was a little rooster - smaller than a standard rooster, but quite a lot bigger than my banty roosters.  Satchmo had class.  He stood out from the crowd.  He decided that an old ladder was the perfect roosting place for chickens, even if it was outside of the coop, so we had to build a covered chicken run around the ladder to keep him safe.

Satchmo was quite the ladies man.  The Americauna chicks hung out with him all the time, and actually fought over who got to roost with him at night.

Satchmo would come running to me every time I ventured outside.  Of course, he was probably hoping that he would get a special tidbit - and he often did.  
Anyway, I will miss him very much. And the next time I get a fancy chicken breed, I guess I will need to keep them inside the covered run. Sigh.

RestStop, now our oldest kitty, has been losing weight like crazy.  To be honest, I didn't pay as much attention to him as I should have because Little Girl was so old and needed a lot of attention before she passed away to kitty cat heaven.  

So I took him to the vet yesterday- not the regular, fine for annual immunizations and boarding vet, but the vet that costs more money and has a ton more experience with critters.  Dr. Teeter said his heart was fine, there were no obvious growths or tumors, and that RestStops' breathe indicated that he did NOT have a kidney problem.  Good.  So he took a couple of vials of blood from Resty and called a courier to have the blood overnighted to a lab in Chicago.

That was expensive!  It's a special lab, they test for everything, apparently.  I just got off the phone with the vet, and they believe that RestStop is diabetic.  His blood glucose was at 320 - way over normal! But to make sure, they need to have that lab run one more test.  They also found signs of a low-grade infection, so I'm giving him antibiotics until Friday, when we will get the final verdict.

Chances are, John and I will be treating Resty's diabetes with insulin injections and trying to keep his diet whatever it needs to be.  RestStop is about 15 years old, and hopefully, he will live for quite a long while yet.  


 

They want to start posting.  After seeing what happened at Three Dog Blog, I better give them logins so they don't decide to just hack into the blog themselves!

I put up (love that term, put up!) 5 pints of fresh pears this morning.  Made Apple Butter a couple of days before Christmas, and it is good.

I am going to try to make some homemade fettucini today, and homemade egg noodles - seems like a good way to use up some of the eggs that my lovely hens lay for me!

I bought a pasta roller and fettucinni cutter attachment for my KitchenAid Mixer.  Very heavy, stainless steel, I read the instructions, but I probably need to check out you tube or something to actually see someone using the attachments.  Don't want to mess up the pasta!  Apparently, I can also use it to make lasagna noodles with! 

My good friend, Robin, makes her own ricotto cheese with her goats' milk.  Between us, we should be able to make almost entirely home made lasagna when her goats start giving milk in the spring.

I think I might make a loaf of chocolate bread, too.  I meant to do that before Christmas, but as usual, I ran out of speed before we had to leave to go visit John's family.