A... Deer?

So you're just coming up the driveway, and do a double-take. Is that a deer? :gasp: And it's a stag! 

And you come to a stop. Wait. Is it moving or no? Why haven't I scared it off yet? You roll down the window. Is that even real? 

(In a very disappointed voice) No. It's not. 

But this little guy has fooled many folks! You're not the only one that he's duped. Our neighbor put this up a while ago, we all had our moment of trying to figure out if it's real or not. We all had a good laugh, and the deer remained. From the kitchen and the dining room table, we have an excellent view of the comings and goings of everyone, so we got to see the show of people slowing, stopping, getting out of their cars, taking pictures, and laughing as they go on. 

Then, on Christmas Eve, someone Santa-bombed the deer. How do we know when this happened? We saw our neighbor's reaction(s) to the holiday-decked deer from our dining room table (I guess it's the perfect place to spy on everyone). 

He looks like he partied too much. 

Photo courtesy of our neighbors

Grass-Fed Butter

When you're reading through healthy recipes and cookbooks, you can usually find the little phrase 'grass fed butter' on many of the ingredient lists. I always chuckle when I see it because my imagination likes to take it a step farther. Hence this quick sketch. 

Baby Butter: Will I become a trans-fat when I grow up?
Mommy Butter: Of course not, Sweetie! You're saturated through and through. 

Farm Girl Got Geek: Lembas Bread

If you're a regular human being, September 22nd is the first day of fall. If you're a Lord of the Rings junkie, it's Bilbo's and Frodo's birthday, and it's Hobbit day to the fandom. Since it was a gully gusher of a day, I can't think of a better way to celebrate than with a Lord of the Rings role playing game and eating tons of food a-la-hobbit style. 

But, as good as regular food is, something about making your regular food go with the theme of the day. So I set out to make Elven lembas bread, the traveling food of the Elves of Middle Earth. Batch of cookies? Check. Mallorn leaves? Uh... That's something that needs doing. You can't have lembas without the mallorn. I found a leaf pattern, but they used foam to make the leaves. I didn't have foam handy, and I didn't feel that the foam would work very well for a method of aesthetic food delivery. I did have felt. A lot of felt. And in green too. How convenient! ;) Cut out the pattern and sew all the veins of the leaf. Voila'! Mallorn leaves. 

Just had to pass it by the critics - the brothers. One thought that it was the coolest thing ever. The other thought that all that all the extra leaf and string action was just hindering his cookie consumption.

Picnic at Pemberly - a Pride and Prejudice Ball

The day finally arrived. Time slows to a crawl once you've finished your dress for the ball (but speeds up exponentially if you procrastinate until the day of). We met up at a friend's house to get ready (ribbons, curls, and bobby pins oh my!) and headed off to the ball. 

I interrupt this story to suggest that you turn on the Pride and Prejudice soundtrack by Dario Marianelli. Finding the whole playlist would be even better. Okay, you can keep reading now.  

But wait! We need to stop at the store to pick up the lemonade!

We get to go shopping in our Regency dresses! xD We ended up going to two stores and buying them  out of lemonade.  

Responses to our get-ups? 

Besides the second glances, stare-downs, compliments, questions about our unusual garb, and a gal helping us carry lemonade to the car, we also caught snippets of funny conversations about us

Little girl: Mommy, why do those people have so much lemonade?

Mommy: Honey, I think they just really like lemonade.

And...

Dude to his friend: Don't worry, you're in Portland now. You're going to see some pretty weird stuff.

And...

Some dude sitting in his car whistled at us. 

It's not every day that you see a gaggle of giggly girls dressed up in 'unusual' clothing pushing a cart full of lemonade

So. After our little shopping trip adventure, we were :really: on our way to the ball! It was for real this time. ;) My guesstimates puts the guest total to 200 (just in case you were wondering while looking at the pictures).

The littlest dancers

I loved the location

Someone ditched their shoes. The poor lost soles...

Mari's Wedding with a double circle

One of my favorite moments of the evening? 

Gentleman #1 asks me to a dance. Okay, nothing weird there. Part of the dance involved doing an 'orbit' around the set. Still nothing new there either. It's when Gent #1 was 'traded' with Gent #2 (who was nonchalantly walking by) during the orbit. Come in for a two-hand turn, and it's not the person I was dancing with before. Haha! Okay, got me! They then proceeded to trade off during each of the 'orbits' for the rest of the dance. We all had a good laugh afterwards. What I don't know is if it was pre-planned or not. Hmm...

Update: They had plotted the whole thing. They had looked at the dance list to see if it would work with any of the dances, and then they looked for someone who would be able to take the joke. 

Venue - Summerfield Farms in Salem, OR

Pictures are from ECD Oregon, Noah Holte, and yours truly

Mudroom

It's called a mudroom for a reason. The sole purpose of this area in the house is to hopefully catch most of the dirt that inevitably gets tracked in on a daily basis. Now, I'm not saying that those footprints are mine or anything... 

The day is all over the shirt...

It's a hand-me-down shirt that I hadn't worn before. Somehow it wound it's way into the back of the work shirt drawer. Long story short, we fell behind on laundry, and guess what I found. Yep, it had it's debut day on the farm. I made sure that the introduction to my life was about as 'real' as it got. What was on the to-do list for the day? Disbudding and tattooing baby goats. But first...

We had an escapee turkey. She flew the coop and made a jail break. So Jake and I rounded her up and enacted the UN no-fly-zone restrictions - we clipped her wing. Somehow I ended up being the one holding the big bird, and she made her displeasure known. She snagged her domesticated poultry talons on my shirt in several places. (Since then, we've had to clip two more birds' wings - I had a better grip that time.)

Finished breakfast and it was time for disbudding. For those of you who aren't familiar with what dehorning is all about, you have a scalding hot iron that you put on the horn bud for about 25 seconds. It stinks, the kid screams, the barn fills with the pungent 'aroma' (thankfully it was breezy, so it cleared out quickly). After the nasty part of the job is done, you apply some blue/purple goo to help keep things from getting infected and what-not. Then it's all done. The kid bounces back to its mama like nothing happened. Well... one of the kiddos decided to smear the purple stuff on me before running back to mom.

But wait! There's more.

We also tattooed the little does that we're planning on selling (once the paper work is all figured out...). One person holds kid goat tight while person #2 tattoos the ear. And we needed to tattoo both ears on three doelings. :does some finger counting: That's six different tattoos. And the wonderful color that's used? Green. New color added to the shirt! While they were at it, they also rubbed the green ink over one side of my neck. It looked like some sort of monochromatic Picasso portrait; it wasn't until after I ran errands that a friend informed me that baby wipes work really well at getting that stuff off. ;) And I got some pretty hilarious expressions from people. I enjoyed myself. Time to play 'Guess that tattoo!'

When all was said and done, I looked down and realized how dirty the goats were - they had been rolling around in the dirt in the side shed.

So between the greens, purples, and dusty hues, I almost had a completely new shirt! ;)

Country Chic Bridal Shower

Has it been a week since Sonia's bridal shower already? Wow, time is flying. I think I need to get started on my bridesmaid dress because the wedding is coming up quick. ;) 

So. Want the lo-down on party details? (you're supposed to nod your head 'yes' at this point) I don't blame you. 

And in case you're wondering, much of the inspiration for the decorating and whatnot came from pinterest. It's pretty simple to get the gist of what the bride wants when she has a board for wedding plans ;) 

Emily H. made up these gorgeous biscotti! We dipped our double-baked goods into chocolate, let it solidify, them piped on the words and doodles. :) Super easy, super cute.

And how can you have a country chic shower without a chalkboard, boots and a pitchfork?

A close up of the centerpieces

And mason jars. Can't forget the mason jars.

The bride isn't huge on everyone staring at her while she opens the presents, so we recruited the guests' help for assembling the wedding favors while she unwrapped the gifts

For an activity, guests created a country song for the bride and groom via 'mad-lib' style.

These paper lanterns get used in just about every party now. Lol!

And when the bride has food restrictions, you make sure that she has something to eat at her own shower. ;)

A better view of the centerpieces

The devotion was a time of prayer led by a good friend of the bride

Favor making

And now for pictures of everyone's smiling faces. :)

This picture makes me laugh. A lot. 

She has that glow about her. :)

This also makes me laugh.

Can't you tell that they're sisters? :D

Flower toss!

All pictures courtesy of Christi