With all the kitten activities this week I have forgotten to keep updating you on the new Scrapblocks â„¢ release. Lisa & the girls are having so much fun with these & the possibilities are endless so I don’t want you missing out.

You might think this is patterned paper but you are WRONG! LOL! This is the Perfect Plaid Scrapblock â„¢

These stamps are SO versatile - you can create your own patterned paper in any shade you want so no more having to run out to the store for the perfect color paper to go with your project - just stamp some & create your own.

To see what Lisa made with this paper click here.

Hope your Friday is going well,

Liz

A couple of you have asked me what I meant by having “to stimulate the kitten’s bottom.” A kitten cannot go to the bathroom by itself for the first three weeks of its life. In the wild it is stimulated by its mother’s licking so as there is no mama we have to do it. After each feed we use a damp cotton ball to wipe its rear end which then stimulates it to do its business.

This kitten is doing well. It is VERY loud & very feisty. (Richard thinks it is a tom.) Right now we are feeding it with a syringe - the kitten bottle teet is a little too large. It gets about 1 1/2 mls every 1 1/2 hours. Richard has made it a box with a lamp under so that it keeps warm. It is already trying to climb out!

Take care,

Liz

Look what Michelle brought in this morning!

Calico had 4 kittens yesterday morning - one was dead when we found them. The other three seemed to be healthy. Last night when Richard & I went down to the barn - 2 were together, 1 was by itself - there are 2 blacks & one calico. Well this morning two are gone & this one was left.

Not sure if Calico has rejected them all but figured this one had more chance with us than the barn. We had to quickly make up some kitten milk - egg yolk, condensed milk & water but I have just been to town & bought KMR (Kitten Milk Replacer).

Because it is so young, it has to be fed 1ml every hour & of course you have to stimulate its bottom etc - oh what joys. It is very noisy so I don’t think it is going to let us starve it!

We have it on a fleece blanket with a hot water bottle underneath & Michelle just went & got it a soft toy to cuddle up to.

Enjoy your day

Liz

Scrapblocks™ are:

1. A dream fulfilled for our Art Director Lisa Strahl!
2. 6″ x 6″ pieces of deeply etched red rubber
3. Fabulous patterns
4. Releasing next Tuesday, June 3rd.

I could go on & on but let me whet your appetite. Head on over to Mona Lisa’s blog to see what she has created with this:

Enjoy your day!

Liz

OK I know! You’re all thinking, “What is so exciting about puddles?!” BUT what you may not realize is how rare an occurance that is up here. In fact I thought I had managed to kill all the new veggies we planted on Saturday as Sunday was SO hot & dry that they wilted really badly & I didn’t think they would recover. I watered them for 2 hours (sprinkler) on Monday night & then guess what happened? It started raining & hasn’t stopped much since.
What a blessing though The ground is just soaking it up. Daniel has been out playing in puddles for two days, coming in absolutely soaking & muddy. The ducks are really happy.

We ended up with just 5 ducklings. No more hatched, not even the goose eggs so tonight Michelle & I performed “autopsies” on the goose eggs to see what was inside. It was so funny. Both of us were a little afraid that they would explode when we cracked them so for the first one I threw it outside on the ground. Guess what? It didn’t even crack! Duchess thought it was great & proudly picked it up so I had to go get it off of her & try again. This time I threw it a bit harder & it cracked but there was nothing in it. No explosion though so the next ones I cracked open on the edge of the dog bowl. Those eggs were tough. Six of the eggs had perfectly formed, dead, goslings in them They had not absorbed their yoke sac which happens in the last 24 hours, sometimes even when they have cracked the shell for air so no idea why they died. Very weird.

The incubator is clean again so we are going to put chicken eggs in & see how they do.

On Monday, when Richard was doing the mail, he heard the chickens making an awful noise. He looked out the window to see them all this side of the fence & Rosie Lee (calf) staring at a fox. We moved the chickens to the front of the house in hope that that would deter the fox who has wiped us out every year. Their new pen is only a couple hundred feet from the house but that fox has a new family & is hungry. So maybe Rosie is our new guard dog. We haven’t seen him back since but hence the incubation of more chicken eggs just in case.

Five lambs are doing great. The little guy that was sick died yesterday - nothing we could do for him We had tried our best but to no avail. The five healthy ones are in very good voice & eating very well.

Hope your week is going well.

Liz

Happy Saturday to you all!

It’s been a busy & hot day here on the farm. First thing, we cleaned all the windows. Our dirty windows have been bugging me for ages but we have never got around it until today. Michael hosed them all down on the outside, Michelle washed all the screens & I cleaned the glass. We can actually see out of them now

The ducklings are hatching:

Since taking this pic we now have 5. There are no goslings yet but apparently they take a couple days longer so time will tell.

Richard spent the morning putting in all the drip irrigation for our vegetable garden & fruit trees. In the week Daniel & I took a trip to the recycling plant & exchanged some magnesium for fruit trees. Well OK it didn’t work quite like that. Let me explain. When we create new art the first step in the stamp making process is to have a magnesium plate made. These are NOT cheap & of course once we retire an image the plate is no good to us. Well on Tuesday evening Michael was in a cleaning mood down in the vulcanizing area & so I figured it was about time we got rid of all our old plates. We boxed them up on Wednesday & off we went. We got enough money to then go & buy a Cherry Tree & a Plum Tree so that was a pretty neat exchange.

After lunch we went & picked up 6 lambs! This little guy is pretty sick - he may or may not make it. His mum starved him.

The other five are doing great. We have put them out in one of the front pastures so they can have lots of sunshine. Of course they looked at the bucket as if it was an alien, played with the teats a little but didn’t drink so right now we are bottle feeding them. Will gradually wean them onto the bucket which is so much easier.

Once the lambs were settled in we went back to gardening & planted 6 tomato plants, 36 broccoli plants, 24 cauliflowers, spinach & onions. I am going to have to go out next week & start weeding. Soil is still a little hard right now but once it has been watered for a while, those weeds are going to shoot! AAGH! We have never grown broccoli or cauliflower before so time will tell. They’re looking pretty wilted in this pic but once they got water they perked up.

Whilst we were out in the garden, Rosco or Penny were getting in the grain bin.

They have really grown but have good temperaments.

Oh yes & I did get a couple hundred stamps made

Hope you all have a wonderful rest of the weekend,

Take care,

Liz

This Friday sees the new Thomas Kinkade release - Hometown Pride. Our designers have been really busy so I wanted to show you some sneak peaks.

Look how effective this looks stamped mono chromatically with just the flag colored in.

SO this stamp can be used all year round not just for patriotic events but for those friends in your life who are moving house.

Hope to see you on Friday when all the wonderful designs will be on full display in the CHF Gallery.

Thanks Liz

I don’t know about your Mother’s Day but mine wasn’t that quiet! In the afternoon we took a walk down the field to look for asparagus as it that time of year but alas we picked about 5 stalks. It has been cold & dry here - in fact we are normally eating Sunday breakfast down by the river in April & this past Sunday was the first Sunday that it was warm enough but nobody thought about it. Anyway so no asparagus so Richard then decided to cut down some little Russian Olive Trees that we have growing where they shouldn’t be. For those of you who are not familiar with Russian Olives they produce NO fruit, have long, sharp spikes and are really more of a weed. There were a few growing out in the main pasture but you know how it is. You think that the job will take five minutes but as you start hacking, you realize that there was more than you thought.

At the same time Chris was down here mending fence as the cows were coming in for the summer. They came back in the evening with 26 cow/calf pairs. T-Bone was very interested to see new friends.

Of course we warned Chris about Cinco. Richard & I don’t think he could reach their cows (Angus) BUT we can’t take the risk so Chris is back here tonight tightening up our girls pasture to hopefully keep Cinco in. Cinco is down there bellowing as he knows there are females around. In fact today was the first time I have seen him not beside Lilly’s side

We have a nice agreement with Chris as we rent the land out at a very reasonable price & then they take care of all the fences & irrigation. Richard & I just do not have time to deal with it all at this time in our lives. The cows help to keep the grass down and fertilize it.

Harvey bit me on the leg yesterday - I was SO mad. I was feeding Rosie Lee & minding my own business. He came up so fast I didn’t even hear him. Tonight both him & Jasper were trying to mate the poor turkey so I had to hit them both over the head with Rosie’s empty milk bottle (plastic) to make them stop. I do hope some of the goose & duck eggs hatch out this week - they’re due Friday. Then Jasper can have friends of his own kind!

I finally figured out the camera so here is the first pic I took. One sleepy boy with one content chick.

Enjoy.

Liz

Have you ever got to the place in life where you are fed up with turkeys peeping at you? No, I’m guessing that not many of you can answer yes to that! LOL! BUT by Friday of this week I was fed up with the turkeys waking me up each morning. They have a very loud, piercing peep when they are hungry & it was worse on Friday as it had rained on Thursday so they had not been able to go out.

I had had enough so once they were put out on Friday I started to plan where they could sleep that night. We did some re-arranging & moved Rosco & Penny out of their shed, put the turkeys in there and Rosco & Penny moved into Rosie Lee’s pen to sleep. Rosie Lee is now big enough & has shelter so she can stay out. She didn’t like going in anyway. SO that problem was solved & I was happy.

Going back a few days to Monday, T-Bone & Chuck had managed to annoy a porcupine hence the title. What a mess! We had to catch them & bring them up here into a confined pen & then it took Michelle & I to hold them whilst Michael pulled the quills out. T-Bone had them the whole length of his face - he must have really been in pain, poor thing or should I say STUPID COW! Chuck wasn’t quite so bad but still had a few so that was how our week started. I wanted to take some pics for you as it was quite a sight BUT I broke the camera. I dropped it & that was the end of it. Richard has since bought me a new one which I wanted anyway as ours was getting really old but now I have to figure out how to get photos from it to the computer so apologies for the lack of pics tonight!
Today Richard & I have been on a training course about Child Brain Development. It was run by the staff of a home in Helena who have a center for kids that everyone else has given up on. The kids come into their program so traumatized & abused it is awful but they are there for 2 years & alot of them go on to live productive lives. It was a very interesting seminar - we learned alot.
We have had some much needed rain this week so that has been wonderful.

Hope you all enjoy the rest of your weekend,

Liz

Our trip to Memphis went really well. It was good for Richard & I to get away for a few days. We did get time to relax but we also learned a LOT. The EPE crew took care of us really well. The first night, as you know, we got the VIP tour of Graceland along with many different types of food. It was fascinating to see the whole set up - gave us a real feel as to who Elvis really was.

Here is a picture of Richard & I outside Graceland:

Here is the living room:

Not sure how much you know about Graceland but each year on the anniversary of Elvis’ death (August 16th) they have a candlelight vigil going up through the property to the Memorial Gardens:

Elvis was a horse lover so there are still horses here:

Graceland is set on 13 acres & it is beautiful. They have done an incredible job of preserving it. For any car lover the Car Museum is a must. Loads of different cars including his famous Pink Cadillac:

It was quite an eye opener to tour the Lisa Marie - his aeroplane.

Although outdated now, in its time it was very plush but also very homely.

Richard thought this suit would look really good on himself!

The next morning, Tuesday, the meetings started in one of the conference rooms at the hotel. I’m guessing there were about 200 of us in attendance. Priscilla did give a speech along with many others. They fed us incredibly well - breakfast, lunch & dinner! That night we headed down to Beale Street to the Hard Rock Cafe. EPE had taken it over for the night. The only downer here was that the entertainers they brought in were SO loud you had to shout to hear each other so Richard & I didn’t stay around for long.

On our way back in the trolley car we met George Kalinsky & his wife - a very nice couple. George is the famous photographer for Madison Square Gardens in New York & recently found 100 photos of Elvis that he had taken when Elvis was at Madison Square Gardens. EPE are putting up a brand new display which opens this month sometime.

Wednesday saw another day of great information. I think the lawyer’s presentation was the most interesting - quite incredible all that is involved. In the afternoon George spoke as did one of the Elvis artist’s Joe Petruccio. We have one of his images being released in July. That day finished about 3pm & that was it.

Richard & I took advantage of the gorgeous weather & walked along the river. ate dinner & then took the trolley car all the way around to see more.

All in all it was a very worthwhile trip.

Thursday we came home.

Now it’s back to the routine. Today has been gorgeous here also so Daniel & I planted onions & lettuce. We still have a chance of frost so can’t be too eager. I had to remake the “herb” garden as the pigs & chickens had scat the stones everywhere. I didn’t have any success with my herbs last year so am now keeping that space for lettuce, spinach & green onions. I see the weeds are just starting to push their heads through.

Hope you all have a great rest of the weekend,

Liz