farm animals

I’m free to do what I want any old time – not really, though the idea is exciting!

| poppypeach

It was the first week off for mama time in 10 weeks – it was just pure ecstasy to be able to have some freedom to create and work in my sewing room. My ideas were overflowing and the motivation to make something an all-time high, which is probably why I made two skirts and a top just to experiment! I really love the style of this skirt as I have always enjoyed the skirts my daughter wore effortlessly with zero zippers and an elastic waist – I love the waistband on the front of this skirt as it reduces the number of gathers in the front. I do really love the big floral skirt with the hand gathering at the front waistband, it is such a fun skirt to wear maybe a bit short for me!

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Repurposed waterproof skirt, score it at Etsy

The Polar Bear fox skirt is a beautiful print in a thin corduroy fabric. I was making a bigger size so I can have a range of sizes available. I love this fabric and am sad to let it go – so check out the sizing if you like animals and spoil yourself with a one of a kind skirt for next season. Both these prototype skirts I am selling at my Etsy store, so see the links above and if you want free shipping with that, go to the contact link on my blog and I will send you a code to use.

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As I love the yellow top that I wore for these skirts I wanted to replicate it as a top for all skirts – this is in a tee shirt style that I was experimenting with so I will try it with another fabric and see how it turns out. I have used a continuous bias binding on the neckline and the sleeve detail and I love how easy it was to create the bias binding using a tutorial from Craftsy.

I really enjoyed my time to create and  I listened to a wonderful audiobook I recently discovered called Big Magic – Creative Living Beyond Fear which was an excellent resource to get me back into the swing of things. Now whenever I am working I will just put an audio book on and work away – as long as I am not writing! What a great way to multi-task! I am now listening to To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee, so groundbreaking for its time and kind of surreal to listen to living here in the USA where times have “supposed” to have progressed in regard to racism.

On to a more food orientated topic and assistance with working efficiently. I found my fave cafe downtown sells a flat white. So I wandered in to meet a friend and talk about her summer vacation in Italy and our vacay in Australia. I ordered the flat white, check out the pic above and guess which one is the flat white? The American style flat white is the one of the right! Now to me coming from Melbourne I expected a flat white to look like the coffee on the left, which is a cappuccino! The flat white they made was perfectly fine but it was a bit low on the foam at the top and at least it did not burn my mouth which is why a flat white is my favorite. Now I know for the future that I will order the cappuccino with soy and see what I get, fingers crossed I can get it the way I am used to!

 

Adding to the fun of getting back to a somewhat normal week where the kids are at school and I am at home working on my creative projects – let me say it again, heaven! We have had to work into our schedule on a Thursday to go to the farm to clean out the chicken coop – which is a kids job and as their payment they get to hang out with the chickens and the pigeons and quails as much as they like. Hanging out with the birds is a great motivator for them and they get their job done – so far it has been an hour to complete the cleaning and feeding of the coop and the aviary and with some luck, they will reduce that time!

Here is Ruby in all her teenage glory looking good as the Production Little Red Hen that she is. We are looking forward to next March after the chickens are 12 months old they will start to lay eggs. Missy is in the aviary holding the cutest little male quail – we are looking for some females if anyone has any hanging around? Then we can have little teeny weeny quail eggs. The kids got to keep the pigeon eggs and bantam eggs as a cleaning reward the other day and enjoyed them for a tiny breakfast the next day.

What a week it was and I was so happy to have had a weekend of doing nothing after the holidays of planning stuff with friends and family over the summer – farewell to the summer holidays and let’s get on this hamster wheel of craziness!!

A piece a Week – A Kombucha Party

| poppypeach
For our school silent auction I hosted a ‘How to make Kombucha party’. As I am a definite convert to kombucha since finding a favorite brand brewed closeby in Sonoma (my new favorite foodie place) – Revive, at Whole Foods. Since drinking the jugs of Kombucha and wanting to find out how to make it my friend in Seattle gave me a gift of a SCOBY from a friend. From that one SCOBY having many babies I have been experimenting with different teas and flavours. So for the party I did a lot of research with books on Kombucha from the local library. A favorite being this one by the crew at Kombucha Kamp. 
The plan of the party was to show my guests how to make Kombucha and introduce them to what a SCOBY looks like. As we were waiting for water to boil and tea to brew, I had some snacks and drinks during the Q&A. The drinks I mixed included different flavours of Kombucha tea and alcohol and some Mocktails for those who don’t like alcohol, still throw a couple of shots in there and you are golden! The cocktails went down very well – I made a Limoncello from Everclear a while back and we had that with a Lavender Green Tea Kombucha, amazing! Here are some recipes if you want to make your own over the summer – it makes a very refreshing beverage!

Healthy Mule
(inspired by the book Kombucha Revolution)
cucumber, Lemon & basil (Serves 4)

Ice
8 oz Yerba Mate Kombucha
5 oz Vodka
4 oz Grapefruit or Lemon juice
2” of cucumber chopped
Basil
¾ cup water
Agave to taste

Place everything in a blender and blend to the prefered consistency. You will see lots of bubbles and foam on the top – that is OK as your ‘buch has bubbles!

Gin and Juice – of course you can always add more gin!

8 oz pomegranate
4 oz gin
4 oz green tea / lavender infused kombucha
Lime juice
Simple Syrup to taste

Place in the blender to mix thoroughly.
Limoncello and Lavender Cocktail

Make your limoncello from Everclear

Use Green Tea Kombucha 2 cups and mix in with an infusion of lavender by taking 1 cup of boiling water and infuse fresh lavender buds in a tea ball for 5 minutes

Blueberry Mojito Mocktail

1 cup blueberries
1 oz lemon juice (½ lemon)
¼ cup mint leaves
1 cup Water
Ice
2 ½ oz black tea kombucha
Maple Syrup to taste

Place all ingredients in the blender and mix.

Berry Basil Green Tea Mocktail

1 cup frozen mixed berries
Fresh Basil to taste
1 cup genmaicha kombucha
1 cup water and ice
Agave to taste

Put everything in the blender and till all the basil is distributed through then serve in a cocktail glass with a basil leaf.

Cheers to these healthy cocktails – as the Kombucha has some fizz it creates some nice bubbles in the blender

Whoa now this is a beautiful drink with cucumber and basil
The SCOBY ready to go home to their new homes

Sunday was our last pygmy goat meeting for the year at the farm. There are going to be little baby pygmy goats at the farm real soon so I cannot wait to see them! 
This little lady is due to have her 4 babies very soon!

Goat crafting and creating with model magic 
The goat drying in the pen

The goat in it’s environment by the lake

Little 1 week old Nigerian dwarf goat – born on Mothers day

Mama goat and her two babies – a boy and a girl

Brother goat

10 day old goat

Proud mama goat in the sunshine

A piece a Week – Back to ceramics and a small thrown bowl

| poppypeach
This is what I found when I went back to ceramics last week – this cute little bowl was found on the pick up shelf and it was a bit of a mess on the foot so I got the Dremel and cleaned up the glaze and I just love it! 
3 boiled eggs in a little bowl
After last weeks sock monkey project on the fly at the library I wanted to get a bit organized for next months class so we are doing Felt Heart Pins. A hand sewing project with buttons to add another dimension. We are doing the project at a smallish room at the library and it is way easier to do a little hand sewing project so if you are free on the 2nd February come on down to the Mountain View Public Library and get your Valentines on! 
Make your own Valentine pin in February at the library
Here is a pic from last weeks sock monkey workshop at the library – the time was a bit of a struggle with everyone so a lot of the students left with their monkey in pieces to hand sew at home. 
The bottom of the monkey, legs, mouth and ears

Today we went for a lovely walk out to see Mc Clellan Ranch Preserve to see where the kids are doing their new little projects for this year with the Rolling Hills 4H program. Missy is wanting to work on projects with the Chickens and Ash is wanting to the Pack Goat project – taking goats for hikes, now that sounds like a lot of fun! And both kids are interested in Beekeeping as are we so it works for the whole family. At the ranch there is a nature preserve which teaches the kids about the local critters and also some visitors hatched in California native to Australia. Meet Draco the Bearded Dragon  – we fed him meal worms and he was just loving it! Such a handsome lizard!!

Feeding Draco a meal worm

Tree climbing a fallen tree
 
Yes I am too cool – my name is Draco!