Feathered and Ready To Explore

The girls are growing!
We keep calling them our babies but really they don't look much like those fuzzy little fluff balls we had anymore :) Their feathers are fully in and they are growing more inquisitive every day. You can see them eyeing up the outdoors when we come in to feed and pet them so I think we're going to have to get their yard finished. Some of the fence needs mending and a layer of fish net needs to be hung over the pen to keep the hawks and eagles from swooping in and taking any. We definitely don't want what to happen!

So while they're waiting to be released into the grassy wild we've been feeding them little dandelion blossom treats and they love them.

So much in fact that they fight over them *grin*.
One will get a flower in its beak and then another will swoop in and snatch it away and this goes on for a while until we drop in another for them to squabble over :)

My daughter on the other hand mesmerizes them. I think I have mentioned in another post that she is like the chick whisperer and it never fails that they flock to her :) Every time she picked one up it would just tuck its beak into the dandelion blossom and hang out. Talk about taking time to smell the roses.... or dandelions in this case *grin*.

She's been taking on a lot of the responsibility of feeding them to and heading out in the mornings on her own to fill their feed dishes and talk to them. It's so cute :)

Oh and I wanted to let you know that Hubby made it safely home Monday morning!! I waited up until 2am for him to get here and it was so nice to have him back. I got the play by play account of how the whole accident went down from him blowing the gear in his tug, to calling out on the radio in hopes that someone might be near enough to help him out and getting no response, to him waiting till the last possible moment to decide to cut his tow loose as he waited hoping that it might hit the beach and hang up on the rocks so that he could save it, and finally how he threw out the anchor which I thought would be a done deal and it was over but no he wasn't sure if it was even going to hold him!! Thank goodness it held or he would have been smashed to bits on the rocks through the rapids like his tow.

We enjoyed two days together as he rested up and slept after so many sleepless nights and now he's gone again. All thoughts of danger pushed out of my mind as we count the days until he returns again :)

Hugs,
Rosina

Ugly Duckling Syndrome

Our girls are growing so quickly!
They will be three weeks old on thursday and as you can see they are definitely much larger than those little fluff balls that fit perfectly into small hands only days before :)

The kids thought they looked a little bit like ugly ducklings today *grin*. Their fluffy down is being replaced by feathers and the transition is so interesting to watch :) This little girl must have felt small today as she kept stretching as tall as she could!

We brought a couple of them into the house today and set a towel down on the living room floor so that they could roam around a bit. They really seemed to love my daughter and gravitated straight for her...

She's like the chick whisperer *grin*, and the boys were just a tad jealous of all the attention she was getting LOL.

It's a little bittersweet to see them maturing so quickly but then again I am really looking forward to all of those fresh eggs!

Hugs,
Rosina

Happy Easter

Wow, it has been one crazy weekend and then some! Today is the first day since last Wednesday that I have been home all day and haven't had to travel into the city and it feels SO GOOD. Between swimming lessons, science group, picking up chicks, easter celebrations and an impromptu trip to Costco it's been go go go here :)

We had a lovely Easter though. On Saturday we had dinner with my sister and her husband and then my mom and I had a sleep over at their house so that we could go to the movies and catch a little retail therapy *grin* and today the kids and I went to my parent's house for an Easter lunch.

After the great success I had making ice cream cone cake pops last summer I thought I'd try making some Easter themed ones so last night I whipped up a cake for making the balls. Hubby thought I was nuts *grin*. Out came the fresh cake from the oven and I proceeded to smash it up making a gooey mess with icing LOL.

I love playing with these although rolling the balls in the chocolate was a little trickier as they had a habit of spinning on the sticks. Nothing a little stint in the freezer couldn't cure though and they were good to go *grin*.

We had all sorts of yummy finger sandwiches, vegetables and desserts...

my mom had plenty of treats for the kids...

and I think they ate enough cake pops and pez to induce a sugar overdose LOL. Thank goodness it's all over and tomorrow it's back to normal we go :)

Hope you all had a wonderful Easter to!

Hugs,
Rosina

Easter Babies

Our little chicky babies arrived today and just in time for Easter :) It couldn't have been better timing!

Everyone was so excited to peek into the box we brought them home in and help move them under the heat lamp :) Of course we had to have the 'you have to be really gentle' talk with the little man but he truly wanted to be as careful as possible with them and he is going to love them so much *grin*.

They are so stinkin' cute!!! I'm going to apologize now because I think there might be quite a few baby chick pictures in the coming days LOL.

Hugs,
Rosina

Fluffy Tissue Easter Chicks ~ Kids Craft

Easter time's a coming, Easter time's a coming.... *grin*.

I loved making these fluffy tissue chicks when I was a little girl, twisting little bits of tissue paper on the end of my pencil and sticking them onto paper in the shapes of hearts, chicks and other animals. I'm seriously just like a little kid when it comes the crafting! I can't wait to get in there and cut and paste along with the kids no matter what the occasion LOL.

Since Easter is actually just about here I thought we'd better get going on some special crafts! Out came the construction paper, odds and ends bits of tissue paper, pencils and glue and we got cutting :) This is such an easy craft with such cute end results that you've got to try it if you haven't before!

Cut any color of tissue paper into a whole lot of little 1.5 - 2 inch squares and then cut an egg shape out of construction paper or cardboard for each child plus yourself :) Next take one square of your tissue paper, place the eraser end of your pencil in the center of the square and pull up the sides of the paper and scrunch it all up around the end of your pencil.

Dip the end of your pencil into the glue...

then press your pencil end with the gluey paper down onto your egg cutout and repeat :)

You just keep squishing and sticking your scrunched up tissue paper to your cutout until you've filled the whole thing up and made yourself a fluffy little chicky :) We made ours look like our chicks were popping out of their shells on the bottom but you could even decorate them like easter eggs with different colored polka dots or waves and so on all over them. They make fantastic fronts for Easter cards to. So fun!! I just love the great 3D texture you get from all that tissue paper :)

I had a bit of yellow ribbon in the cupboard so I punched a hole in the top of each of them and threaded the ribbon through to hang them up in our family room window :) It was a good thing I wanted to hang them as it gave me incentive to finally take down the cinnamon stars that were hanging there from Christmas! I know I'm terrible aren't I *grin*.

Have fun making some :)

Hugs,
Rosina

Spring Chicks

I am moving full steam ahead into spring and surrounding myself with cheery colors and springy items like these little chicks I've been making *grin*.

I had some old sheep's fleece in my craft cupboard that hadn't been carded so I lugged out my big drum carder and cleaned it up nicely to use as the centers of my chicks. I just couldn't bear to use all of my new pretty yellow wool rovings to make them so I wound a tight ball using the natural cream fleece (sorry I can't remember what kind it is) and then just wrapped enough of my yellow corriedale roving around to cover the white and then wet felted them.

I'm really pleased with how the yellow balls turned out :) I was afraid that the yellow would slip on the white as I started to lather and rub it around creating bald spots showing through but I made sure I was extra gentle and it blended together beautifully. For the bottom of the egg shell I used an old plastic easter egg as my form and worked the wool over top of it so that it formed a nice concave shape for the chick bodies to sit in and I trimmed up the edges once they were dry so that they looked like that had been cracked open *grin*.

I was at a bit of a loss though when it came to how to felt a sheet of wool that I could cut out shapes from for the tops of the chick's heads as I've never tried doing it before. All I could think of was that I've seen others do it using bubble wrap or window screen and other similar things to keep the wool together while they agitated it but I didn't have any of that on hand. That was until I spied one of my reusable mesh produce bags! I loaded it up with enough wool roving to make a small 6 inch square, put it in the bottom of my sink on a cutting board and lathered it up and it worked! I think next time I'll work it a little bit longer to make sure it is a little more compact but it felted together enough to cut out little pieces to put on top of the chick's heads to look like bits of broken shell :)

What do you think? Do they look like they're popping out of their shells *grin*. My oldest was giving me a bit of a hard time before I put their eyes and beaks on because he said they looked like tennis balls with stars on their heads LOL.

Hugs,
Rosina

PS. Looking for more crafty ideas or inspiration? Pop over to Natural Suburbia's Creative Friday and see what others are up to :)

Flickr Favorites ~ Easter Crafts

1. home made fluffy easter chicks, 2. Egg-cellent Easter Grass, 3. easter eggs, 4. Chicks sandwich

I thought that with this coming weekend being Easter and all that I would share some really great Easter crafts that you can do for yourself or with your kiddies :)

All of the above photos in the mosaic have links to their tutorial pages and below are some more of my favorites that I've ran across so far this year. Have fun crafting!



Super cute Easter Chick bag made with placemats!

Turn an empty oatmeal can or tin into a creative Easter basket :)

Love these fuzzy chenille carrots!



Easter bunny treat bags or party favors made with envelopes

And I've got to make some of these adorable Ballet Bunnies!! So cute :)

Want to join in the fun and share your flickr favorites? Hop on over Easter bunny style to Misty's blog and join in!

~ Rosina