An Oxymoron and Laying a Claim

I am a creature of habit who flies by the seat of her britches.
It works.



Most days.
Some days,















not so much.

And there might be another oxymoron in the fact that Winnie the Pooh doesn't actually wear pants, but I am a lover of Pooh, and I am using him to illustrate my point.  He can get away with it.

With the demise of Google Reader, many of us are scrambling to find a new option. I posted about them here,  and oddly enough, repeated myself in that first sentence, but apparently I hadn't claimed my blog yet, so here ya' go.

Follow my blog with Bloglovin

I added the button on my side bar earlier this year. Here's hoping we can all find each other after the transition.

Now, this social hermit is off to play in the dirt before the heat escalates to 110° again. It's 7. I walked at 5:30. I may be good for another hour out there since its been 110° for 3 days in a row and another scorcher is on its way. Some days I really do envy that Pooh Bear. It's going to be awfully hot for britches today.

Anticipation

I can't type that without singing this song and thinking of the ketchup commercial from many moons ago.

I have a new project tumbling around in my head. I want to make a floral quilt and I've been collecting for some time now...here and there...mostly online...on sale... because trips to quilts shops are rare.

This pattern:

 this magazine:

 these fabrics:



I'm thinking the pattern allows for some larger pieces so I won't have to chop those gorgeous flowers up into little itty bitty pieces. The pattern calls for 25 10x13" pieces so I pulled 25 different fabrics. That'll leave me enough fabric for more floral quilts because suddenly I have a need to stitch...something...anything...with flowers. Now to figure out how to sneak in some time behind that sewing machine.

Until then, I'll just keep sticking my head into our girl's room where these are lined up and smile a little. I'm saving the big smiles for when she and her brother come for a visit. And no, I don't know when that'll be. All I know is that it can't be soon enough!

More Wet Blessings

Last week God opened up the skies and let it rain down on us:

I mean, it REALLY rained:

All that sand piled up against the fence line is compliments of that wind I keep fussing about:

We've waited 3 years for a rain like this:

Some parts of the ranch had more than others:

The north side of the ranch had over 2.5". It's still too wet to get to some of the pastures so we'll wait for it to dry out to keep from tearing up the roads, but we're pretty sure that some places received even more than that:

                                             

On the south end, it still looks like this:

And if you look really closely, you can see about 4 drops in the bottom of this rain gauge:

Here at the house we just had .2", but the inch we had 2 weeks ago seemed to have been a boost to these pretty weeds:

 We made one last feed run in the pastures that were still dry, and then moved those cattle to soon to be greener pastures:

And it was so good to see the beginnings of a little green in others:

It's nice to cross a draw and see this:

And flooded bar ditches make us truly thankful:

Funny how one place can look so vastly different depending on what pasture you're in and where it rained.

And I can't post today without including that spectacular moon last night. So many rich shades of blue in that sky:

Pictures with my little camera never do it justice, but suffice it to say...it was a gorgeous night:

And we fell asleep with that pretty moon streaming in through the open window and giving thanks for many blessings.

A Sewing Post!

Bet y'all thought I gave up sewing.  Things have been so busy around here that any spare time I found, I would spend writing blog posts...or sleeping.  LOL.  I love to curl up with a good book, but lately, I would be good for two pages at night and then I would be out. I'm a good sleeper. I like my sleep. I need my sleep. It's not pretty when I don't get my sleep. Lately it's been over 100° day after day, and combined with the wind, that just wears a body out. At least it wears THIS old body out.

I've been walking 5 miles in the morning. I finally figured out how to download books to my Nano from a library so it's been a treat to hit the road every morning, although sometimes I just soak up the morning and never even turn it on. We're generally very dry here, but yesterday morning it was humid. I'm not going to complain if the arrival of humidity will be accompanied by rain, but whew! I was a wet mess when I got back. DH had been riding and working with a couple of colts and he was hosing one down when I walked up. I was very tempted to ask him to direct that water my way, but he would have gotten way too much pleasure out of that. :) I settled for a shower.

I think it's been about a month since I even touched my sewing machine. Although I did dust it frequently. :) Now that we've finally finished with our fall works and fed our last load of feed, I was able to sneak in some time behind the sewing machine.

I had forgotten where I was after I finished the wedding quilt for sweet Haley. But somewhere in there, I had started piecing a simple baby quilt for my niece using the panel in the Oink-A-Doodle-Moo line:

I just bought the panel and pulled other fabrics from my stash. I kept getting a nagging feeling that it needed something else like a pieced border. But wait. I've never made a pieced border. I have been wanting to learn how to add pieced borders so I went to the expert on such matters...the border queen...Judy Laquidara. I didn't actually GO to her, but I ordered  her book . However, it just arrived today, and I was impatient so I found a book at the library and  before I knew it, with a bit of number crunching, I had a pieced border that didn't turn out half bad:

In fact, I rather like it. A lot.

 I like the way Judy presents her borders better. If I had not been so impatient, I would not have ended up with so many biased seams, but I'm thinking there will be more pieced borders in my future. I KNOW there will be, because Judy has inspired me. I am intimidated by EQ, but number crunching I can do.

 Off to Jackie it goes as I am not confident enough in my Free Motion Quilting skills to tackle this right now, and I am bushed. I think I'm even too tired to sew. Yep, I'm that tired.

Cinnamon Sticky Buns

 I could have sworn I shared this recipe on here, but for the life of me, I can't put my finger on it. No worries. It's good enough to share twice. These are so fast and easy to throw together and they are always a big hit. I made them the other morning for breakfast and Matt, a friend of ours who helps us when we work cattle, joked that he wanted to sneak some into his pockets to munch on during the morning drive. Not sure they travel well in pockets, but heck, Matt, fill 'em up! Sure am glad I'm not doing your laundry, but I've washed worse. :)

Cinnamon Sticky Buns

1 C packed brown sugar
1/2 C Karo corn syrup
1/2 C butter
1 C coarsely chopped pecans
1/2 C sugar
1/4 C cinnamon
2 cans refrigerated Grands biscuits

*In a saucepan, combine the brown sugar, corn syrup, and butter. Cook and stir until the sugar is dissolved and the mixture begins to boil. Remove from heat and stir in the pecans. Spoon into a greased 9 x 13" pan.
In a shallow bowl, combine the sugar and cinnamon. Cut each biscuit in half and dip in cinnamon sugar mixture. Place cut side down into pan. Pour a little of the cinnamon-sugar mixture over the tops of the biscuits. There will be lots of extra. Bake at 375° for 25 to 30 minutes or until golden brown. Invert onto a serving platter. Serve warm and laugh when all that gooey goodness gets stuck in everyone's teeth.

Warning: Overindulgence is encouraged, but don't blame me when you get a tummy ache.

Spring Branding

The last tea glass has been filled.
The last cinnamon roll has been baked
The last bean has been cooked..
The last tin plate has been put away.
The last cowboy has shuffled out my front door.
The last rig has pulled away from headquarters in a cloud of dust.

This Spring Works is officially behind us. And on this last day of branding I was finally able to sneak out of the house and get behind my camera. They finally got around to branding the Corriente's here at headquarters. It felt so good to be out of the kitchen.

                        

This is a picture heavy post. I have a hard time whittling down shots like this, but after I deleted ruthlessly, I still have 164 in my file on the computer. LOL.

Just a crew of 5 today, but they all know their place and work together easily:

It doesn't take but a minute for them to brand, vaccinate, notch an ear, castrate the bulls and get them back to their Mamas.

They are very efficient and we like to work the calves easy:

                              

Matt has practically become family:

                                        

But this look says one of 2 things: "Just how many pictures do you really need?", and "If you're out here, who's cooking dinner?".



                          

The calves run around bawling

 until they find their mamas and between mamas

 and babies,

 they make quite the  fuss, but they are soon reunited. This little fella was too new, so he escaped the irons today, but isn't he cute?

I could be out here all day:

Crisp morning air.
An early morning sun.
Blue skies.
Bawling cattle.
The smell of the branding fire.
The jingle of spurs.
The laughter of the crew.
The zip of the rope.
Good gravy I love this life.

I was surprised to see DH dragging calves because he mostly lets the crew do that. It's every one's favorite job and DH is gracious. But he has been working with 2 young horses and he wanted to get some calves under their belt today
                          

I was impressed.

                        

DH was not:

                             

But that grin tells me that he is having fun, that this is more than just a job, that we are blessed, and that life is good:

Chicken Coop Visitor

OK - Fair warning...again...another creepy crawly critter report.
 Found this fella in my chicken coop on Sunday evening.

He tried to creep out through the chicken wire, but I had three eggs missing today and I think I know where they are. LOL

I went in to report to my resident Snake Wrangler and he gallantly came out to evict him:

I thought it was kind of funny timing since I just posted about my snake phobia a few days ago:

This is a bull snake, so as snakes go, he's a good snake:

I was quite proud of myself. Initially, there might have been a shiver, but I thought I was pretty brave. When our boy saw these pictures he said, "Why did you need a stick?" LOL.

DH thought he was about 5' long. I thought he was bigger than that, but history shows that I am not very good at estimating the size of snakes. DH is 6' so I think he's closer to that. but I was not about to argue that point.  DH took him to the shop and he has been relocated to another part of the ranch:

As for me, I'm hoping that concludes my creepy crawly critter posts for a very long time. I've never had my hair colored, but it might be time.

How you Know It's Time to Clean the Windows

Around these parts, wind is just a fact of life. We fuss about it, and yes, even on days like this, we have to get out in it:

We've had two of these in the span of a week. We learn to live with it:

Then we fuss about it some more. :) The horses are a little harder to spot on days like this:

                                        

Last week it tried to rain. We ended up with maybe 10 drops per window:

Combined with the wind, this is what we got:

  Guess what I got to do when the wind died down?