Lily and Watson, our granddogs,  celebrated with us and Watson got to stay with us for a visit. Watson has adopted John and follows his every move. He’s upset he can’t sleep on the bed with us but other than that he’s fit in nicely. He and Pepper, John’s cat, are still reconciling their natural differences. Pepper is spending a lot of time up high and moving around while Watson is either sleeping or outside with John. Lily never bothered the cats and she was much smaller.

Watson is a Australian Shepard and his coloring is much like a coyote, so much so that the goats won’t come near the fence when he’s outside.

We’ve gated off the dining room, one of the two rooms with carpeting in our house. Watson remembered the ham and other food in there, though, and tried to get to it via the outside window.

 Watson’s going to have a rude awaking when John heads back to work on tomorrow morning. I’m in for a day … Watson pacing from room to room hunting John.

Here’s a picture of the wall hangings I made for the Kindergarten teachers in Whitewright for Christmas. I can do the stitching and designing but John had to write the names in for me! Thank goodness for his strong, steady hand. The Red School house wall hanging was made by a pattern. I designed and created the other two patterns.

Here’s the first wall hanging I made, using the standard house block pattern.

This one will be mine as there are mistakes I wouldn’t want anyone else to share! First mistake was the houses should be all facing the same direction but I cut two out backwards.

It’s a good time to finish up a lot of projects just waiting to be done. I’ve put the binding on 2 baby quilts, one Christmas quilt and the Houses wall hanging this week.  I also finished up the hand quilting on the K classes quilt we’re making together. Tomorrow I hope to bind it so it can be washed before I appliqued the kids’ hand prints on the borders.

John finished covering the grow house with plastic so I could transplant the broccoli, kohlrabi, spinach and arugula. I planted a bed of lettuce with radish inside also. The kale seeds were planted outside as they can take the cold, tasting better after a frost.

It’s been a busy week!

Debbie

I did finish this quilt that went home with a dear, dear friend. For some reason,  I fought with the border hand quilting on this quilt til I thought I’d scream. Still it was a happy quilt to work on. I pray for the person I’m making the quilt for as I work on it and all  I could pray for this friend was joyous psalms. Very appropriate as she’s a happy, smiley person.

This entry will be short, it’s after 8:30 pm which is past my bedtime. I’m going to cheat and send you to www.quilts.beulahland.com to get double duty out of that posting!

Merry Christmas in case I let time slip by again,

God richly bless you all!

Debbie

John and I saw these two beauties on the way home from church recently.

I didn’t know camels could be so different til I saw the right camel’s white face.  I wanted John to get a close up picture of it but she kept puckering her lips as if to kiss us or spit at us. I chose to believe the kissy face myself.

We had just gotten rain so the ground was all muddy - what a blessing rain is. We still need more to break the drought but so glad for what we did get.

Remember the old brand of cigarettes, Camels? I wondered why they were named that as I always associate camels with dry, something I’m assuming wouldn’t be pleasing in a cigarette, but I can’t think of ANY thing that would be pleasing those nasty things.

These two camels had babies earlier this year. I haven’t seen them with the parents so assuming they are being weaned or separated for some reason.  I know with goats the bucklings are separated at 6 weeks as they are viable then.

As nice as it is to see these camels, I hope they’re NOT a sign of north central Texas turning into a desert!

It’s our fall meat chicken raising time.  Our pasture coops are working well even if they don’t look pretty. They’re light enough we can move them as needed. The shade cloth works to keep them safe the Texas afternoon sun shine.

Homesteading has it’s trying times. Lately, it’s been the goats who have acted like true butt-heads - pun intended. Our new young buck has to stick his head through every opening on the fences and gates and get his head stuck. We’ve had to cut gate pieces, put up protecting fences to keep him from areas where he’s repeated this trick, and this morning I had to pull back on his back legs while John pushed his head out of a different gate’s wire fencing. He’s got great milk quality/quantity blood lines but I’m beginning to wonder about any smart genes in his pedigree.

One of the younger does who has never been separated from her momma is throwing fits because her momma is in with the buck and away from her. She spends her time screaming for her momma. It would be pitiful but this doe is almost a year and half old - she’s no baby! This screaming upsets the two pregnant does who frantically try to get to her to calm her down - maternal instinct showing up early.

It’s going to be hard to NOT post a ‘whole herd for sale’ sign out front.

Thank goodness for a calming hobby like quilting. Ha! Today I’m going to rip four cornerstones already deeply set in a quilt top because they just don’t fit right. They make my eyes hurt and quilts shouldn’t do that.

Here’s the 2011 K class’s quilt we’re working on. This is still on my design wall so the pieces don’t fit right (not sewn yet) together. The border is just a ‘wait and see’ venture but this is the idea.

I planned it so the 3 classes could each do two vertical rows of the quilt. They will get to plan where each square will go, help hand sew the squares in place and later ’sandwich’ the quilt, do a little top quilting and help sew the binding on. They’ll be involved in every step of the process. I had to prepare the squares by sewing the scrappy frames around them so there’s close to 40 hours of my work in this so far but I really enjoy this special time with the kindergartners.

Well, I’d better go see if Arador (buck) has tried to hang himself on the fencing again. I save him and he perfumes me with his wonderful musky stinky buck smell. What a trade.

Debbie

I didn’t think I’d like this blue and yellow scrap quilt. There’s something about working with a quilt, hand quilting by hand, that binds me to a quilt.  A dear friend of mine recently comment that this quilt calms her. What a compliment to me, to make a peaceful quilt.

These two quilts were fun quilts to make and are meant to be used so I had the machine quilted instead of hand quilted.

 I hope these two quilts will be sold together as a pair. The purchase prices from these quilts will be donated to a charity, either locally or nationally. Check out quilts.beulahland.com for more details and more quilts.

This last quilt is not for sale at all. I made this one for our granddaughter, Maggie, for her 18th birthday she’ll celebrate at University of Texas at Austin. She was accepted in the Honors Program - our first grandchild in college.  This quilt is definitely a change from my normal traditional quilt patterns! I call it Swirls of College Life.

I had Jean of Silver Threads in Bonham machine quilt it in purple thread, making the back pretty purple swirls.

 Now my focus will be working on the Kindergarten quilt. I thought I’d do it in the Quilt Across Texas fabric but decided it wasn’t quite right. I’ll still do that quilt, but switched to American Jane fabric instead for the K quilt - pictures and things little ones are familiar with.

It’s hard to follow that picture with words, but of course, I will!

Lilly’s coming back for a visit!! Yeah. She’s coming today and might get to stay for a week or more, as long as we’re allowed to keep her. She’s the grandkids’ dog so we can’t hog her all the time but it will be so nice to have her here again. She’s not met the youngest baby goat, Chici-BanAnna, so I hope Chici keeps her head on her side of the yard fence. I really don’t want an up close and personal visit between those two.

Isn’t she the sweetest thing? Her brother, Black Star just went home with his new owners. He left here with the name Black Star and was re-named Star Burns Bright Reese before he even made it home. He now owns a family out in Honey Grove way and they have built a ‘kid condo’ for him and his 3 year old play mate (their son). The son takes Star into the house and they play chase for an hour. Then the 3 year old puts a lease on Star and he goes out potty. It’s amazing to me how a 3 year takes such good care of little Star. Obviously, the parents did a lot right!

Our 100+ temps broke this past week. What a blessing cooler weather is! Now we  desperately need rain. Because of such a severe and prolonged drought much of Texas is plagued with wild fires. Please pray for our firemen  and for rain.

I started my fall garden inside but will transplant out soon. School has started and I already have a few days scheduled so I’ll have to be more frugal with my ‘free’ time. No time is really free - that’s what my lesson should be!

Enjoy your day. With a morning sight like ours, how could we not?

Debbie

http://www.youtube.com/embed/QuzhwkaNC40?rel=0

Can’t add anything to it. It says it all.

Debbie

In the same vein of not wanting to create a business, I have not designed a website with a shopping cart but instead I’ve just added another blog to display the quilts. If you’re interested in any quilt, just email me for details. The blog is at :

Beulah Land Quilts

I’ve only got a few quilts on the blog - more will be added. If you know anyone interested in quilts or who may need a special gift, please pass this info on to them.

thanks!

Debbie

Tyson, the white Bull Dog, was so sweet. After he came in, he’d hide from me. I could hear his tail thumping the floor behind the table, but he didn’t want me too close. He was nervous without his people home, which I understood. I wanted so bad to kiss his puggy face, though. Isn’t that the sweetest face?

I was the puppy Scout’s newest bestest friend while I was there. She’d jump up in my face, straddle my legs, do anything to get my attention and almost bowl me over. The two male Mastiffs were lovers, they wanted to lean into my knees. Lu-Lu was the ‘watch dog’ of the bunch - first day she almost didn’t let me in the house and scared Tyson and all the little dogs back inside.

On my last day there, she let me pet her. I must have passed inspection … finally! Probably had something to do with the lunch meat and cheese treats I gave her!

Bribery has it’s virtues.

It had only been 6 years since John and I have been away from home overnight together (hate to get in a rut, you know) but we were able to go away overnight this past weekend. We headed up to OK City for a short visit  to Bricktown. Since we were staying only one night we splurged on the hotel right on the canal, Residence Inn. The hotel was worth the visit alone. It had a coffee maker. That rates HIGH on my plus lists for hotels. Each room is a suit with a fully loaded kitchen. Although we didn’t cook any of our meals there, it was nice to have a pot of fresh coffee when I wanted it and John fixed some microwave popcorn. Especially nice to have a full fridge with freezer/ice maker  to store our cooler items - insulin and diet drinks.

During the day we walked around Bricktown, ate at Spaghetti Warehouse and had dessert at an ice cream pallor - OK, John had ice cream; I watched him eat it.  We took the water taxi on the canal tour twice - that was my favorite part. Here’s a few pictures of the bronze statues depicting the OK Land Rush of 1889.

The man inn this first wagon is  a self portrait of the sculptor - whose name I’ve forgotten! He will be adding more in future years but the current display was very impressive.

John enjoyed the hot tubs and swimming pool while I read for awhile on Friday night before we went out for dinner and ‘night life.’ We quickly remembered why we don’t go out for ‘night life’ and came back to the hotel about 11:00 after a quick walk down Bricktown’s live music district.

Full breakfast at the hotel was wonderful, with Belgium waffles for John and an assortment of yogurts for me.  I think the best part of the hotel was they welcomed pets so we saw and petted several dogs during our short stay - a lot of Labs, although no Yellows.

We  headed out Sat. morning for the Martin Nature Preserve, north of OKC. It was really neat and inspiring to see things we could do here at Beulah Land in future years.  The wild flower meadow was all done for the spring, but still gave us ideas for our future plans. We especially liked the way the Center provided bird sighting at the bird feeding stations.

We were more than ready to head home after a extremely filling meal at Irma’s Burgers. Fantastic place! The drive home was slower than anticipated due to the outside heat - many cars and trucks by the side of the roads with overheating  and tire problems. God mercifully kept his hand on us. The outside temp showed 117 on the car thermometers.  I felt like Dorothy, striving to get home.

And it’s true, there’s no place like home!