Scenes from the Day

Life has felt both busy and slow lately, lol.  Work is picking up pace...soon all the tourists in the world will descend on our little valley, and they all come to the shop where I work.  Sigh.  Nice for the wallet, but I'm already ready for summer to be over, when it hasn't actually even started yet.  :P  

Anyway.  

I've received wonderful feedback on my first batch of lotion!  Pretty gracious of God to let me pick a good recipe on the first try!  :D  I believe I have everything that I need now to try adding a bit of goat milk to the next batch.  I will also be adding a preservative; from what I've read, it is necessary unless you want to store the lotion in the fridge - which doesn't exactly work well for a retail setting.

The next adventure will be soap...I haven't even begun to investigate that yet!

My little garden is coming along very nicely...looks like we'll have tomatoes before too much longer.  Who likes the smell of the tomato plant on your fingers?  I don't like it if it's too strong, but in small doses, it makes me very happy.  

The peas are starting to bloom, too.  I have to keep unwinding their tendrils from the neighboring sunflowers and encourage them to grow up the fence instead.  I had the idea when I planted them that they could climb the sunflowers, but the sunflowers are still a little small for that.

The flowers are thriving too...I think I'll always mix flowers and veggies now - so fun and colorful!  

We've got grapes started, too.  The type is Canadice Red Seedless.

And it looks like we'll have a bumper crop of Cherries...as long as we can beat the birds to them!

Thea's been my little shadow since Thane's been away.  He comes home Friday...I bet that will be a fun reunion to watch.  

Anyway, not much else to report.  Happy Tuesday, everyone!  :)  

A Busy Day

I experimented with making lotion for the first time today!

It will take a lot more time, practice and experimentation before I can start streamlining the process...but it was fun to give it a try.  :)

Now to order soap supplies...

In other news, I brought Thane to my friend's house this evening.  Perfect timing - he was definitely even more interested in Thea today, so she's probably about ready to go into the next phase of her heat cycle, wherein she will evidently be extremely eager for male...uh...companionship.  So Thane has been banished - er, I mean, Thane is on vacation for a week or so in Vermont.  I'm sure he'll have a blast, though - he'll have kids and other dogs to play with.  

It was a gorgeous evening for driving!  I paused at one point on the way back for a couple pictures.

Kids and Pups

My nieces visited for a little while this afternoon.  It was fun to see the joy they had in simply running around the back yard - it really doesn't take much to please a kid!

By the way, if anyone knows of any eligible young Baptist men (between 27-37) who might be interested in joining me on this crazy life adventure, feel free to pass along the link to my blog...hanging out with my nieces occasionally makes me want to get married and have a passel of kids, though the thought of raising kids is equal parts terrifying and enthralling, lol.  

The dogs did well with the little girls.  Thane likes to hang out near them, and is very calm and gentle.  Thea goes off and does her own thing, but is gentle and sweet if they approach her to pet her.

Anyway, here's a handful of photos from this afternoon...it seems that Sunday afternoon has become my time to hang out in the back yard and take pictures of the dogs.  :P  

And ending with a couple bloopers:

Happy Sunday!!

Some Craziness and Some Awesomeness

So...Thea is in heat.

In other words...if I'm not vigilant, my 7-month-old puppy could get pregnant!  I knew this was coming (and honestly, I'm glad that it finally did come, so that we can be done with it and not have to think about it again for 6+ months), but this is my first time having intact dogs, and there's definitely a heavy sense of responsibility that goes along with it!  I'm super grateful to my family for helping out with all the supervision and crating and rotating.  

The dogs have done well so far, though a bit mystified as to why they're not allowed to hang out together all the time like they usually do.  Thane is quite affectionate toward Thea, lol (he's giving her kisses in the above photo), but at this stage of heat, she's not really returning the affection yet.  Supposedly that will change soon, so I'll be sending Thane away to stay with a friend for a few days during that time.

In other news, a couple exciting things happened today...first, I found a ridiculously awesome Craigslist deal on some windows!  These windows checked all the boxes on my list - double pane, have the nail flanges, have screens, large, and not ugly, lol.  And they were super inexpensive!!!  I'm very excited.  :)  I suppose it's not really orthodox for windows to be the first thing to purchase when looking ahead to building a house, but, hey, I'm not exactly known for doing things in the proper order.  ;)  

Now if I can only figure out where to put them...

(*Note - photo credit goes to my sister Rachel for the two above pictures.)

And one more VERY exciting tidbit...I got a packet of official papers in the mail today...and this statement was on one of the papers: 

I'm now doing business as Butterscotch Farm...and I hope to be making hand-crafted soaps and lotions soon, as well as doing ink pet portraits on the side.

EEK!  I'm very excited and nervous...and I maybe ought to figure out sooner rather than later how one pays taxes from a personal business....but I'm thrilled to be finally starting the journey of my own business, after talking about it for a LONG time!  :P