In The Third Week of August My True Love Gave To Me......

 Three French Hens.....

We have finished the coop (almost). We needed to get the coop finished by Monday the 20th and were working around Dan's work schedule. It poured most of the day on Sunday so we worked all day Monday to finish up in time to pick up "The Girls". I still need to paint the roof and make some minor adjustments but it is secure enough for now. Abigail has changed one of their names from Esmeralda to Henrietta. Here is a first look....

Claudia is the chicken closest to Abi. She is so gentle. She runs up to Abi as soon as she gets near the coop. 

We brought them home last night around 8 O'clock. This morning when we got up to let them out of the coop and into the run, one little girl was not a happy chick. She kept making a sort of a growling sound (who knew chickens could growl). But by this evening, she seemed to be better adjusted and not growling any more. (I'm thinking the tomato pieces that Abi gave her might have helped improve her mood a bit) But the best part of all was..............

This afternoon, we got our first egg! 

Isabelle- My First Granddaughter

 Here is a sneak peek at some pictures of Isabelle. I just realized I had not added any pictures of her to my blog. 

Baby Belle with big brother Alex and mommy

Feeling Like Fall

With the cooler temperatures today I was really feeling like something "Fallish", so for dessert tonight I made a really yummy yet very healthy Quick Baked Apple. I usually don't use my microwave for anything more than steaming vegetables or re-heating leftovers but I do use it for Quick Baked Apples. 

In a Ziploc bag add 1 apple, cored and sliced
1/4 tsp cornstarch and a few shakes of cinnamon.
You can also add a small handful of raisins or dried cranberries.
Zip the bag but leave a small opening in the zip-top
for steam to vent. 

Microwave for 2 minutes and then dump in a bowl.
(I added a few dark chocolate chips at this point)

And what's dessert without a small splurge of real whipped cream?

So "Fallish"......................So easy...........................So good!

Getting Ready for "The Girls"

We are getting ready to add three more "girls" to our family...but not the human kind. We are getting three laying hens. A family we know is moving and they can't take their chickens with them. We met the chickens a few nights ago and Abi is thrilled. One of them is named Claudia but the other two did not have names. Abi's mission for the past few days has been choosing the perfect names for the other two chickens. Yesterday she announced that she would name one of them Jemimah. This afternoon, while we were getting supplies to start the coop, she chose Esmeralda for the other one. Abi will be starting 4-H in September so this will be a perfect project for her to work on. We are under a bit of a time constraint and summertime is the season where there is not as much extra cash-flow so I had to figure out what we could use for a coop without the expense of purchasing a pre-made one. So I turned to my favorite ideas site, "Pinterest", and searched for chicken coop ideas. I found several that I liked and then happened on one that was made from a dog house. That got me thinking and I put an email out to my fellow homeschool moms asking if anyone had a dog house they were no longer using. With in a few minutes one of my dear friends emailed back offering a dog house that they were no longer using. One of the "Pinterest" articles mentioned getting some supplies from a local Habitat for Humanity resale store. We stopped by our local re-sale store today and found two gallons of paint for $5.00 each. The one gallon looked like a dark reddish brown and the other was white. Good enough for us. Well, when we got home, and I mixed up the darker color to paint the sides of the coop, we found a pleasant surprise. The color was not reddish brown but.................

............................................................PURPLE  

For those who don't know, purple is my favorite color. Abi got right in on the action and helped paint the coop. Dan started the roof tonight but will finish it on Saturday morning. Hopefully we will have the pen done on Saturday and then it is just a matter of time until we bring home the "girls". 

Mystery of History

This year for school we will be using The Mystery of History as our main spine for history and literature. I put together our timeline today and am very excite for my 8 year old to start adding to it this week. I purchased the History Through the Ages timeline figures. Years ago, I did my own timeline figures with my oldest but this time around I decided to go with something pre-made to save time. (I also didn't need to purchase much this year so we were able to budget in this splurge) I am really excited to use these figures. They are done really well and the information with each figure is an added bonus from most time line figures I have looked at or used. I will be posting pictures of our progress through out the year. I would have to say it was money well spent.