Ikea product with my own twist.

So I was taking down pictures and stringing up herbs and garlic from the nails in the walls.  And the pasta, oh my the pasta, I had that stuff strung all over my house.  Over chairs, butcher string strung across the kitchen that we almost had to crawl to get under. Then it occured to me that this was not the best solution considering soon I will have no pictures on my walls and more garlic, pasta, herbs and onions then I will know what to do with.  So I thought and thought and thought.  Then this idea hit me, an idea that my husband was sure to balk at but a good idea in my mind either way :).  He is such a good sport because he is always a willing particiapant in my cookey ideas.  He sometimes works near an Ikea so I called him up and lo and behold he was near by it must have been meant to be!  So he stopped in at my request and got the product I had asked for.  So here is my solution

I have seen these at Ikea quite a few times.  They advertise them as something you hang kids artwork from.  They are simple cables you attach to the walls.  Which is a cute idea but I not nearly functional enough for me to dedicate my wall space to.  I love design with function but design without function is not nearly as interesting to me.

It is like this empty wall space was just waiting for me to figure out the perfect use for it.  And by george I found it!

The table is from Ikea also.  It was in my living room and I knew it would be way more useful in my kitchen.  I mean you can never have enough storage in the kitchen.  All I need now is to get some baskets to fit on the shelves.

My heart is full, my mind is racing but my energy is gone.

Which makes for an empty blog. Between the busy busy time of year and the intense heat since April when I finally get a chunk of time to sit down at the computer I just can't muster enough mental energy to put the creative words running through my brain onto the page.  So here it is in the short version of what has been going on around here.  4-H fair went great my daughter and her little miniature did so awesome!  Our camera  was still out of commission at that point so we did not get any photos.  But a friend of a friend took this picture and by chance she found us and sent it to me!  For which I am so grateful.  I just love this.  Just a candid moment of a girl and her pony.

My first farm camp that I put on here at my farm went great!!  Wait did I ever mention on here that I was doing a farm camp?  Ugh I don't know.  But I did do a camp.  I had 6 campers dropped of every day for a week.  I put them to work.  We cleaned stalls, milked the goat, weeded the garden, planted and we also had lots of fun.  Riding the horses, playing games, making cheese and pies.  It went so well I am opening it up again in August and I already have 4 spots filled.  The crazy part is the kids LOVED all the work.   Here are my campers.

I am still going strong with farmers market.  It is alot of work but it is paying off some.  I have also started bringing my little miniature and doing pony rides.  He made about $15 all by himself last week!  here is our table.

Here is the stuff I bring.  Bouhl Artisan loaf, basil fettuccini, focaccia and some herbs.

Here is blaze getting some love! 25 cents to feed the pony and $1 for a ride.

 

I am also going and taking my first riding lesson in 15 years tomorrow which I am super excited about.  I am mostly excited that I am going to have a professional help me figure out a solution to the many problems I seem to be having with my sweet horse.  I am having the worst time getting weight on him.  He has the worst case of rain rot I have ever seen.  That I have had the vet out for and he got medicine and a perscription shampoo that I cannot tell if it is helping or not.  Then my saddle is giving him a terrible sore on his withers.  I have resorted to riding bareback until we can find a saddle that works :(  Ugh horse ownership does not come without it's costs.

Market Success!

The farmers market was a success! It is an amazing amount of work to put it all together but it has been a cool experience. The people are so awesome to meet and get to know. I actually had a woman tell me today that she has "been dreaming about my bread all week". It is pretty cool that I am already getting faithful customers. I had at least 10 returning customers this week!

We brought our miniature horse today and kids could feed him and we did pony rides.  My goal with this was to try to bring people in and it was successful at that.  I had quite a few people that stopped in just to see the pony.  But in seeing the pony they have to walk through the market.  At least five had never even known there was a farmers market.  So it will help get the word out about the market.  I have been to farmers markets before that you could barely walk through because of all the people.  Well ours is NOT like that.  At best we have a consistent trickle of traffic.  And that is 99% the faithful farmers market types.  We need more of those!  I am hoping it picks up.  In reality though I baked 20 loaves of bread to bring and 2 batches of pasta and I have always sold out of everything.  So I don't know if I could keep up with a bigger crowd.

In other news I got a charger for my camera and I am kicking myself I didn't get pictures.  But seriously I feel like a chicken with it's head cut off from the moment I wake up to the moment it is over.  It is hard to keep my head on straight half the time so the camera slipped my mind.  I will aim for next week to get some pictures.

Keeping up

Keeping up is hard to do.  I keep asking myself what made me think I had the time to start up a business at this point in my life.  I feel God is in it.  So on I go in this exciting yet exhausting path.  God and I have had lots of talks through out the years about what He wants me to do.  I have ALWAYS felt that He wanted me at home caring for my family. There has never been one doubt in that.  But I have always had this little itch that someday we would have a family business.  Something mostly run by me and my 3 girls but that Ryan was involved and supportive of.  I mean he already has a full time job he doesn't need another.  My mind has gone many different routes as to which way we might take this idea of a family business.  But I have not really taken a jump with both feet into that direction until now.

WOW I am having a hard time slowing down to enjoy this.  I am hoping though that I will soon find the balance I need to keep up with it all.  But tonight it is making pasta until 11:30 at night and up at 5 packing up bread, produce, pasta and a pony to head out to the farmers market.

I am truely truely blessed to be living this life!  God is fulfilling my dreams and all I can do in turn is give Him the glory for every last bit of it!  So undeserving am I to receive the love He gives.  NOTHING is impossible with God!

I think I am accidentally starting a business!

I have in the past sold a goat here and there but other than that I never really made any money back from my farm.  After two friends requesting that I do a summer camp for city kids to experience the farm life.  I decided to give it a try.  To my surprise I started to fill up spots quickly.  It is so exciting and it gave me some confidence to maybe try out some of the ventures that I have only dreamed about in the past.

In other news.  I did post about the farmers market.  I have still been doing that and making a small profit here and there.  I am not getting rich by any means but I think it is has alot of other benefits so I am sticking with it.
Well our local farmers market is well kinda dead.  So I started thinking what I could do to help bring people in.  Then it hit me.  I have all these cute little animal why not bring out a little petting zoo.  Of course that lead to researching what regulations there are for petting zoos.  Well I found out that the USDA regulates and requires a license for any petting zoo.  Also insurance is needed to pursue this avenue.  I didn't know what to expect when it came the work and cost involved.  I have googled, called and been transfered and called some more and finally got to the bottom of what I need to do to get this going.

I guess I will  spare all the details but I will say that I am well on my way to the  begining stages of "Country Paradise Farm/ Funny Farm Petting Zoo and Pony Rides"  Above is the link to the facebook page for my business.

Ok I guess I will give you some details.  The license requires paper work, inspections, a regulation book, more paper work and some money.  Then I can be USDA licensed.  Insurance, I got some good news from them today that I should be insured by this weekend.  Just in time for the farmers market and I can do pony rides there this weekend.  The reason I can do that is because equine are not regulated so they do not have to be licensed.

So that is that.  Between baking bread, making pasta, going to the market, doing research, planning for camp, keeping up with the garden not to mention taking care of my beloved little family and the regular chores that is what I have been up to.

First farmers market experience.

So a friend and I decided to do a farmers market booth together.  I didn't really plan  my garden with the market in mind but my friend did.  So I am focusing more on baking, pastas and what ever else I can come up with.  So I was more than a little unprepared.  Well in all fairness it is pretty hard to be prepared for something that you have never done before.  So I went into it with the mind frame that it is  a learning experience.  So I brought 3 loaves of artisan bread, 3 loaves of zucchini bread, chocolate pumpkin bars, aloe plants and tomato plants.  The artisan bread and zucchini bread sold out quickly.  Quickly as in the market started at 4 and the bread was gone by 4:15!!  So I definitely need to find a way to get more of that made.  I also plan to make some homemade pasta and granola.  I actually already have an order for pasta for next week.  I am trying to make this worth my while.  I am still working on it but I will let you know what I come up with.  The other challange for me is to come up with a fair price.  I think I have a tendancy to undersell myself.  So I think after my first day I realized that I really need to raise my prices a bit.  This was my first experience with the farmers market as a vendor.  Next learning experience Saturday!

Sorry still no camera charger so no pictures :(  I am having serious withdrawls.

So much to say....

I have been wanting to post about whats been going on around here but I  keep running into problems.  First is I lost the charger for my camera battery.  Grrrr I have been finding it hard to function without a camera and posts are just so lamo without pictures :)  So I have been trying to take halfway decent pictures with my phone BUT I cannot figure out how to get pictures from my phone to here.  Last dilema is blogspot!  It hasn't been wanting me to post anything.  Everytime I have gone to write the last few days a notification comes up saying that it is not available. I guess it is just not God's will for me to blog at the moment ;).  So just thought I should let everyone know I am not being neglectful of my blog, really.