Old School Acres

The puppy...she is evil.

My new sewing machine cord.

Dressed for the holidays

My entry for the 2007 Holiday Softie Awards in the Animals Dressed for the Holidays category. 

Bow tie for New Year's or any party.
Big smoochie kiss for Valentine's day.
Pig nose for a sneaky Halloween costume.
Santa hat.

More pictures on Flickr.

The big girl and the little hat

This hat?  Is for a little girl.  My little girl is now a big girl.  Sigh.  Do you have a little girl that wears a size 2?  The first person to reply saying they want this hand-sewn wool/acrylic felt hat gets it.  It's been spoken for.

Schweiny goes to Scotland

Back in January I gave away 3 pigs as part of my personal Pigs Across America campaign.  You know...the world would be a better place if everyone owned a pig?  Yeah, that one.  LOL  Anyway, Becky was a winner and she took her pig to live with her in Scotland!  I got an email from Becky yesterday:

Thank you sooo much for my lovely pig! I won a drawing ages ago and I finally met my pig this summer when I was home visiting my mom in Georgia. He, Schweiny, now lives in Scotland with his American mom and German dad. He really likes the outdoors but seems to have adjusted well to his usual spot on the bookshelf with the Martha magazines. I attached some photos of a jaunt we took to the edge of our village, which you can see in the background. The hills in the background are the Ochils. We all love living in this part of the world – I think Schweiny is reminded of his origins as there’re even horses nearby.

Schweiny is the ambassador to the newly created Pigs Across the Universe!  Soon, my friends, I will offer up more pigs.  How fun to have pigs living abroad?

Anna update:  She was taken off the ventilator yesterday and is doing better than the doctors expected.  She is running a low-grade fever, so they are keeping a close eye out for infection. 

New email

I am so frustrated with my email through go*daddy.  I have had the oldschoolacres.com domain for a couple of years and suddenly my email isn't working.  ARGH!

I've changed my email for the blog to oldschoolacres [at] gmail [dot] com.  I was going to send everyone in my address book a notice, but a couple of people have not received my emails.  If you have asked me a question in the comments and not heard back from me please email your question to me.

For those of you who pray, think good thoughts, etc., a little girl from my small community could use them.  Sunday afternoon she was shot in the abdomen by her dad.  I think it was accidental, but there is a lot of rumor going around.  He is in jail charged with child endangement and reckless use of a firearm.  This little 1st grader has severe injuries to her intestines, pancreas, liver, a kidney, and her diaphragm.  She is awake today, but obviously has a difficult road ahead.  Her name is Anna and she has been the foremost thing in my thoughts since Sunday.  Be back soon.

Go ahead, label me.

Many times I've seen the topic of the Great Label Debate on blogs.  Who to order from?  I ordered from 2 places and had good luck with both. 

I first ordered these from Namemaker.com.  They have several choices of color, size, and motif, but limited fonts.  These are 3/8".  I wish I had ordered a different style, but they are okay. Take them for their word that delivery will be within 4-6 weeks.  Mine arrived after 5 weeks.  I bought 100 labels for $35.60 ($5.60 was shipping).  I ordered and didn't hear from them until the labels arrived.  Nice quality labels.

These are from FancyWeaver on ebay.   They will make your label with any free font and just about any color combination.  When I sent payment I put all the information for the labels (name, color, font) in the notes section.  They emailed a mock up of the labels the next day.  They arrived from Hong Kong registered mail in 8 days.  I spent $35 (including shipping) for 200 labels.  Nice quality labels.   I like these much better.

Happenings around here

Thank you for all the sympathy!  My foot is healing pretty well.  When I stepped on the toy (a resin Joseph figure for a nativity set LOL) it cut my toe and bled like a stuck pig.  Thus no bruising!

The most exciting thing that happened this week is that the farmer who rents out farm ground harvested corn!  YAY!  We no longer live in a "corn bowl" with corn on 3 sides.  Katie was giddy with excitement over seeing the neighbors house!  It's been a long summer.  Here are a few pictures of the day he started.  Click to make them bigger.

Before (out the front window)

For some reason the girls were excited about picking up corn cobs.  The combine strips the corn off the cob and shoots the cob, stalk, and leaves out the back. 

The haul

After!

Please excuse my absence

Reasons I'm not here:

1.  1 broken toe and torn ligaments in my foot after stepping on a toy and falling down the steps.
2.  Shoes, shoes, and more shoes (baby shoes).

Be back soon.

Not quite truffles

This new little pig and I took a walk yesterday.  She was looking for treasure.  I was just looking after her.  She'd heard about those truffle-finding pigs and thought she could do better.  She didn't find any truffles, but these little toadstools are much cuter than any stinky ol' truffle.

Here she is telling the cats about The Great Truffle/Toadstool Hunt.

Little blue birds

Do your little girls like to wear clip-on earrings?  Ellie has quite the collection.  Grandma Mary keeps her supplied, but the other day at the thrift shop I decided to stop and look.  It was worth my time! I know a certain someone who might be able to convert these to brooches. 

Not long ago I was asked about Marshall and how he's doing.  Here's the little guy.  He's been in the pasture since early September and I don't see him as much.  Still as cute as ever.

Lucy was telling them off.  Roo-roo-roo.  I bet she wouldn't be so tough on the other side of the fence.

And something pretty fun for me!  CoolMomPicks.com did a little review of my elephant shoes October 4.  Then Celebrity Babies saw it and linked over.  I'll be making baby shoes for a while ;-)