janis

A new family member

I have many things to catch up on (CHA, anyone?), but for now, this short post will have to do.

Upon our return from CHA, we were thrilled to adopt a new duck.  This is Eddie, the super cute Call duck.  He was turned in to a shelter in Seattle, fostered by a friend of ours, and flown to Phoenix last Sunday (that's about 4 weeks in one sentence!).  He's a male Call duck and is very tiny...only 1.5 pounds!  To give you some perspective, Dewey, our Mallard, is 3 pounds.  We always thought she was small, but she towers over Eddie!  I know it's difficult to see, but he really does have eyes!  His eye is black and is at the front of that white stripe on the side of his head.  He's been molting recently and his head feathers are coming in a brilliant green...so pretty!  And he is sporting a cute little drake curl on the top of his tail now too.

Eddie is more content with being with people right now and is a little afraid of our ducks so we're introducing them slowly, just a little more each day.  Here's a picture with Eddie on my lap (leg) in their outdoor pen last Sunday.  You can see how tiny he really is! 

Until Dewey & Daisy welcome him unconditionally, he's spending a lot of time in the office with us each day.  So, word of warning:  if you call you may hear his cute little raspy boy-quack in the background! 

One last thing:  you may remember me telling you about the duck house that Todd built for Dewey & Daisy last summer.  You can see half of it in this picture of me with Eddie. It has nesting areas on both sides of the door and the side roof is on a hinge so we can reach in to get the eggs.  And I'm happy to report that after 6 months of them never even going near the doorway, they are both laying their eggs in the nesting boxes.  Finally! 

Three hearts for Valentine's Day

Valentine's Day is coming soon and will be here before we know it!   We have quite a few templates with heart themes so I thought you might like a few ideas for making a card for your sweetheart.

First we have a very simple card that I did using the Fiber Friend Hearts template.  I used the variegated fiber in the Heart Fiber Pack for the stitching.  The patterned paper has 4 copper eyelets in the corners, placed using the 1/8" Eyelet Friend template.  It's a very basic card, but the great thing about it is that you can do a bunch of these assembly-line style in a very short amount of time.  By the way, this is a fairly large card, 5x7".  You can reduce the overall size by using the smaller version of the heart shape (I used the large).

The second card was created using the Eyelet Friend Frames Heart template.  This was created by Donna Kauffroath.  She traced around the template and cut out the heart.  Then, using the holes in the template for spacing, she punched the eyelet holes in the front of the card.  Donna used a word stamp on lighter paper for the inside of the card (which shows through the opening in the front), pulled ribbon through the eyelets, added a silk flower to the top of the heart, and then stamped the sentiment on another piece of cardstock (matted with hand-made paper).  It's a beautiful card and doesn't take as long as you might think because the spacing has all been figured out for you.

And now the last card for today was created by Dana Florence.  She used the "I love you" stamp from the Greetings Stamp & Stitch set.  The tiny heart was stitched with the silver fiber in the Greetings Fiber Pack.  You may not know this, but metallic fibers are notorious for being brittle, stiff, and shredding all over the place.  We take great care to supply you with metallic fibers that are easy to stitch with and will give you terrific results.  Even though we do that, you might find that stitching with a long piece will tend to fray the ends a bit.  Because of that, I always recommend that you stitch with a piece that's only 12-15" long.  If it's not enough, just tape off the ends on the back of the project and start with a new piece.  Nobody will ever know the difference and you'll avoid some frustration. 

So there you go!   Three very different cards, with three different templates and techniques!  Now get busy and have your cards all ready before Valentine's Day arrives!