Another Night Visitor

We have a new night visitor at our place. This beautiful tabby has been hanging around the bird feeder in the late afternoons. The squirrels have not been happy about it at all, but they get plenty of food when he's not around.

He's not neutered and has a few battle scars, so I assume he's a stray. I watched him catch a rat one day, that was trying to get into the bird feeder. He's wasted no time carrying it off into woods to eat.

Even with my new camera's zoom, I couldn't get close enough for a good photo. He's not particularly social yet.

Now the question is, do I put out food for him or let him catch the rats (and maybe an occasional bird)? At the moment he appears to be young and quite healthy. However that can change quickly with an outdoor cat. If he gets friendly enough that I can trap him, I will get him neutered,vaccinated and let him live outdoors.

The black cat we were feeding and trying to tame last year, disappeared. I now think he was much older so it's likely he died outside. Poor thing, at least he had a few good meals before he went.

Solstice Wall Decor

I decided to add some things to my Etsy shop for the New Year. I love whimsical faces and art combined to cheer up a room, so I'm making some fun fabric wall decor.

Right now I'm just going through my fabric stash, throwing colors and patterns together to see what I come up with. This one is made from vintage Lilly Pulitzer fabric swatches and some very old (maybe 30yr old) green and blue seersucker. The facial features are made from felt, cut freehand.

My photo is not the best, it was late afternoon and the colors seem muted to me. I will be taking some new shots (thanks to the new camera I got for Xmas!) and maybe try to get the focus a little better.

I have a couple more Solstice fabric faces for sale in my shop and hope to add others soon. It takes some time to select, cut and piece them altogether but I'm having fun playing with the patterns!

Season's Greetings 2010

Happy and safe holidays to all!

Fresh Paint

Ok, here it is finally, the new house colors! Yeah, I know, kind of blah in this photo. However, when the grass turns green again and the light is better, it will look a lovely shade of tan and white.

The old siding was vertical planks and it was yellow and white. I also have the old shutters in the garage but I'm not sure I will put them back up. I've been told they are passe'.... plus they are dark green.

No outdoor Christmas decor this year, I'm not attaching anything to that new siding and paint anytime soon! Not until my bank account stops smouldering anyway.

Free American Presidents Timeline

I just received my free copy of C-Span's Classroom American Presidents Timeline.
I love timelines, they really help put history into perspective for me.

This one is available for free to all teachers including homeschoolers. C-Span Classroom has tons of other links and helpful teaching resources as well.

Be aware though, this timeline is 6 feet long and 3 feet tall, it will take up a whole wall in my house (that is once I find an empty wall, ha)!

Our First Diorama

We made our first diorama last week! We are studying habitats and decided to make a deciduous forest diorama.

This one is real simple. We used a small cardboard box, some cut out paper animals that my son colored plus some sticks and moss we found around the garden. We didn't worry about making it to scale, I just wanted to get him involved in the process.

I made 3D paper trees by following the instructions from Enchanted Learning, which is a great site for all kinds of homeschool help. The paper images are just taped down and we used colored construction paper to create the sky and ground.

I also printed out this chart to attach to the top for study. It shows an easy to understand complete picture of the food chain. The best part is we finished the whole thing in an afternoon and he was able to help.

Now he wants to make 100 more! I have a feeling we will have a whole wall of miniature scenes before long. Where on earth am I going to store all his school work?