Missing Willow Farm

We are fortunate enough to live about an hour from a cherry orchard.  Then again, we’re an hour from decent groceries, a Home Depot, movie theater, Thai restaurant and a whole lot of other things but I digress…  We go as close to sour cherry picking opening day as possible and missed it by two days this year so the pickings were pretty difficult.  Luckily there were two of us so we got a decent haul.  The vast majority of them went into homemade cocktail cherries.  I killed two bottles of Luxardo maraschino liqueur in the process.  Since they are canned, they will last us a few years.  Cheers!

I do love to relax with a cup of tea in the afternoon and always keep a box of tea bags on my kitchen counter.

When I saw the GSL Mini House Front Box http://www.gslcuts.com/Store/index.php?main_page=product_info&cPath=3&products_id=1339 I knew I could make something a lot cuter to hold them.

The little open top house comes in five pieces, easily assembled using tacky glue. If you are inspired by this piece to make your own, you can find a tutorial at http://gslcuts.blogspot.com/2019/06/tea-keeper-cottage.html

I made a miniature version of our potting bench party bar for Gypsy Soul.  It stands about 6 inches tall.  For more in-process steps, please visit http://gslcuts.blogspot.com/2019/05/miniature-cocktail-bar.html

The bench is made of chipboard. It ships flat and is super easy to assemble using a little bit of craft glue.

I made some jar candles for the bench’s bottom shelf with polymer clay and a snip of black wire.

Loved working on all of the little bits for the top shelf! I even made a miniature version of my favorite cocktail recipe book, Death & Company.

Here’s the original. 🙂

Every time I leave the farm lately I feel like Snow White.  The deer that found her way into our pasture two years ago loves hanging with our sheep and seems in no hurry to leave.  We now have a family of  five little fox babies hanging around by our mailbox.  At least the skunk is gone.

We’ve been watching a pair of small birds make a nest inside a watering can on our porch.  They finally finished the big project and the female sat on a few eggs for way longer than I thought she would.  I checked on her today and she wasn’t in there but three tiny birds were.  It will be fun watching them grow up and fly away.  I think that watering can will stay right there in case anyone else wants to use it.  Guess I need a new one.

We have just one last ewe yet to have her baby this spring.  The little ones we have running around are so adorable, I got a few photos and turned them into fairy ornaments.  Check them out over at http://gslcuts.blogspot.com/2019/04/sweet-little-lambs.html

We ended our grand adventure in South Africa where we had an opportunity to finally see a rhino, thus completing our big five sightings.  We stayed at the Thanda Game Reserve where we had our own individual lodge complete with a hot tub.  A highlight of our visit was having cocktails in the bush at sundown.  We spent quite a good bit of our safari drive hanging out with a pride of lions next to a watering hole.

OLYMPUS DIGITAL CAMERA

The main reason we chose the itinerary we did was for the stopover in Kenya, which gave us an opportunity for an overnight safari in the Masai Mara.  Our cruise was originally meant to have an overnight in Mombasa but cancelled at the last minute due to terrorist activity in the area.  Mombasa was replaced with Zanzibar, Tanzania.  Thankfully, we were able to fly in from there.  We stayed at a tented camp next to a watering hole and were woken by hippos at dawn.  We saw all but one of Africa’s big five, we missed only the rhino.  Our driver was very surprised we saw a leopard as they are mostly active at night.

What an amazing place!  We had a glorious day visiting with lemurs then snorkeling from a small island with a BBQ lunch buffet.  The lemurs live free in the trees but would come for tasty snacks when called.  If you smeared a little bit of banana on your hands, they would jump out of the trees onto your shoulders to have a snack.  I, of course, couldn’t leave Madagascar without adding to my vanilla stash.

I bought a MUCH smaller bundle of vanilla beans than what this guy had for sale. This is probably $500 worth.

We spent two days in the Seychelles docked next to a tuna factory, which is as lovely as it sounds.  I don’t think anyone visited any of the outdoor restaurants or bars on our ship during that stay.

We escaped to the other side of the island where we got a day pass at a gorgeous Hilton property.

Drank ridiculous cocktails.

Visited a spice plantation where there were giant fruit bats circling overhead.

Nutmeg grows on trees inside something that looks like a peach.

We got to snorkel for a bit.

In some really crazy weather.