Play Day

Yesterday my dear friend, Katie came over from Holbrook for a play day in the craft room. We made Christmas ball ornaments.

It is so easy! You buy clear ornaments, take the top off,pour in floor wax and gently swirl it around until you get the entire inside coated, let the floor wax drip back into the bottle of wax. Then you pour glitter into the ornament, swirl that around until the entire inside is covered and then pour out the glitter into it's container. Snap the metal top back onto the ornament and Viola! you are done. You can decorate the outside with vinyl decals, mod podge designs on, use stickers or just leave them plain. We ended up making them on the dining room table instead of the craft room....more elbow room. Lordy, we had glitter everywhere!!!! It was so much fun. The bigger one on the right side is a flat round one so I think I will make it look like a pocket watch. Katie brought a box of greeting cards she made to show me. We showed them to Pa and he acted impressed. He must have been because he mentioned them again this morning and said how nice they were and how professional they were. I'm trying to get her to put them on her blog so she can sell them. If she does, I'll let you know in case you want to buy some lovely cards. Let me tell ya, she's better than Hallmark! One talented lady. Her blog is KtsAngels and you can click on her icon on the right side of my blog to see what she is up to.

Last week, on a nice day, Pa and I took the Granniemobile and went exploring. We found a mini Indian village, probably just a clan spot and explored a bit. You could see where the hogans/houses must have been because there were stones formed in a large circle. There were about five or six of them in the surrounding area. One thing Pa noticed is that each mini village has their own pottery designs. The area just three or four miles away from this spot had different designs on the pottery shards. I should have taken pictures but didn't. Some designs must be universal because there are some of the same designs every where we look but the rest are unique. We drove along a deep wash to see if anything interesting was down there and found a coyote den with fresh tracks.

 Also saw this tree with it's roots exposed. Hard to imagine that at some point in time, the water rushed thru this wash and washed all the dirt away from the roots.The wash is probably 12 to 15 feet deep. Juniper trees must have a strong will to live! They get by with very little water.

 The next day, we went out exploring again and found this petrified tree trunk. It was at least 15 ft long. Imagine how many years it's been laying out here! Just when you think you are the first person to walk around in this spot, you find a beer bottle or an old can.

 Here's more of this tree or maybe another one. It was all in the same spot. We just left it there since we didn't need any petrified wood.

 Besides that, it 's nice to leave it for someone else to find.

 I call this the Stonehenge of Woodland Valley Ranch. I really expected to find a fire ring or some type of Indian artifact inside the circle but there was nothing except a packrat nest inbetween two rocks.

 Not a rock in sight within a mile and here are these huge stones sitting in a circle.....amazing!

 You can never be bored here at the ranch. There is always something to see and explore. Honestly, I could do this every day of the week and never get tired of it.

Another amazing site is a tree growing out of a rock formation. Very little soil but the will to live is so strong, the tree finds enough soil to grow. I think there might be a lesson here!

Woke up this morning to clouds and we got a little rain. It is still cloudy and maybe a bit of snow is expected. I don't care! I can always spend those snowy/rainy days in my craft room.

The mice just about destroyed my lilac bushes so Pa and I built metal hardware cloth cages around them with tops. The hardware cloth has quarter inch holes in it so I don't think the little bastards can get thru it but they sure will try. Heck, I had rabbits knock over the little cages I had around my wild yellow daisies so they could eat them. I really need to find some horse troughs to plant my flowers in, ya know, the long skinny kind. Wayne is thinking of getting rid of his horses so maybe I can talk him out of his. Hay has gone up to $16.00 a bale!!!!  The ranch has rabbit brush and snake brush all around which is poison to horses, it eats their brains so he can't let his horses free graze. The vet said that is probably why both horses lost their colts. They got loose for a couple of days.

Are ya ready for Thanksgiving? So far, we are having Tom and Wayne over for dinner. I'm going to invite another couple over also. Why do I do this when I hate to cook?????  It's a good thing turkey and dressing and all the trimmings are so easy to do.

Oh my, now the wind has come up and sand is blowing all over. Maybe it will blow the rain and clouds away. Good thing I didn't dust the furniture recently. The dust and sand manage to find its way inside no matter that the windows and doors are shut tight.
Until next time!