Hopes, Dreams, Revelations and Resolutions

Happy New Year’s Eve!

Everyone is talking about their big parties tonight or quiet night alone.
Tomorrow many people will begin their resolutions.

I never have kept a resolution, the closest I got was to May or June. I had decided to stop cursing because my language was terrible at the time. After I found out I had been cheated on in the spring, I decided to give boys a break and try cursing again.

I don’t want to call them resolutions I want to be more free flowing. Why set yourself up for a guilt trip later? Why not list your hopes and dreams for the new year?

My hopes and dreams always far outweigh my accomplishments bucket, but I slowly plug away and get a few more things done.

A few hopes and dreams for the coming year for myself and others:

• I wish to keep trying new recipes with my hubbster. Maybe try another country/culture specific dish.

• Expand our chicken flock, build a simple coop and get free eggs all summer.

• Play with our kids daily or every other day so they learn to love people. (Goat kids are due in May or June)

• Start another garden!
Buy seeds, plan, start and plant.
We skipped 2013 and we were pretty sad every day we didn’t have fresh produce in the backyard.

• Go on more dates with Hubbster. My Christmas present of monthly dates should do the trick. (I will likely post about them later)

• Read more for fun.
Get a book, read it all the way through in two weeks. Quit hanging onto one tiny paperback for two months and then barely finishing it.

• Spread more joy.
Visit people, just to sit and have tea. Talk about happy things, really listen and respond to stories from their life and how they are feeling. Like plants; I need to tend to my relationship garden more.

That’s all I can think of off the top of my head. There are more serious hopes like, finding a solid job that doesn’t kill my spirit, paying off bills so I can travel, and exercising more. However, I don’t need a new year to start these things.

Do you have hopes, dreams, goals, resolutions for the new year, or have you had revelations in 2013?

My wish to all my readers is the warmth of a good meal in their stomachs, happiness in their hearts, and the strength of spirit to achieve their goals for the upcoming year.

Merry new year,
~Kit and Kat~

State Fair 2013 Part Two

So here is the second part of what we got to see at the KY state fair on the 20th. Wanna see Part One? Kit was sad that the goats were mostly gone and the cattle hadn’t all come in yet, but we got to see some fun stuff anyway.

There was a charming “petting” zoo part of the fair designed for kids. It was called discovery farm. There was a lack of educational info and not many people working the animal booths. Also, there were signs above every cage warning that the animals can and will bite. These goats were just too cute to pass up. 

I mean, come on, how can you just walk away from a pile of sleeping piglets??

This peppermint chocolate cake really struck Kit and me. It was colorful and my chocolate stomach started grumbling almost immediately. Not knowing the details, I am betting that it was a rich chocolate cake—like devil’s food—and a cream cheese peppermint frosting would be creamy and minty at the same time. Yummo!
Kit and I also wanted to submit our pickles and pasta sauce for next year. Some of the pickles were a little rough looking by comparison. I’m hoping we can at least get things entered into our county fair for judging.
The theme for various ages and skill levels was music. There were some really cute ones. This was easily my favorite. The colors and design was very beautiful.

This type of cake is gorgeous to look at and although I wouldn’t be interested in taking a bite, I loved this detail they put into the fondant sheet music.
The most popular sewing crafts are quilting and counted cross stitch. I was lucky to find these little gems among the CCXstitch. I love the detail in this peacock. Awesome sauce!
I really like the display for this intricate embroidery design even though I haven’t the foggiest why it is on a paddle. I can’t imagine setting steaming pots of pasta on it or chasing an errant youth around the house with this work of art.

Whenever I look at the rows and rows of quilts I get super excited and then sad all at the same time. I love the patterns, colors, stitches and love that people put into their quilts. I get sad because I don’t know how to make a quilt like these beauties. I just want to make a simple block squared quilt, but it is such a large undertaking by hand that I fear I would get overwhelmed. I don’t know how to use a sewing machine so that would be an even larger undertaking–buying and learning how to use one proficiently without assistance.

My all-time favorite at the fair was this quilt. I cannot believe this didn’t win any awards. The judges were obviously off their rockers and out of their sewing circle minds! These are my favorite colors and the pattern is to die for!!

One of the last things we did at the fair was watch a 30 minute musical about the War of 1812. I was really impressed with the young people involved in putting on the show. I wondered how they perceived the audience and when I looked back I saw, a row of ancients with their chins on their chests, and behind me a woman whose entire bottom fell out of her 32 oz. soda. The soda barely missed me and Kit and made the poor lady looked like she had wet herself.

Despite the non-ideal audience, Kit and I kept eye-contact and reacted to the emotions and songs that they put on. My best two word summary is alligator horses!!! Go ahead, look up the New Orleans battle and see how the soldiers scared the shit out of their enemy!!

Ta ta for now!

~Kat

State Fair 2013 Part One

We went to the state fair for Kit’s 45th birthday. The young man who tallied up our prices assumed we owed one adult, one senior and one parking fee.

Kit was tickled at first because we saved $9 on his ticket. Then the rest of the day he was worried that he looked over 55 (how old you had to be to get the discount).

Check out this impressive ceramic piece we saw in the 4-H section of the fair! I love the design, colors and all. It was the only puffer fish we saw in the whole 4-H area.
I took some other photos of the embroidered crafts, but somehow the camera didn’t save them.

Check our this fancy little show piece tractor. It doesn’t run, as I first hoped, but it is still super cute.
Notice Kit’s backpack, we filled it full of two kinds of cheese snacks, sandwiches, water and granola bars. This way we saved about $20 on fair foods that would leave us lethargic. We saved our coma inducing foods for after the fair.

We hung around the ring in the wing alongside the cows to see Miller’s dogs working. We got to see six ducks herded under and over wire bridges by six excited border collies. Watching working dogs is fascinating and strange to me. Their owner also showed how they worked following word commands and whistles. They followed both styles of work commands seamlessly. I can’t wait for the next cattle dog on our farm. Geena was Kit’s favorite working dog and sadly, I never got to meet her.

A few adorable Boer goats, snuggling the afternoon away. Most of them were gone, judging began at 9am eastern and by afternoon there were only a few stragglers.

There were mountains of veggies in the produce room in addition to this lovely tomato collection I already shared.

Check out these cucumbers! Despite what the sign says I believe these are pickling cucumbers not pickled. Can you believe how tiny they got those Mexican gerkins? Wild stuff.
Speaking of wild and weird. I don’t remember a “critters” division from last year:

Top left clockwise:Wally the Walrus potato, this was easily my favorite and I just kept giggling at his little face. The next guy up didn’t have a cunning name that I recall, but it made a very cute whale. The baby tater tot was watching over the blue potato buffalo and the carrot bird at the state fair—they had an entire story to go along with it!
Lastly, the Duck Taters, I was thankful not to see another lame reference to the TV show that shall not be named. The duck bill had be giggling like a kid as well.

The final impressive thing in the veggies room were the entries for the largest pumpkin contest. Please note, first and second place are both in this photo. First place is the large orange pumpkin weighing in at 1,034 lbs and 2nd place is the white/ghost pumpkin weighing in at 94 lbs. Holy smokes people!!
The thing to keep in mind about this behemoth is that the tiny looking pumpkin sitting at the feet of the blue ribbon winner would make pumpkin pies 1,000 times better than its competitor.
Alas, we weren’t judging flavor.

After looking at all this food we had to bust open the backpack for lunch. Then my phone died and I was forced to take photos on my actual camera.

Day 344: Lawn Mower

My husband is a super pro–this is a picture of him mowing the lawn. Or, the only way I could get him to pose with the cherry tree.
How can he mow the lawn without starting an engine? Simple. We have goats.

I think we need 2-4 more goats to do a better job. They didn’t quite finish the yard. I have been feeding them the sweet blossoms from trees so they made a beeline for low hanging branches before even looking at the grass.

Finally, they looked to the ground and were excitedly running around the yard enjoying the wide variety of grasses, weeds and wildflowers.
They love dandelions and wild onion tops apparently.

After this rain clears and things warm up again we will have another walkabout with Ziva and Denka. They enjoyed the fenceless approach, but wandered to close to the road for comfort.

Day 285: Meet Ziva

We picked up Ziva yesterday and she’s settling in just fine. She rode home just fine and re-met her sister.
Truthfully, they’re half sisters. They have the same daddy. However, being apart for a month means they get to battle for the boss position in their newly forming herd.

The battle was surprisingly spirited! Lots of slamming heads and horns. I took some video of them going at it. The above picture was when (I assume) they knocked themselves a little dazed. They were resting and nudging each other at this point.

Ziva (formally Cherry Bomb) is kind of a dirty fighter. She goes for cheap shots when Denka isn’t paying attention and nips at her ears. Even without the cheap shots, Ziva has about 10 pounds on Denka and is much more stocky.

Do you like her pretty blue collar? I picked it out at TSC. I think she looks quite pretty.
Our triad of herd mamas is almost complete. Ziva is the most chill, Denka is a little more shifty with people and the third goat (we haven’t fully decided) is quite skittish—we will have to work with her a lot.

What do you think of our new family member?