Brr!! It has been biting cold this week. The goats object. The chickens don't like the wind and neither do I.

We have lost several chickens and a duck. Have not seen or identified the culprit, but I think it may be varied. Been seeing a lot of hawks and I am sure that the mammal vermin are keeping the dogs up at night.

We finally decided that all the ducks we had were female, so on Friday we visited a local farmer and bought what we hope is a male duck - the one with the poof on the head in the picture. He (we hope it is a he) is a crested duck. Wikipedia says this is a birth defect caused by an imperfectly sealed skull. Bred to normal ducks, the babies should be OK.

I woke up this morning to a heavy fog, couldn't even see the end of the driveway. This is the type of morning I was thinking of when I wrote the description for my kit that I submitted to the SASy Lady Contest.

• Have you ever been up early when you can't see far because of a thick fog and all the grass and flowers are wet. This mini-kit revives that misty morning feel.

So scroll down a few to preview my kit or go to my SAS gallery to download. You must be a member, you can register first, then vote for Misty Morning by KatLen Kreations (16th on the list).

Sorry I missed last week - went on a campout with family and church. OK - we didn't camp, but we did go canoeing and eat dinner outside which was cooked over a fire.
On the home front, no more floor plans and meetings about a new house. The parents will be moving into the little existing one. We spent most of this week moving stuff from one room to another and shuffling boxes.
With the animals, all the babies are growing up so fast. The guineas are looking more like the adults by the week. This photo shows the adult in the back with a few adolescents. 12 of the 26 are still here - we gave 7 to a neighbor. Good odds for guineas. I think I have seen no more than 20 grasshoppers all season.

We let the peacock out and the two peafowl are hanging together most of the time. He even spread his tail feathers once at feeding time. His tail is not impressive at this time. But in spring, his tail feathers should be in full bloom.
Everyone else is doing fine. Snow, the new pup, is being a pup and not hanging with the goats like she should. We borrowed some Dog Whisperer DVDs from the library. Got his point rather quickly, but the quirky dogs are fun to watch.

The bad news: the goat we bought as a companion to the buck died. He has been looking sickly for a while. One to many blows to gut, I think.
Good news: We were finally able to find a peacock within our price range and driving distance. Our pea hen has been hovering around the isolation cage all week. We finally let him out and the two are getting along just great.
Baby sat some young boys this week and let them have the camera for a bit. Got some really wonderful photos - after sorting through a whole bunch. See my weekly daily double at Digitals.

Not much new this week. The garden grows as do the guinea babies. I babysat a couple of young boys and used the camera to entertain them one day. Here is one of the delightful pictures they caught.
Still trying to teach the baby pup not to run after things that run away from her like chickens and ducks. She is still very energetic!

Yea, I know it is Saturday morning, but hey!
I was so excited about the babies last week that I forgot to introduce our new dog. The puppy shown has now been named Snow White so that we can call her princess. She is a Great Pyrenees like the escape artist we got a month ago. We are keeping her in the pasture with DeDe so that she can learn the art of goat guarding. She is still a pup and loves to chew on things. The biggest problems so far besides her running enthusiastically is that she plays with and eats eggs. They ducks were setting, now we have the remaining eggs in the house under a light.

Earlier this week, I noticed our Star was looking a little lopsided and thinking when was the last time I saw her Gandi nurse (Gandi was the first of the babes this spring). We separated the boy when Gandi was about 3 months old, but apparently the deed was done. Today at chore time, I found 2 little ones with their mom. Now her sister is starting to look a little lopsided as well. Belle's babies, Sam and Frodo, were born within the same week.

Just a short note. Had fun with some relatives that visited for the Forth. Great BBQ!
The guineas have started taking the babies around outside the fence. Great news as the grasshoppers have shown themselves in abundance. We also have a duck that started to sit - so 4 weeks.
Also Digifree did not pick up my note on Friday so here is a repeat:
To celebrate the weekend and my new kit, I made an Add-On and a coupon (I hope).
Catch my new freebie at K*Joi and while you are there pick up any other of my products and get a dollar off of any of my other products (If I set it up right, you have to spend at least $2). Here is the code to copy and paste: katlen7-4
In case you missed it earlier this week: here is the matching calendar!

I skipped last week so here is the double scoop - hmm, makes me think ice cream and in this heat, an excellent idea. We cooled down out of the triple digit heat index and I finally mowed the yard again. The baby guineas are growing wings and the peacock has run away. We think she is looking for a boy as she comes back every few days. The baby goats are growing and we will soon be letting the spring batch of chickens at the grasshoppers.

The big news on the farm this week is the hatching of the guineas. Two of the hens were sitting on 2 nests side-by-side with tons of eggs. I heard some peeping a few days ago and Wednesday the hens were off the nest being trailed by a hoard of little peepers. Getting an accurate count was difficult or a good picture was difficult because of the high grass. Some of the little ones were also having a hard time, my guess is the younger ones. I picked up the struggling ones and the remainder of the eggs and put them under the heat lamp we had for the duck and chicken eggs. No luck with the duck or chicken but 3 more of the guinea eggs hatched, mostly the lavender (gray). The photo above is from the morning when I feed them. The most amazing part of the story is that the mothers took this batch of day old chick with legs about 1.5" long on a journey of about 300 yards from the front yard, down the length of the house and out back to the barn yard.

Members of my family come here for news, so I am going to try to feature some news weekly.
The dogs seem to be working out. DeDe stays with the goats and we have lost no more animals. Dexter, however, likes the front yard. The animals are getting used to them as seen in the picture above. However the llama had a scare as DeDe charged him while protecting her food dish, so is he back to being very skidish.
Several of the eggs in the homemade incubator are going bad as the hatching deadline approaches. The hatching date for the pigeons is past and we have confirmed that we probably bought 2 girls. The guienes we guessed a hatching date of this week, waiting, waiting.
We ate our second handful of peas from the garden last night. Everything else is flowering out well. We did have some damage from the storms that passed through last week. One of the branches on the tree nearest the house has broken. We did buy a chain saw at the auction, now to figure out the gas ratio, etc.
Follow my Arc 52 gallery at Digitals for more pictures.

We have new goatee babies! Our little Jilly had triplets!
All three are very different sizes with the largest and smallest being girls. The little boy has some problems with his back legs. I'll put up some more pictures later and also some of our chicks.

Well, the one we knew was expecting had twins, one almost black, the other gray with white. More pictures will be posted on Measure of Their Creation. You will also see more of the little ones as part of my Arc52 project at Digitals and K*Joi. I will post those links when I have finished my LOs

Having a new babe (and more on the way) will help with the scrap 365 challenge (actually - I am going for weekly (don't want a book 365 pages long or to print it).
For a name, I am leaning toward Plucky. First, she had put up with a lot from the other goats and rolls with the punches. Second, I gave my sister Tiny Toons for Christmas and in the intro Plucky sings "Expect the unexpected."
Will be putting more on the Measure of Their Creation blog later today.

While we were giving her sister, Bell, lectures about having her baby during the warm weather, Star whom we thought was not that pregnant gave birth! FYI: we have pygmy goats and this new born isn't more than a foot high. Better pics tomorrow.

I wish I was just sitting and relaxing, but there is fence to be built so we don't have to buy so much hay this winter or at least for the fall. The parents are visiting here and we had a reasonable meal - Mom is getting better. There are still a bit of leftovers.

I have also put all my products at 50% (not including collaboratives). Check out my K*Joi store. Of course, what I really have in the store right now is my Birthday Star kit, so I made another little freebie to celebrate. Download here. This mini-kit does not duplicate any of the previous elements, pages or kits. Scroll down for previous add-on. This BB QP does have elements from other kits on the page.

Well, we did it again! About a month ago, we got a llama and then last Saturday in a whirlwind tour around Kansas City we picked up a goat, 3 guinea, 2 peafowl and a mimosa tree. What a menagree!

Here is CoCo. She came with the name Maggie, but be already have a pain named Maggie, so miss oreo is named after Chocolate. She has skin injures on her face and legs and her fur is very matted. No hope for the fur until spring. She will come for food, but still won't let us touch her.

Read more about our animals on our Measure of Their Creation Blog.