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found a kitten!

Edit: we think she’s actually a girl!

My better half and I went to his cottage this week for a couple of days. I was going to work remotely, but when we got there we saw a tree had taken out the power line. We called hydro and got them to disconnect it, then went to town for candles, batteries, that sort of thing. On the way back, we realized we forgot ice and turned around. On the second trip back, we saw something scurry in front of us on the road – a kitten! It hid in a pile of rocks, so we stopped and pulled the dusty little bag of bones out. It didn’t struggle, just watched me clean out a bin so we could drive her to the cottage. She looks about 2 months old. We gave her some tuna (very little to see how she could handle it) every few hours, and then got proper food and some free milk replacement from the local pet store the next day.

Luckily I had my camera, and she was happy to have me do a photoshoot with her – well, she was warm, dry and fed, so she didn’t care about much else!

We’ll make sure she finds a good home, she’s very sweet, affectionate, loves to be held, and purrs like a motorboat! If you’d like to adopt her, please let me know. I can’t keep her due to my allergies.

Also, we saw a barred owl! I’ve always wanted to see an owl in the wild!

hallie the kitten | www.kbarlowdesign.com/blog

hallie the kitten | www.kbarlowdesign.com/blog

hallie the kitten | www.kbarlowdesign.com/blog

hallie the kitten | www.kbarlowdesign.com/blog

hallie the kitten | www.kbarlowdesign.com/blog

hallie the kitten | www.kbarlowdesign.com/blog

hallie the kitten | www.kbarlowdesign.com/blog

hallie the kitten | www.kbarlowdesign.com/blog

poor little thing! so skinny!!hallie the kitten | www.kbarlowdesign.com/blog

hallie the kitten | www.kbarlowdesign.com/blog

What!? I’m a piece of wood… you can’t see me!

hallie the kitten | www.kbarlowdesign.com/blog

I totally need to make this into an animated gif!
hallie the kitten | www.kbarlowdesign.com/blog

 

oven dried strawberries: a Pinterest fail.

So, I saw this pin on Pinterest – oven drying strawberries. I knew from the photo that it would NOT look like that when it was done (no dried fruit looks like that), but I was curious enough to give it a shot and see what would happen. I googled around a bit, found it on several Pinterest Fail sites, gathered the tips that people gave in the comments and went for it.

strawberries-pin

The main issues seemed to be people putting the strawberries directly on the parchment paper or the pan itself, the heat being too high (so they burned), and not letting air flow through every half an hour or so. Armed with this knowledge, I gave it a shot, and took photos every half an hour.

Here we go!

strawberries-start

strawberries-330
strawberries-400
stawberries-430

At the 2 hour mark, I decided to flip them over. This is also when I realized that they were probably never going to dry completely unless I left them in the oven for two to three days, but maybe they’re supposed to be mushy, slimy, and disgusting in the middle?

strawberries-500
strawberries-530

So the last few hours of the process I decided that there was no point in taking any more photos, they looked pretty much the same.

I followed the instructions that I read online and turned off the oven, and left them overnight.

This morning, I pulled them out, spread them on the parchment paper and tasted one. It was not delicious. It was kind of sour (which isn’t a deal breaker), the texture was very strange, maybe if i’d made them paper thin slivers it would have worked better as a fruit leather type of thing, but at the end of the day, there’s a reason this is on a bunch of Pinterest Fail lists. And now, it’s on mine too.

strawberries-end-result

Canada Day weekend in the woods

There’s a deer in there! This is one of three we saw. We also saw several cedar waxwing birds, a beaver, a porcupine, a groundhog, and a baby weasel (too cute!). No moose this weekend though. We also caught a couple perch, a ton of rock bass, and a couple of largemouth bass.

deer

sunset

moth5

moth4

moth3

moth2

moth1

This mamma turkey was rushing around gathering up her five chicks after trying to cross the road failed (well, not the “ultimate” fail) due to cars.

turkey

 

spot the turkey chick! (see the answer here)

turkey-chick

impromptu photo shoot

Last weekend I saw some pretty neat stuff up near Haliburton, a few deer, some turtle eggs… but something was wrong with my camera settings! Of course, I didn’t realize that until I got home and looked at the pictures. I decided to test my camera with my sister’s cat, Tiramisu, as the subject.

She’s super playful, and was a great helper… for once 😉

tira-portrait

nom nom nom…

nom

tira1

tira2

A quick jaunt to the country!

Just a quick overnight, but we saw a partridge, a turkey, a deer and a moose! An owl flew by, but I missed it. I’d love to see an owl in the forest – hopefully this year!

Spot the deer!

deer

Sun setting = prime moose-spotting-time!

kennaway1

First moose of the season!

moose