I’ve seen some cute needle felting projects recently, and decided to give it a whirl. Turns out – I love it!
Here are the first (of many, I’m sure) creations!
Step by step of creating a little felt fish for my sister’s cat, Tira:
Category: Personal
weekend wildlife
Another weekend of wildlife! Didn’t catch pictures of the 3 raccoons we saw in the forest on our night drive, or the jumping meadow mice, but I got this family of mergansers and a toad living in the woodpile leftover from the old dock.
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.
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!
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?
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.
antiquing
We checked out a few antique places over the Canada Day weekend too!
interesting pricing method….
There’s something under the truck…
ducks!
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.
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.
spot the turkey chick! (see the answer here)
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 😉
nom nom nom…
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!
Sun setting = prime moose-spotting-time!
First moose of the season!
Stop the car!
What is it? The answer!
It’s a magic bonsai tree! I got this as a silly gift for my better half on his birthday. It was neat to watch the salt crystals form and grow. It grew fairly full and the colours turned out really pretty. A certain someone couldn’t keep his hands off, and parts of the very delicate tree broke off, so we played around with it, added some more water to the dish to see what would happen. It regrew – sort of, but with less pigment. It looks so much like broccoli!
what is it?
Care to venture a guess? answer to come!
