Good Bye 2013, Hello 2014!

Holy moly am I late with this post. It's almost February! But then again, how long has it been since I wrote a post!? Too long!

I like to begin the year by looking back at the previous year. In 2013:

• Maddy turned 4 and had a mermaid party. 
• I lost count of the butterflies we released.
• We added to our flock and hatched eggs for the first time.
• Our rabbits had successful litters.
• We kept 2 female and 1 male rabbits to expand our rabbitry.
• I processed my first rabbit.
• Maddy preformed in her first dance recital. She did beautifully!
• Sean started playing soccer. Maddy joined him later in the year.
• We're officially homeschoolers. According to our city, Sean's a kindergartner but he's more on the first grade level.
• Richard and I celebrated our 7 year anniversary. 
• We added a house rabbit to our homestead; a lionhead named Thumper.
• Sean turned 6 and had a Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles party.
• Emily turned 2. She just had a family party but had a Dora/Minion/Thomas the Train cake...her favorite things.
• Our does (minus one that was too young) had another litter in December.

Now to look forward to this year. In 2014, I plan:

• I plan to do monthly photo shoots of the kids.
• I plan to blog more.
• I plan to use natural options more when it comes to medication and cleaning.
• I plan to eat dinner at the kitchen table more...we've become too lazy with this somehow.
• I have something else I plan to do but I'll make that announcement later. ;)

I will post a couple of update posts with more pictures this week.

© Mama Dani's Musings


Other places to find me:

No More Excuses

One week ago I decided to quit making excuses about exercising. Time was my biggest excuse so getting up early to exercise made sense...just hard to do. I decided that I would start first thing the next morning b/c there was no reason not to. So, I set my alarm and set out my clothes, shoes, phone/headphones, and dog leash....might as well walk the dog at the same time, right? I had no problem getting up the next morning; I was pumped. I walked about 1.5 miles in about 30 minutes. I felt great!! I had a few hiccups the rest of the week: being sore, baby toddler wanting to nurse when alarm went off, being tired, warm bed seeming better than the chilly outside... but I did it anyways. My excuses didn't seem to be as big once I got outside and once it was all done, I felt amazing! The biggest obstacle was getting up and out the door. As I mentioned earlier, I was also bringing the dog, our pug, Gizmo. She's a crazy dog that has way too much energy. Another bonus is she's starting to be a little calmer and behave a little better! She gets so excited when she sees the leash.

I've been using an app called RunKeeper to track my walks...maybe one day I will actually run. RunKeeper is pretty neat. It uses GPS to map my walk and keeps track of my time. It then calculates my pace and how many calories I burned. I have it let me know when every 10 minutes passes. That helps me keep my pace up. Once I'm done it reads my stats to me and I share it on Facebook. There I've received lots of likes and comments and that has helped motivate me. If you're one that's liked my posts or commented on them, thank you and please keep clicking that "like" button! I'm motivated right now but I know my own motivation will eventually start fading.

But for now, I feel energized, happy, proud, and just all around great...and that is quite motivating!

Check out my stats for this week!

I know I haven't blogged in forever. I guess I need to make a no more excuse promise on that too. I'll work on getting a few update post up soon!

© Mama Dani's Musings
Other places to find me:

How to Get All The Facebook Updates You're Missing

If you are like me, you are frustrated that your Facebook news feed has dwindled down and you are missing updates from friends, family, and pages you've "liked". I think I may have a solution! This tutorial will walk you through how to get every post from the pages you've "liked" to show up on your news feed. To make sure all of your friends' posts show up in your news feed, just follow this tutorial but go to your friend list instead of your "like" list. A fair warning, this is tedious and time consuming but it's worth it.

First, you will need to go to your profile, not your news feed page. Right under your cover picture is links to other parts of your profile. Click on "More" and then, in the drop down menu, click "Likes".

Once you're on the next page, you will see another list of links, under the ones right under your cover picture. There will be another "More". Click it and then in the drop down menu, click "Other Likes".

You will then see a list of all the pages you have "liked". For each page you will do the following:

Hover your mouse over the page's profile picture. A check mark and "Liked" will appear. Hover over that. First thing you will want to do now is make sure "Show in News Feed" is checked. If it is, you will see "Settings" under it. Click on "Settings".

Another drop down menu will appear. Click on "All Updates". Now all updates from that page should appear in your news feed. Now just do it for all the other pages you've "liked". As I said before, you can do the same thing for your friends list. I also went ahead and used this time to weed through pages and friends. ;)

© Mama Dani's Musings
Other places to find me:

Suburban Homesteading: May 2013

This update's chicken photo bomb is Amelia. But we'll come back to the chickens in a little bit. Let's start with the garden. It's growing very well!! A raised garden was definitely the way to go because there haven't been too many weeds. All the plants are getting big. Most don't have fruit/veggies on them yet. There are a couple of green tomatoes. But the strawberries... They've taken off!

Next on the homestead tour is the chickens. The big girls are doing great. They are now 5 months old. Henrietta started laying a month ago. Betsy and Amelia just started laying. I actually witnessed Betsy's first or second egg. She was pacing the front of the run when she let out a cackle and a tiny shell-less egg fell from her. Poor thing probably had no idea what was happening!!

The babies are now 6 weeks old. We added a newbie, a Columbian Wyandotte, from a local farm. She is 5 weeks old. A couple weeks ago we moved the babies out into a nursery run. They love the outdoors and I love how they aren't making a mess of my house.

We'll have more babies soon! This week I am expecting a shipment of white and red bantam Silkie eggs and a friend has been collecting bantam Frizzle eggs for me. Time to break out the incubator again!!

In case you missed the posts on incubating/hatching eggs: Part 1/ Part 2

Speaking of eggs, here's a look at some of the eggs the girls have left for us lately:

Last but certainly not least is the rabbits. As I mentioned in a past post, Cottontail turned out to be a he, not a she and he got his sister pregnant. Mopsy had 9 kits but unfortunately, none made it. I believe it was just a case of first time rabbit mommy not knowing what to do. We wanted to have 2 does so I started searching and found a beautiful Californian doe that is right about the same age as the rest of rabbits. We named her Flopsy and she's doing wonderful. Once she was settled in we bred the rabbits; Mopsy with Peter, Flopsy with Cottontail. They are due tomorrow! I'm quite excited! We did everything right this time so I'm hoping for a good outcome. If Flopsy proves to also be a bad first time mom, we'll try to foster her kits over to Mopsy. I gave the girls their nest boxes on Saturday. Flopsy did a little rearranging and that was about it. Mopsy did major rearranging including removing a lot of the bedding. She keeps hopping in it and messing with it all. Yesterday she did a lot of panting. She did that right before she gave birth last time so I'm on baby watch now!

Here are the pretty mamas!

© Mama Dani's Musings
Other places to find me: