Suburban Homesteading: January 2014

My last homesteading update was in May so I have a lot to talk about. Both our chicken flock and our rabbitry have grown! In May 2013 Mopsy had a litter of 10 kits. Unfortunately, only 4 survived. Flopsy was suppose to be due at the same time but it turned out that she wasn't pregnant. When she didn't give birth, we bred her again. In July she had a litter of 5, with only 1 surviving. Out of these litters we ended up keeping the only 2 females (Beatrix and Flora) and 1 of the males (Baby....more on him later). The other 2 were processed in the fall. 

We also hatched more some chicks in the summer. We didn't keep any of those but it sure was fun! In August we bought some chicks. All the Silkies went to a friend but we kept the Rhode Island Red and Polish; Penny and Joan Jett.

Of Mopsy's and Flopsy's litters, we were only planning on keeping the females. Well, this little guy was just way too tame to process. His name was changed to Baby and we attempted to keep him as a house rabbit. He's just too big for the house so he went back outside with the others.

We did end up getting a house rabbit. We got this little Lionhead in November. His name is Thumper. He hasn't gotten much bigger than he was in this picture:

Around then, our does were due, or we thought. It seems they hadn't gotten pregnant. So we decided to give a rabbit colony a try and moved the rabbits in with the chickens. The girls did beautifully. The boys however, couldn't get along. The girls now live in the colony and the boys live in separate cages and get special visits to the colony. Hubby also built an awesome new chicken/rabbit run this fall. It's bigger and more sturdy than the other one. I absolutely love it! The chickens and rabbits are getting along just fine....once the chickens realized the rabbits weren't something to be scared of. 

Almost 2 months ago we had the results of the rabbit colony 3 of our 4 does gave birth. The one doe that didn't give birth was just slightly too young to get pregnant. We had a total of 24 kits. We lost a few and are down to 17. They are now weaned and doing great. Some of the current babies will be adopted out as pets, some will be processed and I'm thinking of keeping one female. She's a beautiful solid black. The boys have had visits with the girls so if it all went well, we have 4 does due in the beginning of February. I love having the babies around! 

And lastly, yesterday, the chickens got their first taste of snow. .... They were not impressed!!

© Mama Dani's Musings


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Kiddo Update

The last time I did update posts for the kids was in May of last year. The kids have done a lot of growing since then!

I'll start with Sean. Sean's still in soccer. He loves it! He has out grown soccer shots and will be starting in soccer club this spring. He's technically a kindergartner this year per the city but he's started on first grade level work. He's our reader. He's always amazing me on what he can read and reads anything he can get his hands on. He's also the caring one of the bunch. He's always looking out for others before himself.

Maddy... She's still in dance and absolutely loving it! She tried soccer last summer and winter but has chose to stick with  dance for now. Maddy isn't an official homeschooler yet but is doing preschool work. She loves her art as much as before but she's also really getting into math. Numbers just click with her. Many times on the way to dance she will make up addition problems and figure them out. She's still always at extremes when it comes to emotions but she's getting better about controlling her anger.

Emily... Our littlest munchkin is now 2 years old. At her last check up she was21 lbs 10.5 oz, 32.5in, and right about the 3rd percentile. She may be tiny but her personality is huge! She has a huge vocabulary and talks with such emotion! She's a little sponge too. She has learned about all of the colors and has started on letters now. Her favorite phrase right now is "what is this?" so there's no wonder why she's soaking it all in.

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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


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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
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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. ;)

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