Chicken proofing the garden

Recently my girls decided to eat my potato plant growing in the backyard. I have read that chickens tend to avoid plants that are poisonous to them, apparently mine are not that smart. The leaves and stems on potatoes are poisonous to us and them. Luckily they survived their consumption of the plant. Here it is after it bounced back from them.

After this and planting more of my spring garden I decided fencing was desperately needed. So Lindsey and I set out on this mission!

You can see the old fencing on the right that I was using, the chickens went right through it.

We used 2×4’s as posts. We built every other section into a 3ft x 3ft frame of 2×2 wood so it will open. Then we chicken wired everything.

The next day we built the smaller one where my lettuce is now for them summer.

After both areas were done I decided to add 1×2 to the top of all the sections that don’t open to add stability. ( since we didn’t cement the posts in)

Also check out:

Echo’s Friends’ Cookies Website and Facebook Page!

Filmmaking & Cookiebaking’s Instagram

Sister site: Craft Making and Drag Racing

Lindsey’s Jewelry: Hard Wear by Lindsey (Awesome stuff)

Rustified.com – Lifestyle Inspirations from a Renaissance Man (I love his blog- 365 page book for this year, recipes, & daily inspirations)

Rusty J’s Music Site

Garden Party with mom

This past weekend I went to a “Garden party” with my mom. Her neighborhood hosts this every year, it’s basically 5 large properties with incredible gardens. You start at one house to get your wrist band and drive to the other properties and have a self guided tour. They have vendors, a beer garden, musicians, and various gardening seminars. We got our wristbands and headed to the property with a huge organic garden
At this property there was a seminar on organic gardening that we stayed for, it was wonderful. It was held next the their incredible pond full of giant catfish and turtles
Plus i was able to buy an organic raspberry plant while there, theymhave a wonderful little farm stand.

They also make and sell these incredible raised beds (thats the farm stand in the background)

Next we went to a property with different themed gardens: cactus & agave, iris, deer grass, Moroccan, faux arroyo seco, zen, and vegtable. This property had beautifully done stone work all over.

The third property we went to had an heirloom tomato garden, huge artichoke plants, a hydroponics set up, and cute little signs with verses all throughout their gardens.

The last property we went to was the most stunning, they participated last year as well. They have a massive pool with incredible bridges, a wake boarding system, ramps and beach entrances. They also have a putting green (pool side), terraced fountains all over, multiple fire pits, an outdoor movie theatre, water slides, and a gymnasium with an indoor heated lap pool (the local high school uses this for their swim team).

It was a wonderful day! Thanks Mom!!

Also check out:

Echo’s Friends’ Cookies Website and Facebook Page!

Filmmaking & Cookiebaking’s Instagram

Sister site: Craft Making and Drag Racing

Lindsey’s Jewelry: Hard Wear by Lindsey (Awesome stuff)

Rustified.com – Lifestyle Inspirations from a Renaissance Man (I love his blog- 365 page book for this year, recipes, & daily inspirations)

Rusty J’s Music Site

Busy week!

Hi all!

Haven’t gotten to post lately life has been so crazy! All week I have been working at OMG! Insider and have been baking some awesome treats for Echo’s Friends’ Cookies!!

Echo got to play tug of war for real finally with an awesome pup Charlie at the dog park.

Lindsey and I made a new treat Beefy Donuts!

I’ve also been looking for a new roommate which has been a bit more time consuming than expected. Hopefully we can find the right person soon.

Last night I also made lunch for the next two days at work, Lindsey and her mom had given me this pot of condensed stock:

Shes been making roasts and chicken with it recently, so good!

So I made some ground turkey, spinach and rice using this condensed stock.

First I cooked up the turkey meat on the stove with organic Worcester sauce.

The put 2 bags of rice melody (from trader joes) in the microwave.

Once the meat was cooked up I added the condensed stock and organic frozen spinach, and cooked it until the spinach was warmed through.

Last I added the cooked rice and stirred it well.

Also check out:

Echo’s Friends’ Cookies Website and Facebook Page!

Filmmaking & Cookiebaking’s Instagram

Sister site: Craft Making and Drag Racing

Lindsey’s Jewelry: Hard Wear by Lindsey (Awesome stuff)

Rustified.com – Lifestyle Inspirations from a Renaissance Man (I love his blog- 365 page book for this year, recipes, & daily inspirations)

Rusty J’s Music Site

What we’ve been up to with Echo’s Friends’ Cookies!

Hi all! Sorry for being kinds of missing in action this week, Lindsey and I have been busy making puppy treats and launching Echo’s Friends’ Cookies!!

Saturday Lindsey and I made Puppy Truffies to take to Camp Run-a-mutt Sunday.

We also made:

Peanut butter Banana Crunchies

Carrot Banana Sticks These now have flax seed meal instead of corn meal, which we all like even better.

Apple Cinnamon bites

We took all these to an event at Camp Run-A-Mutt! Julie (the awesome manager) set us up with a spot and a table to sell our treats/cookies! The pet parents reactions were very positive and the dogs loved them!!

And Sunday night after the event Lindsey came up with a new one!!

Chicky Crisps!
These came out so good once again we couldn’t stop eating them. We think they need to be a people treat too!

Also check out:

Echo’s Friends’ Cookies Website and Facebook Page!

Filmmaking & Cookiebaking’s Instagram

Sister site: Craft Making and Drag Racing

Lindsey’s Jewelry: Hard Wear by Lindsey (Awesome stuff)

Rustified.com – Lifestyle Inspirations from a Renaissance Man (I love his blog- 365 page book for this year, recipes, & daily inspirations)

Rusty J’s Music Site

Website Launched! For Echo’s Friends’ Cookies!!

Today Lindsey and I launched the website for Echo’s Friends’ Cookies! Check it out!!

Plus! Echo’s Friends Cookies are now for sale at Camp Run-A-Mutt South Bay!!

Busy day off

That is definitely my favorite photo from yesterday!

Yesterday I was all over the place as usual, luckily my sister Sierra has been in town and I’ve gotten to spend some awesome time with her around working. And of course we dragged Lindsey in as well!

Back to the day, after working late the night before I slept a bit later than usual then jumped up got my coffee with Echo in tow. Came home got Sisi (Sierra) went and got her phone repaired. Came home again, cleaned a bunch, gave the girls a ton of lettuce from the garden

Had a painter out for an estimate, took Echo to Camp Run-A-Mutt for daycare,

Then headed to get Lindsey and got Boba!

After running a few more places we headed back to the house again, i started working up a cost calculation for our “Echo’s Friend’s Cookies” while Lindsey worked on these amazing and incredible rock veggie markers for my garden!!

Then Sisi showed back up with her awesome friends in tow and decided to attempt to eat 100 chicken mc-nuggets (not a thing I condone but slightly entertaining none the less).

Later we all went to pick Echo up from Camp Run-A-Mutt that’s when this happened haha

After, the teens had all their bikes out so Lindsey and I took Echo out to see how she would do walking along side us on bikes

When I took Echo to Camp Run-A-Mutt for daycare the awesome manager Julie told me that the treats we took over “Echo’s Friend’s Cookies” went over great and asked when we wanted to bring more in! So after all that bike riding Lindsey and I set off to make more! Here’s some photos ( I will cover them in more detail soon)

Oh and again tonight my hen Starla did not put herself to bed, I have no idea what’s wrong or what’s bothering her, hopefully tomorrow I will be able to figure it out after further investigation. have you have had a chicken act the way? Not wanting to go to bed in the coop suddenly after almost a year of doing so everyday.

Also check out:

Filmmaking & Cookiebaking’s Instagram

Sister site: Craft Making and Drag Racing

Lindsey’s Jewelry: Hard Wear by Lindsey (Awesome stuff)

Rustified.com – Lifestyle Inspirations from a Renaissance Man (I love his blog- 365 page book for this year, recipes, & daily inspirations)

Rusty J’s Music Site

A little more Rambling

Yesterday while I was working at Bones I found a couple foods I really want to make. Of course I immediately texted them to Lindsey! I found this zucchini gratin on Instagram

Then these awesome little muffins

And for 2nd meal….(the meal we have about 12 hours into work). We had these amazing braised Short Ribs with some mashed potatoes and corn. They were so good I decided I REALLY need to try making them! So I found this recipe online http://m.foodandwine.com/recipes/braised-short-ribs
I will let you know when I try them! Have you made short ribs? What tips would you give me

That’s all for now, but as I write this its 1:15am I just got home from work and for some reason my chickens are awake. They always put themselves to bed at sunset and I just close the door from the coop into the run when I get home. But tonight they are all up and wandering around. I have no idea why…. Maybe they think its morning since some days they get up with me before dawn (when I work early). It’s time to skedaddle them into their coop so I can go to bed. Since its night time I’m not taking any chicken pics but here’s some from last weekend when Starla decided to push her luck with the house boundaries, lol.

I waited to see if she’d actually do it then shoooed her out

Crazy chickens…

Also check out:

Filmmaking & Cookiebaking’s Instagram

Sister site: Craft Making and Drag Racing

Lindsey’s Jewelry: Hard Wear by Lindsey (Awesome stuff)

Rustified.com – Lifestyle Inspirations from a Renaissance Man (I love his blog- 365 page book for this year, recipes, & daily inspirations)

Rusty J’s Music Site

Getting A Dog used to long days at doggy day care

This week I have been thinking about how to get my Echo used to spending long days at Camp Run-a-Mutt doggy day care.
This weekend I posted about her first time there, I almost took her on Tuesday but I realized that would mean she was stuck there twelve and a half hours and that seems like too much too fast. She loves to sleep too much…
She has always spent so much time just sleeping while we all work, that shes used to it now. When i come home after 12-16 hours she doesnt jump right out of bed, she lays there wagging her tail, stretches, and waits for us to coax her out of bed.
So instead of sending her suddenly into a 12.5 hour day there I decided to work up to it. Last weekend she was there for 3 hours, today (since I’m off) I’m going to take her for 6 hours. If she does well with that then next week I will take her for a whole day while I’m at work. Hopefully she will quickly get used to going some of the days I work and will be happy not to be stuck at home all the time and the other days she can relish in sleeping all day.

Yesterday morning while I was home she even curled up, passed out, and started snoring as soon she finished breakfast.

Have you done this before? What was your strategy with your dog ?

Also check out:

Filmmaking & Cookiebaking’s Instagram

Sister site: Craft Making and Drag Racing

Lindsey’s Jewelry: Hard Wear by Lindsey (Awesome stuff)

Rustified.com – Lifestyle Inspirations from a Renaissance Man (I love his blog- 365 page book for this year, recipes, & daily inspirations)

Rusty J’s Music Site

Dog Park Trip and some Weekend Rambling

Sunday, Lindsey and I ran all over, we got Honey Boba, met an electrician at my house to get an estimate, went and got our favorite Thai food at Rocharin

Then we took Echo to the local dog park! I was being a slightly nervous mama, I didn’t want her to get bit because she tends to invade dogs space sometimes and she’s still learning to listen to “come”. But she did fantastic!!

We took her in very calmly and let her off her leash, she got to run and play. We even found some adorable Great Dane pups for her to play with! (In the pic below). The cutest dog I’ve ever seen!!!

Echo had a blast and came home exhausted. I’m so glad we went, now on my days off I can take her there instead of day care (since it’s free) and she can go to daycare on some of my work days 🙂

Also check out:

Filmmaking & Cookiebaking’s Instagram

Sister site: Craft Making and Drag Racing

Lindsey’s Jewelry: Hard Wear by Lindsey (Awesome stuff)

Rustified.com – Lifestyle Inspirations from a Renaissance Man (I love his blog- 365 page book for this year, recipes, & daily inspirations)

Rusty J’s Music Site

Doggy Day Care

Saturday I decided to start looking for some doggy day care places for Echo. The one near me that I’ve always known of seemed to be closed today even though their Yelp said they should’ve been open, so I reviewed their Yelp page further and found some of the reviews to be not quite what I was looking for. But what I did find was another doggy day care near me that I didn’t know existed!

It’s called Camp Run-a-Mutt, and it’s amazing! I decided to stop by there and see if I could view their facilities, I found a beautiful outdoor cage-free facility and an amazing staff, exactly what I was hoping for!

Before they take on new dogs you have to do it temperament test to see if your dog will acclimate well with all of the other dogs they have. So I found out the requirements for shot records etc. and scheduled my temperament test for echo for later that afternoon.

After I picked Lindsey up we took Echo back to Camp Run-a-Mutt for her temperament test. One of the staff members Took Echo back into another room into a fenced area while we watched on a television.

The staff member worked with Echo for a few minutes on leash and then they let one dog into the pen, After a few minutes they let Echo off leash and slowly added dogs into the mix. They had a big dogs, small dogs, various energy levels… Etc. As we are watching I could tell Echo was doing pretty well but she did get kind of excited when one of the smaller dogs was added.

After about 15 to 20 minutes I was told that Echo had passed and they asked if I wanted her to stay for couple hours. Since it was only a couple hours till they closed they even let her stay for free! Plus we get a discount on her first trip back in.

They have this cool platform inside so owners can look out the window to the play yard! So before we left we watched Echo get acclimated for a little bit.

She seemed like she was doing great so we took off to find some lunch. But while your dogs there you can check up on them – they have five doggy-cams on their website which is great!! This is what I saw…

Then I saw this, i got concerned but they were just playing

Once it was getting close to closing time we went back and picked her up, but we watched a bit first and talked to the owner for a bit (she’s great).

Echo came home happy and exhausted and I can’t wait to use them often while I’m work crazy hours!

Do you use a doggy daycare? What do you do to keep your dogs exercised and happy while you work?

(*** this is NOT a sponsored post in any way ***)

Also check out:

Filmmaking & Cookiebaking’s Instagram

Sister site: Craft Making and Drag Racing

Lindsey’s Jewelry: Hard Wear by Lindsey (Awesome stuff)

Rustified.com – Lifestyle Inspirations from a Renaissance Man (I love his blog- 365 page book for this year, recipes, & daily inspirations)

Rusty J’s Music Site