Fun with birds, and an exciting announcement!

Claude Maran, our rooster

Wow, I can't believe it's been two months since I've posted! I have got to do better about keeping up with this, because I enjoy it so much.

Over Christmas we built ourselves a new chicken coop and pen that we hope will be safer than anything we've had before. Of course, we let the chickens range during the daytime when we're home, but nothing should get them while they're penned up, anyway.

A couple of weeks ago a friend offered us some of her Americauna chickens. She had to get rid of her stock because she's been doing so much traveling. These are the chickens that lay pastel colored eggs- Easter eggs! We are so excited because the white one (you can see her in the picture above) has laid two blue-green eggs this week!!!

Last week another friend gave us one of her red-faced parrot finches! She had banned this one from her aviary because it was a bully. It's perfectly happy to live by itself, so we are happy to have it! Jon named him Atticus. :) I do think that's it for adding any new animals for a while, though...

Now for the exciting announcement!

(Well, it's exciting to me, anyway...)

I've decided to create a separate blog just for my artwork. I would love it if you would pop on over to my art gallery blog and tell me what you think of it! The address is http://lesliebrasherart.blogspot.com/ and I will be tweaking it in the days to come, I'm sure. I'm also hoping it will inspire me to be more faithful at creating and posting new artwork, without bogging this one down for those of you who aren't interested in seeing the art.

Busy December

As the title says, it has been a busy December. I was blessed to be in 3 art shows/sales within 5 weeks, and really enjoyed doing that. They kept me hopping to get ready for each! Now I'm looking forward to participating in the Auburn CityFest in April.

Here's a picture of my display at the last show of this year, a couple of weeks ago. I know Jon cut off my head, but what I wanted him to get was the table, anyway. I really like how it looked. :)



Now, I want to close with this picture of the fantastic sunset visible from our back porch 2 nights ago. Wow... this photo doesn't come near to doing it justice! This month, our family celebrates the day the God of this fantastic creation was born a Child in Bethlehem. He came to sacrifice Himself so that we might know Him forever. May you have joy this season, and know the One Who loves you so much.



With love from our family to yours!
Leslie

Pears, pears and more pears!

First, I need to correct something I said in my last blog post. Our new rooster and hens were given to us by our FRIEND, who also happens to be Jon's boss. :) The friendship has gone on much longer than the working relationship, however!

Our neighbors have a pear tree that has produced abundantly this year. They have been very generous with the fruit, and we all worked together to make pear honey a few weeks ago. While we had all these wonderful pears around I decided to do a couple of fun paintings with some of them as models. I also had some long, slender mats my mom had given me, so I painted these to fit the mats.




I'm going to be in another art show this weekend. This time it's a Christmas sale featuring a lot of local artists and craftsmen. I participated in the first one last year and had a lot of fun! It will be tomorrow (Friday) from 4 to 8pm, and Saturday from 10 to 5pm, at the Jan Dempsey Art Center in Auburn. Please come out and do your Christmas shopping, and come by to say hello to me!!

Eggs!!! Camping and Art

Out of the 11 small Barred Rock chickens we got for David's birthday, all but 3 were killed by a pack of dogs two weeks after we got them. Sigh. So, the following week Jon's boss gave us an adult rooster, and sent 2 older hens along with him. They were no longer laying eggs, he said.

This Saturday, the small brown hen laid an egg!!! Then another on Monday, another on Tuesday, and a 4th today! We are surprised and thrilled. So was the former owner, who was really shocked. :)




The last weekend in October we went camping with a group of friends we've known for years, most of them, anyway. New ones, too! The campground was Roosevelt State Park in Georgia, next to Callaway Gardens. So, we spent Sunday afternoon at Callaway. We enjoyed the whole weekend! It was beautiful weather- beautiful!!





Our tent and campsite:


After leaving the butterfly house we saw a Great Grey Heron as we were driving over the bridge, heading to the Raptor Show.



At the Raptor Show they were demonstrating the owls! They were so cool. After the show the handler stayed up front with this adorable Screech Owl!



While we were at the campground relaxing, I began a set of small paintings that I ended up really liking as a single unit!



I'd like to invite any of you who live in the area to come do a little early Christmas shopping on Saturday. I'm participating in Shop It!, a fundraiser for Youth For Christ's teen moms program. A portion of all sales will go to them, and there will be a lot of vendors there, like Mary Kay, Tupperware, and Southern Home. It is from 9 to 2 at the Auburn Chamber of Commerce building, which is at Glendean shopping center in front of Hastings. Please come out! I'll be there, and painting to draw a crowd. :) We'll have to see what kind of crowd I'll draw- maybe I should try juggling or something! Anyway, it should be fun and for a good cause. I hope to see you there!