DIY--Wheat Wreath

Decorating a farm house by a farm wife often requires a little bit of creativity and if you are cheap frugal like me, using things you can find in a field while you are waiting on your husband.  The last 2 years we have had beautiful wheat crops.  The heads were big and the crop didn't get rained on which makes mold and mildew grow on the plants as they are drying down before harvest. Our wheat is currently just starting to pollinate, but those beautiful golden heads will be here before we know it.

To get straight wheat heads like the ones I used, I cut the wheat while it was still green and tied it in bundles.  The boys and I hung it upside down to let it dry.  It has to have sunshine for it to turn golden.  My front porch looked interesting for awhile to say the least.

To make the Wheat Wreath, I started with a simple styrofoam wreath form.

I am not real good with wire and I tend to get myself all wound up in tape, too.  I bought these floral pins at Hobby Lobby and think they are the best for the craft challenged like myself.

Here's what the bag looked like.  I found them near all the foam forms and artificial flowers.

The boys liked helping me by cutting the wheat heads off the stalks.

I pinned 2 wheat heads at a time and made sure to put the pins in at an angle.  They might have pushed all the way through if I had them too straight.

Push the pins in all the way.

I made rows that got pretty random at times. 

The next row needs to be close enough that it covers the pins before it.

Keep going around the form until you have it full and it looks like this.

-A Kansas Farm Mom

Agtastic Baby Gifts

I am a one of a kind gift person.  If I can spend a little extra time and give a gift that they won’t find anywhere else, then that’s what I am going to do.  If you are someone that loves to return gifts, so you can get EXACTLY what you want, don’t put me on your next baby shower guest list.  My cousin Lisa and I co-hosted a shower for our cousin Kim, whose adventures you can follow over on A House Lab.  (If you don't have a lot to do and want to make my pregnant cousins day, click on her page and let her watch her page views climb. )

I love the ink jet iron on transfers.  Have you ever tried these?  One of our cousins teased my boys once that he was jealous that had Thomas the Tank Engine undies.  Guess who made him his own Thomas boxer shorts for Christmas that year?  LOL  Oh, and it is the cousin that currently works for us.

If you have kids with unusual names, like mine and most of their cousins, these are a great way to help them have something personalized.  My boys can’t buy anything at a store that has their name on it unless they order it.

I thought a lot about what to give my cousin for a baby gift.  She lives half way across the country and requested either small gifts or to have the larger gifts shipped to her house. 

I bought a couple of packages of onesies, because I used tons of these.  They are great for layers in the winter and a nice cool complete outfit in the hot summers of Kansas.  But I couldn’t give her plain old onesies.  NOOOO!  So, The Farmer and I brainstormed.

This was my favorite:

Here's what The Farmer cam up with:

 And on the back...

 And one more

We thought of some good ag ones, but she and her hubs graduated from KU.  I got on Twitter to see what Jayhawk fans talk about.  It happened to be the night of the back to school teach their freshman how to cheer pep rally.  I even found a couple of ideas that the Jayhawk fans appreciated. 

Even though my cousin couldn’t read a couple of them without laughing.

What are your favorite baby gifts to give or receive?  I have several friends expecting babies very soon.  I could use some ideas.  What was your favorite of the ones I made?

-A Kansas Farm Mom

Check out the rest of my 30 days of Farm Mom Tips and the other farm bloggers joining me.

4-H is More than Livestock Projects

Well, our family survived another year at the county fair.  This was the first time that I have had both boys competing and exhibiting.  Let me get this straight the county fair is a place for the kids to demonstrate what THEY have learned not what I have done for them.  My boys work their hearts out to get to the county fair.  They spent hours in the kitchen, barn, craft supplies, fields and even shopping to earn the ribbons they were awarded. I have talked before about how much I Love 4-H.

Don’t think that I am going to only talk about the livestock projects.  Yes, the whole family spends hours together with the livestock, but I truly believe to raise well rounded and well educated kids they need to try a variety of projects. 

The Geology project is something that I knew nothing about 4 years ago.  I never displayed geology when I was in 4-H.  I always admired my best friend’s box though.  When my then 7 year old started collecting fossils in the yard, we decided to try it out for a year.  Here is his box this year.

Geology has evolved into Lapidary, a sub division of the geology project.  He collects or buys rocks and minerals to polish.  We have a rock tumbler that runs almost continuously throughout the year.  In Kansas 4-H, there are many different types of lapidary displays.  His box this year shows the before and after of 5 different stones he polished this year.  These specimens took him 4 to 7 weeks to polish in the tumbler each.

Then we had the problem of what to do with these pretty rocks, so both boys made jewelry for the arts and crafts project.  They used different mounting methods to display the stones.  

They are still boys, so I also let them take their Lego kits to display at the fair.

Another crafty type project the youngest completed was a rocket for the Rocketry project.  This was a bit more involved project than we expected it to be when we started.  Not only do these kids have to glue, paint and apply decals, they must launch the rocket before exhibiting it.  They are also to calculate the altitude that the rocket reached.  Well, for my 7 year old figuring tangents was a little over his head, so I helped him the best I could.  He also had to fill out this form about his rocket and have 1-5 pages of pictures. 

I also think that all kids, boys and girls, should know how to cook.  We all eat every day.  If we don’t know how to cook we end up eating out way too much.  The boys had a good time learning how to bake and are great at reading directions and measuring ingredients.  If you really think about it, baking is just edible chemistry experiments.  The recipe for the Two Cheese Braided Bread is already up on the blog.

Over the coming months, I hope that a few other farm moms are going to help me explain a variety of 4-H projects and help new 4-H mom's with some helpful hints.

-A Kansas Farm Mom