High Desert Life

Posted by: calpoppy, 12:46 AM GMT on May 28, 2013

Milk paint has been around for hundreds of years. It is really made of milk or cottage cheese and uses natural pigments. Those pigments could be soot, charcoal, crushed brick or come from the earth. Milk paint is made from curdled milk, lime and pigment and comes in powered form. You can then mix it with water to get the consistency you want.

The neat think about milk paint is the ability to use two colors one over each other to create your own unique look. Used on antique furniture to give it that old look, it is best used on old wood, not new. Another neat thing about milk paint is it is not toxic! You could dump the unused paint in your garden if you want. Also it can be used a lot in baby furniture or on things you want to be non-toxic.

I first learned about milk paint when we were ordering our farm table. We wanted old barnwood for the wood and found a company in Pennsylvania that does it. They also use milk paint on some of their furniture. We went ahead and had part of the farm table benches painted in milk paint. So I thought I could do this to a few old benches we had. They were originally used as a hatch for a boat. Mr. P got them in the late 1960’s so they are OLD wood!!

I painted the benches and then we put together are sun and moon garden, or sitting area, LOL!

We still aren’t done as we need to finish the walkway and I am putting in Torch cactus between the planters.

We did use the paint on these cement chimney inserts that I use as planters, the pups were very willing to leave their paw prints in the paint, and being non-toxic it was allowed!

Now look at a professional job of milk paint, one of our farm table benches.

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Hummingbird season

Posted by: calpoppy, 3:52 PM GMT on April 01, 2013

In SoCal the Anna's Hummingbird is year round, even in our high desert winter the Anna's will stick around. Going to a frozen feeder!

One of my favorite seasonal hummer is the Rufus, small but mighty around the feeders!

Here is a male Anna's Hummer

The female on the next two pics I believe are Anna's.

The blogger on WU WatchinTheSky has the most hummingbirds I have ev...

Updated: 5:40 PM GMT on May 13, 2013

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New pups!

Posted by: calpoppy, 11:03 PM GMT on February 18, 2013

When we decided to get pups we choose to go through an adoption center. We don’t believe in paying for a pup but in the case of an adoption center it is a donation. They are non-profit and the foster parents get no pay except for the costs of feeding the animals. They have some pretty hefty vet bills to pay so the cost of these foster dogs is not cheap. They get them from shelters and many are surrendered to them. While we were picking up ou...

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Chimp Haven

Posted by: calpoppy, 10:59 PM GMT on January 27, 2013

Chimp Haven was founded in 1995 by a group of primatologists and business professionals. They had their sights set on constructing a chimpanzee sanctuary where the chimps could live in large social groups. The government selected this sanctuary to operate the National Chimpanzee Sanctuary System. This initiative was a result of passage of the CHIMP Act that was signed into law by President Bill Clinton in 2000 and is overseen by the National Institutes of Heal...

Updated: 10:59 PM GMT on January 27, 2013

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Who was your favorite animal friend?

Posted by: calpoppy, 12:23 AM GMT on January 08, 2013

This was a hard question for me! Each of them have meant so much, but I posed the question so it came down to a tie. One dog, one cat.

I'll start with the cat. Yahtzee was a six toed cat, that got his name because of his habit as a kitten of sleeping in my kid's Yahtzee game box. He was a least 17 pounds of long haired, blue eyed cat. One of the funniest animals that has ever been a part of my life. He would sleep in the bathroom sink, and never did...

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