The Hunnie Pot: August 2010

The Cookie Jar

UPDATE:

To see more iced cookies, click here.

The Cookie Jar also ships cookies to your front door. Email thehunniepot (at) gmail (dot) com for more information!

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As you have seen before on here, I have been making some cookies here and there. I love making the cookies. They are my little works of art.

Sadly, my cookie "business" had no name.

I needed to come up with something quick because I wanted to donate some cookies to an auction that was being held at one of the schools close by. My high school does an auction similar to this one, so I knew I had to enter something - small schools are near and dear to my heart and I love to do anything I can to help. I was thrilled that they would take cookies from some no name for their auction! (And I selfishly hoped I could drum up a little business :) )

However, I am no longer a no name! We have a name! I am now The Cookie Jar and I even have some snazzy business cards and stickers that my lovely husband transferred from my head to the computer then printed. (This is where the graphic designer husband comes in mighty handy!!)

I made two cookie baskets for the auction. The first was an all boy basket.

(See my card?!?)

Of course it had to have tractors,

tools,

and heavy equipment.

The frilly girlie basket...

Complete with tiara (with sparkles, of course),

cupcakes,

and balloons.

I hope someone was as excited to get these as I was to give them. I felt like I was sending my kids off to their first day of school.

I am gearing up for some more cookie making. And when I say more I mean more!! Big order coming up and I am so excited!

It's Official!

I'm a chicken mommy!
We are proud to say that we now are the proud parents of 19 baby chicks.

We had about half of the eggs hatch, and unfortunately, we have lost three along the way.

One of those was one of our four "special chicks", dubbed Leonard. Of course, Ben came up with this name. He couldn't walk straight and turned in circles when he tried to walk. Ben thought it was quite humorous. Me, not so much! We still have one Leonard that is not walking well, but the other two chicks, with the help of a bandaid, are doing great.

This little lady had a non responsive leg when she was born, but now she is walking like a champ.

Of course, we aren't going to keep all of these chicks. My coop is pretty large, but I think it will max out at 15 or 16 chickens. I would like to have several different breeds, so I will only keep 5 or 6 of these babies.

I have found that you can tell by some of their markings if they are males or females. I don't know how accurate this is, but they are supposed to be girlies if they have dark legs.

I think this little chica, is in fact, a chica! I think!

Also during my research, I discovered that I think my Dominique chickens may be Barred Rocks. They are confused often, and I think my chicken man may have been confused!!

This is the Dominique (or Dominecker)

http://www.purelypoultry.com/images/chickens/dominique.jpg

This is the Barred Rock

Not much difference, huh?

So my little ones are six days old, very messy, loud, and have already moved out of the house! They now reside in the garage. Those little independent chickies!

Hard to tell, but they are getting feathers too!

Labor Pains

It's official. I now know what daddy's feel like when their wives are in labor and they are waiting on the birth of their infants.

We are at day 22 and still no chickens.

However, after a million visits to my incubator, I do have some activity. I had a little movin' and shakin' yesterday afternoon. I was really excited about that, however what was more exciting happened this morning at 5:15. I thought I was hallucinating, but no, I wasn't.... I have PEEPING!! They are peeping from within their shells!!! Can I call work and tell them I can't come in because my eggs are about to hatch?!?

The Big Day

After 21 days of gestation, today is the day that I become a chicken mom. Hopefully. Two a day turnings and careful temperature monitoring will hopefully pay off on this very day. However, as my dad told me a few days ago, I am trying not to "count my chickens before they hatch". At this point, I am hoping to just have one hatch!

We "candled" the eggs a few days after incubation to check the fertility. My instructions said to cut a hole in a shoebox and shine a light through with the egg sitting on the hole, but we decided to do it our own way. We simply turned off all the lights in the house and held up a mini mag light to see if we had embryos within. Much to my dismay, we had several that Ben said were no go's, but being the girl that I am, I couldn't just throw them away because there just might be a chance. Ben says I am a typical woman. But hey, there just may be a chance!

I didn't take any pictures of the first candling, but we did it a few days ago, and what a difference a few days makes. I still say that some of the no go's that Ben wanted to throw away were miraculously alive.

Ok. Here is what you don't want it to look like.

See? There is nothing in there. Nada. Just a big empty egg. No baby chicks here.

Now this one looks a little promising!

We have a chick! We actually saw him/her move too! I was so excited!

Hopefully they will make their appearance today and do away with my fears of being a bad incubator mom. Stay tuned!

Me and Kate Gosselin

After much begging, pleading, and reminding Ben that Ashlee's husband got her chickens, he finally caved. I "received" chickens for my birthday and I thought it would be much like the rest of my IOU birthday presents - nonexistent. However, Ben pulled through on the birthday present and got me some chickens!

I was flipping channels last night and spotted Kate Plus 8 and couldn't resist checking it out. Ironically, Kate was boasting about her new chicken coop and her chickens. I used to like Kate on the old show and sympathized with her a wee bit. However last night, she was on a rampage! And most importantly, what is up with that hair?!? Back to the chickens. Kate's chickens are already laying eggs.

Mine look like this.

Yes, I am incubating eggs.

No, I didn't magically photoshop this picture and make you think there are more than there are.

Yes, there are 42 eggs.

No, you didn't read that wrong. Forty two. F-o-r-t-y t-w-o. Count them.
Forty two. FORTY TWO.

Never one to do anything half way, my husband thought forty two sounded like a safe number for me to mother for the next 21 days. Apparently, the likelihood that all of them will hatch is slim to none, and this mother hen is going to feel like a failure. There will also be some roosters in there too. My luck, I will have forty two roosters waking me up at the first sight of daybreak. My neighbors are going to love me!!!

I just hope I can be a successful incubator mother. I already forgot to turn them last night. They have to be turned twice a day, at the same time every day. They are quite the demanding little eggs. For now they are set at a cozy 99.5 degrees and waiting to hatch.