Peaches Found a Home!

Oh yeah!! Peaches has been adopted. She is going home Tuesday.
Please, no more phone calls or emails, Thank you!

Quick and Easy Kashi Meal for Your Parrots

Need a quick healthy meal for the birds? Try this one. It will feed all 17 of my birds a nice little meal.

What you need:

• Kashi Pilaf in the 8.5 oz packet- This has 7 different grains in it Including:OATS, LONG GRAIN BROWN RICE, RYE, HARD RED WINTER WHEAT, TRITICALE, BUCKWHEAT, BARLEY, SESAME SEEDS
• 4 oz. jar of organic baby food. I used sweet potato.
• Herbs- I used 3 teaspoons from my friend Marilu Anderson the Avian Goddess.

• Veggies if you have them. I try to keep organic, no salt added frozen veggies around. Peas and beans too!

In a glass bowl add the Kashi, 2 tablespoons of water and the baby food. Microwave for a minute and a half. Stir well. Add 3 teaspoons of herbs. Stir well and refrigerate.After 30 minutes or so the liquid will be absorbed and the meal ready to serve.

I gave this to the kids cold and got a tails up from everyone. Everyone gets a heaping teaspoon. More for the bigger birds depending on what is left over the first time around.

Serve as your birds like it!

Yard Work

Well I set my timer for 15 minutes. I started with the area around the front door. Looks better now. I saw a black fuzzy spider with a yellow dot on his bum. I went to get the camera to take a picture and he is gone. Scary!




The potted peony from John's grandma is blooming. Looks great and smells good too. The peony tree looks good and is still growing but there are not any blooms yet.


We have half the strawberry plants as last year but are getting plenty for us and the birds. We have been eating them daily.
Yum!

Now I am going to work on the area around the mail box. It is looking pretty shabby. I hope I don't see that spider again!

OHS Visit

Well I went to OHS. Have not been for over a week.

Last weekend John got in a bike accident so I have been taking him and picking him up from work. Don't worry, he is ok!

I am also still sad that a little bird I hoped to adopt went back to his home.
Today there were four little budgies. I gave them two toys each. One just of beads and one with chewable wood. (Thank you Ellen!) I played with the rats too! It was fun. One was very curious about the toys that I was giving the birds. They were nice and did not bite.

Now I am back, checking email, drinking coffee and enjoying a muffin.

Next on the agenda today is to visit the First Friday Uptown Fair/ Craft Uprising. Still not sure what exactly they are calling it.

Then I will be off to visit the First Friday Art Walk a little further down town. I am taking my umbrella and hopping on the bus and walking. I might take a camera if I can find one...

Click here to read an article from the Vancouver Voice about the first Uptown Fair



Click here to visit Ellen's Payroll and Bookkeeping Service. She is the one who donates toys for me to take to OHS.

I plan to give lots of linky love to all the local businesses that I use and love.

Christa

Friday Funnies

moar funny pictures


see more Lolcats and funny pictures

Lost parrot may be too scared to squawk, couple say

This is the bird I have been try to help them find. We have posted flyer's all over.
Here is the article in today's newspaper:

Paul and Diana Carter love their macaw so much that they had her DNA analyzed to see if she was male or female so she’d get an appropriate name.

The green yellow-collared mini-macaw, hatched in Georgia, ended up being called Savannah.

The Vancouver residents paid about $1,500 for her more than two years ago, and lavished her with affection as if she were a child.

“She was hatched on my wife’s birthday,” said Paul Carter, a truck driver. “So that makes her more special.”

“She’s a sweet bird,” said Diana Carter, a schoolteacher. “She’s our baby. She loves to wrestle and play. She plays peekaboo with me. When you say, ‘Who wants a peanut?’ she squawks because she wants the peanut.”

The Carters’ haven’t heard those squawks for a while.

On April 19, a Sunday, Diana Carter stepped out her front door in the Burnt Bridge Creek neighborhood with Savannah on a little leash.

Something startled the parrot and she slipped the leash and flew into a nearby tree.

“We tried to coax her down,” the husband said.

“She was calling to us from the tree,” Diana Carter said. “She said, ‘Ma’ and ‘Step up.’ She doesn’t know how to fly down from really tall heights. She’s never been flying outside before.”

Savannah is trained to say “Step up” when she wants to perch on her owners’ fingers.

As the Carters watched over the next few days, the bird stayed in trees nearby.

“She was staying around our home and trying to get to us,” the wife said. “She’d call and try to get down. We called to her and tried to get her home with peanuts and gourmet popcorn.”

But on Wednesday, the wind picked up and Savannah was gone with it.

Fearing that Savannah is exhausted, dehydrated and sick, or might be found and sold who knows where, the couple swung into action. They notified the local Humane Society, veterinarians and pet stores.

The Carters and Christopher Driggins with N.W. Bird Rescue posted fliers in the Hearthwood area and others nearby, but some were quickly taken down by unknown persons, they said.

Finders keepers?

Thursday, Paul Carter took a flier into a pet store in Cascade Park. He said clerks looked at Savannah’s photo on the flier and said a woman had stopped by about an hour earlier, saying her son had found such a bird.

Paul Carter said he was told the woman bought a magazine about caring for parrots and left, saying the bird had landed in her yard, that her son found it and that he was attached to it.

On Sunday, April 26, after the Carters contacted Vancouver police, an officer obtained the woman’s name and address from the store and went to her home in the Countryside Woods neighborhood, according to public records.

The officer later reported that the woman told him her daughter in Florida had found such a macaw, and was trying to care for it, so the mother bought a magazine to help her daughter.

The woman allowed the officer to look inside her home, but no bird was found.

The Carters said they suspect the woman knows where Savannah is. They said Savannah might be too scared to speak or squawk, especially if the woman has dogs.

Friday evening, Driggins went to the woman’s home with three volunteers: Tracy Nichols, owner of the Love Your Pet store in Orchards; Dorothy Krout, 90, a volunteer and supporter of N.W. Bird Rescue; and Christa Kangas, a local representative with www.911parrotalert.com, a Web site featuring lost birds.

“While they were gone I prayed and read verses and sang praises and kept praying and waiting,” Diana Carter said.

After Driggins knocked and rang the doorbell a few times, the woman came to the door and said she didn’t have the parrot.

Driggins said he left his business cards with the woman and told her he’s offering a large cash reward and a more valuable bird to anyone who finds Savannah alive and returns her to the Carters. The couple have several ways of identifying their bird.

Anyone who finds Savannah, or knows where she is, is asked to call Driggins at 360-BIRDMAN or 503-BIRDMAN.

John Branton: 360-735-4513 or john.branton@columbian.com

http://columbian.com/article/20090503/NEWS02/705039959/-1/NEWS

Chicks flying out the coops as Portlanders flock to suppliers

The chirping of 70 of the cutest, fluffiest chicks you ever saw filled Pistils Nursery last Tuesday. Customers in the store on Northeast Mississippi Avenue took turns cooing over the newborn birds.

Two days later, the store was quiet again. All of the chicks had been sold.

The slow economy has egged on Portlanders' already strong do-it-yourself mentality and created an unprecedented demand for chickens, as more urbanites discover the benefits of companion animals that produce free breakfast.

More about chickens

Before you rush out and set up that coop, check with your city on what regulations it has about keeping chickens. Here are some.

Portland: You can keep up to three hens without a permit as long as they live in sanitary conditions and don't cause obnoxious smells. Permits for more hens are $30; adequate facilities are required.

Vancouver: You can keep as many hens as you like as long as they are healthy and safe and don't cause odor. No eggs can be sold without a permit.

Beaverton: Chickens are prohibited except as pets inside the house.

Hillsboro: Chickens are prohibited with this exception: You may apply for a permit if you live on a single-family one-acre lot along the floodplain or at the city's outer edges. The city is reviewing this policy; changes are not expected before 2010.

Information about raising chickens: TheCityChicken.com

Information about chicken breeds: The ICYouSee Handy-Dandy Chicken Charts

Pistils sold about 600 chicks last year, said manager Mandie Rose. This year, they're selling about twice as fast.

Read the rest

Full of Beans

Full of Beans, originally uploaded by John Martz.

I just love this picture!

10 Things to Enrich Your Parrot's Life

Here is a list of things that you can do to help enrich your parrot's life. Just pick one! I would love to hear what other ideas are out there.
Looking forward to hearing from you.
Christa

Click HERE to read

Not Another V Stitch Scarf

Mom's birthday party was on Saturday. I needed something great to make her besides the two dishcloths already done.


I decided that a nice lacey scarf would do the trick. In a wonderful red color. I am sure that many others have done scarves just like this so it is not technically original. Don't want to step on anyones toes!



I used two hanks of Sport Weight Baby Alpaca from Blue Sky color number 511 and a J or 6MM crochet hook.
V stitch is so easy: 2 dc, chain 1, 2dc in same stitch

I chained 16 and got two borders and 3 v's in the middle.
When turning do not chain, just turn and start your v stitch pattern all over. This creates a nice scalloped edge on both sides.

When I was done I soaked it in luke warm tap water with Eucalan for 15 min, rolled it out with a towel and blocked.

Finished size after blocking was 6 inches wide and 72 inches long.

This would also look great as a set of three v's or four.
For three you need to chain only 10. That would make the ultimate quick, skinny, and lacey scarf.
For 4 chain 13.

Links that Inspired

http://www.woolcrafting.com/v-stitch-crochet-pattern.html
http://www.monkeysee.com/play/10399-crochet-v-stitches
http://crochet.about.com/b/2005/06/28/v-stitch-how-to-and-beginner-crochet-pattern.htm
http://suzies-yarnie-stuff.blogspot.com/2008/06/v-stitch-cell-phone-pouch-c.html

Smokey's News Story

This is the story that ran Wednesday after Smokey went home.
Christa

OHS Macaws need homes!

Please take a look at Lou and Bonnie.
They are in need of forever homes.

Click here to read about Bonnie:
http://www.oregonhumane.org/adopt/detail.asp?animalID=69433

Click here to read about Lou:
http://www.oregonhumane.org/adopt/detail.asp?animalID=66109




Have a great day!
Christa

Crochet Flower Class at StitchCraft!

Here are a couple of the leaves we will be making in the Crochet Flower class coming up on the 17th. Check out the StitchCraft site.

These are made from Lambs Pride. The first one is a lacy leaf and the second a fern.
I am now making up some shop samples. Check back for more pictures of leaves and the flowers!
Christa



And the rose leaf. This can be done like the fern with multiple leaves.

John and I in Hawaii

John and I in Hawaii, originally uploaded by ashbirdlady.

Our cruise photo