I'm a wife, stay-at-home mom, crafter, and blogger living in rural New England. As seen in Martha Stewart Living, Food Network Magazine, and more! | Tutorials, DIY, crafts, parenting tips, recipes, money saving tips, product reviews, local product features, New England living, intentional living, and more! |
As you probably know already, I love supporting local makers and buisnesses so I thought it was time to make a group board on Pinterest to support New England Made Products. This board will be a collaboration where New England-based crafters and small buisnesses can share their beautiful goods.
If you're interested in joining please give me a follow on Pinterest and send a message requesting to join the group board.
As of right now there's just my items on the board, but I can't wait to get more collaborators and see more beautiful New England-made products on here too!
Our little one made this Paper Pizza at story time at the public library the other day and I thought it was so cute I wanted to show you all. The story time lady read several pizza-related stories and then had the kids make their own paper pizzas to bring home. The kids really enjoyed this project and I think it would make a great activity for a pizza-themed kids' party.
They gave the kids paper plates and a brown crayon to color the "crust" (our daughter skipped this part), then a paper red circle "tomato sauce" to glue down, shredded yellow paper "cheese", as well as paper mushrooms, pepperonis, and meatballs. After the pizzas were done, the kids took them home in actual pizza boxes which was the perfect finishing touch to the project. These brand new boxes had been bought ahead of time at the local pizza shop for a few cents each.
I don't remember the actual books she read before the project, but I've linked some cute-looking pizza stories here (affiliate links):
Instagram just announced that they'll be showing most popular posts first in their feed (read more about it here) - which means everyone will be more likely to miss posts from little guys, like us. I understand that for the user this may be nice so they don't miss popular posts, but for small businesses this really hurts. Instagram is how I get most of my traffic and to know that I'll be lost under Kim Kardashian and big retailer posts really stinks.
How to Preserve Your Following with Instagram's New Feed Changes
For us small businesses that rely on Instagram exposure, this hurts. But one way to help preserve your following is to ask your followers to "Turn on Post Notifications". This way they will get a little notification whenever you create a new post and they won't miss seeing your content with this new algorithm. You can also encourage them to follow you on other social platforms as well (Facebook, Pinterest, Bloglovin', Twitter, etc) so you have more chances to reach your audience.
I'm sure paying for promoted posts will be the next change coming to Instagram, just like Facebook and Pinterest have done. I understand it's lucrative for them to make these changes, but as a small business owner it really stinks because I can't afford to pay for consistent advertising.
I'm hoping that Instagram will eventually give you the option to at least change the filter of your feed like Facebook does (you can toggle between "Top Stories" and "Most Recent" - but it always defaults to "Top Stories"), but who knows. Like all other small businesses, I'm really hoping that we don't get completely lost in this change.
Please don't forget to Turn on Post Notifications for me at @birchlandinghome and follow me on the other social platforms linked below. Thank you so much!
I've just dropped off another order of our handmade ornaments to The Straw Cellar in Wolfeboro, NH! Even though it's not Christmas-season, it's always a great time to get ahead on gifts and our ornaments are now again in-stock there.
While you're at The Straw Cellar, don't forget to check out all the other wonderful New England-made goods they carry!
Last year we started keeping backyard chickens and they've become a really fun and important addition to our family. We love the fresh eggs we get everyday and our toddler thinks the chickens are super fun. Since she's become so fond of our six Rhode Island Red hens, I thought we'd make her Easter basket chicken-themed this year! Now to just wait until Easter.. | This post contains affiliate links |
Two of "the girls."
We have six Rhode Island Red hens (two of them pictured here), so I tried to find chicken-related items that looked like our girls. Most of the items I found can be purchased through Amazon, but you may also have luck finding similar things at your local store. (Amazon also had other chicken breeds too in case you were looking to find something that looked more like ones you have at home.)
I think creating an animal-themed Easter basket can be a really fun and engaging idea, and could easily be done to reflect whatever animal(s) you might have at home - dogs, cats, horses, fish, etc.
Here are the items I chose for our Chicken-Themed Easter Basket:
Chicken Stuffed Animal - Our little one is going to LOVE this stuffed chicken! It's about the same size and color as our Rhode Island Red hens. Amazon also has stuffed animals of several other breeds of chickens as well.
Easter Eggsfilled with mini M&Ms - Plastic Easter eggs is a given, just simply fill with your little one's favorite candy.
Marshmallow Peeps - Baby chicks for the mama hen! (I included these Marshmallow Peeps in this post as an example, but I actually won't be giving them to our daughter - I don't feel as though she's old enough to eat them just yet.)
St. Patricks's Day is coming up and you need a to have a good Irish meal to celebrate - everybody is Irish on St. Patrick's Day afterall! "Bangers and Mash" (sausage and mashed potatoes) is one of my favorite Irish-inspired meals to make because it's easy and quicker than making corned beef and cabbage. And really - you just can't go wrong with sausage and potatoes!
Bangers + Mash
Total time 50 mins | Serves the whole clan!
Ingredients
sausages, at least 2 per person (I believe it's traditionally supposed to be a sage-y sausage, but our local grocery store doesn't carry those - so I went with Sweet Italian)
potatoes for mashing, my rule of thumb is at least 1.5 potatoes per person when figuring out how many to buy
sweet onion
butter
milk
head of cabbage
sage
salt + pepper to taste
Directions
Wash, peel, and chop potatoes. Set them aside in a pot of salted water to boil.
Pan fry sausages and onion until cooked through. Season with salt, pepper, and sage to taste towards the end of it's cooking.
Chop some fresh cabbage and gently boil until wilted (just a few minutes).
Once the potatoes are soft, drain them and mash with butter and milk until it's to your liking (feel free to also season with salt and pepper to taste).
Serve! We like the sausages and onions on top of our mashed potatoes and the cabbage on the side.
Today was my first time going to IKEA and let me tell you, it was ah-mazing!
We live about 3 hours away from the nearest IKEA, and that's probably a good thing because I liked way too many of the things they have there. What blew me away most was how beautiful, sturdy, and reasonably-priced the furniture was.
We left with "big girl" furniture for our daughter's new room since she'll be transitioning out of her crib soon (eek) and moving into what was my craft room. We got her the small Hemnes dresser and Hemnes twin bed (full review and room makeover will be on the blog soon). And since my craft room will become her room, we decided to bite the bullet and get the Hemnes sideboard to hold all my displaced craft supplies. I just loved the Hemnes line from IKEA, can't you tell? We also picked up a cute (and cheap!) wooden train set for her.
I was expecting IKEA to be a lot of modern furniture and accessories, but I was pleasantly surprised to see they had a lot of great "farmhouse-inspired" pieces that fit with our New England style.
I should have taken more pictures for the blog while we were there, but I was just too busy browsing and shopping! ;)
