Cricut Tips For Ipad & Iphone Users

Disclaimer - I do not use apple devices.  
 Because a lot of you use ipads and iphones, I have done my best to compile answers to common questions from sites that know more about these devices than I do.

I've sorted these into sections - Fonts, Svgs, & General Tips & Tutorials For Apple Users

 Fonts:

How To Install Fonts On A Mac

https://www.craftaholicsanonymous.net/how-to-install-fonts-on-a-mac

https://www.creativecuttingclassroom.com/blogpost/add-fonts-ipad-use-design-space

SVGS:

How To Download, Unzip, And Save, SVGS On an Iphone - From SVG Cuts

https://svgcuts.com/blog/2019/04/29/how-to-download-save-unzip-svg-files-using-an-iphone/

https://www.redearthandgumtrees.com/how-to-open-a-zipfile-on-an-iphone-or-ipad-without-the-need-of-dropbox-or-laptop-or-computer/how-to-open-a-zip-file-on-an-iphone-ipad-without-the-need-of-dropbox-or-a-computer-or-laptop

How to Upload SVGS With Iphones & Ipads

https://svgandme.com/upload-svgs-iphone/

General Tips & Tutorials:

How to use Cricut Design Space on your Ipad & Phone – Full Tutorial(includes a section on Snapmat)

https://daydreamintoreality.com/cricut-design-space-app-tutorial-ipad-iphone/

http://inspiration.cricut.com/cricut-design-space-ios-app/


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https://fieldsofhether.blogspot.com/2019/02/an-index-of-cricut-resources-how-tos.html

Skipping The Egg, Milk & Cheese Run - 15 Practical Things To Do Before The Storm Comes

Because we live in a rural area, with a lot of trees, winter storms frequently leave us without electricity. And when our power goes out, we are not at the top of the priority list.  Which is as it should be - get the power lines fixed for the hospitals and nursing homes first - most of our neighbors are Amish or have generators, we can all wait.  Over the years, I've learned a few tricks to make weathering the storm a bit easier.

15 Things To Do Before The Power Goes Out:

1. Fill extra containers with water - drink pitchers in the kitchen, 5 gallon buckets in the bathrooms.  I'm generally adverse to plastic water bottles, but I will usually buy a case to keep on hand - great for brushing our teeth, etc. 
2. Charge all of the cell phone battery packs, and keep cell phones plugged in as much as possible while we still have power. (Tip - Watch TJ Maxx for the battery packs, sometimes they are really cheap there!)
3. Use plastic window insulation kits  - to cut down on drafts before we lose heat. (Ideally I do this in December, but often I don't get to it until I'm worried about  the temps dropping really low, in January or February.)  
4. Turn the temp up a few degrees - so if we lose heat, the house is already warm (we typically keep the house fairly cool)
5. Bring a cooler into the laundry room - to store frequently used items & keep from opening the refrigerator door if the power is out.
6. Make sure the grill is close to the front door (protected on the porch) and that we have propane.  We also have a camp stove (the portable kind made for camping trips) that I like to keep handy and prepped - we can use that in the kitchen if it's too blustery to be outside.
7. Cook up a few quick foods that we can eat cold, or heat up easily on the grill or over a campfire.  (Suggestions below)  If you live in town a campfire in your yard is probably not normal - but here it's very normal, and as long as the snow is not too deep or too windy, it's another method for cooking food.
8. Before bed, open up all the closets & cabinets that hold pipes - Under the kitchen sink, the bathroom closet, etc.
9. Check all of the oil lamps, make sure the wicks are trimmed and they have plenty of oil.  We lose power frequently enough that I started collecting pretty, and unique, oil lamps at thrift stores and flea markets, and incorporating them into our decor. 
10. Place flashlights and lighters (for the oil lamps) in the nightstands, and in the living room side table.  I usually pick up a pack of cigarette lighters and stash them around the house.  
11. Check your battery supply.  What batteries do your flashlights use?  Do you have extras?  Battery operated candles - do you have extra batteries for those as well? 
12. Battery operated candles are fantastic for "nightlights" around the house when the power is out.  
13. Make sure all of the laundry is caught up.  We'll go through a lot of extra towels when things thaw out and the dogs are wet and the washer throws water on the floor because the  drain wasn't completely thawed when I tried to use it when the power comes back..  If I think of it a week before a storm, I like to wash the throw blankets in the wash  so they are all fresh and fluffy and smell good.  My washer is also the first thing to freeze and the last thing we thaw - so having the laundry caught up helps.
14. Fill the extra gas cans in the garage.   We've never actually needed extra gas during a storm  - but in theory, if the power was out long enough, we could use the cars for heat and to power the cell phones back up....  This is one of those things that I just think needs done, for no real logical reason. 
15. Stock up on books & games.  As avid readers, this might just be an excuse..  but we download extra ebooks before the storm, and I keep a stack of "real" books on hand in case we need to save power.   We also have a bookshelf full of board games and packs of playing cards - our family plays a lot of cards and games normally, but it's nice to have everything handy when we're stuck inside with "nothing to do".  (Suggestions for our favorites, below)

My storm prep shopping list:

1. Peanut butter
2. Batteries 
3. Lighters & matches
4. Clorox wipes (for quick clean up  - when you have a well pump, if there is no power, you have no water)
5. A case of water

Food Prep

When you are eating cake and playing cards around an oil lamp, not having power doesn't seem all that terrible...

• Peanut Butter is the perfect storm food.  Peanut butter on crackers, PB&J sandwiches..
• Eggs - hard boiled... and quiche can be served hot or cold.  Don't think of a quiche as "fancy" - load it with maple sausage, mushrooms, onion & cheese..  or make one with salsa & diced chicken.. the combinations are endless.  It's a farm staple when the hens are all laying, here.  Hard boiled eggs can be made into deviled eggs, or into egg salad.  Clafoutis is another favorite here- a crustless custard made with eggs, yogurt, and fruit.
• Baked goods.  If you have time, this is a great time to bake a couple of loaves of bread, a cake, and some cookies.  When you are eating cake and playing cards around an oil lamp, not having power doesn't seem all that terrible...  If you don't bake, pick up a few extra treats when grocery shopping.  Consider stocking up on your families favorite candies, and put them in the back of the pantry in a box saved storms.
• Soup.  I usually fill a crock pot with soup before a storm.  It will keep warm in the crock pot for awhile if the power goes out, but it is also easy to warm up on the grill or over a campfire.  And it's a no fuss meal when we come in from the last minute farm chores before the storm hits, even if the power is still on.  
• Think about picking up a cheap french press coffee maker and learning how to use it.  You can heat hot water on the grill, and still have coffee!

Some Of Our Favorite Card  Games:

• Five Crowns
• Phase 10
• Skip BO
• Rummy - How to Play
• Kings In the Corner - How To Play
• 
  

Misc:

https://amzn.to/3nr8Juu

In our car we have an adapter originally meant to run laptop computers from a cigarette lighter.  Mine is a lot older, but it's the same concept.  This will run a crock pot.  So if you want to leave your car running for awhile, you could, theoretically, warm up a meal.  That is not why I bought ours - I bought it way back when it was actually handy to charge my laptop on trips.. and then I discovered that I could take meals, like bbq, to the kids sports practices with the crockpot keeping everything warm while I was driving.  

These are another item that I love - oil filled electric radiators.  We have them in the bedrooms here, because our furnace struggles to adequately heat a couple of the rooms in  this old house.  Because they are oil filled, they stay warm for awhile after the power goes out.  

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The Grass Is Always Greener... In The Pasture With Nothing In It

Tia & a few of the goats, checking to see if I opened the gate back up yet.

Yesterday, at my suggestion, Dan put a gate between the goat pen and the front pasture. The idea is that in the morning I can open the gate, the goats can go out to the front pasture to eat the abundance of grass there, and then in the afternoon when I feed them they will go back to their pen.

This is because we only have one cow currently. One lonely cow on 10 acres of pasture. And an abundance of goats, and a llama, in a very adequate, but much smaller, area. So we basically have 10 acres of free goat food, just out of reach of the goats.

Lets install a gate, and give the goats access to all of that free grass! What a great idea!

Day One: I open the gate, pet the baby goats, assure Tia the llama that it's safe, and watch them all happily munching on the grass in the front pasture. YAY! Success! This was such a great idea! I go back to the house and sit down with my laptop to work on a writing project.

Day One, 15 minutes later:
Piper, Meg's goat, trots purposefully past the living room window, straight to the feed barrel, and carefully opens the lid to eat straight from the barrel. Our backyard is not part of any pen or pasture. Neither is the driveway she walked in from.

I laugh, and head out to put her back in the pen. Piper's the oldest goat here, and a bit spoiled. She was originally raised in the house with diapers, bottle fed... and we've always left her choose her own pen, fences have never slowed her down much.

First I put the lid back on the grain, then I watched her easily open the lid once again while I was trying to unlatch the back gate.

Ok, so that's a TINY bit annoying. She can open that barrel in seconds, while it takes me no less than five minutes and three broken fingernails.

But she is pretty easy to work with, and I convinced her to go back in the pen, after putting some of the grain in the feeder for her.

A few more goats... and see how short the grass is here?

Day One, 25 minutes later:
Then I thought I had better check on the others, to make sure Piper had escaped through the fence, and not because a pasture gate was open.

As I walk out front, the first thing I see is the big billy goat in the calf feed barrel. This boy has a HUGE rack of horns, so this is physically impossible. The barrel is not that large. His horns have to be at least 4 feet across. He's a large Kiko billy. And yet, somehow he managed. He's also pretty tame (all of our goats are, for the most part) so when I hollered at him he went running... which scared the row of baby goats that were wandering down the lane.

In case it's not obvious, the lane is not inside the fence either.

This upset some of the mom goats, who then came through the pasture fence to the babies. And it got the attention of two more goats, who realized Horton the billy goat was no longer in the feed barrel, leaving it free for them to try.

So now the pasture has approximately 3 goats, one Scottish Highland cow, and, thank God, one llama. I'm not sure what I'd have done if Tia was loose.

I chase the goats out of the feed, lock the lid down tight, and head to the back yard, where I fill the goat feeders. I bang on the feeders and call... no response. I walk out front, and several are gathered around the feed barrel, working together to try to open it. Monsters.

Finally Sandy, who is not the oldest but is definitely Queen Goat, notices me holding a feed scoop and comes running to me. All of the others, including the llama, follow. Several jump on me and wrap around my legs as I walk. I feel like a master goat herder, if goat herders are supposed to look ridiculous and have no control over the goats.

As the goats finally notice the grain in their feeders, I head back to close the gate between the two pens... and Hilda, the very not tame scottish highlander cow meanders into the goat pen.

Day One, an Hour Later:
I could not convince Hilda that the grass truly is greener (SO much greener. Taller. And so much more of it.) on her side of the fence, so for now she's a goat. I did spend the next 20 minutes trying to get her to eat out of my hand... but she wasn't interested in getting that close.

To recap, after Dan spent a great deal of time installing a new gate so that the goats would have more grass to eat, I now have a cow, a llama, and a turkey in the goat pen with the goat, and I have 10 acres of completely empty pasture. (Did I mention the turkey? He didn't get in the way too much today, just followed along wondering what on earth I was doing, and taking advantage of the goat feeders being full with no goats around.)

Well that worked out about as well as most of my farm ideas.

But I got to pet Tia the llama, and I think Hilda the cow got a foot closer to me than ever before. I'm counting these as accomplishments, and hoping Dan still finds me amusing.... I had probably bake something, just to be sure.

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Day One - Lunch Time
I go to make myself lunch, look out the window and Tia is GLARING at the gate, ears back. So I go open it for her. There's still a cow in the goat pen, but now the pasture at least has a llama happily munching on it's abundant grass.

Read More About Our Life On The Farm

https://fieldsofhether.blogspot.com/p/our-farm.html

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All About Sweet Corn Season...

This year, more than any other, we've had a lot of questions about the sweet corn.  I thought I'd try to answer them all here in one spot, for my reference as much as anyone else.  :-)

What Is The Difference Between Yellow & Bicolor?

We plant two variety of seed - a yellow, appropriately named "Incredible", and a bicolor, which is usually refereed to as Butter and Sugar.  Both of these seeds are non GMO.

Dan's family has been planting the Incredible brand for may years, and we have planted it every year since we've moved here in 2004.  It is hands down my favorite. 

The Butter and Sugar is expensive to plant.  The seed is very expensive, the corn is often buggier, and it just doesn't grow as well, so it is sometimes more limited in availability.  The bi-color that we plant is a triple sweet variety called Serendipity.

We typically sell by the 100, although we will do "special orders" for less.  In past years, it was about 100 ears that fit in one feed bag.  This year we have smaller feed bags, we've been buying our feed from Norms Farm Store, and his bags are smaller.  So this year it's 50 ears in each bag, which is really much easier to lift into vehicles anyway.  Yes, we will sell 50 yellow and 50 butter and sugar as 100 ears - we do that any time we are asked, as long as both are ready at the same time.

When Will It Be Ready?
In 2017 we planted very late, because it was such a wet spring.  We found that our customers really liked having sweet corn later in the year, after their summer vacations, with some still fresh for labor day.  So now we always try to have it come on in August, and September.  I so wish there were concrete dates I could put on a calendar to plan weeks ahead - but it will all depend on the weather each year. 

 Once it is ready, we usually have sweet corn for weeks.

We try to stagger the planting so that it does not all come on at once.  This year the yellow was ready one week before the butter and sugar.  Usually it comes on for about two weeks once it starts..  so this year it was a week of yellow, a week of yellow and butter and sugar, and then a week of butter and sugar, allowing us to  have corn available for three weeks.  That varies each year, depending on the weather.  We've had years where we planted the two varieties weeks apart, and yet it all came on at the exact same time.  Unfortunately, we can't guarantee corn will be ready the day you have free to do it.

How Much Corn Is 100 Ears?

How many quarts can you get from 100 ears?  Oh, that depends.  How much are you putting in each bag?  I usually use a 1/2 cup scoop and put 4 heaping scoops in each bag.  It works out to roughly 3 cups in each bag.  Most people fill them a bit fuller and have closer to 4 cups per a bag.

Then it will depend on how full the ears are.  It is smaller early on, and sweeter, then gets a little bit tougher as it fills out...

I think a safe rule of thumb is 25 qts per 100 ears.  But that number is going to vary greatly depending on how full you fill your bags, and how full the ears are.

For reference I did 28 ears of yellow yesterday, and got 9 quarts of corn.  Tonight I did 30 ears of butter and sugar, and I got 7 quarts of corn.  Those bags were all about 3 cups each.

When Do I Order?
We pick the corn fresh each morning.  Freshly picked, sweet corn is high in sugar and low in starch. The longer it sits, the starchier it gets.  A day or two usually does not make much difference at all - but a week or so definitely will.  For me, myself, I don't let it sit more than 48 hours - the fresher the better.  After  awhile, not only will it not be as sweet, it may start to get a chalky taste.  This is one of the reasons why the sweet corn you freeze each year will be SO much better than what you buy in the freezer section of your grocery store. You can order as far in advance as you want (once we announce when it is expected to be ready) but we do not pick more than that days orders... so if you call at 9am, we may not be able to get back out to pick more until the next morning.  It depends on the day - sometimes we have time to go back out, but your best bet is to make sure we have your order before 6:30am - so the night before, typically.

Molly, after picking sweet corn.  

How Long Do I Cook It?
We do not husk the corn for you - it will come in the husk.  When you get it home, you will first husk it, then silk it.  I put the corn in a sink of cold water and run a vegetable brush over it quickly to remove the silk.  (Note - the butter and sugar also seems to have a lot more silk than the Incredible... another reason I prefer the yellow).  While you are husking you can start the water boiling on the stove.  I use my canner, but any large pan will do - even a dutch oven.  You want the water  to be at a good rolling boil, then place a few ears at a time in to cook.  Cooking recommendations are 3-5 minutes.  It will depend on how full your pan is...  basically you want the corn cooked all the way through, the ears should be good and hot.  Then you can drop them into a sink of ice water, so they are cool enough to handle to remove the corn.  You can then slice the corn off with a knife, or use a variety of gadgets.  I LOVE the pampered chef tool, and recommend it if you are doing a lot of corn.  It is SO fast and easy to use.

Why Did My Sweet Corn Go Sour?
Once you have your corn bagged, lay it out in thin piles to freeze it.  If you pile all the bags into one high stack, you run the risk of the center bags going sour.  I'm sure there is some science behind this, but I don't know exactly what it is off hand...  I just know it happened to me when I did 300 ears years ago, and my mother in law said it had happened to her once too.  I usually make sure the corn is good and cool on the counter before putting it in the freezer too.

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https://fieldsofhether.blogspot.com/p/recipes.html

And We Are Bottle Feeding Babies... Goats that is!

Meet Tom & Gerry.  Three times a day I lean out the back door and holler "bottles!" and they come running up the back porch.. so they might think their name is bottles.  LOL!

Tom is an orphan.  One of our nannies gave birth to him, and then a stillborn baby after him.  We moved her up beside the house just to keep an eye on her, and less than two days later she was dead.  We do not know why.  She didn't have any signs of being ill.  

So Tom lives in the pen beside the house currently, all by himself.  Although he has lots of visitors.  

And he can squeeze through the fencing still, so he often can be found playing in the back yard with the triplets.

Patty had triplets this year.  Just to be sure they were all getting enough to eat, we moved them back to the pen in the back yard, the "calf pen".  I'm glad we did.  We came home from church one Sunday to find one of the babies beside the backyard pond, being guarded by Jet (one of our big dogs).  She was soaking wet.  We assume she fell in the shallow pond and got back out..  but after we dried her off, it was obvious she was not getting enough to eat, so she gets a bottle 3x a day along with Tom.

Being carried in for a feeding during the Blizzard of 2017

One Of These Things Is Not Like The Other

Dan sent me this photo this morning, with a note that all is well with the babies in the front pasture. Lol! Yes, that IS a chicken

Around The Farm This Week - May 6th (Building A Goat Playground)

This week we built a goat playground.

The baby goats LOVE it, and play, and sleep, on this most of the day.

I get a lot less done each day - because I spend so much time just watching them play.  :-)

The babies are starting to eat grass now too.

We moved all the goats that are not moms out of this pen.  Horton escaped the pen we put him in, and has been happily living with the horses in their pen.  Piper, who is still pregnant, is in the dog pen on the side of the house (where we have moved all the new moms when they first give birth, to keep an eye on them this year)

Dan and Matt used the skid loader to clean up around the hay troughs and smooth down the ground in a few areas where we had bad ruts - it looks so much better.

We also moved the ducks and chicks out of the garage.  We put them in the back of the goat pen, in a dog kennel, with a pen that has a heat lamp in case they needed it on colder nights.  That lasted for a day.  Then they figured out they could escape the dog kennel and roam the goat pen.  On Day 3 they were wandering around my backyard, and today they are in the peacock pen - they let themselves in and seem happy in there.  At night they appear to go back to their own pen, inside the dog kennel, all by themselves. 

 This week they discovered the little pond in my backyard flower beds, and they love it.  :-)

Dan blocked off part of the chicken coop run, and has put seed down.  I've been watering it, but it has not even sprouted yet.  :-(

I'm REALLY glad I put in a lot of perennials last year.  It's nice to see the rhubarb flourishing, and flowers like the bleeding heart pop up and bloom even though I haven't done a single thing in any of the gardens or flower beds yet this year.  I'm planning to look for plants and bushes at the flea markets on Sunday morning, then I will visit a couple of local markets and greenhouses to fill in some more

The pig pen is ready - but we haven't found pigs at the right price yet.

Around The Farm April 24 2015

So much for my intentions of updating every week.  :-)  It gets BUSY here in the spring! (everything in italics is copied from facebook posts)

We have babies!

Addie had a baby boy yesterday - leaving us with just one pregnant goat (Piper) left this spring. We have 10 baby goats right now - 6 girls, 4 boys.

 

At BSF this week some of the women asked how many baby goats we have now, & I told them I expected more by the time I got home today. Sure enough, another set of boy girl twins. Any time we have a storm come through, if we have goats close to giving birth they usually have babies then. I think it has something to do with the air pressure change. I don't know what it is exactly, but I do know we have had babies born with every storm in the past week

 

We got a llama!!

Statements normal people probably do not utter - "I'm running late, I can either feed you guys or feed the llama, I don't have time for both." (I made supper, Dan fed the llama)

We've been looking for a llama for awhile now. We've had a few others watching for us too - we wanted a really friendly one.  You can't get more friendly than Barnaby!  He comes running when we drive up the lane, and waits at the fence for us to come pet and fuss over him.  He's super, super soft too. 

Meet Peabody the 2nd

I found a gorgeous, older, peacock at the Middleburg livestock auction today, & was prepared to pay a ridiculous amount of money for him. I won't even tell you how much - just know it was a truly ridiculous amount. (I don't care for jewelry, I'd rather have livestock & amusing poultry) And yet I was still outbid. The kicker? After they outbid me, they commented that they didn't know where they were going to put him, they guessed they would have to move some chickens. I have a backyard landscaped around a zoo sized peacock pen, and a female peahen here - but they spent all that money and don't even know where they are going to put him. Life is so not fair.

Then a few hours later:

So Dan found me peacocks. smile emoticon I'm going with "because he really loves me", but it may be that he found out what I almost spent today & decided to make sure that didn't happen again.

And

He rode home in the car, on my lap, because it was how I thought he would be safest. We passed a truck driver, and I think he almost wrecked his truck after he looked down into our car... Peabody on my lap, tail over the console and back across the folded down back seats...My life is just plain weird. But it's never, ever, dull. (Sometimes I pray for a little dull. Just a little.)

I went to Middleburg this week - 

Every Tuesday there is a livestock auction in Middleburg.  They have the largest weekly poultry sale that I am aware of, in this area.  I went looking for a peacock, guineas, and silkies.  I came home with Lavendar Guineas, and a silkie with 6 babies.  

I had forgotten how noisy guineas are.  :-)

(We have 5 of them - at least one is a girl)

The Cows

We're down to just the three cows (2 steers and 1 cow technically) - we sold those black ones that we simply could not keep fenced.  They were angus limousine cross, which apparently is one of the worst breeds - VERY high strung.  The one almost broke a wall, and the auctioneer hid from her, at the sale.  I'm so relieved they are gone!

 This cow isn't ours - it belongs to our neighbors.  I love her.  Dan won't let me have longhorns, and I've never seen another breed with this coloring.


Dan and the boys took down the fence on the center island here, and rebuilt it.  It looks so much nicer!

Right now we have the billy goat in there, along with the goats that are not pregnant this year.  That freed up the goat pasture for just the moms & babies.

Garden - 
I haven't planted a single thing yet this year.  Not so much as an onion.  I'm kind of glad I didn't - we had a hard freeze last night.  Because I'm so far behind, I didn't have to cover anything.  :-)  I'll try to have the beds all planted and nice looking for the Skeet Shoot here on May 9th.

I know you are all very upset over this cold weather, but I'm over here going "yay! It's ok that my garden isn't in & I haven't planted any flowers!" smile emoticon I'm looking forward to two days of catching up on things inside this house.

All of that tiny green plant all over?  I think that is sweet annie.  It's seeded all through the herb bed, and through a lot of the yard - especially where the mole had dug up around the outside of this herb bed earlier this year.