Frogs for Allison's Class

Allison,

As requested here are some dart frog pictures for you. Two of them are from the Atlanta Botanical Gardens, and the rest are frogs you should recognize my and Aunt Bear's house.

Enjoy,
Uncle Jason



This is a Bumble-Bee Dart Frog (Dendrobates lucomales) photographed at the Atlanta Botanical Gardens.

Above is the bronze spotted form of the Green and Black Dart Frog (Dendrobates auratus). This one is a male; you can tell by the large toe pads on his front feet.

A group of my Green and Blacks at feeding time. This group is of the nominate Panamanian type of the species; which simply means they are the typical type native to Panama.



Here is a video of two Green and Blacks courting. The larger one is the female and she is dancing for the smaller one (the male) as part of their mating behavior. If the male finds the dance acceptable he will lead the female to a spot he has selected for her to lay her eggs. Typical a protected spot in a leaf axle or under a dead leaf.

After the eggs hatch the male takes them on his back and carries the tadpoles to small pools of water. If you look closely you can see a tadpole curled up on the back of this male.

This is a Green and Black tadpole that has sprouted legs. Soon it will lose its tail and crawl out of the water. The light colored areas on its legs are where its green patterning is starting to develop.
This is a Bicolor Dart Frog (Phyllobates bicolor) from a pair I used to keep. In the wild this is one of the most poisonous species of dart frog. Nothing to worry about here though; Dart frogs get their poisons from the insects they eat and this little guys got a diet of non-poisonous fruit flys and springtails. Yummy!

These are two Terrible Dart Frogs (Phyllobates terribilis) photographed at the Atlanta Botanical Gardens. The one in the front is the typicall yellow form and the lighter one in the back is the "mint" form. In the wild these are the most toxic of the dart frogs, and the where the "dart" comes from in dart frog. They are commonly used by native hunters to poison tip the ends of the blow darts they use to hunt with.

Made for baby Rowen

We are almost 35 weeks here. The belly dropped a bit the night before and can be seen in this picture. 
This is what daddy made for the baby. It is a beautiful dresser made of oak and purple heart. 
We are going to use it as a changing table for the first years.

It took us many trips to the hardware stores to pick out the handles. 

Trying to get a nice closeup picture of the purple heart. It is a beautiful wood.

Yep I already put the baby's stuff in the drawers!

What mommy made for the baby. A beautiful crocheted blanket.

Our baby boy

We are 34 weeks and 4 days today and our little boy is 5lbs 10 oz. We had an ultrasound to check on the growth of the baby today and he is doing great measuring 3-4 days ahead of schedule but on track for him. We did not know that we were going to get to see images of him with the new 3D technology. So it was a wonderful surprise when she flipped screens and showed us. The picture above is from an the standard style ultrasound and below are two pictures from the new style. They usually do not do the new style this late as the baby can look really odd all squished up against the side of the womb. You can see his cute nose and eyes, never opened them up during the exam. The object to the right covering part of his face is his arm. 

The pictures below are from our 21 week ultrasound. I just love the one of his spine just way to cool! And the one below explains why I said we were having a boy before the Nurse could get it out of her mouth. We did have conformation that it is definitely a boy today. All off his organs looked great. We could see him moving  his lips and  swallowing the amniotic fluid. It was just the neatest thing to get to see him and I really can not wait until to meet him soon (but not to soon). 

A good day to bake.

So the weather here in Nebraska has decided to change to cool over night. It was in the mid-50's last night and today's high was not out of the low 70's. So it was fitting that over the weekend I had promised the husband that I would make him zucchini bread this week. So with it feeling like fall I was ready to bake. Before getting started baking I had to make some lunch, I remember it was pancake Wednesday. These last weeks in pregnancy I have decided that I really like blueberry pancakes and have declared Wednesday pancake day so that I don't eat them all the time.  After eating 3 wonderful pancakes I got started with the baking.

The Zucchini bread recipe is from mom that I baked. 

Ingredients:

3 eggs

2 cups Sugar

1 cup Oil

3 tsp Vanilla

2 cups graded raw Zucchini

1 tsp Salt

1 tsp Baking Soda

1/4 tsp Baking powder

3 tsp Cinnamon

3 cups Flour

1 cup Walnuts or Pecans

Just beat the eggs, add the sugar, oil, zucchini, and vanilla. Mix lightly. Combined the dry ingredients in separate bowl. Add the dry ingredients to the wet a little at a time. Stir in nuts. 

Makes 2 9x5 loafs. Bake 1 hour at 350. 

 I have baked it at least five times this summer. Man can the husband eat zucchini bread. 

While this was baking I was assigned the task of picking the tomatoes from the garden. We had 10.5 lbs out there to be picked!!! Yummy! So tomorrow I will have to cut them up to put in the freezer if they are not given away to work. 

Feeling the bread was not enough baking I made some very yummy peanut butter cookies that I had made in August. Got the recipe off the Internet:  http://southernfood.about.com/od/pbcookies/r/30408b.htm

Ingredients:

1/2 cup margarine

1/2 cup granulated sugar

1/2 cup brown sugar

1/2 cup peanut butter

1 egg

3/4 teaspoon soda

1/2 teaspoon baking powder

1 1/4 cups flour

1/4 teaspoon salt

Cream sugars, margarine, and peanut butter. Beat in egg, then stir in remaining ingredients. Shape dough into tablespoon sized small balls. Place on baking sheet and press dough down with fork. Dip fork tines in flour the fork each time before pressing a cookie. Sprinkle lightly with sugar. Bake at 350° for about 10-11 minutes. Makes about 28-32 peanut butter cookies.

Diaper bag

So it is not completely finished yet but I thought I would post some pictures of the process of me making the diaper bag.

This picture shows a couple of things: the pattern, the main material that to me forever for me to pick, and the blue tape measure. The pattern was drawn out by me (on the left), I looked at a ton of diaper bags on the internet and came up with a couple of things I wanted in mine. I also looked at dimensions to get in idea of what I would need. I drew out an idea and worked from there. It is not worth a closeup as I had know idea what I was really doing. As for the material, I wanted to work with as much pre-owned material as I could to save money. This project was more to keep me busy while the husband was out of town then it was for a finished project. I really liked this blue fabric and had enough and manged to find two matching fabrics as well. As for the blue tape... I have two different tapes and use both at the same time. This project having interior and exterior fabric that was cut in two stages I used them both. Then when I went to check a piece to see how it would line up, the interior fabric was one inch to short, a whole inch!!! After setting up to re-cut the piece I went a head and checked the piece to make sure it was really off, and then it measure correctly. So I checked the other piece of fabric and it was to long. What was going on!!! I then when through a couple more steps and realized that hell the blue tape measure was not correct and that it lost a whole inch by inch 42 on the tape. Sigh... rechecked all other pieces and continued on.
This picture shows the other two fabrics, the green and the cream with leaves. I believe this shot has all the exterior fabric I cut for the project.










Next came all the fusable interfacing. I did not like working with this stuff but enjoyed the finished product with it.

This is the interior back and front sewn. I used clear vinyl, white vinyl, and green quilt binding tape.

To make my zipper pockets I used Uhandblog zipper pocket tutorial, http://u-handbag.typepad.com/uhandblog/2007/02/zippered_inner_.html.
Loved her tutorial and will use this method again and again!!


This is the inside sewn together and ready to be sewn to the outside.

At this point I stopped taking pictures of making it. All the pictures that follow are the "completed" bag. The part that is not completed is the handle has to be properly sewn in, it is just sewn across the top.

Blogging

Blogging is so over rated.... there is not enough time in the day to read all the craft blogs let alone write one of your own..... Anyway all the crafty stuff I have been getting into has been yarn related so it is up on Ravelry.


One thing I wanted to share is my sowing table. My Father and Husband worked on it over the holidays to refinish it. It is really beautiful!! Tons of sanding, new handles, two coats of stain, four coats of gloss and lots of wax.

Secret Santa Gift...

I have been learning stained glass from my husband this last two weeks. I was learning so that I could make a secret santa gift for work. And here it is:

Only that I like it so much I am going to keep it. Now what to get for a secret santa gift....