It's that time of year again...

The smell of burning hair, bawling children, and agitated mothers. It reminds me of the time Mom tried to curl my bangs for a family portrait.

It's branding time.

The set up: mama cows and their 200 lb babies are driven into a pen by men on horseback. Then, all the mama cows are squeezed out of the pen without their calves. They all rush out, but once they realize their calves aren't with them, they start to bawl and weep and moan and gnash their teeth. It's a loud and anxious time. Then when most of the cows are out and calves are in they let in the ropers.

They rope a calf by the hind legs and drag it to the fire.

The wrestlers stretch the calf out so it can be branded and rendered nutless.

It's marked on the back so the ropers know not to rope it again.

Repeat and Repeat and Repeat until all the calves are done.

Then they let the calves out in a big rush and its pandemonium as the mothers search for their babies and babies search for their mamas. They all find the right pair up and peace reigns again amongst the herd. Until weaning time......

Gimped

Before and afters at the hacienda

We did some little beautifications last week in the kitchen. The wallpaper I was really unsure of because it had some possible yuck factor with the plaid, but I'm sold on it now. I think it adds some good color and ties the cabinets together. I also think it makes our counters look better. Well, as good as chocolate brown formica can look.

The tree thing was an idea I scammed from wallwords.com. I saw it in a magazine and thought it looked so cool, but to buy the look was like 400 dollars. And since I am "Design on a half penny" I thought that I could do it myself. The process was actually so easy! And free! YES! I downloaded a sillhouette of a tree I liked from the internet, printed it. copied it onto a transparency, borrowed the church's overhead projector, projected it on the wall, traced it in pencil, and then using some brown paint we already had, painted in the picture. I hated the picture arrangement that was there before, and now I think I have a really nice graphic look instead. I was thinking aspens or birch trees would look very cool on a darker background.