Cockeyed Christmas Gift Wrapping with Creativity Gene

Before my stroke, gift wrapping was no problem. But gift wrapping post stroke being left with one functioning hand and arm is a nightmare. Thanks Barb, for the topic of this blog and Christmas is upon us once again.

Regular gift wrapping post stroke involves using nose, knee, elbow, or whatever other body part you can use to help hold the paper while you tear tape, position it, and press it down to hold it together. Being a contortionist would help, but I am not one.  It was too much work when dealing with upwards of ten presents to wrap for the holidays birthdays were bad enough.

Pre-stroke

Now being an extraordinary, creative person, my gifts were a feast for the eyes. Plain and ordinary gift wrapping wouldn't do.You see I did a Japanese gift wrapping technique of folded paper for my gift

Ribbons & bows added later

wrapping. Intricate pleats and folds were made into the wrapping paper for each and every present I gave. No plain ribbons or bows either. Pleats that formed triangles, squares, crosses, and hexagons were all within my realm of talents. Each present had a gift attached to the wrapping as well. Be it a hair clip, a refrigerator magnet, X-stitched or crocheted  ornaments, or something to keep and use...a double gift. Maybe a little hint as to what was inside. A case of my hand crafted beer had a bottle opener on the bow for my brother-in-law. My homemade wine for my stepmother handmade redneck corkscrew (a 4" screw, a screw driver, and a pair of pliers). Hand quilted potholders for the bean pot and bowl set I made for my newlywed nephew and his wife.You see our family does handmade gifts to exchange among ourselves whenever we can. We would go bankrupt buy gifts for each other. I have seven brothers and sisters between natural and adopted siblings, their children and spouses alone equal THIRTY-ONE plus their children is a passel of gifts to swap. Even if I only did my immediate family of my children, spouses, and grandchildren, I'm talking about EIGHTEEN gifts. It's enough to put a serious hurting on anyone's wallet having to buy one present a piece. Let alone wrapping those presents one-handed. Nobody gets only one present, and siblings and parents (grandparents) are always included.

2012

So the first year after my stroke, it was your standard gift bags. None were gorgeous or special. Anyone could stuff a present into a premade box or bag. But what's a one-handed person to do? I've never been a fan of premade boxes. Although colorful, after a while you end up with several presents in the same printed box. Nothing original or creative about them. Totally impersonal. It gnawed at my creative, extraordinary in nature. How could I make these special like my old gift wrapping? I couldn't. Being two weeks out from my second (third) stroke, it was impossible.

2013-2016

The next three years after my first stroke, I tried a different approach. I used rubber stamps to decorate plain gift bags and boxes. It added color, glitter, and decorated them. It was better, but no where near as creative as my Japanese pleated gift wrap. It did have some duplication of designs. How many different rubber stamps and ink can you buy for just one holiday? Every year they came out with four or five new stamps to keep things fresher. There is a limit because you have to store them all for the next year. It turned out to be more expensive than any other option in stamps alone.

2017

For 2017, I sewed fabric gift bags. I was definitely more creative. There are a small ton of holiday fabrics to pick from. I could customize the sizes of the bags too. Each were creative and unique. There isn't a local fabric store in town besides Walmart. So I had to go to a neighboring city to find a Joann's or Michaels to get the variety of fabric, notions, and ribbons to make them unique.

2018

That brings us to this year 2018. I could have done the same as last year, but decided to do something different, but the same...sort of. If you do the same thing every year it's not creative, just repetitious and boring. I'm going back to paper gift bags. The twist, I downloaded a pattern to make the bags myself. I can use store bought Christmas gift wrap and plain paper lining to strengthen the bags. I would create them myself. With the holes at the top, I can thread an assortment of ribbons. The pattern is simple enough with very few cuts and folds. All of the folds are straight. A glue stick to put it all together, and I'm done.

I could even make them out of Christmas fabric, iron-on interfacing, and fabric glue next Christmas. I thought about it too late for this year. I could even change the pattern a bit and add a closure flap. But next year, I'm trying a new crafty/old crafty thing for Christmas too, so fabric bags will be more appropriate. For now this cures my creative, unique, handmade gift wrapping bug.

Maybe by next Christmas, I'll have some use of my nonfunctioning hand and fingers back again to go back to my Japanese folded paper wrapping technique. It's two more days until my neurosurgeon gives the final thumbs up for the rhizotomy and schedules me for surgery. I can only hope and pray.

Y'all have a blessed day.

Jo

Cockeyed Homestead's Adaptive Gardening Style

Adaptive gardening can only take you so far. If you are like us, we depend on the production of our garden to supply us for the whole year. We use a variety of planting methods. Some are adaptive and some are not.

This year we are focusing on building up new sections of the garden area. We laid wood chips in a thick layer. Then, we laid down cardboard. On top of it all, we placed straw bales. Hopefully in a season or two, we'll have a foot or more new, rich, composted soil over the hard, compacted red clay and granite rocks in which to grow vegetables in.

Straw bale gardening is another adaptive gardening technique. But for us, I'm not talking a dozen straw bales. I got fifty of them. As I said, our garden needs to provide a year's worth of vegetables for us. Each row around the perimeter of the garden took 10 bales a side in a trapezoid shape. This is all new ground for the garden. It was previously a rough driveway of sorts so the clay is really compressed. Now, with the new driving areas graveled in, we've got a definite borders to the garden besides just a fence.

While planting or transplanting these bales, would be a classic adaptive or handicapable garden, the interior of the garden is the standard row planting. Unlike the previous year where I misplanted some crops in low raised beds that should have been elevated and vice versa, this year I'm actually mapping it out before I plant. I know what I need to plant where.

I'm also not listening to Mel this year. Her idea of walkways between rows and mine are feet apart . Her ideal walkway between tomato plants is 2' when actually with the sprawling growth, tomatoes really need 4' between rows. I just really have difficulty managing to weed and harvest in that narrow of a row spacing. My toy box garden cart or a garden cart won't fit between the rows once the plants reach full maturity.

We are still growing potatoes in tires. Old tires are easy to manage. It's upcycling although there is some concern about toxicity of old tires. We roughly get 50 lbs of potatoes a year and that is just about right for the two of us to consume. I just throw another tire on the stack and compost as it grows. I usually stop mounding tires and compost when I get five tires stacked. That's roughly 5lbs of potatoes for each tire. We usually do two tire towers for 50 lbs or there abouts. To harvest, it's simply removing the tires one by one and pulling the potatoes out. The soil can be mixed with new compost and it's recharged for the next plants. The straw we put in the noncentral parts of the tire also decompose over the growing season. The reason we do this is water tends to pool inside of this part. It serves to provide a moist not soggy growing area.

After the initial potato harvest, I'll stack and fill the tires two high for sweet potatoes or onions. Some of the tires I'll leave as singles and plant spinach or other greens in them. I do like my gutter planters (another adaptive gardening technique) for lettuces though. I can pick micro greens to my heart's content without stooping. Gutter planting works best on quick harvesting like salad greens. They aren't deep enough for standard crops. They also tend to dry out quickly so close and careful monitoring is essential. I've watched videos on using this technique for strawberries, but when I attempted it I found the soil depth too shallow for an abundant harvest.

If you are only raising two or three tomato plants a raised bed is fine, but this year we'll be plant a minimum of 25 plants between Roma paste tomatoes and Cherokee blacks. The same goes for other vegetables too.  For seedling or seeds planting, I carry two sticks. One is 6" long and one is 3' long. Can you guess why? The 6" stick is for elevated raised bed planting. Our beds are only 3 1/2' wide. It's an easy reach to the center of the beds. The 3' stick is for ground level planting. It's also a substitute cane if I need it. I use a lot of different things in the garden that can substitute for my cane; a rake or hoe works wonderfully. I can get pretty creative when it comes to my mobility issues and doing what I want/need to do.

I say that living post stroke has been an adventure. In a way it has been a great blessing. A blessing?! I hear y'all now wondering how anyone would consider surviving a stroke is a blessing. "Jo, you've stepped off the ledge and are free falling into the crazy zone!" My response is still, it's a blessing. Hear me out. I jokingly say that God permitted my strokes to happen to me to teach me patience and it's working.

• I have met many wonderful and supportive people since my stroke. Ones I may not have met otherwise. I inspire regular folks to break free of their comfort zones and try something new.
• In spite of all I lost in abilities, I've found new and creative avenues to enjoy that I may not have tried if it weren't for my strokes.
• I'm thinking more outside the box to achieve what I want out of life. Admittedly, I've always thought outside the box, but now it's extreme and I love it.
• Through the frustrations in attempting to live my life post stroke, I've developed a more patient attitude. See, God, it's working.
• Through my pain, I have a deeper compassion and empathy for others than I had before. I can relate more on a one by one basis.
• Through my limited ability, doors or windows open that were closed shut before.

Every experience is an opportunity for learning. You can either embrace it and get on with your life, or stew in despair. I never would have thought that adaptive gardening as a way to be self sufficient before my strokes. My strokes opened my eyes to a new way of being self sufficient and productive that I wouldn't have thought of before.

Sure, adaptive gardening techniques are for small time gardeners. But sometimes, the end results can be greater than you first thought. I'm still trying to get back to the production levels here as I had on my old property. It will happen. It just takes time. I'm patient. Hear that God! I'm being patient. If you are physically impaired, it's the only way to get something good out of a bad situation. Gardening adaptively, let's you produce your own food. Maybe not most of it like we do, but even if you produce one tomato, it's gonna be the best tasting tomato you have ever eaten. Plus, you know where it came from, how it was grown, and you tried something new. So what are you waiting for? Let's get down and dirty.

Y'all have a blessed day!

A Cockeyed Update

In a few weeks, is our first frost date. This growing season has zoomed by. I'm still trying to adjust to having four seasons again.

Honestly, it's been a cockeyed roller coaster of weather this year. Marked with late freezes, a cooler than normal summer, rainy spring and summer (not that I'm complaining), and a tropical storm blowing through our mountains. I keep saying that next year will be better. Or, I hope it will be.

BECAUSE of our strange weather patterns, the orchard wasn't planted, but it is cleared now with a thick layer of cardboard, wood chips (thank you TS Irma), and straw so it will be ready in the spring for the trees and bushes. We did expand our garden area. It now has a blanket of cardboard, wood chips, and straw too. My goal for the garden this year was to produce six months worth of vegetables. We fell short. I only managed a few months worth. Vegetables that grew well for several years didn't this year. In part I blame the chickens...they ate the seeds, and decided my garden was the ideal place to sunbathe and dust bathe. Once again, I had no idea what would come up, or even if the plants would survive the chicken claws and beaks.

Most of what I canned was chemical-free, non-GMO, and locally sourced produce. Although it seemed like I canned a whole lot, it isn't when you look at how many meals and sides it will be. But then again, I did manage six months worth. I'm still working on Mel's attitude of not having too much food around. She just has a hard time understanding the quantity of food that is necessary to feed us for that amount of time. It's the city girl in her. It's so much easier to go to the grocery store every couple of weeks and buy what you need without thinking what the total amount needed for months. Sure we could still do that, but it goes against a healthier, self-sufficient lifestyle. It's hard to find good, whole foods in the grocery stores.

She griped when I canned two cases of apple pie filling. "We aren't going the eat THAT many pies!" Then, I made my pie filling muffins.  I didn't hear another peep out of her.

When I canned two bushels of green bean, her favorite. It was the same thing. I tried logic. "How many cans of green beans do you want to eat a week?" That didn't work. So finally I told her, "Shut up! It's my money." She stopped fighting me about food stuff. She's also got a part-time job now too so she's out of the house more.


While our 5 cu ft freezer is filled to capacity with beef, chicken, pork, and shrimp, I keep hearing her say that there's no more room but yet, I find room. Mel has a giant love of animal protein. I can take it or leave it. Five pounds of organic soybeans and dry beans will supply the amino acids I need without the animal based meat products for quite a while. Not that I don't like a well cooked steak, or chicken and dumplings from time to time. I really do! I love my veggies. I made a video of making Lo Mein. Mel's complaint, "It has too many vegetables." When I made chicken Lo Mein the other night I made hers with mushrooms, onions, and garlic for vegetables. Mine was loaded with about six ounces of vegetables. I try to get her to eat healthier, but sometimes it's a losing battle.

The Cockeyed Critters are doing well. I had the opportunity to buy a new breeding trio of Chinchilla rabbits, but didn't. Mel helped me butcher the roosters this go around! She held them while I dispatched them. She learned how to pluck them and watched as I butchered them saving the choice bits. It's a start. But by the same token, she loves the cuddly, fluffy bunnies. She doesn't mind eating them but raising them for meat purposes, she's against it. I don't understand the difference meat is meat. I watched her tear into a deer roast with no problem. If I could still maneuver, I'd be packing another freezer with venison hunting season. She doesn't think of deer as Bambi, or beef as Elise the cow. I do know that I'll be getting my quota of squirrel meat this year. Wait there is no quota. :o) I'll eat squirrel in a pinch but it'll go towards dog food. Anybody else notice how expensive animal food has gotten?  I wish the cats and dogs would eat fodder too, but their diets is meat protein based. I really love knowing where my food comes from and how its grown. It's quite a bit quieter around here since four roosters went on to their next stage of life.

Moira and Mel

The cockeyed rabbits, now down to ten, are doing great in the new, rabbitry barn. The does love their new, larger cages. The bucks are content. They get their weekly outings. All the bucks are allowed to hop and play for hours inside the rabbitry area (12'x24') while they are groomed. The does, likewise, are allowed their time too. Moira, while sweet and timid with us, is a holy terror and territorial in the open space. She'll stake out a corner and chase everyone else out of it- including the cats and chickens. It's really hilarious to watch her guard her territory. This giant poof ball chasing a full grown hen. Even Flynn the fearless runs from her. She actually only weighs a little over three pounds without the fur, but you'd never know it from her thick, luxurious coat. But then, all our angoras are great woolers. Our Chinchilla rabbit doe, Colleen, doesn't seem to miss the kit rotation I've had her on before we lost Keiran. But who really knows what bunnies think? 

Y'all have a blessed day!