Chiachatter Vlogs

Recorded this for my friend Karen

Haven't been able to take video for a while now so I am just catching up a bit.

Just a couple of minutes of the neighborhood turkeys this morning as they start their new day.

A trip to the city for some shopping and then to Olive Garden to have now-3YO granddaughter Luna's birthday dinner!

The plethora of animals in our yard doesn't come without some drama!

When one of us has a birthday in our family that person chooses the restaurant where we will celebrate together. This is Casey's celebration.

Typically we do our errands on Fridays but this week we have other plans so we did them today instead, and chose Mt. Pleasant as the most likely place to find the things that we needed. (Lots of "my face talking" in this video!)

This is my first recording with my first electric ukulele. I'm playing it like I play my acoustic ukes because that's the only way I know how 🤪. I chose the song earlier today, created an arrangement on my Yamaha PSR-S950, recorded it, then finally connected the ukulele to the keyboard and recorded playing it all together. (I'm a lot better on keyboards, being a lifelong pianist but I have just as much fun with my ukes!) Anyway, people said they wanted to hear the new uke so here it is...and all those reviews were totally on point that said the strings are "crap"... I will definitely be replacing them which should get more consistent sound. Thanks for listening, anyway... I'm having a blast! 😀

Snaps 'n' clips from the past week of my life

My longest video ever! Didn't know I could talk so long 🥱

Our deer usually come at dawn and dusk, so when they showed up this afternoon I got a few photos through the window. There is one sassy little doe that reaches up to the valve underneath and pushes it so it will release some corn right into her mouth...I hope I caught that in this video, she's so cute!

Pete hung a bird feeder right outside our living room window and, though the birds love it, the squirrels have mostly taken over! (We also have multiple bird feeders elsewhere in the yard, no worries!) We are just as entertained by the squirrels as we are by the birds, and in fact the squirrels are more interactive with us - lots of fun! The first squirrel has been a regular visitor with us for a long time. The little black girl, though, has probably had babies recently we noticed, and she's been a little more timid - though she's starting to come around too :). We have others of course, these are just the two that were here this morning. So fun!

Mostly the wild turkeys in our yard, including new babies!

< 1 min showing how I make my Pumped Up Eggs. Make any modifications you see fit to suit your own eating plan.

Some of my pictures from the week

An updated video on how our garden grows!

Big fluffy flakes accumulated to about 3" of snow here in the middle of the mitten, and lots of wildlife came through our yard to feed.

A couple of minutes of what our mornings usually look like after Pete (N8HIS) has finished with his nets and I have done my morning routine, and we are just relaxing, enjoying the animals both outside and in, and peace and quiet.

Pete and I went to 2 of the places where we used to shop when we lived in Houghton Lake: Pineview (McBain, MI) and Ebel's (Falmouth, MI). We haven't been there to either one in a very long time. This is our haul.

I'd planned to do laundry today, but when the opportunity came to go visit Bill & Casey & the grands, I jumped at the chance! This video has a little of everything, from the arts (music and visual arts) to bike races!

I wasn't satisfied with the first recording I did. Later that day I started messing with settings on the keyboard in an attempt to rectify the "mind of is own" issues, and YAY I figured it out! Posting this version for comparison.

We stayed with 2 of the 3 grands a few days ago while mom & dad were at the hospital with the 3rd as she was having surgery. Here is a little of our fun times, and pictures sent from mom through the day.

I need to explain something here...our turkeys disappeared about 3 weeks ago. There was about an hour of gunfire - like a war zone - in the woods around us, and our turkeys never came back. We "had" 3 toms who have been here on our property, were used to us and didn't mind us or the dogs, and even followed my husband around, since the summer of 2020. And they've been gone since that awful afternoon. So we have been so sad...until what you see at the beginning of this video! The rest of the day is mostly me talking about what we were doing, and stuff.

We are still expecting more tonight but I got a head start on sharing our beautiful winter wonderland, here in our yard, with my service dog Maisie. (She wasn't on duty though, she loves the snow and wanted to play!)

We got the chance to spend time with our daughter, son-in-law, and grandkids yesterday; here are a few clips.