Birdie Balls
It’s just beautiful outdoors in Kansas City; the trees are blooming, the flowers are bursting through the ground and the bunnies and birds are in abundance.
Now is the perfect time to help birds build their nests by creating Birdie Balls. This project is great for kids and adults and it’s like opening a backyard bedding store for your neighborhood birds to shop!
Use only organic matter for this project but imagine the possibilities!!!! You will need a grapevine ball or suet feeder or an old kitchen whisk and some twine. Fill, stuff, and poke the container with all your ALL-NATURAL bits and baubles: dried flowers, pine needles, birch bark bits, 100% cotton balls, finely cut up old wool and cashmere sweaters, feathers from an old down coat or pillow or even your dog’s or cat’s fur (unless you treat with flea and tick medication)! Just make sure that the materials are all natural and cut into small bits so they won’t wrap around the birds' feet and injure them. Pull out some pieces for easy access, add the twine for hanging and let nature do its thing!
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These Recipes Should Butter You Up!
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It's supposed to rain quite a bit this week so it's a good time to create recipes that can be saved for a sunny day.
Garlic Dill Butter can be used on almost anything savory like baked potatoes, veggies, fish, chicken and pork but when you are ready to strike up the grill again, try rubbing it on some on fresh corn. Then seal the corn up in some foil and throw it on the grill for a really tasty treat.
A great topping for anything you'd use barbecue sauce on, Smoky BBQ Butter is an especially great topping for boneless, skinless chicken breasts, which can tend to get a bit dry. Pop it on top the chicken right when you take it off the grill and allow it to melt. If it's a rainy day, Smoky BBQ Butter will infuse your indoor cooking with that yummy taste of the outdoors.
These two recipes are part of our current
Eclectics cookbook, available for sale at the store for $78. Each page has been handcrafted by one of our artists to create wonderful, timeless and tasty works of art. Hopefully, we'll open soon and you can take a peek at all the wonderful recipes.
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There are 13 member artists at Eclectics. That means that currently, there are thirteen of us who own and operate our shop. But, in order to provide the vast array of art that we offer to you, our fabulous customers, we show the works of over 50 consignment artists.
One of those artists is Steve Hess, the owner and designer at From the Summer's Garden.
His new 2020 designs are called
Nothin’ But Blue Skies
and are vertical sculptural pieces in concrete STACKS celebrating faceted patterns, birds, hearts, flowers and angels as components, a popular trend in design for 2020. Everywhere artwork will be celebrating beautiful Classic Blue, the 2020 Pantone Color of the Year.
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"Working in the garden leaves us physically exhausted maybe, but our spirits are refreshed and restored. We're all busy with what we have to do. Leaving it all behind for a handful of seeds and a visit with the wrens and toads in the garden, makes us grounded and gives our brains the time needed to rest and nurture creative thoughts which recharges us just as our plugged-in phones receive their daily charge. This spring, smell the sweet peas, relax with the wrens and see how it frees!"
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As much as we love making the art that we naturally have a passion for, many of the Eclectics artists that sew are working away to make health care workers and loved ones safer in these unsafe times.
One of our members has a daughter who recently moved to New York to become a nurse. Never did she imagine that the entire floor of her hospital would be moved offshore onto a ship and that her entire ward would become involved with Covid patients.
The hospital provides a limited number of masks during work hours but those masks cannot be taken from the hospital because they are in such short supply. Although our masks can't be used when treating patients. these brave health care workers have lives, too! They need to get to and from work and may need to enter stores for groceries or items from the pharmacy.
So, we're working away. When we have elastic, we use it and when we don't, we make straps.
We use what we have to do what we can.
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