200 lbs Buck

Well, this morning I climbed into my stand to face a wall of fog. But as the morning progressed the fog burned away. While it was still foggy and a little dark I could make out a deer coming my way. I got up my gun and looked at it through the scope. It was a big deer but it was limping and it appeared to have a lame leg. As for antler, well all i could see was one good beam because it was broadside. I had passed up a spike the previous evening (which my mom was not happy about) so i decided to take this one. After waiting a hour and a half after the shot i got down and looked for blood. I found it and trailed it to my deer. But what a state of shock I was in to find a HUGE deer laying before me. We estimated it to be about 200 lbs and three years old. The antlers we very different though. On one side it had a good 6 inch beam and on the other side it had a mess of 8-9 short points. I had a time of it getting that deer processed.

Jacob shot his first deer!!!!!

Tuesday evening caught Jay and I (Coy) in a tree stand on the edge of a power-line overlooking a food plot. About 10 minutes before dark, we spotted 3 does crossing the power-line at about 150 yards to our left. Jay got the gun up but decided it was to far and dark for his shooting capabilities. No more then 3 minutes after this decision we heard movement on the right and a large spike walked out broadside. After stopping him with some grunts, Jay's .243 Remington roared. After finding the deer about 25 yards away we realized he doubled lunged him through the heart and broke a shoulder. Patience is truly a virtue.

This was Jay's first deer and it was a big one.

DEER!!!!

Finally we kill us some food. I shot a spike (with my new rifle) and Zac shot his first deer ever!!

After Zac shot his deer we had to track it about 100 yards into thick brush which was a challenge but a good experience for Zac.

Coy's 16!

We had a phenomenal week celebrating Coy's 16th birthday. It started out with Coy opening several large boxes that only contained notes leading him to various places in the house. He may be 16, but we still love our silly games! The look on his face below is a fearful grimace that we are really toying with him and there's not really a gun in the box. Ha! The next pic shows the "I can't believe it's really a gun" look. He received a Remington Model 770 .270, camo, steel barrel - very cool rifle! Then later that day the Baker grands dropped in for a visit and took everyone out to dinner followed by his birthday cheesecake.

Just when we thought all the surprises were over the Sellers grands showed up as a surprise to us all and we had another fun filled time with them for a couple of days. One of the things Coy wanted to do for his special day was to take me on my first hunt. Early Monday morning we crept into our stand to wait. We saw deer that morning , but they were to far off and moving to fast. We enjoyed our hours in the cold together even still. That evening Nani and Papa took everyone out for dinner. Also, Coy went for his driver's test, received his license and is now driving ALONE! Yikes!

Mom's Garden

We decided to try our hand at a Fall garden this year since we had so much fun in the Spring. It is absolutely maintenance free! We are growing pie pumpkins, cabbage, broccoli, lettuce, carrots and peas. We have tons of peppers left over from the earlier garden also.

BakerVideoProduction

Dear family and friends,

I am moving all the movies that we do from this blog to another blog.

That blog is bakervideoproductions.blogspot.com

Please go to see some of them.

WARNING: this blog is not going to be updated very much because it takes a while to make a movie.

Guns

I went out today to shoot my Dad's .357 mag. Jacob took this video for me. That is an awesome gun!!! The first half is in regular motion and the second half is in slow motion. So cool!

Hunters Safety Course

This weekend Jacob and Mom took the Hunter Safety Course.......

........AND THEY BOTH PASSED!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

So we celebrated with Jacob's favorite cake, white angle food cake with melted chocolate dribbled on top.

Jacob can now go hunting with us!!

Bruce is 46!

On July 1st Bruce had a birthday. We celebrated by having one of his favorite meals, Sesame Chicken, but he changed his cake up this year. Every year as long as we have been married he has asked for the famous Chocolate Angel Food Cake, but not this year! (Mid life crisis???) This year he wanted a Chocolate Chip Cheesecake with fresh blueberry compote on top. We just enjoyed a wonderful weekend with the Baker and Hall clan for Bruce's niece's wedding in which Lee sent us home with a bottle of our favorite port wine - Fabbioli, Raspberry Merlot. It was a perfect fit with the cheesecake. (Thanks Uncle Lee!!) For one of his birthday gifts I bought a new blouse for myself that he would like very much! (featured in pic) All ladies should try this approach to obtaining new clothes; it works marvelously!

The White House Quilts

Many people have been asking me about the quilts I have been doing for the Jim Shore Collection. Jim Shore is a world famous artist and he and his wife (Jan) opened a store in her hometown - the big booming metropolis of Heath Springs, SC. It also happens to be my mom's home town and where my parents currently live. This store displays all of his artwork and in the back Jan has a quilt store (her passion). Last fall, I happened upon Jan in the store and offered to make quilts for her. These first two have Jim's artwork printed on fabric in the center and I created the design around it. I attempted to keep his unique style flowing through the piece.

This one uses several of Jim Shore's fabrics. He has taken the quilt patterns he uses on his angels and made fabric out of them. Sorry the picture doesn't show the detail of the actual quilting.

This is a pattern I borrowed from Designer Joanne Page of a table runner. It was made to entice people to buy that funky fabric!

This was the first quilt I did for them. It was designed not so much for its beauty or creativeness as it was for showing off the fabrics they had in the store in hopes of selling fabric. You can't see the quilting on the piece, but in the blocks that don't have an X in the center I quilted butterflies. It adds a little pizazz anyways.

Mimi's Summer Quilting Projects

This is a quilt I have been working on for many years. The top is finally finished. I hope to quilt it before fall arrives. It is my first attempt at blending fabrics together. Despite the fact that some of my fabrics don't blend so well, it is still pleasant to the eye.

A close up!

Jacob's Cowboy Quilt - I made this for his 9th birthday back in April.

You can't see it very well, but I quilted it with lasso loops and stars.

Garden News

See Papaw, we can grow eggplant!!

Cucumbers in a barrel.

Squash in a barrel.

Sunday we had very heavy winds while we were at church. The wind snapped one of my stakes and my beans are now providing more shade than necessary for the broccoli! Two of the tomato plants were literally horizontal, but we fixed them before taking the picture. The incident caused me to have to remove the pea vines about a week before I planned to so that Bruce and Coy could repair the damage to the tomatoes. Lost about 10-15 tomatoes, but that's very little compared to the massive numbers still on the vines.

Our Garden

Everything is growing big and beautiful. We have already harvested lots of peas and now we're waiting for the millions of tomatoes to turn red. This had been a very satisfying way to garden - no weeding involved!

And presto! We now have plants. Tomatoes, peas, onions, broccoli, beans (bush and pole), peppers, melon, squash, cucumbers, egg plant and some herbs.

The one on the left is cooking while it awaits planting. The one on the right has been partially planted.

This year we planned our first garden. We decided to try the lasagna method. We applied different layers and layers of organic material for a balanced pH level. The boys helped me build it, cook it, and plant it! What fun!!

SNOW!!!!!!!

Finally it snowed. We woke up and it was falling and it continued to fall all day. We got about 6 inches.


We all enjoyed sledding down the hill behind our house.

And then, there is the little brother that wants to be pulled up the hill.

Even Dad went down once.

One of our most enjoyable part of the snow was shaking the trees in the woods and letting the snow fall all over us.

Timbers!!!!!! (or snowers)

After these adventures we attacked the camera man with snowballs.

And the last thing still standing in our yard is Zac's snowman which he built.

Here are two hand forged knives that I made. This one is called a tanto.

This one is no particular kind but I use it to butcher my deer. I got this one sharp!!!!

My Forge

Here are two pictures of my forge. I have a friend who is a blacksmith and he taught me a little about blacksmithing. After trying to use an open fire for heating and treating my metal I decided that it was not doing the job. So I (with help from my brothers) loaded the jeep with cinder blocks from my landlords house and hauled them to my house. Building the forge was the easy part. After laying the blocks in a orderly fashion we filled in the cracks with clay/mud. One part of the forge that is not shown in these pictures is the bellows which I installed later. I made them out of a pieces of PVC pipe running under the forge and then pointing up. At the end of the PVC pipe I strapped an old hair dryer. The blow dryer blows air into the PVC pipe and up under my hot coals giving them great heat. I am having great fun with it and it is doing the job well.

A few pics from our Christmas

Zac and Jacob helping make Christmas cookies…

Bruce’s parents came down on Christmas day from Virginia to visit for a few days. When they arrived, they shared a few gifts with us, but first we had a feast…

The surprise of the gifts was a special present for Bruce … HAIR!

Just about everybody wanted to be pictured with me having hair… again :)