Kiwi is very curious, she pecks and runs, hops and flies, she’s never been one for petting or holding, but when she does it warms my heart. She is an Easter eager or an Ameracauna, it is hard to tell. Most times you are getting an Easter eager when they say Ameracauna. She lays blue eggs! Like Easter, and laid first at only 18 weeks. She lays 6 times a week and her breed is known for laying all year round.
Anything else
Kiwi was a crazy chick, always getting into trouble and wanting to be outside, she was light brown with a strip down her back, like a kiwi. Now her coloring is completely different. She has a pea comb, muffs, and a beard. We were worried that she was a rooster because of her tail feathers, aggressive nature, and loner attitude. She is an amazing flyer, once because she was being chased by a dog, flew onto our 8ft fence.
Licorice is a black australorp, a sassy, calm, and fluffy OG chicken in our flock. She loves food, snacks, and anything that smells good. Mostly she loves humans. As far as chickens go she is a perfect breed to keep as a pet and an amazing egg layer. Her breed holds the world record for egg laying, mine lays 6 days of the week and lays pinkish brown medium eggs.
What is she like?
Lic-o-spice is calm, she never pecks other chickens, unless they steal her food. She and Mango are besties and enjoy chasing flies, butterflies, and anything really that has wings. She greets me in the mornings, in case I have a snack for her, and has no problem being picked up or snuggling in the evening. She is very curious, it’s hard for her to sit still. She is a terrible flyer and we’ve never seen her fly unless in a crisis.
Anything else
As a baby she was the family favorite. She had a white butt, and liked taking photos. She is talkative in the morning when her friends are laying, and likes take it slow most days.
Plum from the day we got her is feisty. She was a year old when we bought her with her two baby chicks. She wasn’t held, she wan’t fed enough, her comb was pale. When he went to go get her she flew to the ground running through the yard, underneath the fence, and into the hay barrels. I chased after her knowing that we could give her and her babies a good life. I caught her and held her in my arms and to this day she is still feisty. She is the smallest but she is also the oldest and enjoys sitting in the mulch or grazing on grass. Plum started to lay again two weeks after separation and lays small light brown eggs 4-5 times each week.
Anything else
Plum has feathered feet like all Cochins do and hops when she runs. She is a favorite because of her personality, fluffy feet, and big heart. Plum has integrated with the big chickens and they have included her more and more, but she prefers to stay with her babies. Her favorite snack is apples, especially cubed, and she likes to sleep in the nesting boxes instead of the perch.
It took us a while to get the coop we love but it was worth it. After our new additions, Fig, Coconut, and Plum we doubled our flock. Our coop is the perfect place for our chickens to lay beautiful eggs, sleep on their perch, and drink water. Farm&yard did an amazing job with the design and it has kept our chickens safe and happy. Here’s the coop tour…
It’s not that big but that’s because, with six chickens, this is the perfect amount of space. They don’t spend time in the coop often only for laying and sleeping but they love to scratch around at the nesting material and dirt box we set up for them. Make sure to meet the flock and our new additions.
Digital art is so versatile that you don’t have to go out and buy Thank you cards anymore, just send it through a message with a note, money, or artwork. On Procreate, brushes may look like watercolor or chalk, these are my newest thank you cards. Take a look…
This children’s book is available on Amazon as an E copy and a paperback! Trichy Tillie has an Instagram as well if you would like to be up to date on her adventures.
Why Amazon?
We got offers from publishers to publish this book but we chose Amazon as our platform for Trichy Tillie. It is a great way to publish online with a wide range of readers, it is easy to manage, and helps keep the author’s vision for Tillie alive.
It’s finally here. Over the past few months, I have worked on this book along with schoolwork, ballet, my life, nothing is as rewarding as seeing it come to life. I collaborated with my aunt who’s incredible writing will bring you into Tillie’s experience with this rare hair pulling disorder, Trichotillomania or Trich for short.
My Experience
My aunt and I had already written a children’s book together so this was our second time collaborating, but first time publishing. Trichy Tillie went through many edits before I drew Tillie in the book.
1st Tillie
This was my first draft. An ombré bird with small feet and an orange beak. Cute right? We wanted only a few eyelashes to raise awareness for other BFRB disorders. This is a children’s book so I used bright colors, some of my personal favorites, and made her fluffy. This was drawn on January 1st, 2020, nine months before the book was published. Afterward, Tillie was put on hold for our new children’s book coming out soon. When I returned to Tillie, her layers were all wrong, I couldn’t find the exact colors to use on the new sketches of her… so I changed Tillie.
Today’s Tillie
Excuse my handwriting but as you can see Tillie is completely purple with light pink skin. This was much easier to transfer from page to page. After I was sent the words to the book I started getting idea after idea. When I sat down to draw I used the lighter color palette and black outline to add more of what drawing style I liked on children’s books. Each page was so colorful and fun to draw that I ended up finishing fast, although each page was fixed at least twice, what you see in the book was overall my first idea. But there were some that I never felt happy about and fixed right before the book was published.
What I fixed
1st draft of page 12
This page never sat right with me. It was too plain and didn’t convey the best way it could. I changed it out a week before the book was published. I had drawn something for my aunt that it was replaced with.
Now
This fit better with the words and I liked how simple it was. One of my favorite things you will see throughout the book is colors, all of them, including black for backgrounds. It just makes the drawings come to life.
Struggles
My aunt lives in Australia so I would say one of the harder things about this book was distance. Time zones, limited talking time, connection. It was different than being able to sit down together or show her what I was thinking in front of her. She was amazing at answering back and calling so that made the distance so much better. It takes me a while to start a book so once I got into it I wanted to do it in my free time, at school, on the bus. There was no struggle too big to stop this book from happening and I am grateful for that.
Tortillas are a lot easier to make than you might think. It only takes a few ingredients and half an hour out of your day. You can make these for dinner or lunch but they are tasty either way. There’s nothing quite like a fresh tortilla and now you can have one. I’ve perfected this recipe and hope you enjoy making these as much as I do. I used Cup4cup flour but feel free to use whatever you have. Bake away!
Ingredients:
2 c flour*
1/2 tsp salt
3/4 c warm water
2 tbsp olive oil
1 tsp baking powder
Directions:
Mix the flour, baking powder, and salt together in a bowl, and then warm up the water. Warm meaning when you touch it, it feels neutral.
Pour in the water and then the olive oil mixing with a fork. If it’s too dry you won’t be able to knead it so add more water or olive oil. Depending on what flour you use it will be a different texture.
Flour the counter and pour out your tortilla dough. Flour your hands and get out your materials before you start. You will need a rolling pin, tortilla press, a knife, a towel, and a cast iron.
Knead the dough until it is all one even texture, not too sticky, not too dry. Put it back in the bowl with the towel covering it and let it rest for 5-10 minutes.
Using your knife to cut the dough into 8 sections for medium tortillas. Roll each one into a ball and then press them into circles with your tortilla press. Make sure to flour your surfaces/press to avoid sticking.
Roll them out with the rolling pin until they are thin and the right size. Don’t worry if they look thin, if they are too thick you will be making pita. Heat up your cast iron until it will burn you… then place each tortilla on without olive oil. I know, weird.
They don’t take long, flip and enjoy!
*You can use a variety of different flours some with gluten, others not. If using gluten-free which I do, I recommend Cup4cup because it has a great texture similar to gluten flours. The best flour is just all-purpose, it makes it fluffy, soft, and delicious.
My friends and I are constantly making messes in our parent’s kitchens, but this cake was the worst. By the time we were done the kitchen looked like a battlefield, with frosting and jams, fondant, and mixing bowls. We love to tackle the hardest recipes we can find and produce the most mess with the tastiest outcomes.
Mistakes
A wedding cake seemed like the perfect recipe to try for that challenge but we didn’t come prepared, no we decided to wing it. All we knew was that we wanted three tiers and 6-9 layers so that it was nice and tall. Turns out that you need structure for a cake like this one, as we soon found out. I’m talking rods and stiff frosting. Another mistake we made was our crumb coating. I hadn’t worked with larger cakes so I didn’t know how long the cake needed to sit for, or at what temperature the frosting was applied.
Ratio
Baking with three other people means you are bound to get your signals crossed. We made too much frosting and not enough jam, which means our second batch didn’t set properly before it went on the cake, saved only by a frosting barrier. The easiest part for us was of course the vanilla cake as we had made that before. But after the cake was mostly done we had to think decorations… trying our hand at buttercream flowers. Or not. These failed epically which was sad because I had wanted to try them for forever. However, I ended up making fondant flowers instead.
Flowers
Fondant is not hard to make, if you have marshmallows and powdered sugar that is the easiest way. I hate the way it tastes but it’s perfect for molding. I did plain white to match our already white cake. I got the hang of it making 75 flowers and letting them chill overnight. My friends helped me, making a range of sizes to look more natural. We topped them off with gold leaves at the base.
Assembly
We had a sleepover so everything could chill overnight… but the next morning we got to work. People would be there soon. Why eat a whole wedding cake by yourself? We invited our families to help eat it and they did 😋 We started by pulling out the crumb-coated cakes, which we had sliced evenly, and assembled so each layer was big, smaller, smallest. Now was the tricky part, do we frost before or after putting them together? I am no expert but it seemed better to frost before that way we could let each layer chill further and then put them all together. We did just that, touching up the frosting and making it as sturdy as possible. We added the flowers, and the leaves around the base, stepping back to admire our work. It was far from perfect but it was delicious. Now we just had to clean up the kitchen…
When you order food online there is always a mistake or two in your order. Instead of getting five figs we got five buckets of figs, so I had to find a recipe that used a lot of figs and fast. I used Cup4Cup flour in this recipe as well and a mix of what I had in my pantry. It turned out better than expected and is going down in my recipe book as one of the best cakes I’ve ever made. The cake was perfectly crumbly, a caramel dripping with delicious figs and candied ginger. What’s not to like?
For the Cake:
1/2 c butter
2/3 c brown sugar
1/3 c sugar
3 small eggs
1/4 c milk
1/2 c yogurt
1 tbsp vanilla
1/2 tsp salt
1/2 tsp dried ginger
2/3 c candied ginger
1 1/2 c flour
2 tsp baking powder
Caramel and figs:
13 figs
8 tbsp butter
1/3 c brown sugar
1/3 c honey
1 tbsp vanilla extract
pinch of salt
1/2 tsp dried ginger
Directions:
Preheat the oven to 350 and grease a Bundt pan.
Slice the figs in half and place them where the cut side is facing up so that you can see them when you take out the cake.
Make the cake first, combining the dry ingredients and getting out the butter so that it is room temperature.
Cream butter and sugar until light and fluffy, and add eggs. Measure out the yogurt and milk to add and scrape down the sides. Add the flour a little at a time and speed up your machine to avoid chunks.
Cut up the candied ginger into little pieces and add to the batter, making sure they are scattered throughout.
Make the caramel, heating the butter and sugar in a pan till it boils. Take off the heat and add seasoning.
Drizzle over the figs until it fills up the bottom of the pan evenly. Add the cake batter and smooth with your spatula.
Put the cake in the oven, and bake for an hour until it’s golden brown. Flip the pan over and enjoy the cake!
Hadley's Hues 