Free Farmhouse Chicken Design and the First Free Pack from the Catalonia Collection

Welcome to The Cherry On Top.

If you were here last week and you're back for today's freebie, welcome again! If ya helped unlock today's free pack of designs, thanks so much. I was relieved to see that it didn't even take a week to get 10 comments when most of my blogs only have that many comments when something goes wrong with a link. Yikes! Anytime ya get something for free, it's always nice to leave a note. No matter whose blog.

Today, I've got a bit of a manage of things for the blog. Of course, I've got that new pack of goodies from my brand new collection, Catalonia. Serdinya is in Catalonia, France. Our vacation was in Serdinya and the book I'm writing also takes place there. At least part of the book does. You'll also find another fun freebie in today's blog. The image below is a fun, cottage farmhouse kind of design with text, "Fresh Eggs". Besides, these two freebies, I'll be adding a little more about chickens that I didn't cover in last week's blog and I'm going to plug in some travel information.

Today's free country chicken design. Keep reading for the link.

Let's get in to some egg-cellent talk about chickens and eggs. Did ya know in most of Europe, eggs in the grocery store are not stored cooled? They are just on shelves like a box of cereal. I was like, "What?!" the first time I saw this. From what I learned, living in Europe all of these years is that when eggs are truly fresh, they need not be refrigerated. I only refrigerate my oldest eggs.

Lately, my neighbors are hitting me up for eggs. So, my stash is a lot smaller than usual. I like to leave at least half a dozen eggs on the counter. Sometimes ya need a room temperature egg for baking and I've been saved a few times by treating severe burns with the white from an egg. Did ya know you can do that?!

Holy, wow! I cannot remember who told me or where I read it, but egg white heals burns and alleviates the pain on contact. Isn't that just amazing? Y'all, check out this true story. I was making home made soup and I filled the bowl way too, full with the super hot, right off out of the pot soup. As I was carrying it, it spilled out and scolded my hands really, really bad.

I immediately grabbed an egg, quickly separated the yolk with the shell and poured the white in my cupped hands. They were so, so red. Both my hands were badly burned. I rolled the egg white back and forth and all over my hands and fingers for at least 5 minutes. The pain was mega intense. I thought for sure I'd be scarred and in pain for hours and maybe even days. To my relief, the pain subsided very quickly and ... I had no indication that I was burned. At all!!! I was totally dumbfounded with joy and amazement.

I'm not sure if I'd do this with a store bought egg or if the wound was open. I don't know if it's just conspiracy to talk so terribly about birds and chickens, but over two decades, we've never ever had any health issues because of our girls. Just be careful if you do this knowing that maybe something could happen.

This is last week's free design. Cute, eh?!

Take a look at Daisy. Just look at that face. Does she look pissed off or what?! My, goodness! She is definitely one of the worst chickens we've ever had. I thought I'd write a bit about chicken personalities because you may not know this, but boy, oh boy have they got a lot of personality. This little lady is mean as all to my brown chickens. She is a good layer, though!

You may have heard of the pecking order. It seems the queen chick is plain old mean. Not just to the others, but to me and my family. Every roost has one or two chickens that just can't get enough food. Have to be the first. Pick on the other girls. It reminds me a lot of when I was a little girl. All of the girls in the neighborhood would take turns being the boss.

My brownies are super sweet. They are nice to each other. They are nice to the mean, white chickens. They make super cute sounds. For some reason, it seems they are more content and happy than the white chickens, which I think are Leg Horns. I more often than not, can pet and cuddle the brown chickens and they never leave me alone. They literally stand on my feet or between my legs and if I sit, they sit on me.

Another thing I think I forgot to mention, last week is that chickens are an awesome means to lower your trash. In my area, they still use the old fashioned, plastic garbage bags. Double, ugh! We have to pay more than 2 Euros for one, lousy bag and it is not a big bag by any means. They are not anywhere near big enough to even fill or line a regular sized garbage can! Now, that we have chickens we only need to put out a garbage can once every two months. Isn't that crazy? Before chickens we needed to put out at least 1 and sometimes 2 bags, every other week.

How do ya like my page? The image quality is terrible. I'm not sure if it is my screen or what, but you can hardly see that I'm holding a glass of wine. If you know me, I'm sure you guessed I was. Hehehe... You can see a lot of whats to come in future freebies with the Catalonia Collection. I love this floral paper, the pretty deep dramatic green foliage and the silk flowers. This image is also a hint at what is in today's free download. Wink, wink!

I really wished I would have changed the color of that bright pink cushion to match the deep shade of red. I do love the vintage bike stamp! Look how big my boys are getting.

When we travel, we often stay at an Air BnB. This was Claudia's AirBnB in France. We were all out of minds when we saw this place! Her backyard was huge and really, really pretty. The first page I posted was me sitting by the pool. We had the entire space. It was amazing. We did have to share the space with Claudia, but she made herself scarce, which was much appreciated.

We were in for a big surprise in the morning. Breakfast! We had no idea breakfast was included. Oddly enough, breakfast is rarely included at the AirBnB's we stay in. Go figure? What the hell does the other B stand for?

BnB's are often the same price, if not cheaper than a hotel room. I do not like staying in hotels. Even the fancy ones. BnB's typically offer a lot bigger space, outside space and are great for families, families with pets and for people who just like more space or their own bedroom.

You'll see that I designed this collection using the colors from the photos we took on our adventurous vacation. I love this dramatic deep red. There's a lot of brown, green and blue shades from all of the stone, nature and sky. Thank goodness the sky was always bright blue. Nothing like the chemtrailed, grey concoction in East Flanders.

Click the image or right here for today's freebie.

Maybe it's wrong for me to say this collection is free because we do need some participation to unlock the freebies. This time, in the comments here and or in our group, tell me what ya did this summer. Where did ya go on vacation? Did ya do a stay-cation? Did you take a trip to the beach or lake? Maybe you planted a garden or installed a fish pond? When we get 15 comments here and or in the group, I'll put up the next pack from the collection, next Friday.

Here's your other freebie! Click on the image for the link.

Thanks again for the comments. It totally helps my blog get more views and that means a lot to me. Activity in the group helps as well. Things are so lame there, lately. I'm not sure if I want to keep it going. I may just keep it all here in future. Though, I love seeing people's beautiful scrapbook pages and creations.

Happy scrapping!