So I sell this new Paparazzi $5 jewelry now, so excited about it!  I love, love, love these new earrings I'm getting in!

For more information, call, text or email me.
Anne Excell
435-691-0311
annepaparazzi@yahoo.com

You can also find me, and all of the cute stuff I've got at
facebook.com/annes5paparazzijewelry

Ya know I've really come to hate summer.  It's always so busy and hot and my nose runs constantly.  I feel like I've always got hay in my bra and I can't see straight for my eyes watering so much.  I seriously feel like a snot-nosed little kid for 4 months straight!  We're constantly on the run and my house becomes a total wreck (sorry no pictures of that).  But just when I decide that I'm going to boycott summer and move to Alaska, I look through the pictures I've taken the last few months.  And then I realize that yeah, we might have been busier than heck and I no longer have matching pairs of socks because I never had time to do laundry, my kitchen floor is covered in 2 inches of dirt and I can no longer find the lids to any of my bowls, but we sure did have fun!  Here's to summer being almost over!

Didn't you know that Jason does photo shoots for Marlboro in his spare time?

Me and this old gal had a good long talk about her attitude and now we're getting along just fine. 

No more bucking for her!

I'm so excited that these 3 little cats are still alive.  I usually have terrible luck with cats and they end up dead or missing after a few weeks.  But I've had these 3 all summer long!  I started with 4 so I think my odds are getting better.  I haven't named them yet, so maybe that's why they're still alive.

Jason bought this ram and then sold it for a mutton with one condition, he gets the head back.  It'll look cool in my garage once it's bleached.

Jason and I bought a few goats (without Hammer's blessing, believe me we had to hear about it) to put our orphaned lambs and calves on this winter.  One of the goats had this baby on it, I thought I knew what cute was until I saw this little guy.

Jimmy and Ryder came over for the fair and did the fish grab again.  They sure loved it.  I'm glad that Jane and Hammer like fish because there was no way those slimy things were coming in my house!  Gross!  My brain just won't let me eat fish.

Hi All!

Just thought I'd let you in on what I'm up to lately outside of the farm.  I've started selling this amazing jewelry called Paparazzi!  It's all so cute and everything is in style.  The best part about it is everything is only $5!  I wear something pretty much every single day from them.  I have a hard time not keeping everything for myself sometimes.  I sell headbands, hair clips, rings, bracelets and necklaces.  I really love it!  It's an easy way to make some extra money.  I started because it's something extra that I can do to make money with out a lot of time or effort.  I can still work my regular job and have time to go to the farm all while doing this!  It's an amazing company to get into! 

I'd love to come and do a party for you.  I give 10% of party sales in free jewelry to the host.  Let me know if you're interested in becoming a consultant, it's so easy and rewarding.

Here is a sample of some of the stuff I sell, remember all of this is only $5 each!

This summer has been crazy busy so far!  But it's been so fun too!  Here's just a little bit of what we've been up to.

Jimmy, my sister's boy, has moved over here for the summer.  He's raising a lamb to show in the stock show.  He's having so much fun, he tells me he never wants to go home.

Jason's still the same old Jason!

The tree in my front yard looked like this!  It was so beautiful and made my whole house smell so dang good.  It looks like this for about a week every spring.  I'm so glad that Jason's grandparents planted so many beautiful trees.

My 2 best friends had their babies this spring.  Amanda had her little boy Shad and Kristi had her little girl Whitlee.  Somehow the picture of Whitlee got deleted, but here is one of me with Shad.  They're both so dang cute and I look forward to being able to spoil them.

We got this cute dog Wilma this spring.  She's a Great Pyrenees and stays with the sheep.  She's done really well so far for only being about 7 months old.  It's really hard to not love on her, but in order for her to be a good sheep dog we have to just leave her alone.  It's so hard.

We ended up with this cat at our farm.  We named him Simon.  He's the weirdest cat I've ever seen, he will climb a panel just like it's a ladder.  I hope he sticks around.

This has got to be one of the cutest calves I've ever seen!  I know that I say that about just about every single calf I see, but it's got to be true about this one!  It always gets old bottle feeding a calf about this time of year though.

We've also got our cows on the mountain, we were finally about to go on around the 15th of June.  The grass looks so good over there!  Hopefully it stays green like it is now.  We're going to be moving them this weekend to one of the upper pastures.  It's always fun to ride all day long.

The hay is looking good, Jason got some back swaths cut last night.  With all the water that we've had this year, it looks like it's going to be a good year for hay.

Well there's a short update on what we've been up to!  Hopefully I'll have more pictures to update with soon!

Well it's that time of the year again, time to mark the calves. We decided to mark them all in one weekend this year. It sure made for a long weekend, but it's a good job to have done. We still have a few more to do, but they're too small right now.  I always love seeing the calves that I've been checking out all winter up close. Thank goodness we had so much good help! Marty and Ryder came down from Salina and Ty, Nicole, Lydia and Canyon came down from Nephi. It was so awesome of them all to come and help us. My mom came over and made us lunch on Saturday. She made my Grandma's Sloppy Joes and they were amazing! Thank goodness for awesome mothers like mine! I really don't know what I'd do without her!

Weekends like this one make me so thankful for the amazing country that we live in.  It's hard for me to fully express the deep love that I have for this country. We have all the freedom in the world to work on our own place without having to look over our shoulder all the time. I think that farmers and ranchers have such gratitude for this country that we're blessed to live in and that we're able to have the lifestyle that we choose.  There's many people in this country that just don't understand our lifestyle, they think 'Well why would you ever choose to have a lifestyle that makes you broke all the time?'  I guess it just takes a different kind of cat to make a go in this business.  And I'm grateful that I was able to be raised around this kind of lifestyle.  I always loved it, but since I married Jason I've been able to be more hands on with everything and have really come to love this.

Here is a picture of a bull calf that we didn't cut. Hopefully he looks good this fall so that we can use him as a bull in the future. Only time will tell on that I guess.

Some of this year's calf crop.

This time of year always makes me feel a bit lazy. After a long spring and summer of rushing around with no time to spare, we find ourselves with not too many pressing things to get done now. The hay is all put up and all the equipment cleaned and ready for another summer, all the cows are home, most of them are preg checked, and most of the fence is fixed. Sometimes I wonder what to do with myself! I never wonder out loud though, because that gets Jason thinking and whenever he starts thinking that means more work for me!

Jimmy Johnson came over when we were gathering the cows on the mountain to help us out. I think his favorite part was being able to take 2 days off of school!

His mother should be really proud of us for this picture! I promised her I'd be careful, but not that I wouldn't let him do stuff like this! haha! Good thing he's got good old Silver underneath him!

That Stupid Sheep

Alright, so if this blog was a plant, it would surely have kicked the bucket by now. Unless it was a cactus, then it would have flourished, but that doesn't really make sense in this analogy, so never mind that I brought a cactus into this conversation.

Chiz and I haven't been on any really exciting adventures lately. We've just been working to get all the hay up, and I use the term we really really loosely. All I really do is go over and bale the hay, that doesn't take much work really. I get to just sit in the tractor and sing along to the radio really really loud and no one complains at me. Although earlier in the summer I had my dog Burt in the tractor with me and I swear after about 15 minutes of my singing, he started giving me dirty looks. Doubt all you want, but that dog can really give somebody the stink eye! So I gave him a break from my singing and kicked him out of the tractor. That'll teach him to give me the stink eye! No, I'm not really that mean, I let him back in after about 10 minutes, I got lonely in there all by myself.


This Labor Day weekend, Chiz and I had a scheduled ride day on our cow permit. We thought it'd be fun for our 10 year old nephew Jimmy to come along. We got him all set up with a saddle that had stirrups short enough for him (I'm shocked at how little it takes to amuse that kid!) and we set off. We had to gather some cows and move them to a different area, so we sent Jimmy down the middle of an area following some cows. Chiz and I worked the sides of the area and sent cows into where Jimmy was. Well as I was riding along my merry little way, all of the sudden something caught my eye that didn't' look quite right. And it wasn't right. There, right in the middle of a group of cows and their babies, was a dang sheep! She was quite at home too, let me tell ya, I tried to cut her out of the group and she wasn't going anywhere. I swear I saw her stick her tongue out at me a few times. So I just brought her along with the cows and I figured Chiz would know what to do with her. He is usually the brains of the outfit in the mountain, but that's only because I'm totally, completely and utterly lost when it comes to that mountain. I really have no idea where I'm going.


Back to the sheep. When Chiz saw her, I thought that he was yelling that we were going the wrong way, because that's what he usually yells to me when we're one the mountain. Later I learned that he was just really excited. Well he rides through the middle of the cows and scatters them from Hell to Breakfast and then disappeared into the trees going after that dang sheep. Jimmy and I did the best we could to gather and get the cows moving again. After a few minutes of peace and quiet, here Chiz comes again after that sheep. All of the sudden, off he jumps and tries to land on that ewe. Didn't work out so great for him, but I truly believe that's because we were watching him. Better give him the benefit of the doubt, he might read this! Then he disappears again into the trees. Jimmy and I regroup, again, and get them going again. (Let me just say that for a 10 year old who hasn't done much riding or herding, my little Jimmy did awesome and I'm so proud of him!)

When Chiz finally comes around again, he tells me that he's got that old ewe tied up in some trees with the rein off his horse. He's now using the lead rope off of Jimmy's horse as a rein. We decided to take the horses back to the trailer and unhook the truck, get the ewe in the back of the truck and then be on our merry way. Yeah like it was going to be just that easy. It took us forever to drag that ewe up to the truck! But finally we get her up there and into the truck and then into the trailer and go home and get her turned out with some other sheep.

Skip to Monday, because nothing else went on on Sunday and my story continues on Monday that's why! Chiz and Jimmy are hauling hay in a field next to the sheep. They look over and see that old ewe and are really proud of themselves for getting her home in one piece. 30 minutes later, they look over at her again, she's kicked the bucket. Yep, after all of that dang work, that dang ewe just laid over and died! I guess if nothing else we got a workout out of that dang old ewe. My Gramps used to say that sheep were born with one eye to the ground anyway. Stupid sheep.

Dang, I'm blessed!

Well it's been a long time since I've blogged and I figured I'd let you, the non-existent people who read this usually abandoned blog, what we've been up to!

A whole lotta nothin!

We're spending all of our time at the farm lately, finishing up calving, letting that calf suck his newly adopted mother, loading hay, watering, fixing fence, disking, cultivating, planting, mucking out corrals, fixing fence, hauling away garbage because we're sick of picking it up when the dogs get into it and spread it from Hell to breakfast, putting out salt for the cows, fixing fence, doctoring sick calves, moving pastures with the cows, marking calves, getting the cows ready to go on the mountain, filling the water troughs, fixing fence (did I mention how much I hate fixing fence?), changing water and all of those other chores that it seems like we never have enough time to get done.

And ya wanna know what? All of that stuff just reminds me how grateful I am to be living the lifestyle that we are. I figure when people will pay thousands of dollars to do for a weekend what I get to do everyday, we're pretty fortunate. (But when they start poking around here, they get to do my share of fencing first!)

And how grateful I am to have a husband who will finish all of those chores when I give up and go home. (Sure do love ya Chiz!) Dang we're blessed!

Shed Hunting!

A few Saturdays ago, Jason and I found ourselves in a situation that we don't find ourselves in often...it was Saturday afternoon...and all the chores were done...and no cows were calving...and we had nothing to do! It was wonderful! So we decided to use our time wisely...and go look for deer sheds. Wise use of our time I know! It's so awesome to just go for a ride just the two of us and just hang out! It's awesome to do the things you love with the one you love! (and the dogs you love!)

There were so many deer up there! There was this poor old gal that wasn't looking so hot. And if Jason would have gotten any closer he wouldn't have been looking so hot either, who would think that a guy who loves deer hunting as much as he does would be so deathly allergic to their hair? Weird.

I think the word GOMER just about describes Jason in this picture. I could make a whole scrapbook of Jason with just silly pictures in it.

Lovin the sunshine!

Me with the big deer shed Jason found! haha!

The first brown deer horn of the season! haha! Jason was pretty dang proud!

And of course, no post would be complete without our children!
Burtamus
And Moo!

Me and Jason often wonder to each other if we'll spoil our kids as much as we do our dogs.

I think we oughta just stick with the dog just in case we don't.

What have we been doing lately you ask?

Playing with babies! Lots and lots of babies!!!

Like Herbie and Sampson here who sure do love it when we bring around the grain bucket!
And good ole Rita here who sure loves that bottle of milk and her replacement Mommies!

And of all of the babies, this one is the cutest one!