~The last day of...August?~

Wow...this summer has flown by! I can't believe that tomorrow we'll turn the calendar page to September.

I've been up to my ears in tomatoes. We've heard that this year hasn't been a good year for tomatoes. While our tomatoes did get hit with blight, the tomato plants kept on producing and our 15 plants have produced so many tomatoes that I've been canning constantly for the last few weeks! I'll have to do a separate canning post in the near future. This summer (so far!) I've put up over 130 jars of produce.

After all my canning, I was desperate for jars and was so thankful to find someone on Craigslist that was selling some. I was second in line for them, but the first person never showed up so I got a call from the lady who was selling them. When she called I dropped everything and got there as fast as I could!

Now that September is nearly here, I'm looking forward to finishing up our summer activities and jumping into fall!

~Baby Gift #3~

My sister was given her baby shower last Saturday, and thankfully my package arrived at her mother-in-law's in time for her to open my present at the shower. She told me when she opened the card, she said, "Who's Tammy?" LOL

For this present, I was sneaky, oh-so-sneaky! She is having a BOY and so I sent my brother-in-law a message, asking him to send me some of his t-shirts. He sent me three of his t-shirts.

And this is what I came up with:


Three little baby gowns.

I didn't know the signficance of any of the shirts, but the one on the left is the t-shirt my brother-in-law was wearing when he proposed to my sister. Cue the "awwws": awwwwwwwwwww. LOL (It has my dad's company logo on the left shoulder, which I covered for the sake of privacy. My sister was also working at that company at the time.)

I used this pattern. The sleeves seemed a bit wide and long when compared to baby gowns I had from my daughter. So I shortened them and made them a little narrower. I used a special knit stitch to attach the binding (instructions for binding not included with this pattern/tutorial). Can I just say that I love my new machine? I do. A lot! It has so many nice stitch options! My old machine would have just sucked the knit fabric right into the throat plate.

Knit stitch I used for the binding:


My brother-in-law wears small/medium size shirts so I had to get some extra t-shirts to make the sleeves and contrasting binding. I went to a thrift store when they had their $1 clothes day. I happened to have thread that matched all three of these (six colors of thread) and all the elastic I needed.

And then, because I'm such an awesome aunt, this little outfit too:


Oh, yes, I do. ;) I saw the shirt at Meijer and I just couldn't resist. The pants they had to "match" didn't go at all, so I went to the fabric store and found fabric that matched perfectly! I used Rae's baby pants pattern. I added a cuff that can be turned up:


or down if more length is needed:


I am so happy that I got to make these little things for my coming nephew!

~Blueberries~

My daughter and I went blueberry picking recently. I picked a gorgeous day, with a slight wind and warm weather (not hot). Couldn't have picked a better day for blueberry picking, though we were picking at the tail end of the season, so the blueberry bushes were a little thin.

But still, I brought home enough blueberries to put 6 quarts in the freezer, to eat fresh, and to make blueberry focaccia with. Yum.

This week I checked out Blueberries for Sal by Robert McCloskey from our library. It's a delightful story about Little Sal and her mother picking blueberries. Bears are involved, but no one gets hurt. ;) The first few pages reminded me so much of our recent blueberry picking excursion!


My Little Sal had her own bucket.


And ate all her blueberries out of her bucket.


Then noticed that Mommy had a lot of blueberries in her bucket, and it was so much easier to just grab handfuls of blueberries out of Mommy's bucket!


But Mommy pointed to the blueberry bushes and told Little Sal to eat her own blueberries, as Mommy was picking blueberries to put up for next winter!

From there the stories do not parallel, after all, I kept my Little Sal with me, and we didn't come across any bears!

~Baby Gift~

Kevin's half-sister had her baby {a boy!}, and this is the gift we are giving:


Sophie the Giraffe and two hand-made burp cloths. We picked Sophie, because it is a nice, all-natural teether. We got one when our daughter was little and she still plays with her (though she never really used her as a teether).



Both burp cloths are the same. One side has cozy flannel, and the other side is a soft knit. This project is my foray into knits. :D {Note: 100% cotton shrinks a lot, so buy extra yardage!} I whipped these up this afternoon. It was a fun little project!



So now I have a niece and a nephew! One of my sisters is due with a boy and the other one isn't finding out until birth. I've started some projects for the little boy, and will wait to sew my gifts for my other sister until I find out if it's a "he" or a "she".