~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".

~Patterns~

A dear friend of my mother-in-law's passed away, and her daughter asked if I'd like some of the patterns and fabric. I got the box from my mother-in-law today. It was interesting to see the patterns, because so many of them were ones that I was familiar with.

It was funny to see all the Daisy Kingdom patterns. For many years, my grandma made us a dress for our birthday each year. For several years it was a given that it would be a dress made with a Daisy Kingdom pattern (I neatly escaped the Daisy Kingdom dresses, I don't think they came in teen sizes! LOL).

Not a problem for 1994. But when the dress got passed down, as it happens in a family with 8 girls, the girls having to wear the dresses in 2004 shed a few tears. And finally my mom conceded that perhaps they didn't have to wear the Daisy Kingdom dresses any longer.

I remember my mom making this dress for my younger sister. The pattern is marked 1983, so that's probably when my mom made it.


She did the embroidery too, I just remember loving the cute little birds. The dress was blue like the pattern as well.


I got this dress, view B for my 14th birthday, from my Grandma.


Bunnies, lots of bunnies. The 1990's were full of bunnies for my mom. I don't know how many she made but she made a lot. Big ones, little ones, medium ones. For herself, for gifts, for gifts for us.


I decided I wanted mice rather than bunnies. I started a pair of mice, which never got finished.


My Grandma had a pattern similar to this one, and made my sister 5 play dresses for her 5th birthday.


One of my sisters had a dress like this:


And at least one, if not more, of my sisters had a dress like this:


Not quite the same pattern:


But my dad's mom made me an outfit very similar:

~Hello!~

Oh, hello there! Long time, no blog!

It's been kind of busy around here lately! I haven't had much to blog about, and the summer is passing so quickly I sometimes forget I have a blog.

Over the last few months, Kevin lost most of his hearing in his right ear. The last week he has been extremely dizzy (lessening each day, thankfully!). Official diagnosis is: sudden hearing loss, unexplained. So all the treatments have been for the symptoms, not the cause. Which of course is how most doctors do treatments anyhow, but it would be nice to have answers. But we don't... The expectation is that his hearing loss is permanent, though of course I'm praying that it returns!

Also, there is a little someone which keeps me super busy! This low-energy mommy got a high-energy little girl. So from morning till bedtime it's run, run, run. All day long. Which I totally love, truly! I do have a hard time keeping up with the basics though. But I'm working on it. I need some super-duper-Super-Mommy pills. If I only had half my daughter's energy, just think what I could get accomplished! But on the other hand, my husband reminds me of what I get done. I'll tell him about my day and he'll say I got a lot done. Then I'll say, "but the laundry-dishes-sweeping-mopping-ironing-scouring-dusting didn't get done" and he'll say, "But look at all you got done!" So maybe I'm just being too hard on myself. I don't know!

We've had a few problems with our garden. It seems someone else was watering our garden, by way of an overhead sprinkler. Thankyouverymuch but stop it already. ;-) Our tomatoes and peppers were not appreciating the soaking they were getting in the evening. I think the situation has been rectified (though we got tons of rain overnight last night). And, HOW ON EARTH do all the bugs find plants? I found a tomato worm munching on a tomato. Those things are terrifying. I just might find myself sobbing in the garden if I have to deal with too many of them. (And if you think I'm joking about the sobbing part, I'm not!)

We (along with a lot of others in the Midwest/East) had a super heat wave, with lots of humidity and a high heat index (which still didn't ripen our tomatoes! LOL) I'm not complaining about the heat though. I refuse to complain about heat. As much as I complain about the cold weather in the winter I will not be unhappy about hot weather. :D

And lastly, I have a stack of vintage sheets that I've been collecting. The stack is getting wobbly, so it's time to start sewing! Watch this space for Etsy news. :D

~A Pint of Pickled Peppers~

I'm so excited! I put up a pint of pickled peppers from our garden!


My hope is that I'll have more peppers that are ready to use when my tomatoes get ripe, to make salsa with. But in the meantime my pepper plants needed harvesting so I picked them with the idea to make "nacho rings". I used a pickled pepper recipe from my canning book. The recipe called for three types of peppers, but I didn't want to buy more peppers, so I just used the one type.

In other canning news, I've put up 28 jars of jam and fruit spread, using both strawberries and cherries! Let the canning season begin!

~Title Goes Here~

I'm posting a picture of my toilet because my mother asked me to. No, really, she did.

So here it is:


It's our new toilet handle. This is the box it came in:

It describes the function of the two buttons. ;-)

It's a stylish, intelligent European system. I'm not making that up, either! It's right on the box.

I'm very impressed with myself, because "I do it" all by myself! I'm not usually very handy about the house, but I've wanted to have this type of handle for a while, and when our handle broke that was the motivation to get it! Kevin was gone all day so I went to the hardware store and came home and rolled my sleeves up and got it installed. A few "ABC" videos to keep my "helper" busy, and it was done! It will be interesting to see if our water bill shows a difference in the next billing cycle.

~Thinking Thoughts of Love~

One of my sisters has a new sales position, and one of my other sisters told her that if you look at people and think (not say! LOL) "I love you" your sales will be higher. Interesting. (Side note: I'd be scared to do this because sooner or later I would accidentally be telling random strangers that I loved them! Ha.) My mom and I were discussing this the other day, and how we should think thoughts of love towards the people we really do love!

I will admit, messes frazzle me. My daughter is 2. "I do it" is oft-heard around here, as is the phrase, "I'm making a mess" (yes, she alerts me to her naughtiness-in-progress!). So the next day after my conversation with my mom, I was washing my daughter's messy hands in the bathroom sink for the umpteenth time and I looked in the mirror and saw a frazzled mommy staring back. Not what I really wanted to see, and I figured my daughter deserved better than that face! Still looking in the mirror, I looked at my daughter and thought, "I love you" and my face instantly smoothed and relaxed. It was a pretty remarkable change of countenance!

Our thoughts drive our actions and feelings and our feelings exemplify themselves on our face and in our body language. This works in both positive and negative directions. I want to work on the positive side of things! :-)

~Flower Beds~

My front flower beds:



A close up of the hosta:


I have hostas, cone flowers (echinacea), bleeding heart, and a few flowering annuals that I've planted. I had a few alyssum plants last year, and left them over the fall. They reseeded and I transplanted them around the front flower beds. The beds need some weeding, but otherwise I've been so pleased with them this year. I'm working on buying perennials and planting them so that I don't have to spend so much on annuals every year.

~Muffin Tin Lunch~

I recently found the Muffin Tin Mom blog. Shortly after, I found a 6-cup muffin tin at a thrift shop which has been perfect for lunches! Today was "one of those days" and having a fun muffin tin lunch seemed to make things much better! :-)

top: Goldfish, raisins, Meijer Organics graham bears
bottom: sugar peas from our garden, Hormel Natural Choice lunch meat, yogurt



All was eaten, except for the raisins for some reason. The peas are devoured with relish. My daughter was quite excited to have "peas from our garden" with her lunch.

~Food Face~

Taco Salad for a 2-year old.



Plate can be found here (this is not an affiliate link).

~Gardening~

//roma tomatoes//

This summer I have a garden (besides the volunteer squash plants)! I haven't mentioned it on my blog yet, I don't really know why! The garden isn't in our yard, but I feel blessed to be able to have a gardening spot made available to us that isn't too far away!


//bell peppers//

What are we growing?
Tomatoes! lots of them! We have 15 regular tomato plants and 2 cherry tomatoes.
Green beans - again, lots of them! I'll be busy canning later this summer!
Red bell peppers (4)
"Jalapa" peppers (4) - these are hot peppers but not jalapenos, so I don't know what to expect
Lettuce
Radishes
Sugar Peas


//hot peppers//

It takes planning to get our garden watered and weeded since we have to go to it, rather than just walk out the door. But really, we don't have a spot in our yard that is ideal for growing the quantity of vegetables that we desire. So this is working out really well!

~The Great Squash Mystery: Update~

I know, all of my blog readers are on pins and needles, waiting to find out what my mystery squash plants are. Well, it's still somewhat of a mystery!

We have three plants. We've determined that all three plants are different. Two plants are growing like a "bush" but the other plant is sending out a long "vine". I don't know the proper terms, so excuse me if I'm wrong. ;)


One plant is growing these:


At first we thought they were acorn squash, but now we're leaning towards decorative squash. I did buy a few of those last year.

The plant with the long vine is growing these:


Maybe watermelon?

And the third plant is just starting to grow fruit, so we'll see what happens! It looks kind of round. Maybe pumpkins?

~Itty Bitty Toddler Dress~

After making the Itty Bitty Baby Dress for my coming niece, I was itching to make another one...only bigger! I used the Itty Bitty Baby Dress Enlargement pattern found here. It is enlarged to 3T and I would say that's accurate. My daughter is still in 2T, so I'm guessing this dress will fit her for a while...maybe even next summer! While it is large on her, it is still perfectly wearable, and she wore it to church last Sunday.



No outfit is complete without bloomers!




The little tag...I machine embroidered a design down twill tape. I *heart* my new machine. :D

~Itty Bitty Baby Dress~

I am going from 0 to 4 nieces and/or nephews in a period of 4 months! That means lots of sewing! :-)

First up is a baby girl due in July. It was really fun to put this little outfit together.

First, the Itty Bitty Baby Dress by Made by Rae. I used a good quality quilting cotton from JoAnn's. I made it in the 0-3 month size, to ensure that it will fit. The newborn size was tempting, but I thought the slightly larger size would be better.


It was the first time I've done piping, which was a lot of fun. I see more piping in my future! :)


It is super hard to find solids to match prints! Have you had that problem? I had to go to another fabric store to find a matching solid. It was a lightweight batiste, which works well for bloomers:


For the pattern above I used Rae's Newborn Baby Pants pattern. I cut the leg about 1 1/2 inches below the crotch, and added elastic.

And then, a headband, of course.


All together:


I've been dying to post about this, but had to wait till after my sister's shower, since she occasionally reads my blog! Now that she's had her shower, I can share!

Next in line is my husband's half sister. She's due in August and isn't finding out what she's having till she has the baby. I haven't made anything for her yet, I'll probably wait to find out what she has before I make anything!

~Phew! I found it!~

A while back, someone recommended a book to me. I checked it out of the library. It was a paperback fiction, and I didn't care for the writing style and some of the content, so I never finished it (though I did read the end! LOL).

It disappeared.

I renewed it twice.

I asked the librarian if it had been returned and not checked in (thinking I had returned it and forgotten that I had returned it). Nope.

I determined to look methodically through every room in the house. Particularly in the low spots. ;-)

Bathroom: No

Hallway: No

Kitchen: Hello lost book! It was on top of my crock pot, in a lower cabinet.

I'm so glad this book wasn't thrown away or permanently lost! I wouldn't have minded so much if it were a book I'd actually enjoyed, but I didn't really want to replace a book I didn't even like! :P

~Lions and Tigers and Bears! Oh My!~

We went to visit Kevin's sister and her husband recently, and Kevin's mom came too. It was a great family time! While we were there, we went to the Milwaukee County Zoo. It's a pretty impressive zoo! Kevin took the following pictures.