July Wrap Up

Well, it's time to recap the last of July............

1.  I took my Mom and Dad to St. Peters to visit Sarah and see her new house.  She took us all to "her" library.........one of her favorite places.  I have to admit, it is a really nice library.  There is even a fireplace with lots of comfy seating around it.  She wasn't going to check out any books, so only left with FOUR!

Every time she takes me there, I always spot something I'd like to read.  So I took a picture of this one.  I later found it on hoopla and read it that way.  It was good.  All through the book they were trying to recreate a mac and cheese recipe and in the end, they finally did it.  I was really hoping there would be a recipe at the end of the book, but there wasn't.  That was the only disappointment.

I took Sarah an early birthday present.  She loved the t-shirt until she realized I had a matching one, then maybe not so much.  However, we won't be together much, so probably no one will know her mom has a matching one.

She took us to her favorite Italian restaurant, Erio's, which is only a couple of blocks from her house.  This is our favorite dessert!  

2.  The garden is going crazy!  I wisely let David pull the cucumbers so it could just stop raining cucumbers on me.  The pumpkin, spaghetti squash, and butternut squash vines quickly took over the cucumber area.  They are trying to overtake the tomatoes as well.  My romas have come much earlier this year........and if you notice the tomato in the lower left, they aren't all romas like they are supposed to be.

I have been making pasta sauce.  We love this recipe and it uses lots of fresh herbs which I have right now as well.  I even made up a couple of pans of lasagna with fresh sauce and herbs to freeze for Carter and Jackson.  This got my sister in to trouble last year when I did it.  Jackson asked her to recreate it, so she called me for the secret recipe and when I said fresh tomatoes and herbs, and it was January in Iowa, she told Jackson she hoped he enjoyed the pan I had made for him.  My freezer now smells like an Italian restaurant.

I had no more than used all the tomatoes when I visited the garden and picked more stuff!  This sweet corn is from some seed we found in the garage that was probably 4 years old.  This is a year when I think ANYTHING would grow.

I have made lots of pasta sauce and still have lots of tomato sauce left from last year and I made pizza sauce for the first time and canned it.  Fortunately my neighbor said he would be interested in any extra roma tomatoes, so there is a home for them.

3.  Chain saw accident................yes, David has been at it again.  He came in for lunch and asked me to patch up his knee.  He hit it with the chainsaw.  He seemed a little more worried about his jeans, a like-new pair, so...........

they are now mended.  Quilter's are never impressed when asked to mend clothes especially not when asked to from someone who was probably doing something he shouldn't have been doing.

4.  I finally started working on my challenge project for guild.  I can honestly say that I found so many ways of procrastinating before starting on this one.  My sewing room has never been cleaner, almost all of my projects are to the flimsy stage waiting to be quilted, with bindings already made.  I have cut 4 projects to take to a retreat at the end of August.  I even cleaned the house! (not that you can tell it now).  But I finally started.  I was at a 50% seam ripping rate at the beginning, but seam! to have gotten the hang of it.  I have told myself to just work on it for an hour a day and see how it goes.  Of course, I haven't even been to the sewing room this week.  Here is a sneak peek.............I don't want to show it until after the reveal in October.  I am depicting the idiom, Through Thick and Thin.

and yes, I grayed the photo so you can't tell colors yet, and yes, that is a glue stick!

5.  It's been Hot!

This has precipitated the need for the occasional chocolate malt.

Esme knows there must be something good in there and has been trying to master the art of the straw.  Don't worry, the glass was empty and I was through before she started practicing.

All of this hot weather has really brought on the napping too...............

What can I say.............It's a Hard-Knock Life around here!

6.  The last, be definitely not the least...................Willow's 4th birthday!  

We made our annual trek to my parent's house to visit the county lake and let Willow swim.  It was so hot that the water felt really good.  

For those who thing she's gotten really big, you can now see that it's just a LOT of hair.

The place was almost deserted, except for this heron (we think).

And that wraps up July!  I am heading up to the sewing room today to get back to work on my challenge project and maybe get something on the longarm.

Christi