Blues Medley

Great Grandma's 89th

Four generations

Summer Harvest

Fun sized Outer Limits had a blast picking veggies in the garden- we have san marzano and roma tomatoes, early girl tomatoes, white wonder cucumbers and one lonely bell pepper picked today.

Still have several green tomatoes on the vine- Cherokee Purple, Ozark Pink, Arkansas Traveler and lots of Matt's wild cherry, sun sugar, sun gold and princess borghese(not sure about spelling on last one)

Have decided to always grow the cherokee purple and the matt's and the sun varieties.

Family Pics

Tyler Bend Campground -check out the beautiful river and bluffs. Sunny skies, and temps in the 80's, yet only sighted one canoe floating leisurely downstream. Water was comfortable to wade in to your knees- at least for me and Lauren!! Cliff and I are thinking Lauren is about the right age to make first canoe trip.

Under the Mistletoe

You can barely see the mistletoe -complete with berries
above my head- did not realize how much it blended in with the background foliage.

Church Retreat Pics

Gift to be simple- Piano

What's for Breakfast???

End of Summer Fun

Tubing at the lake- Mr. Paul, Erin and Lauren. 

Laurenisms

Bella, the family dog, rode in the car to pick up Lauren from school.  Lauren is riding in her booster seat and Bella is sitting calmly beside her ( not the norm for Bella-as she is wild unless in the car).  Lauren smiled at Bella and said to me, "Look mom, Bella is riding so nicely, she thinks she has a pedigree."  She correctly told me what pedigree meant and agreed that the traditional meaning did not apply to Bella- part beagle/lab.  She meant she was acting fancy!!!

At the lake this past weekend, Lauren mentioned getting a tan- she and hubby both have the ability to tan well- me not so much.  Anyway- she said getting a tan is like roasting a marshmallow- you gotta keep moving around to get it even.

Little Tittles, the kitten is fond of eating locust. She said it's new name is John the Baptist- since the cat also likes locusts and wears animal skins.  Nice to know those Bible lessons are having an impact on her.

Visit to a Vineyard

We have made several trips to an elderly gentleman's farm to help him harvest his grapes.  He grows a few varieties of muscadines and two varieties of scuppernogs ( the green colored grapes). 

This venture is best undertaken in the cooler part of the day as it gets quite warm even under the canopy of the grape vines.

Our first trip yielded one gallon of huge muscadines that were squeezed and turned into grape juice which was then used to start a batch of wine- new experience for us.

Our second trip- we came home with 2 gallons of grapes.  One gallon of small, dark muscadines great for jelly and a gallon of scuppernog - also for jelly.  Our farmers informed us that we would get more juice from the grapes if we froze them first and then let them thaw before using them.  So..... now the grapes are resting in our freezer until I have the time to deal with them.

You can see in the photo the different colors of the grapes.  These are muscadines and we were searching for the darkest ones- they looked a lot like olives.  The grapes will ripen over a period of 30 days.  This style of grapes are picked individually-unlike the bunch style grapes we commonly see the in the supermarket.

A  prerequisite of making juice is watching the I love Lucy clip where she is stomping the grapes. Click here to view the video clip.

Menu Planning

Help for those last five pesky pounds I would like to lose. 

What do you do to drop those hard to lose last pounds???

Maybe I should just be fine with them??

Summer Fruit Jams

Peach, Strawberry, Red Plum and Cherry Jams

All Good

SOMETIMES- the biscuit is just a vehicle for the butter and jelly

Christmas in July part 2 and 3

Okay- the canvas is not quite finished- still a little more thinking on this one or just may wrap the artist canvas with the fabric and attach to the back- but you get the concept.

I first saw Gail Pan's design for the above when a talented sewing forum member, Carol, made a precious wall hanging.  Here blog is click here.  I knew I wanted to stitch this design for my kitchen but was not quite sure what to make with it.  Gail also has more designs on her website that I will most likely stitch to hang with this one.  click here for more of Gail's work.

Part 3 - you ask- underneath the canvas- six, crimson, toile tablemats that can be used for more than just Christmas.  Took me awhile to determine the appropriate dimensions as I wanted to use them at both my round kitchen table and my rectangular dining table and had to factor in the chargers  and elbow room that would be the best fit.   The finished size ended up 13 x 17 and the reversible (same print) mats have thin fleece ( retired baby blanket)  in between them to act both as a moisture/heat barrier and to add some body to them. Added bones-just toss in the washer and dryer. 

How Hot is It??

Short story- decided to walk to the mailbox (about 1/8 of a mile) to mail of few items.  Opened the front door and my lungs immediately filled with the humid air-shut door and make a cold drink for the long walk.  Arrive at mailbox- no mail to be placed inside.  Yes- it is that hot!!!!  100 plus degrees in our fair city- I took very little comfort in that it is generally 5 degrees cooler where we live than in the center of the city.  Note to self- next time - drive the golf cart to the mailbox or send the mail with hubby.

To the right of the mailbox you can see where we have begun removing some undergrowth and making some progress on our slat fence- we stopped due to aforementioned heat and humidity.

Here a Tomato, There a Tomato

A sampling of what we have harvested from our tomato plants left to right- Brandwine, Aunt Ruby's German Green, Lemon Boy, Jubilee and Cherokee Purple.  Not sure why this CP's coloration was quite a bit different from our previous ones- they were much duskier pinky purple color- no matter- the taste is pure concentrated tomato.  The cherokee purples will make next years list to plant and possible box car willie- scratch all the other aboves- not enough flavor and thick skins rule them out.  We will still plant the better boys and a few varieties of cherry and grape tomatoes.  Still waiting on the late to be planted sun golds. 

Running Man or How my Dad celebrated his 63rd birthday

My father decided to run the Peachtree Marathon in Georgia this year and signed on for an extensive 12 week training course to prepare.  Had had a set program to follow on most days with runs scheduled with a group of other runners on Saturday.  The picture above is from the training run just before the race on July 4th- my dad turned 63 on July 5th.  We are so proud of him for finishing the race and in good time as well.  He has aspirations of repeating the race next year and shaving some time off of his run-way to go!!!!

photo provided by a friend named Vicki-thanks so much

Coconut Pineapple Layer Cake- aka Pineapple Tall Cake

Saturday the 17th- we celebrated a combination of birthday's- Lauren's 6.5 (yes- a half b-day) and my grandmother's 88th birthday.

Cliff made Lauren little bug cakes and I made the cake above for my grandmother's cake. Will admit I am not great at getting layer cakes to look good- took several knife attempts to get these three layers leveled before spreading the pineapple filling between the layers and then frosting them. The cake did require a trip to fridge to set the frosting well- since I tweaked the recipe by adding cocount cream-yummy stuff.

After cake the ladies played hearts- Lauren even caught all the "tricks" in one hand. The children's version was quite a bit different than we usually play- no face cards and different rules too.

My grandmother left one little bite of cake on her plate- I froze it and saved it for her next year to celebrate 89!!!

Little Man's Wheelchair

Last Thursday, we were alarmed to see that Little Man had an injured right paw. He recuperated in our kitty cat hospital for a few days before returning to his family-yes we informed his mother and did allow visitation.

Lauren's caretaking extended to her making him is very own wheelchair you see pictured above-courtesty of her barbie car and leftover fabric scraps. Love her creativity. Sorry I did not catch a pic of him waving in the parade and tossing out treats- he rode proudly.