Supplies Tape, Crayons, Scissors, Paper, String and a odd leftover pool part
Add in one four year old
What you get is a floor covered with paper bits and a happily creating boy who is busy long enough for you the mom to get something done and snap some quick photos of your busy little bee.
Some of our treasures from the past week’s projects. We have been kept quite busy with several outdoor projects. My chickens are the proud little owners of a new fenced run. The deer will soon learn that the fence we are putting around the garden is for them! (electric :D) Harvest is now upon me in many small ways. I lost out on my strawberries with the move of the bed and I left the rhubarb - because I couldn’t think of anything to do with it sans strawberries! Enjoy our photo bounty (yay batteries!)
Interesting Rock found while Jr. was helping Granpda dig post holes for garden fence.
Currants 2008 - currently turning in to Jelly
Cherry Harvest 2008
Cherry pits!
Our cherries are ripe so we’ve been outside picking and inside pitting. I was going to update with a photo but I’ve got 14 pounds of pitted cherries yet to process tonight so the end product will have perform “picture” duty. Am I sick of cherry pits - oh hell yeah. Props to Jr. for his help he pitted between a 1/2 to 1 pound which doesn’t sound like much until you’ve pitted a pound of cherries by hand.
We had a great weekend and hope you all did too! Lots of little things to talk about but here’s our weekend in a nutshell:
1. mama went to the farmers market while the men had a manly morning.
2. we reminded ourselves we are gardeners of the optimistic type and planted for fall harvest.
3. we picked cherries and found that our pear tree has lovely little future pears!
How was your weekend?
Jr.’s jammies are all sewn up and ready to go. I’m quite pleased that both the boys’ pajamas came out reasonabley well or at least not so horrid that they will notice. I expect they will be a bit big since I sized up for both boys.
In other homemade for the holiday news I have several small projects to do this week but its winding down. Whew! So a few therapy bags and a couple small trinket gifts should finish up our gifting.
Hope everyone else’s preparations are going well. Gram & Gramps here are starting to freak out because they haven’t gotten anything yet! LOL
but the projects inside delightful! With all the ice and snow we are having a project day here at our house!
First up was to try my hand at dyeing a piece of fabric. I loved the subtle flowers but wanted something blue rather than white. I of course forgot to get a before picture.
I had this project going on the kitchen counter. I also added to the mix a few sacrificial wash clothes to hold the fabric down in the bowl which were dingy white and are now fantastic blue!
Next up Christmas Sugar cookies which the boys helped me with we will frost these up soon. Our first batch didn’t last more than four days.
And speaking of cookies we picked up our cookies from the cookie exchange we participated in…..those cookies won’t last four day either!! The boys have been nibbling at sugar, chocolate chip (all my “boys” favorite cookie). We are pleasantly sugar buzzed!
Then I worked on a small gift which came out better than I expected or even planned.
All in all it was a good day for projects here at our house. Granted the boys would much prefer the ability to get out of the house rather than be stuck inside. Maybe we’ll be able to get out of doors tomorrow for a bit.
HA!
Well one can hope right?
I started my “big” projects of the boys’ Christmas jammies. I must say there was some happy dancing when I finished up Lil’B shirt and it actually looked like a pajama shirt! Woo Hoo!
I finished up dear hubbies gift (ha ha thought I’d tell you didn’t you husband!)
I finished up a kitchen “gadget” of sorts for one sister.
Oops more later the hungry minions are calling.
First a note to myself. One should not try to launch a new hobby/craft in the midst of the holiday rush. Take heart dear little inner sewing mama it will get better when my head stops trying to hurry my fingers. I have three or four projects that are percolating in my brain for after the holidays. And I’m getting lots of inspiration from Sew, Mama, Sew!.
Next playing with my serger (as in not really doing anything productive) is wildly amusing! One day I cobbled together a new baby doll diaper for our resident dolly Joey. We do have a second dolly but its much, much smaller. I’m on the watch for a decent sized doll (read as close to Joey as I can find) at the thrifts to add to our pretend family to even up the “I get the baby” odds.
This week I’m adding a few more projects to my plate for the rest of November and December. On of which I am really excited about. We are going to decorate a tree with edible eats for our bird friends. We’ll do this the day after Thanksgiving as a family. One of my struggles with the abrupt transition from Thanksgiving to Christmas everywhere is that I feel we miss out on establishing a tradition of sorts from a community event standpoint. And these past few years we’ve not done much better from a family standpoint either. Our Thanksgivings have been lackluster these last couple of years.
So I’m working not only the menu for next week but also the activities. I’m not going to go into our first holiday weekend with no ideas of the “what” we’ll be doing this year.
How are all your Thanksgiving plans going??
