Grandma and Cherry Pie

 Can she bake a cherry pie, Billy Boy, Billy Boy? the verdict is in... YES I can. Crust was the standard crust my mom always makes from Joy of Cooking and the filling was half fresh cherries and half canned. Would have been even better if I had enough of the fresh ones.

Continued progress on Grandma Lucille. She is looking a little sad here but should brighten up when her eyes have a little more twinkle.  A long ways to go and lots of challenging wrinkles.

Busy Summer

I have already had a very busy summer and there is more to come. We went to Indianapolis for the Indy 500 and went to my Parents 50th Wedding Anniversary Party.

Along with travels, we are remodeling a bathroom ourselves and rearranging rooms. With all of these activities it has been hard to find time to sit down and blog. I will fill you in with the hope that each of these pictures really is worth a thousand words because right now I am too tired to think of any more.

 

 

 At my parents farm I took some time to work on this painting of my son.

 I was using my mom's easel  so I had to cover it with plastic so that it would not get paint on it. I think it would be happier with a little paint coverage.  My mother is a wonderful painter but never works on it. The easel only gets used to hold a mirror so that she can cut her own hair.

 

Beginning of a new painting of my 98 yr old grandmother, just a first rough in of shadows.

Baby Shower Gifts

For My friends baby shower I made two gifts inspired by various pins on pinterest. One was a faux chenille blanket, and the other was an altered onesie.

 

 The blanket started with one layer of cotton quilt fabric and three layers of flannel. I pinned them together as I ironed them to keep them from shifting during quilting.

 Sewing diagonal lines approximately 1/2 inch apart (this took a lot longer than I thought it would)

 I cut through the three layers of flannel without cutting the top layer.

 I squared up the quilt and then added a satin blanket binding.

After the blanket was washed the edges of the flannel fray in this cool wavy pattern.

 I just added three layers of jersey cotton to this onesie to make it a sweet little dress. No one else will have this outfit.

 Blanket and Dress

And my Goose was happy to model for the picture shoot.

Baby Shower

 The last week has been very busy with projects, all of which I could not post to the blog. I was getting ready for my friend's surprise baby shower. She has two boys and is now having a girl and I wanted to use the opportunity to have a surprise party. I think there is nothing better than a surprise party. To not be expecting anything and then have something delightful happen. What fun.

I made the cake and had so much fun with the gum paste decorations.
The cake was a lemon box cake with milk substituted for water, butter for oil, and an extra egg. I also added the zest from one lemon. Between the 4 layers of cake I added a filling of seedless Raspberry preserves. The bottom of the cake had a trim of fresh raspberries.

 Thumbelina
 

My messy work area

 Flowers drying

 Finished Cake

 With cake work I did not manage to get my gifts completely finished. I will show pictures of the baby gifts once they are complete.

And I just had to share the joy of a good piece of watermelon.

What I have accomplished and what I have not

In this generation of pinterest and blogs it can be easy to believe that everyone does amazing handmade crafts and artwork, has a spotless house cleaned entirely with homemade cleaning supplies, makes gourmet dinners from scratch every night, uses cloth diapers but only for 1.5 years when their children learn to use the potty with nary an accident, homeschools their perfectly behaved children and goes on interesting dates every week with their charming husbands.
I want to make sure no one believes I anywhere come close to meeting this "Norm." Not that anyone who knows me ever would.

So things I got done this week:

• Washed 3 loads of laundry,
• Gave my family food to eat
• Invented a new recipe
• Finished a painting
• Worked on a small quilt project to show to Blissful Home Guild - topic Homemade Gift Ideas (Pictures to follow)
• Had 3 tea parties with my daughter
• Nursed the baby countless times
• Got the kids to bed
• Read books
• Made cookies with daughter
• Cleaned off the table
• Swept the floor of cheerios 24 times
• Cleaned out the sandbox
• This Blog

Things I have not gotten to

• Folding or putting away any laundry
• Feeding much more than PB and J or pasta for several days in a row
• Grocery shopping- new recipe was mandatory to take advantage of what was available on hand
• Starting another painting
• Making the tea parties beautiful enough to photograph, we were wearing boring clothes and eating off of the coffee table, no special decorations
• Giving the kids nightly baths, bedtime came and I was too tired to tackle bathtime
• Reading Adult books
• Cleaning off the foot tall pile of paperwork on the dining room Hutch
• Moving things up the stairs from the pile on the stairs
• Vacuuming
• Mopping
• Cleaning bathrooms
• Finding the lost movie from the library
• Sending mothers day cards to the amazing mothers in my life
• Clearing countertops in the kitchen
• Taking out the trash on trash day
• Getting to church on Sunday- potty training and fussy baby made the whole thing seem too daunting
  

Milkweed Complete....I think

Milkweed is complete, at least I think it is. Sometimes it is hard to know whether I have reached a spot of completion. It will have to sit around for a few days or weeks and I will decide if I need to change anything.

Garden Flowers

We took a visit with the Community Center to Meadowlark Gardens this morning and for it was a grand adventure.

 Stopping to smell the flowers

 Mushrooms in the woods

 Korean Garden

 Looking at tadpoles in the pond

 Reading the Alphabet book

 Turtles in the lake

 Way ahead of the group

 Tea party

And for Kate, an update on her painting. Small changes but it is developing.