TreasuresInTerraCotta

I've been doing a bit of sewing lately.  With a hot machine, in the hottest part of the house, and flannel and piles of fabric it doesn't seem like an especially summery activity...except that we live in Arizona where summer is the time to avoid being outdoors.  Not to mention that I've had a couple quiet evenings at home alone, which always make for great sewing (or reading) time.  Last Saturday afternoon I decided I needed to make a floor quilt for a baby shower on Sunday.  I took my own baby to the craft store and we picked out these adorable flannel pieces.  I cut (a lot) of 6" x 6" squares and sewed them wrong-sides together with a big X.   Then I sewed all the individual squares together and snipped the exposed seams to make this simple and adorable quilt.   I have discovered that babies don't need much...diapers and a few blankies can go a long way!  So that was my gift!  All wrapped up and ready to go. This weeke...

As I've mentioned before my relationship with tomatoes is mixed. This is what is happening currently in my garden of three tomatoes.  The tomatoes in the yellow and green cages are doing great!  They are taller than the cages and I am considering adding a stake for extra support because those two are so top-heavy.   These are "Cherry" tomatoes in the yellow cage.  (That's exactly what it says on the label!)  They are pretty and round and flavorful, even if the skin is a bit thick. And in the green cage is a Roma.  Both plants have done very well and we've eaten quite a few tomatoes. This is the third tomato.  A "Sweet 100" Cherry tomato.  For a while I thought it was dead.  I ignored the tomato because we got distracted watching a cucumber plant send out tendrils and climb its way up and around and over the red cage.  It grew about 5 nice beautiful cucumbers and then the cucumber plant mysteriously...

One of the local school districts started back to school this week!  It put me in a panic!  Where has summer gone?  How are we doing on our list of summer fun ideas?  Have we actually done anything fun?   I feel like we need to cram a whole bunch of summer fun into the next couple weeks.   But, in my defense, here are a few of the things we've done in the past couple weeks.   We made pinecone bird feeders ( again ).  This time, I was much more prepared and it was a lot more fun.   We spent part of a morning doing crafts at the kitchen table.  We seems to make crafty messes a lot, but this time we were all doing it together and I got a couple pictures.  Truman got to experience water coloring for the first time. For kid's art work Crayola Water Colors are the best !  Look at that bold red that Andrew is working on.  (And they washed right off the baby!) ...

The book selections in our house seem to run the gamete.  We are now a household of board books, picture books, "readers," chapter books and comic books; arts and crafts books, historical fiction, non-fiction in many genera, devotionals and Bible studies.  It's no surprise that we've been getting a lot of inspiration from our books. I've had this post half-written for months, so it's about time to push Publish.  I suspect many more posts in the future will fall into the category of Books are Inspiration.  Of course, the craft books have been giving me lots of inspiration.  One of my new favorite authors and bloggers is Amanda Blake Soule.  She provided the inspiration and instructions for the Mama's bag  sewing project a few months ago.      She has a son named Calvin so we had to make "Calvin's Paper-Mache Bowls" We used up some of our junk mail.   And I ...

photos taken on Memorial Day...because one of my Mother's Day requests was to have  a family picture taken...so here it is on Fourth of July! Hope you are living free!