i have to say...

it was one of those weekends...

...where nothing got done. No apples were sauced. They are all just sitting there staring at me, wondering when their time will come.

That time is today. And tomorrow.

This is our very last "free" week.  Next week we open the schoolbooks and get back to being serious.  I, for one, am ready for it.  After a while, too much freedom feels overwhelming.  Especially when so much mommy-time is spent keeping everyone busy, because if you don't, chaos reigns.  How is it that when there is more to do, I actually find more free time.  I am pretty sure it is because my kids are not bored. When we are busy, they enjoy their time after school since it seems like a treat.  Something special.

I'm off to work on the apples.

Have a lovely Monday!

Hi there! 

I wanted you all to know that I am having a giveaway at Soulemama's blog--a $40 shopping spree in my store--so that you could go and throw your names in the pool.  Also, there is a 10% discount code you can use. 

Have a great weekend!

apple harvest

Aubry visited at a friend's house yesterday and she was able to do some apple picking. Lots of apple picking! 

We have bags and bags of these delicious, organic apples (organic as in "the trees weren't sprayed so you have to watch out for worms") just sitting and waiting to be made into applesauce. 

They aren't the lovely, perfect ones you find in the store, but they taste amazing and they were free.  Free is my favorite price, you know!

All I need is a recipe for Apple Butter.  I have never tasted it, but it sounds worth having in the winter when the fresh taste of harvest-days is so welcome.  My grandma's well-used recipe book will be my guide and I will report back next week.

Goodness knows that you need to be updated on my apple adventures!

Have a great weekend!

a few things...

Penny has initiated a "Bring Back the Flea Market Fancy" campaign and I can fully support this one!  What a perfect line of fabric and what fun if we could get it again!  Head on over to sign the petition or to see the list of goods made with these fabrics.  Too cute!

***Have you seen Tanya Whelan's new line, Dolce?  Oh my gosh, the florals in this line are just too much.  Eye-candy for sure.  And, yes, the full line will be in my shop this fall.

***I want this.  Too cute and too true!

***Here are a couple of quilt blogs that I am LOVING these days: The Sometimes Crafter and Red Pepper Quilts. So much inspiration!

Have a great Thursday!

making a quilt with your child: a "me and my girl" tutorial

Aubry has been asking to make a quilt of her very own for a while.  We decided to make this into a tutorial that you can find here.  (You will also find it on my sidebar.)

I let her do almost everything on this one, including picking out the fabric and sewing and pinning.  The only step I did by  myself was ironing because I am not ready to set her free with that yet.

Letting her pick the fabrics was the hard part for me and guess how many fabrics she picked from my shop? 

NONE!  Not one! 

My girl wanted to go with bandanas, which turned out to be bright and fun and colorful.

A post called Practice Makes Perfect (on a blog I used to keep called Me and My Girl) will help you and your crafter get ready for this project. I always make sure to talk about sewing safety with my kids, because running over your finger with the needle hurts.  A lot.  Some kids insist on learning this the hard way.

If you have any questions, please feel free to ask and I will post all answers in the comments so everyone can see.

And most of all, have fun with this.  Craft experiences are not for creating perfection, but rather for creating memories and relationship.  If you get a cute project at the end of it, great!

The tutorial is here.

hello, betty!

Betty is finished!  I can't say that I am love with her, but I do like her.  For some reason the colors I picked are not making me completely happy.  Don't know why...

Before I quit whining about my quilt, I have to show you the part that is going to make me crazy every time I look at it.  The corner fabric is the same as the binding fabric.  This completely swallows up the corner block and makes it look like it isn't even there:

This happened because I didn't buy all of the fabric I needed at one time, so when I went to find my backing and binding, I only had two choices, neither one of them great.  Lesson learned.

On to Betty's positive traits!  Since she is small (40" X 40") it was much easier to quilt Betty.  The design is smaller, more even, and there are fewer "jumps" in the stitching where I started and stopped.  Also, I love the design of the blocks.  Simple, but a great way to show off a range of fabrics.

I do love the look of Betty sitting on her chair. 

I decided to pile a couple of quilts on a chair that I have in the entryway of our house.  Not only does it look cute, but it also solves the problem of what to do with all of these quilts I am making these days.  Necessity meets home decor. Love it!

Aubry and I have a little surprise coming up:  a tutorial for a quilt you can make with your child. I hope to have it posted tomorrow or Wednesday.

See you soon!

here's whats goin' on!

***a friend and i are canning peaches today. the peaches from the west slope have been so good this year (seriously, they are like candy!) we couldn't resist.

***i can now run the length of a 5K.  i did it for the first time in San Francisco and have done it 5 times since then.  yeah!

***school books SHOULD be arriving today.  you know what that means don't you?  school plans will be in the works and we will start soon.  looking forward to having more purpose in our days...

***tomorrow we are weeding our co-op garden for the last time.  after that it is all harvesting until it is time to pick all the plants to let the garden rest for the year.  this signifies the end of summer for me.

***next week is registration for our homeschool co-op.  just another sign of summer ending.

***apple pickin' time is coming soon.  applesauce, apple pie, apple-pumpkin muffins.  the end of summer ain't all bad!

*** i hope to quilt my hello betty quilt this weekend.  i made one giant mistake on it that will drive me crazy.  next week i will show you the finished product and the "oops".

what's goin' on for you this weekend?

have a good one!

noticing bubbles

One of my favorite things about having children is their ability to get me to slow down and notice life.  If I had it my way, my to-do list would be my guide and I would flit from item to item until I lay down exhausted at the end of the day.  All of the beauty and happiness that could have been found, would be long gone and unenjoyed.

Sometimes when one of the kids come and ask me to notice life with them--a new Lego model, seed pods on the flowers, the ability to do a handstand in the pool--I have to force myself to put down what I am working on. 

Each and every time I am glad I did. 

Pulling myself away doesn't come naturally, but I do it anyway.  I am blessed to have had many people tell me the importance of the little moments in life, and I believed them.  Kids that are growing older also provide the motivation to spend more minutes just living.

Someday these busy days will be behind and me and I will have all of the time in the world to do the things I have set aside for this season.  And I think I will wish that someone would tug me away from the chores so that I can witness bubbles being blown without a bubble-wand.  Did you know that you can use your hands?

Ah, these sweet moments......

deliciousness

I am happy to report that our garden is in full harvest mode!  This weekend we picked tomatoes, potatoes, beets, peppers, onions, radishes, basil and other herbs.

Of course, the first thing we made was salsa.  My grandma is the queen of makin' salsa, so I use her recipe, if you can call a "little bit of this and a little bit of that" a recipe.  You can add the ingredients you like and leave the rest out, and you can add extra amounts of the things you love to taste.  We love the taste of the garlic, cilantro and the lime.

Here is the basic salsa recipe:

2 cups chopped, fresh tomatoes
1/2 cup chopped white onion
2 cloves minced garlic
1 chopped jalapeno
juice of 1/2 of a lemon or a lime
1/4 cup chopped cilantro
salt and pepper to taste (sometimes when you can't get the taste just right, you need more salt)

Mix all ingredients together until you like the taste (the jalapenos will get a little hotter as the salsa sits) and then refrigerate it for about 2 hours. Serve it with tortilla chips.

You are going to want to make a lot of this so double it if you have more than a couple of people who will eat it.  The fun thing about salsa is that it is pretty much fat free.  Of course, the chips add fat but if you pile the salsa onto a few chips, you are doing just fine!

Happy snacking!

we have a winner!

Wow!  How fun to find that there are so many fabric-lovers besides me! 

I was going to have Aubry pick a name, but it was past her bedtime by the time I got around to it, so Danika was our Random-Comment Picker.  Here is who she picked:

Mary Flynn from Quilt Hollow!

Congrats, Mary!  All I need is your mailing address and your decision about whether you want the red/orange pile or the blue/green pile, or a mix of the two.  You can email me at ihavetosayblog (at) gmail (dot) com.

I will be having a giveaway like this about every 6 weeks or so, depending on how quickly the end-bolt stack grows out of the confines of the shelf.  Hope to see you next time!

Today is a busy, busy Monday for me.  I am in school-preparation mode and that means planning lessons, organizing, cleaning and meditating fondly on the fact that my kids will soon be busy with school and my main job for the day won't be keeping them busy.  Isn't it funny that summer always seems so busy because we spend so much time keeping the kiddos busy?

I think I should get some sort of prize for using the word "busy" so many times in one paragraph.

Have a nice Monday!