Sometimes All you Need is a Little Pick Me Up

 

In the midst of covid, shut downs, stress, store closures, empty grocery stores, and it being impossible to find toilet paper~ one of my dear, dear friends had a terrible, no-good, awful week with TWO of her children breaking bones in the SAME WEEK.  

It was all TOO MUCH!

So we had them over for lunch and made it a bit of a party to help give them a little pick me up.

(The PEANUT theme is a bit of an inside joke with the children and doesn't make sense outside of their relationships.  In fact, it really doesn't even make sense INSIDE of their relationship, come to think of it!)

As Corynns' sign says, sometimes all we need is a little pick me up.

Rebels, together. 18 years.

 18 years ago, despite the urging of Very.Important.People not to marry me, this man did.  What a rebel!

I spent the day of our anniversary looking forward to going on a date and out to eat (!!!) for the first time in almost a year.  Despite getting to the restaurant at the minute it opened and it being entirely empty, they refused to seat us without wearing a worthless mask to walk 6 feet to an empty table in an (again) empty restaurant.  Which is total and absolute malarky.

Taking part in malarky is not what I am about so.....

we left and happily gave our money to a roadside stand that was happy to treat us like people and sell us chicken and pork (sans mask).  We ate it at a park- with a nicer view than the restaurant anyway.  

What rebels we are!!

Thanks for standing for Very.Important.Things, Mister, and thanks for standing with me.

Tomatoes Are NOT Cardboard.

 

Early morning light hits the tomatoes just right

As proud of I am of growing lots of beautiful heads of broccoli... I don't think I am going to grow it anymore.

Picking all those broccoli worms out before cooking- makes me lose all appetite for the stuff.  And dinner is always a bit on edge for everyone- hoping they don't find any leftover surprises.  STRESS!

It may make me a bad person but pesticide broccoli is looking pretty good to me!! 

They are awfully pretty in the sunlight but they can't stay here forever. 

The question is... WHERE will I put them?!

Peanut butter pie.  The creamy peach and blueberry pie was eaten up too quickly to be photographed.

Baby Moses loves him some cherry tomatoes!  Can you tell?

Pressure  canner mirrors are so SLIMMING.

(except when they are not.)

I made a breakfast hash to top scrambled eggs one morning.  And then discovered I didn't have any eggs left to scramble!  We had breakfast topping all by itself.  For SHAME.

I spied a gaping hole before anyone had even sat down to supper.  

Summer tubs

Making homemade ice cream is a task that happens once or twice a week around here.

On 90 degree days it melts before it can smile pretty for the camera.

Biscuits and Sausage gravy for supper...because we can. 

 

After supper porch sitting...for a few seconds before grabbing the climber from flipping the rocking chairs over. 

Over and over and over again. 

He's HILARIOUS.

Corynn and her own zinnias.

Do you get tired of all the food and flower pictures I share in the summer?  That seems to be all I blog about but I can't help myself!

Here's the thing:  God is SO GOOD.  And every time I make a colorful meal full of kaleidoscope from the garden or load a vase with lurid petals, I am astounded by His goodness to us in His creation.  

Have you ever thought about the fact that God could have created us to survive and thrive on a single food...  He could have made us to eat only cardboard.  Seriously!  I think about it a lot.  Probably every day.  (Hey...I think about food a lot.)  Especially in the summertime.  Especially when the lighting is so beautiful at every meal to actually capture some of its' beauty before it is wolfed down to be redeemed as energy.  I can't help but take just a tiny moment to revel in it.

It's astounding.  All of it.

Tomatoes are happening at our place these days.  And MY, what a harvest.  Last years' harvest was puny... whatever we got, we ate.  I don't think I canned ANY.  When you plant over 100 plants...that is a disappointment!  I am thankful for this year and the opportunity to restock those homecanned tomatoes.  My one disappointment (if I could be disappointed at abundance...) is how many red cherry tomatoes we are getting.  I had bought several six packs of orange tomatoes and yellow pear tomatoes to go along with the ones I had started from seed...and they must have been all miss-marked because all I have is a ton of cherry tomatoes and NO yellow or orange tomatoes.  

Happy weekend, friends!  What are your plans? 

Mine involve cheesemaking, canning, and cleaning.  What else?!  

Book Chatter and "Procraftination"

A few finished projects:

A nightgown big enough for two seasons...

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A gift for one of the bravest boys I know.  Enduring leukemia treatments as a toddler makes him a SUPERHERO in my book.

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A mermaid skirt and headscarf.  I used this skirt tutorial/pattern.

And proof that Moses' little penguin lovey did, in fact, get finished for Christmas...

Also- a new towel.  FOR...you guessed it....Ineke.

It's not my fault though- the one she got as a gift last year looked like this:

I mean...seriously... it's not my fault that poor little unicorns and God-given rainbows have been highjacked by insanity.

 I still love them both- but maybe not together. 

Wouldn't want to give anyone the wrong impression.

So I bribed Ineke with MERMAIDS instead.  (Low, I know.)

As you can see- Ineke is a spoiled girl.

When you make two different gifts for other people out of two different girlie-girl fabrics and have *just enough* left over to make something small from each of them... the littlest girl of the bunch gets spoiled rotten.

And not EVEN for a birthday!  

Just because Mama FINALLY got sick of the leftover fabrics sitting on the sewing table, pieces cut and getting dusty.

I think Adele' needs a little handmade lovin' next, she turned positively green with envy as I was working on these.  But unfortunately, a teeny bit of leftover fabric can only be stretched so far.

It's lucky to be little!

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If you want to know how I manage to get so much crafting done, the key is to begin a project, then set it aside for, oh..... at least several months.  Possibly years.  

Finally finish the job after you get sick to death of moving or looking at the unfinished piles another dozen times or so.  

Then...make sure to take many months to blog about them and do so ALL at the same time.

You will look very productive indeed.

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Book chatter... I started this post while reading The Turn of the Screw...here's what I had to say about that:

I finished reading The Turn of the Screw by Henry James.  Wow.  Have you read it?  This was a dark book and difficult to interpret.  I believe that Henry James masterfully created a story that could be interpreted several different ways, each outcome entirely plausible.  It was as if he wanted the reader to make up his mind as to the truth of his tale.  But, the thing is, I hate subjective truth.  I guess I lean toward books that tell it to me plain... I find its' ambiguity makes me feel stupid.  I want to know WHAT was Mr. James saying... precisely?!  Am I not smart enough to be able to tell?  IS the governess mad?  Was she protector?  Were the ghosts real?  Who, in the story, was perverse?  I think my sympathies lie with the governess.  How else would Miles' have known who she saw at the window?  Any thoughts?

Since then...

I gobbled up Death By Living by N.D.Wilson. 

I finished All Art is Propaganda by George Orwell (which was interesting.)

Just Show Up: The Dance of Walking Through Suffering Together by Kara Tippetts and Jill Buteyn (which was heartbreaking.)

Where the Crawdads Sing by Delia Owens (which was well written and engaging but I hated it. The ending....REALLY?!? So dumb.)

The Constitution Made Easy (which was educating.  Wish more people were reading that these days, lemmetellyou)

And now I am doing a dance between Slave Narratives by the Library of America (which is profound) and The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society (which is just plain pleasant...and a nice diversion.)

    I am trying to make a list of books to read that lovers of literature would expect me to have read by now but which I haven't.  You know, those books that reside in the "Books You Must Read Before You Die" bucket list of worthwhile reads or "Books Everyone Should Know".  If you had a list like these, what would your list include? 

As for crafting/creating.... I need to get working on several projects that I'd LIKE to do but lack total motivation in starting.  Ineke wants a birthday mermaid.  I have THREE baby gifts to make.    Three children have birthdays in September.  And as fast as time is flying...Christmas is in about three seconds.

Wouldn't it be nice to not procrastinate?  Or rather, 'procraftinate'?

Or maybe it would be nicer to just go curl up with a book.

crafting and yarning along