Jam-making babies (and giveaway!)

Ryla and I made some strawberry jam yesterday....

Let me tell you a story... about a jam making Ryla....

She made sure to eat her fair share of berries. (one for the bowl, one for her mouth)

She helped me by wiping up her mess(then dipping her wet cloth in the strawberries and wiping some more)

She tasted really yummy everywhere I went to give her kisses when we were done..

How odd.

She made sure the wall was pretty. Apparently she wants our kitchen to be red.

She gave me the "what Mommy?" look when I gave her the exasperated "Could you get any more berry anywhere?" look.

She was great at measuring out tablespoonfuls of berry.

She was very helpful smushing berries.

She looks cute no matter what she does.

The yield from yesterday's jam making extravaganza..

Something you might not know about me..(there are probably lots of things... ha) is that I LOVE to read. LOVE. I used to read All. Of. The. Time. I don't have as much time as I used to, but I still get in as much reading as I can... My grandma sends up boxes of books from Florida for us to read here and there... I read them and add them to floor to ceiling bookshelves that literally hold thousands of books. Well, I decided to raid my shelves and pick out some books that I liked to give away. While I was at it I pulled a couple of hundred off to sell in my garage sale, but that's beside the point.

Anyway, I am giving away these books:

If you don't want all of them, I will separate them up... You can pick which ones you like or don't like, you can take them all, or you can e-mail me and we can work out some different ones to exchange in and out from my stash if you really don't like an author or you have read one already...

I have a ton.

I am also going to throw in a copy of The Time Traveler's Wife. The movie comes out soon, and I am going to start reading it so I can go watch it!

Also... it talks about South Haven and MacKenzies Bakery. If you saw my birthday post, you would see that I went to S. Haven and I got a MacKenzies mini cake for my birthday! :D

So you will get that regardless of the other ones you choose... I just don't have the copy to give away yet. I'll pick it up today.

Same old on the rules.

One comment= one entry. Tell me what your all time fav book is... or if you don't like to read then tell me what your favorite hobby is... leave one of those 2 things or you aren't qualified!

If you follow me you can get an extra-leave an extra comment and let me know.

If you blog about this you get 2 extra entries!

If you refer someone you can get an extra entry(make sure and tell them to tell me that you referred them!)

It's garage sale day, so I have to go get ready!

Before Bed.

Oh. My. Goodness. I am so tired! I drove a 3 hour round trip to pick up strawberries. Then I made 2 batches of Strawberry Jam, 2 batches of Tart Cherry Jam, and 1 batch of Black Raspberry Jam.

So here are a couple of touched up photos and I am off to bed!

Come back tomorrow... if I can muster the energy I am going to do a giveaway. We'll see, though.

7.7.09

I had a fantastic birthday this year! It was a very full day, but very fun!

First my Mom and I went cherry picking with Ryla.

The cherries on the trees looked perfect red, round, and delicious! They were warm and sticky as we picked them.

Ryla was a big help! :) She kept picking the cherries up off the ground and putting them in our buckets(Which we promptly threw back out when she wasn't watching...)

After we showed her how to pick them off of the tree, she had to go find her own! Of course. So she searched out a tree that had low enough hanging cherries...

This is a barn on the edge of the farm.

A quilt block on the barn!

We were technically in S. Haven when we were picking cherries, but we went into town afterwards to get a cherry pitter...

My dear hubby bought me a mini cake f0r my birthday!

From my favorite bakery! (I tend to make my own food, and I love doing it, but if I am going to go to a bakery it is this one!) Also, if you have read, or do read The Time Traveler's Wife... MacKenzies is in it!

This "Deluxe" cherry pitter is the DEVIL! It was horrible. Clamps on to your counter(how many counters does THAT fit?) Then the clamp snapped and the whole thing fell on the floor breaking the plastic part off... so for the rest of the day I had to hold it. Which, oddly enough, worked better than the original design!

Cherries. Tart are on the left, then Sweet Bing Cherries, and then Sweet White Cherries in front!

Ryla and I in our aprons..I wanted to show a colored photo of my apron...:P

In the Black Raspberry Jam process....

O-Cherry-O

I had a fantastic birthday! I fully intend on blogging all about it(including photos) but I only have a few minutes because I have to get ready to go make Sour Cherry and Sweet Cherry Jam!

We went to Clementine's for dinner, and since Ryla and I were in our party dresses I asked my mom to take some photos!

For my birthday my Mom made me this apron! :) I absolutely love it and it is the same fabric line that we made my kitchen curtains out of!

Just a quick peek at something I did for my birthday: we went cherry picking at a local orchard!

I will be back later to fully blog about all of the fun we had yesterday, but I am off to make jam! I also have to meet a friend later who kindly picked me up a flat of strawberries! :D

Hope you are having a great day!

Oh, and don't forget the giveaway in the previous post!

My Bloggy Birthday! (and giveaway)

It's my birthday! Woohoo! :D Let the party begin!

So, I decided to start this off with a giveaway, since I don't have time today to bake something delish for you to drool over!

I decided that I wanted to give away things that I would like to receive, so I am going to go through my mental lists of things I love, and then go through it again and see what is realistic to send..(for instance: I love cupcakes, but those would probably be somewhat, err... perishable..) So, I decided my first giveaway is going to be:

A $5 Starbucks gift card! :) Just enough for one Venti specialty drink, or a small coffee and a blueberry muffin. Or something... your choice. Just a simple giveaway, but still fun.

Here are the rules:

To enter you need to leave me a comment telling me your favorite warm beverage. Earl Gray tea? Raspberry Vanilla Hot Chocolate? Maxwell House Coffee? If you just leave me a "pick me" comment, you won't be qualified!

You can earn an extra entry for:

Referring someone to me, which requires the person who is being referred to tell me that they were sent by YOU!

Blogging about My Bloggy Birthday Birthday, July 7 - 17! and earn an extra one.

Becoming a new follower.

The Starbucks giveaway is open until July 14th at 9am.

Warning:This Post Contains Many Photos!

I have about 20 photos of varied topics to show you, so I am going to try to keep the text light, here!

Fresh picked strawberries from our GinormaGarden in my hand. Note the green edge of my sweatshirt... I told my mom that I need to dress in jeans, boots, and a sweatshirt every day in the summer and I am sure to lose weight! I wanted to pick black raspberries to make jam, and I am a mosquito magnet... they are instantly drawn to me. So I dressed up in 85* weather to pick berries... anyway, I digress. Strawberries.

This is Cueball Squash! It's very yummy. :) This is the first year that we have grown this, and it is really great!

Zucchini and Summer Squash, fresh from the garden. You don't realize how great actual fresh veggies are until you eat them straight out of the garden. You think that zucchini from the grocery store tastes great... then you try zucchini from the garden...

I showed Ryla her little cubby holes under her slide so she could put things in them... I wasn't thinking she could put her in it, though. She quickly cleared up that lapse in thought for me, though!

My husband manned the grill last night and made chicken, potatoes & broccoli, and cueball squash. Everything was fantastic! The squash was amazing cooked this way! It was a great dinner!

Since it was such a beautiful afternoon we decided to eat outside... and I felt like the occasion merited my new fiesta ware that I got at a garage sale(14 plates for $10!), and my special, favorite teal glasses and pitcher!

freshly picked black raspberries in the sun! :D Can't wait to make jam today!

I got this little gem in a box of junk for $2. I will show you some of the other things later... there are a couple of doozies in there! There were several mini crocks in there... this is just the most adorable one!

I got all of these in the box! No chips!

I baked a fresh double batch of Blueberry Strawberry Banana Bread. Turned out great! I also made a fresh batch of Applesauce for my daughter who is an applesauce fiend!

Yum!

This is my silly painted manatee gourd. I love manatees! I live in Michigan, however, so buying one of the big manatee mailboxes would look a little... strange. I had to have something manatee, though! When I saw the lady painting this at Webster's Flea Market, I knew I had to have it!

My husband found this up in our crookedy, falling down barn! I thought it was pretty neat! There is a lot of junk in our barn from the previous tenants, and we have slowly but surely cleaning it out... this is just one of the newest things that we have found.

This is our raised bed garden. The GinormaGarden is at my mom's house, but we planted this one at our house just for fun. It has 3 cayenne peppers and 3 different kinds of radishes. My husband loves both of those things!

Matt and Ryla playing with Matt's hummer toy. :) She was a little wary at first, but she quickly got into... throwing pebbles at it. Maybe she didn't quite get over being wary... :)

This is my ground cover flower that I call the Sea Anemone. It is all floaty and beautiful... I didn't check the tag to see what it really was.. ha. So I couldn't tell you!

Just thought I would share a front view of my house. Ignore the dead, dying, and growing hanging plants, please. My chenille plant isn't making it, and I forgot to water my petunias for 2 days... that one will come back, though.

Last, but not least... fireworks! We have a ton more photos, but I am not going to bore you with a million! It was really a great fireworks show!

Thanks for stopping by! Remember to check back tomorrow for the start of My Bloggy Birthday Party!

Fireworks and Memories

I have photos, I promise! We went to Allegan(a local town) tonight for their fireworks show! Boy, did that bring back the memories! I used to work in Allegan at Subs'N'More. It has since closed, but I loved that job! Can't say I was fond of the owner, but that's another story. It was my first "real" job(legal, paperwork filing type of job) and I just adored it! I loved the customers(well, some of them) who would come in repeatedly. I loved being part of our little Subs'N'More family. My favorite thing was when we got busy and I would have to dash over there and cut onions, and dash downstairs and bring up a fresh bucket of pickles! We all had so much fun together.

Every year on the 3rd of July we would work tirelessly to feed the hungry masses, and then right as the fireworks would start we would hurry up and close down shop, lock the doors, and dash for the roof. Allegan is a historic town, so Subs'N'More was in a 2 story brick building... the bottom had been renovated, but the top was like a trip back in time. There were ledgers from the lawyers office, and random articles from the barber shop that used to be up there. The owner's daughter and I loved exploring up there! In order to get to the roof we would have to go outside and upstairs.. then we would have to open the wall, that was a door, then go in and around and up the rickety ladder, through the ceiling opening, onto the roof. It was so fantastic at 16!

Hard to believe that it was almost 10 years ago!

Last time I went to the Allegan fireworks they were terrible. Really. We climbed all of the way up on that roof and they were ridiculous and horrible. They were literally over in 10 minutes, and half of them were duds. So I decided not to go again. Besides, South Haven has them and they are on the beach! What could be better than that?!

Well, we went this year... and they were so great!

Allegan has a mini carnival every year on the fireworks day... sticky, sweet, greasy fair food vendors... bouncy toys... local bands.

It is an assault on the senses... as you walk you can hear the murmur(and sometimes roar) of a writhing, wriggling crowd.

You can smell the sticky sweet elephant ears as they are swiftly passed out to anxious patrons...

You can hear the local cover band playing Thriller in the background(that totally happened. i swear!)... and watch few brave souls who tried their very best(but failed) to emulate the moves...

This year you could see the kids caterpillar tunnel toy, where the kids go in the mouth and come out... the butt. Seriously. I am not kidding.

I wish that I could have captured all that. Instead I abstained from taking photos, because I knew that it wouldn't do the whole thing justice.I did, however, take photos of the fireworks! Which I will post tomorrow. Umm... today. When it isn't midnight.

Partly it is for teenagers to strut around pretending they don't care if no one notices them, but show by their demeanor that all they want is to be noticed. Partly it is for families to get together, relax, buy a glow necklace, and watch the fireworks together. Partly it is for people to congregate en masse.

Entirely, it is to celebrate our country and the freedoms that we have. It's to celebrate those who signed for us, so many years ago, the right for our lives to be ours.

I for one, am grateful for the amazing place I live. I pray for our country, and our leaders, that we can continue to be this great nation, and that we don't sway too far one way or the other and lose what was fought so hard to gain.

But for today... I am going to light a few sparklers, dance around the yard with my daughter, and be thankful for this amazing life I have, in this fantastic, free, country that I live in!