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Forget about the various Play Dough toys - the big Play Dough favorite at my house is playing Chopped. Deciding what to cook, how to present, the hustling to get it all finished on time. It's great fun every time. Of course, Team Lockhart always wins!
Yesterday, because she was in a race up Grandfather Mountain last night, there was a discussion about Aunt Sarah. The kid concensus was that Aunt Sarah can do anything: make milkshakes and smoothies, fix bikes, and run up mountains.
I worked at the store a couple of days last week and got to make some samples using the new Dakota designs. The design above is from the Garden Decor collection. I'd love to keep this one.
My own garden is doing well with all the rain. Finally, finally yesterday I was able to mow, around 5 p.m., and the grass was still wet and clumpy because the ground is so soaked. I still have a few potted things to plant, and that's my garden goal for today. Yesterday I scattered some cosmos seeds and put some four o'clock seeds in a planter. I'm getting toward the end of my planting for the year. Next year I want to get back to starting seeds during the spring since it's just too hard to find pretty things that aren't the usual suspects. You know what they are.
I'm getting ready to spend a couple of days at Pieceful Haven, just sewing. I LOVE that. The first thing to do, of course, is to clean out my car. I'm such an admirer of people who have lovely clean cars, not a spec of trash, pristene dash, no crumbs anywhere. Oh, my. I know I have sand toys in the back, library books, probably a couple of empty juice boxes floating around. A hammer and some nails from putting up several quilts at church yesterday. A bag of sewing I need to do for a client. Even my embroidery machine USB stick in the glove box.
I guess my cluttered house and cluttered car reflect my cluttered mind.
Every once in awhile, I get an urge to bake something. Not too often, because the doctor says I have pre-diabetes and I don't want the full-blown thing, but just now and then I want to get out the butter and sugar and chocolate or fruit. And when it's cake, I get out this book, which has lovely pictures and nice stories and yummy recipes. Every time I read it, I want to BE a Cake Lady.
Yesterday for the 4th, my assignment was to bring watermelon for dessert, but I really wanted to MAKE something, which turned out to be this Mississippi Mud Cake. I won't tell you that it isn't so bad for you because . . . It really has the wonderful things that make it taste great. Butter, sugar, cocoa.
My theory about eating cake or ice cream or whatever is that if you're going to have some, it should be really good, not something with lots of preservatives and ingredients that I have no idea what they could be. And this was really good. We never did eat the watermelon.
Last night, Steph and I with the kids spent the evening at Kings Island, riding up the Eiffel Tower just before 10:00 for the fireworks. It was a good time to celebrate because it looks like it's going to be a rainy 4th.
Rainy or not, I love all the holidays.
One last picture of the embroidered pants from yesterday, with a reminder to never give up. A couple of added buttons and the project looks like it was designed that way. I'm happy.
Yesterday the kids and I had lunch at Cobblestone Cafe for the first time this summer, and it was cool enough to sit on the patio. Peanut butter and jelly sandwiches, either cut as a flower or a butterfly, with Skittles on top. Goldfish and grapes. Perfect for a kid. The chips were from my lunch.
We got to the zoo around 2:30, which was perfect. The early people were leaving and we got one of the shaded parking spots on Vine Street. The last hour was especially nice as people cleared out. There was a very short line for the train and the kids got the last seat, which faces backward. A first for them. We're going to be late zoo go-ers from now on. Extra bonus: we met up with their mom, who works about two minutes from the zoo, and they could go on home with her.
I've embroidered names on the back of little baby pants before with good results, but this was the first time I embroidered two words. My first thought was to do it in two hoopings, one for each side and that's what I did. Here's the deal: don't do that!
I started with the gray pants and my first side was ok but the second side was a little crooked. It's pretty easy to rip out a satin stitch, and when I saw that it wasn't going like I wanted I got out the seam ripper, ripped, adjusted, and went on my way. All looked pretty good, but I was using a larger needle that I should have and there were a couple of miniscule holes in the knit from the first stitching.
Eventually I figured that I could satin stitch a curvy line between the words and the holes would disappear, so it was a decent rescue. For the black pants I did both words in one hooping and life was good. I did a couple of little extras for the friend who needed the baby gift so hopefully she'll be happy.
But if you embroider, don't do what I did. Hoop once for the baby butt, even if it's two words.
June was a month full of good stuff, really fun stuff, so I'm not sure why I found my creativity tanking. And my motivation overall. And my housekeeping, never stellar at best, too.
This is a new month, and I'm going to try to do better, and in that spirit, I really enjoyed having lunch with my baby quilt group. This is the time when we just lunch, and don't sew. We went to Don Pablo's, on the Ohio River, and it was so enjoyable. Except for a couple of times walking to see fireworks, I'd never driven through the entry in the flood wall that leads to several restaurants.
I so enjoy the creativity and generosity of spirit in this group. And now I'm ready to sew again, beginning with the quilt that was supposed to be for June.
One thing that will help: when hot weather comes, my upstairs Cape Cod studio is just too warm. I don't even try to air condition it, just keep the vents closed. I usually end up with a dining room sewing area and then I'm cranky because the living area never looks neat. I grew up in a messy house and just get uneasy when things get out of control.
This summer, today actually, I'm setting up a table in my bedroom, which is certainly large enough, and I'll choose one of my sewing machines to live there. Well, maybe two of them. A small cutting mat, ruler, and rotary cutter. I'll see how that works. I know there will be lots of running up and down stairs, but I do that anyway and it's good exercise.
Maybe one of these days I'll have a project completed.
