Garden Bouquet

No words today, just a pretty bouquet of zinnias, dahlias, and lavender from the garden to start the week...

Beautiful Burp Cloths

Before Noah was born, one of Curtis' coworkers (a recent Dad himself) gave us a package of Gerber cloth diapers. Since we were cloth diapering and had plenty of real cloth diapers, I remember thinking that we probably wouldn't use them, despite his coworker's reassurance and advice to keep some in every room. Well, as it turns out, Noah was a huge spitter-upper, and even with those dozen burp cloths and the several dozen more that we went out and purchased ourselves, I still had to do laundry every day to keep them in stock for his copious, round-the-clock spit-ups. So, in preparation for this next baby, I am sewing up some pretty burps cloths to make catching those messes at least a little more pleasant. And if, by some miracle, this one does not spit-up, all babies eventually drool, so this baby will have nice soft drool cloths.

We will not be finding out if this baby is a girl or boy until Birth Day, so I tried to find some gender neutral flannel. What I ended up with was boyish colors in girlish designs. These heavy duty burp cloths are nice soft flannel on one side and the standard cloth diaper on the other side for super-duper absorption. The extra thickness combined with a beginner sewer caused a few problems for the sewing machine. A quick call to my Mom helped solve the problem. Her high school Home Ec teacher would be very proud of her for remembering how to solve my bobbin tension problems some 54 years after taking her class. Notice however, that there are only five finished cloths pictured, and burp cloths of course come in packs of six. One was unfortunately sacrificed after multiple seam rippings during the bobbin tension incident caused too much fraying.

While this project turned out pretty well, and I may eventually make some more, I am hoping beyond hope that I will not have much use for them until the drooling starts.
-Jen

Summer's Bounty

I appologize for being such a lazy blogger lately. I am going to claim as my excuse the fact that I have been using my usual blogging time during Noah's afternoon nap to nap myself as well. And I am going to blaim that on the fatigue caused by growing a new baby. So now, as I come out of the first trimester (15 weeks to be exact), maybe I will be napping a little less and writing more. Though, I have become really fond of those afternoon naps, so no promises.
Another upside of passing into the second trimester is that my appetite is returning just in time to enjoy the vegetables that we are harvesting from our own backyard. Right now we are drowning in green beans, carrots, and cucumbers, and the tomatoes started ripening last week.

I have been having fun searching out and trying new recipes to use up all those veggies. Some winners have been Eggplant and Zucchini Casserole and Sauteed Swiss Chard with Parmesan Cheese. Here are the makings of tonight's dinner, Beef and Vegetable Stew and Cucumber Salad (forgot to add the cucumbers in the picture).

Noah accompanies me to the garden and has learned to respectfully watch the bees that love our borage. He has been enjoying alpine strawberries straight from the garden, and stands by not-so-patiently signing "more please, more please" as I search for a small handful of ripe berries every other day or so. I have to keep checking on him when my back it turned, as he has been known to pluck some green ones and eat those too.

We hope everyone is enjoying their summer! It is hard to believe how fast it went!

Be back soon (hopefully),

Jen