Few garden and family posts

We have been busy with gardening and canning. Here is our tomato patch. It isn't doing as well as normal due to mixup in tomato plants. They were labeled wrong and the main thing is the water. We have had rain almost every single day. The sun pops out for a little while and then it rains and repeats over and over. 

We have begun to pick our corn. We didn't plant much but I use it in cornbread all winter. We will put up a few cobs whole but cutting off the rest to freeze.

We have been slowly cutting the rosemary back some. We plan to kill out the spearmint. It has gotten scraggly and ugly and I tried infusing it in vodka last year and it tasted like weeds. I plan to start over next spring with new pepper mint and asparagus plants. But I took the rosemary and infused coconut oil and yesterday put some up to infuse with vinegar. 

I also made some blueberry health syrup from the last of the berries this year. I added several whole lemons, sugar, tumeric, cinnamon, and ginger. It sounds awful but really it doesn't taste too bad. It will good for cholesterol, inflamation and antioxidant. 

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Here are a few family photos. 

Sonny cooking breakfast. Yes I'm lucky but we really do take turns cooking. 

He really is in good shape for 74.

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These are my 3 granddaughers and their mother. I'm so proud of all of them and they are so close to their mom.

Busy Garden and Wedding

These last few weeks have been really busy. Our garden has been coming off big time. We finally picked the last of the blueberries and Sonny will be pruning them drastically so we may not have berries again for a few years. 

We have slowly been pruning the rosemary. We have 2 big bushes and they have overgrown terribly. So I'm drying the rosemary and saving some for my cooking but I also made some rosemary infused coconut oil. Rosemary oil is great for cleaning as it is a natural antibiotic. I did my infusion in a crock pot set on warm.

The local grocery store had some wonderful red bell peppers that are grown locally. They were HUGE. I forgot to get a photo of them. But we initially bought 10. Sonny roasted them on the grill and I peeled and packed in jars and we pressured for 10 minutes and now I have pimentos for my winter cooking. Later we went back and got what they had left so think I'm now prepared for winter. 

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We had a wedding on June 20 for our middle granddaughter. It was held outside and we all tried to social distance but it was hard. Sonny performed the wedding. So here are some special shots from the wedding.

Alaska Life

Our youngest son took a job this year working on a boat on the Toolic River in Alaska. His home base is Bethel and he travels up river about 400 miles to deliver cooking and heating oil to small villages. It has really been an adventure for all of us as he left in the midst of the pandemic. He was test 5 days before he left and then again when he got to Bethel and was in quarentine for 5 more days. Now he has been really experiencing life on the river. His boat is small and so living quarters are cramped. But so far he is enjoying it. I can say that our daugher-in-law and daughter are all that happy him being going for 3 months. He will be home the end of August for a couple of weeks and then back to Bethel until the river starts to freeze over. He will be off all winter and plans to use his time to work on his 2nd mates license. So here are just a few photos of his time spent in Alaska.

He went fishing and caught a Dolly Varden (artic char) and then he cooked it up. He is the designated breakfast chef.

He got to see a moose about 20 feet away from the boat.

And since he is in the land of the midnight sun he isn't getting much dark time sleep. In fact he is working nights. 

Here is a picture of his boat.

And he took this amazing photo of a bald eagle through the lens of a binocular.

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And as always. 

Phew!!! still not finished with garden days

This is always a busy time of the year for us with our garden veggies and fruit trees yielding their bounty. I've put up peaches in freezer for 2 days and now picking blueberries everyother day and freezing. 

These are just a few shots of our garden from the first few weeks after planting.

This is the garden from about 3 weeks ago. I'll post photos of what it looks like now on next post.

It looks quite different. We are now harvesting squash, cucumbers and green beans. I've put up pickles and dilled green beans and even squash relish. I have more of the pickles and relish to put up. Soon we will have corn and tomatoes. 

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My herb garden spot has really grown. I have rosemary, oregano, sage and basil. I planted Italian parsley but seed must have been bad. 

We have trimmed back about half the rosemary and have dried and frozen the herb.

I spent 2 days reorganizing my pantry and back laundry room. The laundry room shelves now house my wool dying equipment, canning equipment and crock pots, air fryer and cleaning tools. 

On another post later, I will post my youngest son's great adventure. Stay tuned.

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And as always........

Bible Journaling 101 part4?

Sometimes it is so hard for me to keep up with this blog on journaling but I'll continue to try. It makes it hard when you have limited data to use....so on with the tutorial.

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I had this old old set of 1920 Encyclopedias that had been in storage. They were pretty rank looking and had water spots and pages were really aged. I looked up to see if they were worth the effort to sell them as a collectible set and they were worth maybe $20 if I sold them. Instead I turned them into blessings. 

First thing I did was to remove the cover from the pages. I did save some of the pages to use in these and other projects. The illustrations were all in black and white so it makes unique junk journal pages. Once I had the covers removed, I painted the covers. I had to paint them with several coats of paint as the red color of the fabric kept bleeding through. On some I wanted pink I only did one coat of white and left them looking pinkish. I did a survey with most of the ladies at church and one was their favorite color so tried to match them to the person I was doing them for. I did mine blue. 

As you can see it is over stuffed. After painting blue, I glued on laces, doilys and anything to decorate the cover. I used a round clipart I dound of the butterflies. Also there is a metal charm glued on. 

I then took scrapbooking paper and also cardstock to make the pages. I cut most to the page size to fit inside the book. I drilled holes in the cover so I could attach the pages. The pages are all punched at same spacing as the cover. I tie it altogether when finished with ribbon or I used soft netting for mine. I also glued in a strip of the netting on the inside of the cover on front and back and glued a cardstock sheet over to seal it in. These are used to tie the book closed when I'm not using it. The pages are all sewn together as some scrapbook paper or cardstock is blank on one side and I wanted printed look to all mine. 

One of the highlights of my life was going to Israel. It was a trip of a lifetime. I found some old junk mail I had saved that had this neat map. The other is a print from an artist I like. 

This shows a photo of me being baptized in the Jordan River. I also love Mary Englebrit. The right page was from a calendar of hers. 

As you can see these pages have holes punched on the side. The page on the left has a scripture clipart I found online. The dress is a cute clipart I found for free online. It folded in half so I can write inside the dress. I attached it with tying ribbon or embroider floss to a hole punched at top. The page on the right is a pocket and a journal box at the top. I tuck in tags I've cut from scrap paper and tie a ribbon or floss in a hole punched at top. I usually attach 2 tags together to make a tiny tag book. It gives space to write my thoughts. 

Another pocket. The thing with the button is a craft stick with lace glued to back, button on top front and ribbon. It is supposed to be an angel. 

If you click on the photo and enlarge it you can see that I sewed alot of the clipart and pages together. The pockets are all sewn on each page. 

This is one of my favorite pages. I love all the vintage looking paperdolls you can find on the internet. I found this cute body builder and it was to make a jumping jack using brads. I had to reduce the size to fit the book so it was too small for brads so I just glued the arms and legs on the body. I did tie him so he dangles in the book. If you click to enlarge you can see the decorative stitching I used to sew the page together and the straight stitch for the pocket. I also used wallpaper from old wallpaper books I had. 

The picture was one I took from Facebook. The leaves are charms or buttons I glue in. The moon was an old piece of costume jewelry. You can see the journal page I glued in to write my thought. 

The hand was another vintage card I found online. I printed on cardstock and cut around the thumb to hold a scripture card. The right page has more charms and buttons. 

Of course I had to add a couple of pages on tea. The angel was a pattern I printed onto scrapbook paper. I only glued the center and folded the wings to make it look 3D. 

Another paper doll dress I had from a Mary Englebrit book. I used the top tabs to fold over a tiny coat hanger I made from a paper clip. Some of the pockets I folded with a tuck before sewing in to give more room in the pocket. 

I folded a paper lunch sack and used it for the center of the book. I did glue on clipart to decorate. The paper sack is open on the right side to allow space to tuck in photos or things I might want to keep. 

The folded paper sack is the very center of the book. You can see where I ran the lacy netting through the center to hold the book together. I tie a bow on the center of the back of the book. 

I sewed in rickrack and glued in charms around the clipart. 

The tag in the pocket has a charm tied to the top to make the it easier to pull the tag out. 

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This is about all I've done in this book. There are several more pages but they are similar to what's shown. 

Next I show my newest journal and share a little of it. 

And as always. 

Bible Journaling101 part4

I found a wonderful free Bible Study on the book of James. At this time, our church was doing a Wednesday night study on the same book. It is so wonderful how God directs our paths to the same things in life with other Christians.

 Anyway this study had lots of cute cut outs and little tiny books that I cut out and glued into my notebook. Today, I'm sharing some of the photos taken from my study.

Again I used the coloring pages I had scanned from my Inspire Bible. This Scripture list was one that was shared online by a Bible Journaling group I'm in.

The white looking Arrow at bottom that says "Joy in our Trials" was one of the cute clip-art books I cut out and glued in. The colomn strip and other clip-art was found on Google Images

The left side is more clip-art found online and left was part of the Bible Study on James that I printed and then added clip-art.

There were more pages on my study of James but think you're probably bored by now. Most are about the same. If you look closely at some of the photos by clicking on them, you can see some of the little books I added to go along with the study. 

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Since then, I've done a study on Ezekiel and have not gotten in put into the notebook. I just started a study on BibleJournalLove (click on to access some Bible courses. Some are free). The free one I'm working on is the Parables of Jesus and she has free clipart to go along with the study. She also has a couple of groups on Facebook. I did an earlier one with her on Psalm 119. I did Psalm 119 in my Journaling Bible. 

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Tomorrow I will show you a cute altered book I made into a journal. I made up about 26 and gave to the ladies in our church one year for Christmas. 

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And as always......