Stella went to her cousin's birthday party...

Aunt Honey hosted a birthday party for her Grandson Matty...although I couldn't get him to pose for a picture...but Stella is always up for that...
She got a goodie bag too....hmmm...let's see what's inside...

Oh look...Groucho glasses and they are the perfect size....

Don't I look great?

A paper yo yo too....

I like this little horn.

Isn't she a cutie...she was so good all day and I get to watch her all day tomorrow too!!

Yippie!! Another bag done...

I feel pretty accomplished this week. I have another bag to add to my Etsy shop. Sometimes I get so lost in gardening that I forget to get other things done, but this week I have managed to do both! When I found this fabric, I just loved it. It's a Waverly fabric and the navy and cream are just so clean looking.

Here's a close up of the tie fabric. It is cream with a little white pattern on it. It is a very subtle pattern, but it works well with the navy bag. I like the tie on it too. I made another bag with a tie and I liked it so much I thought I'd make this one with the tie too.

Here's the inside. Again there is another cream fabric with a little white pattern. This one has little white flowers on it. I made pockets for all around the inside of the bag too. I just love pockets so all the small things we gals like to carry around won't get lost. There's a light board covered with fabric on the bottom to help keep the bottom flat. I quilted both the inside and outside in the same size diamond pattern. I hope you like my latest creation. I am so new at all of this and I need all the feedback I can get. I really enjoy sewing and making these bags is a fun way for me to earn a bit of spending money.

The weather has been pretty nice around here for the last few days. The temperatures have been staying right around 90 degrees. Since we really have no humidity here, that is pretty pleasant for the summer. We had one really bad week and I'm glad that is over. I hope everyone is having a great week...and now that this bag is done, I'm back to the drawing board for another one!

Outdoor Wednesday....San Bernardino Mountain style...

We are pretty lucky to have mountains just north of our house. We can just drive for 15-20 minutes and find a hiking trail where it's nice and cool in the morning.
This morning we set out up Highway 18. It's the road that goes up to Big Bear. On the way up there, we found many good sites to take a hike. We picked this one because there was a little stream at the bottom.

It's much cooler up here at about 5000 feet, than down at our house.

All the pine trees smell so good. It is a nice peaceful walk this day. There weren't many people out early like us.

We hiked about 5 miles and then we drove home. The temperatures have been cooling down this week for some strange reason. I didn't even have to turn on the AC yesterday and that is just weird for this time of year. We even woke up to a pretty chilly morning today. Whatever the reason is....I love it! How is your summer going?

Sewing Day at my house...

My sister, Debbie , came over for a sewing day at my house this morning. We thought we'd work on one of the kits or patterns we got at the quilt show. We decided on a little mat with sunflowers.
Here is a picture of mine so far...I have lots of hand work yet to go, but it's starting to take shape. We got a little distracted though because we had a special visitor....

Stella!!!

Debbie got her this new little frog bouncer and she really loved it.

I can't believe how fast she's growing! She already figured out how to get the music to go when she touched the eyeballs and she enjoyed chewing on the teether. It was the best kind of distraction and now that they have gone home, I can settle in a finish my hand stitching.

How was your day?

My Newest bag...

I just finished a new bag to add to my Etsy shop. This is a nice big tote made of cotton canvas. I actually used four different fabrics on this bag and I like the way they all came together.
I found this cute button for the closure.

Here's the inside. The pockets are deep enough for the stuff we all carry around with us. I added a swivel hook too. I have been making some custom bags lately and this one will actually be added to my inventory. My shop is looking sort of pathetic, but I'm getting there. I put a lot of time into these bags and they are fun to design and create. I hope you enjoy my latest one!

Have a wonderful weekend!!

Quilt Festival in Long Beach

My sister Debbie and I went down to Long Beach for the preview night at the Quilt Show. This is one of the most beautiful quilts I have ever seen, and boy were there lots of them to chose from. It looks like it was painted, not stitched. Amazing!!
This is the Primitive Gatherings Booth. We got this incredible book there, which I will show on my next post. and this wool piece is in it. It's one thing I have to make...and soon!

This is a shot of a booth with some of the cutest packaged kits and darling patterns. My pictures aren't very good I'm afraid. I was too busy being in awe of everything! Anyway, these gals design patterns and they are wonderful...of course I picked up a couple kits there too! Their name is Puddingstone Road. They design in Temecula and said you could get patterns at the local shops there.



This is the Bonnie Blue Quilts booth. They were such nice ladies and while we were there taking a couple of pictures, we ran into the ladies from Fat Quarters. They actually said that they had visited our blogs! Imagine that! I just love their store too!



Here's another shot of Bonnie Blue. It was so darling...my photos just don't do justice.




Look at all this scrumptious wool!! There was also a big $1 barrel where we found some great big pieces! Yippee...now that the way to shop...I love a bargain!






This is Heart to Hand...it's another wool designer and you can bet we broke the bank there! I got some great finds I think and had a wonderful time. Thanks Debbie for going with me!
Below are just some of the quilts that caught my eye...

This one was made circa 1840's by an unknown quilter. I love the colors.

This is another unknown quilter form some time in the early 1840's. The colors are still so bright.

This was so cute I thought. She is having such a great time sewing away...

This one was actually found just pieced together but never quilted and they actually had it machine quilted in 2002, but the piecing was thought to have been done in the 1860's.

And this beauty is all hand painted fabric that was ripped and then sewn together and quilted. I just love the abstract look of it. Again, this one looks like a beautiful painting. I just loved it! I think it would look great hung above my sofa in the living room!!

I will show all my great finds on another post and more of the beautiful quilts that were on display...enjoy the day!!

Outdoor Wednesday...the big apple style...

As I have mentioned in my earlier posts...I have a huge apple tree. It has had so many apples on it that we have a hard time dealing with it. I give apples away to everyone I know and to those I don't know. I sometimes feel like going on a busy street corner with a few boxes of apples and a "FREE" sign! I have given boxes...and I do mean BIG boxes...to homeless shelters, food banks and bags and bags to neighbors and co-workers. But that is not what this story is really about today. This is about the big apple....
You see, ever since our kids were small, when we would pick apples, we would all try and find the biggest apple. It was a game to keep those boys working....yeah, we all have to find tricks to do that sometimes! This game stuck and when the kids next door would come over to help, they would always look for the BIG apple. We would line up everyone' s apples and measure to see who found the big one. Well, yesterday...the big one found me!! I was mowing under the tree and this huge apple hit me right on top of the head! Now that was painful....but...I found the BIG apple! I measured it and it is 12 inches around and 4 1/2 inches high! I t has a slight bruise on it due to hitting my head, but then I think I might have one too!!
And now starring in my back yard are just some of the Black Eyed Susans! I love these gals!
Speaking of Susans...go here for a peek at many other Outdoor Wednesday sites.
Enjoy the day...we're on a cooling trend. It is only going to be 91 today!

I love to get things in the mail....

Today started out like my typical day. Get Don's breakfast and lunch made...get him off to work and then out in the garden by 7:30. This time of year I need to get everything done out there before the heat really kicks in so I go out as soon as he leaves for work. Today had a frustrating start though. The lawn mower wouldn't start and try as I may...I just couldn't get it going. So I scrapped that idea for a while and just decided to weed and trim. I was getting hot and tired, came in for a drink and knocked my new thrift store picture off the wall and the glass shattered every where! I was really mad by this time. Nothing seemed to go right today and I was just thinking about going back to bed and trying to start the day over....
when the doorbell rang...and it was my friendly UPS driver with a package for me...

I had ordered these fabrics at the end of last week and here they were already! Something to smile about:)!!

I must have been in an orange mood when I ordered all of this. Actually I love orange. It's so happy and so am I now that I have some new fabric! Don't you just love those huge polka dots! I've never seen any that big, but I know just what I'm going to do with all of this and you will see when I finish some of the other things that will come first....now if I can just get that pesky lawn mower started....

Something new to wear....

I don't know about you, but I have a terrible time finding clothes. For starters...I'm vertically challenged and there isn't a whole lot of stores that have petite clothes that I like. I guess I'm picky too. I want something cute, but I don't want to dress like I'm 20 and I especially don't want to dress like I'm 80 ...and that's usually the choices I find in the petite section. So I went to Joann's today because I got all these coupons in the mail and here's what I'm going to make...
I haven't decided if I'll make the round or square neck on this one, but it will be one with short sleeves. The top one is sleeveless. I got some new brown capris and I thought the second fabric will look nice with them. These are both super simple patterns that I bought when they were on sale for 99 cents at Joann's. I just love when they have the patterns on sale so cheap. So with my coupons and getting the patterns at such a great price, I will have two new tops for under $20!!!
Now that a bargain!

So many peaches....

We have a small peach tree in our yard and this year, even though we thinned it more than usual, we have tons of peaches. We had so many peaches that about two weeks ago Don discovered broken branches and had to prop up part of the tree. We pulled about half the peaches off the poor tree at that point to relieve the pressure, even though they weren't all ripe. We gave so many bags to neighbors and then we made 8 pies and froze those. Well , today I noticed a couple of beetles flying around and that is not a good thing with all the fruit still on the trees. We quickly pulled all the remaining peaches off the tree and brought huge amounts inside.

This afternoon we spent a couple hours peeling and slicing peaches! What fun...ugh, but it has to be done. We froze bags filled with enough peaches to make small peach crisps when we get in the mood. I have found that I can make a tiny crisp in a one quart casserole and cook it in the convection oven so it doesn't heat up the house. I make my crisp a little different from most peoples and it always requested at pot lucks. In fact, I froze two large apple crisps for a pot luck next week at Don's work. I thought maybe some of you would like the recipe so here it is:

This makes a 8 x8 casserole and I double it for the 8 x 13 pan. I halve it for my little corning ware casserole.

Topping

1 cup of flour
3/4 cup of sugar
1 tsp of baking powder
1 egg

Combine the flour, sugar, baking powder and unbeaten egg in a bowl. Use a fork and a kind of chopping motion to form coarse crumbs. Don't beat it of you will have a big lump instead of a bunch of little ones. Put that aside.

Fruit part
5-6 cups of peeled and sliced apples or peaches
brown sugar
cinnamon

What I do is layer the fruit and sprinkle each layer with some brown sugar and cinnamon. I keep layering until I'm near the top. You need to leave room for the topping. I like cinnamon, so I am pretty liberal with it.

Next, sprinkle the topping on the fruit, making sure to cover all the fruit. Melt 1/3 cup of butter...I use the real stuff, no margerine at my house. Drizzle the melted butter over the top. The last part is to take a mixture of sugar and cinnamon...I always keep this made. It's the best toast topping. Sprinkle that liberally on the top.

Bake at 350 degrees for about 30-40 minutes until the fruit is bubbly and the top is a nice golden brown.

We love to eat ours a little warm with a scopp of vanilla ice cream.

I hope you will enjoy this.

Outdoors Wednesdays and baby it's HOT outside!!

Summer has finally reared its ugly head and is it ever hot outside....
Even the cactus and succulents are asking for a drink of water...

This sedum says ...please give me a drink. I had to get all of my gardening done before it gets too hot. I checked the thermometer under my apple tree at 9:30 this morning and it was already 88 degrees.

Even this guy wants to find a nice spot in the shade!

The zinnias are doing fine though...they seem to love the heat.

I took close up shots because that's what I like looking at.

These yellow ones are getting quite big.

The hostas have lots of flowers, but they are in the deep shade of my yard.

The Dusty Miller is starting to flower again too. That's one that loves dry heat as well.

These guys are doing OK, but they were screaming for some water....

She's a little parched too.

I am done with gardening for today and it's only 10:00 AM. It is supposed to get to 102 degrees today and so you will find me in my cool back bedroom with an icy glass of lemonade and a good book to read...ahhh...summertime...