Knitting for Christmas

 Getting a few things done for Christmas  here are a couple of fun project for some of the ones I love. This hat  and some fun leaf shaped dish cloths- great stocking stuffers

working on getting some other projects done so that each one of my family have something hand made by me for this Christmas. Which I try and do every year.
how about you do you have a hand made Christmas rule?

Gifts

A gift for my sweet Aunt Janet.  I really wish I would have taken a better picture, anyhow this is a fun knitting bag that I made for my Mom to give to her Sister as an early Christmas gift.
Love the fabric and I had a set of great stitch markers that my daughter made that went perfectly with the set.
Are you thinking about Christmas yet?

The Door

A few weeks ago I saw a picture of a kitchen door painted with chalk board paint   since then I have run across several other kitchen spaces painted with chalk board paint  so I thought I'd give it a go.

 At first I wasn't sure about the whole Idea I kinda like things abit more tidy and the door was looking a little messy at times  but  I have to say that I love seeing what my family has to say.  This is after a weekend of having the kids stop in both while we were at home and away.  oh yeah and the door is metal so the chalk holder that I think was an old Match holder is just hung on the door with magnates

Autumn and JT after a full day of canning goodness!

now for the fish taco's

( and yes I'm looking at new wall color options for this winter )

Canning Tomatoes

what to do with all those cherry tomatoes

there is no way that we can eat all the cherry tomatoes that we have in the garden .

then I remembered a recipe that I have for roasted tomato and basil soup .. perfect no blanching and pealing of the tomatoes  just stick them on a cookie sheet with onion and garlic salt pepper and olive oil and roast at 450 for 30-40 mins.

 then transfer  the whole wonderful smelling lot into 3 quarts of chicken stock that is simmering on the stove top  add fresh picked basil and blend with and immersion blender...   yum-O 

 now for the tricky bit I wanted to cann it so that I could have the soup this winter, so I treated it like salsa and canned according to my salsa recipe since it has alot of the same ingredient in it.  All the jars sealed perfectly.  These last for jars of soup have an addition of grated zucchini as I was grating some zucchini for freezing while I waited for the first batch of soup to process.  A good  addition to the soup, it tasted great and thickened up the soup too.  Yeah another way to use up all that zucchini.

Why I love Sundays

This is why I love Sundays

Especially Birthday Sundays

A typical Sunday is spent getting ready to have this kids over for Sunday dinner  but this day I had the whole day to  just sit and enjoying spending time and knitting and visiting.

this is to me is a gift greater than anything that I can think of,  spending a day " My day"with my Family and look we had a little knit along as my oldest learns to crochet and is now working on a blanket for JT. Yup it was a good day

my family all under one roof just spending time together.

I didn't get a picture of Son Shayne he spent his day sitting on the computer putting tons of pictures on a memory stick for a digital frame that I got as a gift from my Daughter Autumn.

 Hubby was manning the grill making a great birthday dinner ( Steak a Shrimp )

yeah it just doesn't get any better than this

Sun Pickles

Have you ever made these?

They are sun pickles we were given the recipe last year and were so excited to make them again this year, they are super simple to make and so good. I like to use the bigger pickles that are too big for my regular canned dills.

The Recipe

6 1/2 Cups water

3 1/4 cups vinegar

1/4 cup canning salt

1 tsp. alum

a couple heads of dill

a few cloves garlic

Stir all ingredients together until salt is dissolved and pour over gallon jar of pickles.

Set in sun for 3 days and your done.

Store in refrigerator and enjoy.



In the Garden

 We have been busy in the garden.  since we live about 10 miles away from our garden its been a bit of a challenge getting there as often as we would like
 
 so things get away from us very quickly.   when we are there we have a great time chatting with chickens that provide us with eggs and

 harvesting all that we can get into the truck so that we can get it put up.
I've done quite abit of canning this year already and I haven't even started with the
Cucumbers and tomatoes

 these pictures were actually taken about a month ago.  The garden is quite a different place now.
I'm  always amazed at how quickly everything grows!

Looking forward to getting back there in a day or two.
How is your garden growing?

Summer!

A Busy summer finds us in the garden often weeding and havesting with help from littles JT loves to pull weeds with Grandpa!

we have lettice that is comming up great for us

I found a new canning book/magizene that I'm having a great time with. It has so many great and different recipes in it along with some great gift giving and packaging idea's

and a simple summer knit that I work on inbetween all the rest of the summer fun.

Have a great week!

Well I've finally taken pictures of a top that I finished up a while back I was having a hard time finding a top that went well with the necklace that my daughter made for me.

so I descided that I needed to knit one up.

Its perfect for summer and Im haveing a great time wearing it!

Details are here

Have a great weekend

Summer Knitting

Along with all the other things that go along with summer fun I'm working on a summer top that Im hopping will be as pretty as the picture also did up a couple of dish cloths with some left over cotton linen yarn that I have

Hope to get pictures of the garden soon