June/July Randoms

I need to catch up on a few items that have been going on around the house. First, it was Eric’s birthday in June and I embroidered a quote from Dune (a favorite of his) and then framed it as a present. Take a look at the finished result!

Here are my boys taking a nap:

John made this a long time ago, but it was delicious. It had potatoes, beet leave, and swiss chard. Swiss  chard is my new favorite green. I love everything that we make with it!

I saw an idea for reusable “paper towels” on Pinterest. Since we are cheap and don’t like buying paper towels and since it’s also earth friendly I decided to try it out. It was also a good excuse to break out the new sewing machine we got from our wedding. I’ve learned how to sew twice before this, and I can say that’s it’s not like riding a bike. The only improvement was that I’m not longer scared of impaling my finger. I didn’t bother making the final product too nice because they are really just grease/mess towels. The ends are held together with velcro. Here’s what I finished!

My aunt has a few sour cherry trees in her yard and this year we were happy to take some of those cherries off her hands. I now have a love of all things cherry. I just can’t get over how beautiful they look.

As you can see, we canned them finally. It was my first canning experience and I had a lot of help from my Grandma. We used a 2 to 1 sugar to water recipe to make the syrup. It looks like I have some air inside the cans, but over all not to shabby from a first attempt. My sister Crystal made the most beautiful cherry pie from some of the fresh ones. Too bad I don’t have a picture of that.

Next time: make apricot jam