Our week in review.

i really can not believe it is already September. The summer always goes by way too quickly, and i look back on it and think what did we even do? In past summers we've done a lot more hiking, and weekend traveling. This year we really haven't gone anywhere or done much of anything and yet, we are always busy and rarely bored.

In just this past week, we've released 8 monarch butterflies. We've had two more emerge this morning, and still have two munchy crunchy caterpillars and one more chrysalis. We also found a praying mantis with a swollen belly right outside our door. So we are expecting we'll be finding an egg case in the flower bed soon.

We spend a lot of time outside chasing butterflies, and peeps, blowing giant bubbles, weeding the garden and feeding garden scraps to the goats.

i finally tackled the tomatoes that have been sitting on my counter. In fact, i've done a ton of canning this week; applesauce, pasta sauce, tomatoes and pears. This isn't everything, just what has been sitting on my table from yesterday and the day before. Kenan has been moving it all down to the basement. i don't have shelves down there yet for storage, but am hoping too soon. i've run out of space on my table and counters. i am feeling extremely fortunate this year to be blessed with such an amazing harvest, and generous neighbors...but i'm really lacking on storage space.


This week, i have been focused on my pears. They have begun to ripen enough for canning. i've canned a ton so far...well, maybe not a ton, but well over a bushel. i still have around 25 lbs to finish up today. Then i get to start in on apples...again. Kenan went back and picked more apples the day after i finished up the first bushel. So, i have over 100 lbs of apples to peel, core and cook down into apple sauce and freeze/can. i asked Kenan for an apple peeler for my birthday. :) i've been doing all of these by hand with a paring knife.


So i've been feeling quite food obsessed lately. While i work on canning, Sage plays with her kitchen and playfoods. She pretends to cook and can. It is so cute it absolutely melts my heart. So while my jars are processing, and i give my hands a rest from peeling...i've been sewing felt playfood. This week, i made her a fried egg and an veggie omelet. The omelet has removable cheese, onions, peppers and mushrooms for decorating. i need to pick up some velcro next time i'm at the store, to put on the end so she can fold over the omelet.


i pinned it closed to show how it will look with the velcro. She is loving it! i also made a stack of blueberry pancakes with syrup and melty butter. tee hee.


She also requested her favorite meal, which is tofu and veggies over udon noodles. The noodles i had made before as fettuccine for a different meal. This week, i made tofu triangles, snow pea pods, baby carrots, broccoli florets and red peppers. She also wanted purple beans, like the ones we grow in our garden. i sewed these all by hand, using the blanket stitch. i use free patterns, make up many of my own patterns, and get a lot of inspiration from the web to make felt foods. All very easy to make. This link has a really good list of free felt food patterns available on the web, and also a good list of places to purchase patterns.

So that about wraps up my week. Somewhere in between the canning, butterfly chasing and felt food making... i've also managed to keep up on the dishes and laundry and even feed the family and critters. :) Sequoia and i also finished up the third book in the Lemony Snippets series earlier this week and have begun reading Percy Jackson and the Olympians. We also did several science projects from the Science in a bag book, including removing an eggs shell without breaking it and then shrinking the shelless egg through the process of osmosis. Fun stuff.
Looking forward to a weekend of sleeping in and finally getting to the end of the pears.