Handy Work

I know, two posts in one day after my usual dry spell. Oh well, I found the time to add some pictures of some past embroidery work and some new as well. Dennis had the time to upload the pictures so I could add them. Thanks hubby!

Some of these Harper's mommy may remember from about a year ago! Happy Birthday (a little belated) to sweet Harper! Whoo doesn't love an owl!?!

The patterns I use are from http://www.sublimestitching.com/. I love her selection of patterns. It is nice to find patterns that are not so old fashioned!

This one of the darling angel and bee is one of my favorites for a baby shower gift. It is soft, sweet, and cute! The bee burp cloth is part of the set!

The dish towel of the pears I did for my mother-in-law for Mother's Day last year. I gave her a set of three, this is just one of them.

I have done quite a few things for Lou as well. I did a dress with the same owl from the bib above. I have done several pairs of bloomers. I am obsessed with them!

I look forward to doing some more work for Lou and for a few mommies who have had special deliveries recently. My latest thing is antique infant slips. Instead of using them under dresses I am embroidering them for sweet, cool summer dresses. Thus far I have infant slips from the 1920's, 1930's, and the 1940's in pristine condition! Etsy is my friend!!!!!!

I just completed a bib and burp cloth set as well as a clothing set for one of our friends who had a little girl in May. She also has a big sister that I did a tee-shirt to match her little sister's items.

Though it takes me some time to complete, I enjoy my other hobby. I have been working on something special for Landon for a while. It is very time consuming and large. I really wish I could get it done for his birthday this year. He will be 4 years old on August 12th!!!!!!! We will see!

The Thompson Harvest

We have gathered fruit and veggies from our garden for the past month. Some of our latest harvest has been the best! Above is a picture of a celebrity tomato. We haven't tasted it yet, but it is heavy for it's size and I have feeling will be very good!
Dennis picks anywhere from 5 to 20 tomatoes a day. These are the small variety that include yellow plum, sweet one-hundreds (red), and the yellow pear. They are delicious!

The peppers are very vibrant. We have sweet and hot varieties. We haven't eaten them yet though. I am holding out until we have a few more to grill. The large red one is a gypsy pepper, the orange one is a tequila sunrise, and the red small ones are hot cherry peppers.

We have picked probably 100 blueberries. We have eaten quite a few as well. We noticed last week that the blackberry bush that was crushed by the last storm has blooms on it. Yesterday, the blackberries are formed and will turn a glorious shade of indigo/deep purple in a week or 2.




Our squash is blooming so hopefully we will be harvesting it soon.

We still have a few varieties of tomatoes that are not ready to pick. Those include a marglobe (deep red), black plum (purple), tommy toes (golf ball size and red) and a delicious (red).

We are loving our little garden and look forward to picking grapes soon as well!

Lou's Latest Stats!

We celebrated Lou turning 4 months on July 2nd. We had to wait until this week to go to the doctor due to the 4th of July and the closing of the office.
We went yesterday. She did so well. She was smiling and cooing and looking at herself in the mirror. She loves the mirror!
She weighed 11lbs and 7.5oz and is 23 inches long. She is in the 10th percentile for weight and the 25th for height. Dr. Lana was pleased because Lou is finally on the growth chart. Up to this point, Lou was not on the growth chart for her weight. She is still small but is meeting all her milestones. Mommy and daddy were both very pleased!
We have started Lou on rice cereal and first fruits. I will be making her babyfood just like I made Landon's. Thus far we have just tried a few jars of the organic fruits. She loves it!
Lou has been sleeping through the night since 6 weeks old, so we are very blessed. She is rolling over, sitting in a "tripod" fashion (arms on the side propping her up), and babbling away!
We are looking forward to more firsts from her! But, hopefully they don't come too quickly. It is hard to believe she is already 4 months old. Time has flown even more with her than it did with Landon!

I have taken on another task....

I have been sharing recipes a lot lately (so it seems). I thought one way to share and keep track of them would be through a blog. Now, I have to be honest and say that most recipes I use are tweaked from ones I have read or tried and didn't follow to a "T" (and credit will be given to those sources!) That or I make them up in my head (I do this quite a bit).

You can find it here:
http://lesleysapples.blogspot.com/

So the way this will work is each week I will share a recipe I have tested. If I feel that no tweaking was needed I will give it an "apple" rating. If I made changes (due to taste, not having the needed ingredient handy, etc), I will give it a "bite". If I tested it and I felt it was not worth my time to make or didn't care for it, I will say it was "rotten" (harsh, I know, but it goes with the theme).

Not only that I will offer tips on meals that freeze beautifully (note the Steel Magnolia's reference), meals that please a crowd, nutritious meals for picky eaters (hello, 4 year old!), and homemade baby food (aww, Lou will be my tester!). If I test a gadget I think is worthy, don't worry I will let you know!

I hope you enjoy my apples!

The 4th and Her Feet

We enjoyed a relaxing 4th of July. The 3rd we spent the evening preparing Landon's new swimming pool. Though I say it is Landon's it is for all of us to enjoy during this summer that is sure to get even hotter as we get further into July and August. The 4th we enjoyed an afternoon of playing in the pool before enjoying some BBQ I had slow cooked the day before and some ribs that we had smoked for Memorial day and had frozen a rack for later (a good decision I think!) The night of the 4th we painted Lou's toenails. Poor Lou, her feet are still too tiny for shoes. She is not a fan of socks as she kicks them off whenever she gets the chance. A co-worker of mine suggested painting them. Seriously? I thought to myself. How do you paint baby's toenails. They squirm and wiggle and do all sorts of contortions. Surely this will end with paint everywhere (I thought). In her sleep maybe? No, Lou sleeps with one leg crossed over the other and has done this since birth.

While Dennis fed Lou her last bottle of the night I painted her toes. She kept still for the most part and did pretty good. I had a little touch up to do, but all in all a success! Her little tiny toes looked cute. The color even matched mommy's! (If you know me, you know I like things to match)

We enjoyed church the next day in our matching outfits. We didn't make the boys suffer through that, so they just blended in with mommy and Lou! It was fun and I loved it! Looking down at her toes puts a smile on my face and seeing the picture Dennis took makes me giggle just a bit!
This little piggy.......

How Does Your Garden Grow?

Over Memorial day weekend we did some yard work. Dennis made me a raised garden bed, which I absolutely adore! We also went to Angel Wings Nursery in Byhalia, MS to get the fruit and vegetable plants for the garden and flower bed. She had tons of plants at great prices. We later found out she is the only nursery left who grows her plants and sells them. Most nurseries buy their plants from whole-sale. We got various types of heirloom tomatoes, some peppers, basil, and 3 blueberry plants.
We normally container garden small veggies each year, but the yields are small. This year the garden box has already been a success. We have harvested some tomatoes and blueberries thus far. By Dennis' count we have over 100 tomatoes growing in every shape, size, and color you can think of (from purple, to yellow, to orange, and of course red!)
Here are some pictures of garden and flower beds.

The big potted plant is my basil which I love to use when I cook. The other picture is of one of my gypsy peppers that we like to grill. In the picture it is tucked beneath a leaf and is light yellow. Now it is orange. The colors range from yellow to red!



The next picture is of my celebrity tomato plant. It now has 2 more growing. These are large, heavy, bright red fruits. We cannot wait to taste them!
The picture that looks like just a bunch of leaves shows the little tomatoes.

These are called sweet 100's and we have already pulled a few off. I think we will be giving them a taste-test this week. There are so many of them!
Though not in the garden box, our blueberries have done well! We have already tasted some and though not one of Dennis' favorite fruits, they are good!

We also have our thriving lavender. Not only does it smell wonderful, the bees love it. We have had some new guests this year, which are electric blue colored dragon flies. Dennis has seen them and says they are really cool looking. I have yet to lay eyes on them, but keep looking!

We also have our grape vines that have taken off again this year. We even had to purchase a larger trellis. Unfortunately, some storms in June broke the trellis and the grapes fell forward crushing my blooming blackberry bush. Looks like no blackberrries this year. The grapes did just fine. We will have to wait until fall to replace the damaged, new trellis. We are looking forward to harvesting our grapes! Right now they are the size of large green peas, some maybe a bit bigger than that!

Each day we check on our little garden. Dennis has been so faithful in watering it each day! Landon has also enjoyed learning about the fruits and vegetables too! We are planning on adding at least one if not 2 more garden boxes next year! Not only has it been nice to dig in the dirt again (like a little kid, though I still hate earth worms!), but hopefully it will save some $$$ since we will have our own produce!

To give credit where credit is due, here is the link to the blog where I found the instructions for the garden box: http://mynew30.blogspot.com/2009/03/how-to-build-raised-bed-vegetable.html