Satisfaction.

After a long day of canning... all day long... Nic came home and asked, "Do you enjoy doing this?"

"Yes!" I responded... pause... thinking about how totally exhausted I was and how I still had a huge mess to clean up. "Well..."

Then Nic said, "You get satisfaction out of it?" Said more as a statement than a question.

Yes. Exactly. Satisfaction.

I have enjoyed canning this year. I've done it this year more than ever before and I am getting great satisfaction from my work. At the end of a long day I can look at my accomplishment and know it will benefit my family for a quite a while. I love that. (Also why I love crafting... something that lasts. So unlike cleaning the bathroom, doing dishes and washing laundry... its ready to do again the minute its "done.")

It also helps that I have a supportive husband that has been appreciative of all this canning... and helps clean up!

This past Saturday and Monday I canned salsa for the first time. It is a lot of work! But, yes, I'll do it again (but hopefully not for a while). I'm so excited to have homemade salsa now at just the opening of a bottle. I got my recipe here at Prepared NOT Scared. (I ended up 8X-ing the recipe over the 2 days. I halved the jalapenos.)Hannah was a great help, chopping veggies and peeling tomato skin off!I got a pizza sauce recipe from a friend (which I'm excited to used today) and bottled that. As well as some regular tomatoes.Here's the round up:
Salsa
quarts: 8
pints: 27

Tomatoes
quart: 1
pint: 4

Pizza Sauce
pint: 10
half pint: 6

Satisfaction.

Garden

Just some pictures of my garden. (Taken 8/25/2010) I love the Armenian cucumbers and regular cucumbers. I've gotten way too many yellow pear tomatoes. Not as many zucchini and yellow squash this year. And lots more regular tomatoes... which I am loving. My beans haven't done well again... so far I've picked 4... yes, just 4 beans! My watermelon and cantaloupe died, but I didn't plant them in my garden boxes, just out in the flower beds. They didn't get enough sun or water and weren't in great soil. I'm just starting to harvest potatoes. The ones we've had are delish! And I'm hoping my carrots are still growing. I don't really know when to pull them. The ones I've pulled are "baby carrots." I have a few little tiny onions and some green peppers are growing.
I am using my garden as my Faith project for Personal Progress. I would have grown a garden anyway, but it is so nice to take it a step further and apply it to the gospel! More on that later.

The story of three chairs...

Bryson was more than done being in is high chair and no matter how tight the buckles were he could manage to get out of them! He would not stay sitting and was often on his tray or on the counter. He loved sitting in Hannah's booster (and the buckle seemed to keep him in better) but he could only sit there when Nic was gone... because, well... we only had 3 chairs.

We've always only had 3 chairs. Nic and I got our table and chairs as a wedding gift from my grandparents and an aunt and uncle (a gift we were very grateful for). When it was being driven down from Salt Lake (on the freeway... in the back of a pick up truck) one of the chairs flew out! Well, needless to say, we never saw that fourth chair to the set. So we've just had the three chairs. (It is always a little tricky when we have company, parties, or play groups here!)

BEFORE:
Well, to get one matching chair to our set it was going to cost about $60... for ONE chair. (I really wanted more than just one. After all it would still be tricky to have company.) I started looking for chairs on KSL classifieds, with the goal of having some fun miss-matching chairs and possibly painting them different colors. (I've always loved that style.)

Fortunately, I found a used table with eight chairs. The chairs were painted teal blue and bright yellow... two colors I really like... but not the colors of my kitchen. The table was not in as good of condition as I had hoped and would need to be refinished as well. It had lots of long, deep scratches and the legs were scraped and dinged up quite a bit. But it was a very sturdy, solid-wood, counter top height table with beautiful wide legs. I was able to talk the price down a bit and got a great table and 8 chairs for $250 (about the price of 4 chairs to my old set). I was very excited for the table... and the challenge of refinishing it!THE PROCESS:
And so the process began that very evening. Nic sanded the top completely down. The next morning I got some stain and gave the top two coats. Every day there was something to do. I sanded the chairs down roughly. Nic and I primed them. I covered the table top with plastic and painted the table legs black... then sanded edges and added some stain to antique the table. I used a spray polyurethane... which seemed alright for the legs, but after 4 coats, knew the top was going to need to be brushed on. In the meantime, the chairs needed to be sanded lightly and wiped down. Then I finally started painting my chairs. I did them three colors... yes, three! Red. A goldish yellow. And green. This was my inspiration:Everyone thought I was crazy. One neighbor came over and finally asked, "So what color are you doing these chairs? I've seen them blue, yellow, white, red, green!" She thought I kept changing my mind as to what color I wanted them. Even when there were all out, one lady saw all the colors and said, "I'm confused."

People really did think I was crazy doing three different colors... and that they were out in my driveway everyday for 2 weeks! (Some days I got them out and it was too windy to paint... so I would wait all day for the wind to die down and at the end of the day they ended up being brought back into the garage.) I told my neighbors that eventually they really would be inside of my house and that they wouldn't have to look at them in my driveway everyday! (I did get some very great compliments along the way too.)
Anyway... the chairs took about 3 coats. I sanded the edges, used a stain (should have used glaze) to antique the edges. Then painted another coat over the chairs. Lastly the chairs all got about 4 coats of spray poly, the table got 3 coats of brushed poly, and the tabled got a light sanding.

AFTER:
...Then the table finally got to come in the house! Phew! I was a bit worried it would seem too big for our space, but I am very please with how it worked out. I love the 3 colors of chairs and think the table is beautiful! (Hannah loves having all the chairs. It is like playing musical chairs at dinner time. She loves to select where everyone is sitting and it is always changing.) Now I'm ready for another refinishing project.

Easy Fall Subway Art and Applesauce

Have you seen all the fun subway art that is the new rave?! I think it would be fun to make one on canvas sometime (maybe even for Halloween?!) but I found this fun website, Wordle, where you can put it different words and it will scramble them up and make a "word cloud" out of them. You can change the colors and design a bit... And ta da... A fun, super cheap, and extremely easy decoration idea!Here's the link to the fall words I did. You can print the page yourself. (I'd like to play around with it some more and get more variation in the words.) Wouldn't it be fun just to change a simple piece of paper in a frame for various holidays... like Valentines?! Just thought it was fun and I'd share... Enjoy Wordle-ing! :)

In the spirit of all things fall... I tried my hand at homemade applesauce this week. I'm excited to report that it was successful and that I bottled 6 quarts... which didn't seem nearly enough for all the apples I peeled, cored, cooked, and blended! But I am excited to add it to the food storage inventory and will definitely make it again!Happy Fall!

Paper clutter!?

Help! How do you control all your paper clutter? Mail, ads, coupons, bills! Do you have a system that works? I've tried a few things, but haven't mastered the constant flow... and piles of paper. Anyone have some advice?!

Why?

When Hannah wants a story at night, I'll sometimes tell her about a mom whose head popped right off because she had a daughter who asked "why?" all the time! I'm glad Hannah has an inquistive mind... but I go crazy with the constant "why? why? why?" around here! We are trying to learn to just say "OK!" sometimes.

Well, now Bryson has picked it up too! Ahhh! My head really might pop off! One child was enough... Now even my one year old is saying why when I tell him about something or ask him to do something!

Homemade Terra Cotta Coasters

I just got done making these really fun coasters. Someday I hope to have this fun, bright turquoise color in my basement. For now, these will have to do for my splash of color.I got this idea from a blog called Sweet Charli. She has a great tutorial on her blog... But just for fun, I wanted to do my own little tutorial (basically, I want to feel cool):

Things you need:

4" terra cotta saucers

Spray paint primer

Spray paint color

Scrapbook Paper

Ink

Mod Podge
Polyurethane

Felt

Hot Glue

Buy the 4" terra cotta saucers (The kind that go with flower pots... You can buy them separate. Don't worry you don't have to buy all the pots to go with the saucers!). Then, prime and spray paint your saucers and let them dry:Cut about 3" circles out of coordinating scrapbook paper. You could use a bowl or glass to trace that is about 3"... I was able to use my handy dandy Cricut machine. (My circles were 3 1/4".)Distress the edges of your circles with ink:Mod Podge your paper onto the terra cotta saucers by applying a thin coat of Mod Podge to the back on your paper then sticking onto your saucer. Then Mod Podge the top of the paper, carefully and neatly. Go just over the paper edge so it will seal.Once the Mod Podge has dried, spray your coasters with polyurethane to help make them water proof. (I sprayed several coats, letting it try between coats.)We aren't done yet... we wouldn't want our coasters to scratch the table! Cut approximately 3" circles out of felt and use a hot glue gun to attach the felt to the bottom of the saucers.And ta-da! You have some fun, custom coasters! Aren't they fun!(Now if I could learn to take better pictures I could pretend to be one of those fun, crafty bloggers!) They were really fun to make and I can't wait to use them. Did you notice I made a whole big stack... enough for a party!

Hannah's First Day of Preschool

Hannah has been excited for... a year... and has been counting down for weeks! Yesterday she finally got to start preschool. She is attending Just Imagine Preschool on Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays. Her teacher is Miss Tiffany. This class is only for kids going into kindergarten next year. (The sign is a little skewed, because I edited the phone number off.)

My friend, Jennifer, watched Bryson for me so I could go with Hannah, take pictures, and help her at the beginning of class do a hand-print in paint for a special little book she made. When I asked her about the highlights of her first day, these are the thing she said:
I thought coloring was really neat.
The book was really silly at the end (of class).
Playing with Benjamin at recess.

She was so excited about her new backpack... that she got to pick out. She picked a princess one, of course! I tried to convince her of others... but the princess one was definitely the one she was most excited about. She loved how it was big enough to "fit folders."

This is the morning of her first day! Obviously it was pretty windy!Hanging up her backpack (We found out later this is just where the coats and jackets go):Finding her name and turning it around to her picture:Sitting in her seat with her supply box:This morning she woke up saying she doesn't have school today... but will again tomorrow! I hope this enthusiasm continues. I couldn't help being super-duper excited too, just because of her own excitement! Hannah is getting so big!

That's How I Roll

So we were in the midst of a huge garage shelving project... and at the same time I am making coasters, painting an old picture frame, making a nursing cover, painting a hook board for my bathroom, cutting a board for a shelf in our laundry room and planning on making a bench for the garage... Nic thinks I am crazy and asks why in the world we can't just have one project going on at a time. I tell him it's just how I roll!The next day he comes home with two boxes of peaches... as if I didn't have enough going on... he simply responds... "Well, that's how you roll!"

The coasters need one more coat of polyurethane, the frame is on Hannah's shelf with a picture of her in front of the temple, the nursing cover still isn't finished (sorry, Ash), the hooks are hung in our bathroom, the shelf is cut and supplies bought for the laundry room, but the board needs to be painted, the bench is still just a dream... and the garage shelves look awesome, all loaded up!

And now for the past 5 days or so we have been knee deep in another project... refinishing a dinning set! I guess that's just how I roll! Crazy!