Red, White and Blue

I am ashamed to admit that our Easter decorations, even as few of them as there were, stayed up way too long after Easter. Then we had so many events and busy weekends in a row that I never got a chance to redo my shelving. So even though it's less than a week before the 4th of July, I am still going to decorate and do something crafty!!

Yesterday, with my daughter's help, I sewed up a felt circle garland. Cutting the circles out took longer than the actual sewing! A couple years ago when I painted the living room, we took down the horrible clanky vertical blinds, and put up these temporary cheap mini-blinds. I had planned for curtains, some nicer blinds, something! Nope, the cheap white mini blinds are still there.
This morning we took the entire family to the beach. There are two beaches nearby where dogs are allowed, so we picked the one that requires less hiking to the beach and it was PERFECT! We had the beach almost entirely to ourselves. People just started to come out when we were getting ready to leave. The thing I can't get over still after 7 years of living here is the temperature drop when you get to the lake and the water felt sooooo cold today! On a 90 degree day it feels great to cool off in the cold water, not so much today when it was in the upper 70s! But we still had a great time. It was our greyhound's first time at the beach. She didn't care much for the crashing waves but she did get her feet wet. Crystal, our beagle mutt, was soooo excited! She loves to swim, but wasn't sure of the bigger waves today. When she'd get to the shore, she would whine and bite at the waves coming in! We've had her out there to swim many times but this was probably the biggest waves she'd seen.

Strawberry Time!

My house has smelled so good lately!! I've been working on a huge box of strawberries turning most of the super red, super sweet local farm grown strawberries into jam. I was able to get 20 jars total. 1 has already been eaten and 1 was given away to grandma for bringing us more sugar to finish a batch of jam. Unfortunately it's probably not enough to last us the next year. Even though I usually make peach and blueberry as well, strawberry is my husband's favorite so it goes fast.

We went fishing over the weekend at a neighbor's but I was the only one that caught anything.

What has been distracting me?

Pinterest!
Completely distracted by the wonderful things on pinterest. I've found lots of inspiration, lots of things I want to make and lots of things I can dream about having. I created a Red, White and Blue board, a board for kids room ideas, summer fun, recipes, a board with pillow tutorials so maybe some day I'll make pillows for our couch!
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Pantry Raid

One of the things that I do miss about not having satelite or cable is the Food Network. There are a few shows on PBS that I enjoy - L's Italy and America's Test Kitchen but I can't say I've ever cooked a recipe from either for them. I was searching around Netflix last night looking for something, anything to watch and I found a show from 2007 called Pantry Raid. I have no idea if the show is still on the air but the first season is on Netflix. After watching a couple of them it inspired me that I could whip up something from our pantry without having a recipe. My husband is the throw something together from the pantry kind of person, not me. I need a recipe and I get in a rut of not having something ready for dinner because I didn't have the right ingredients for a recipe. As I type I have steamed corn and a salad from lettuce and radishes that I picked this morning waiting for the breaded pork chops that are in the oven. I did it! It's not a fancy dish, but I put something together without having a recipe.... and the oven is beeping me. Time to eat!