Random Stuff all Jumbled Together

Zarina handed me the camera and seemed to want her picture taken earlier this week. This is when she said "cheese":

Then she got all serious on me:

And then she sat on the couch by me and didn't know what kind of face to make:

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She wasn't actually cranky when this next picture was taken, but just happened to look super cranky. It accurately portrays how she felt all last weekend and the most of this week. She was quite clingy and unhappy for absolutely no reason.

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Back on June 8th Z pulled a cake mix out of the pantry, and when I put it away she pulled it out again and handed it to me with a grunty-whine. I then made chocolate cupcakes. The next day I made frosting and she received her first beater that she was able to lick to her heart's content and not have to share with anyone. I just love those deep blue eyes.

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I have a been working on my quilt for the quilt-along. In this picture the blocks were just sewn into rows. I have now sewn all the rows together, but haven't had a chance to take a good picture of it. It's plenty wide enough, but not as long as I would like, so I need to figure out how I want to use my leftovers to make it longer. If I was totally on track with the project leader I would actually be quilting the layers together this week, but I dont' even have a back for it yet.


Most of my block intersections are perfect. When I made Z's baby quilt with some friends my mom told us we didn't press enough, so I made sure to press everything, and it helped a lot.

The intersections that are not perfect are still pretty close. Really the quilt is so busy that you would have to be really anal to notice the mistakes. A friend of mine once said that if people critique the mistakes in a handmade quilt, then they don't deserve it.

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We've also made a few double batches of strawberry jam. There is also the incredible batch of raspberry-strawberry jam. I love homemade jam. There are very few people deemed lucky enough to get jam. Parents and grandparents are the only recipients so far. If you have a yummy homemade jam that you want to exchange for a jar of jam, let us know and we'll bring some when we travel. We've made "low sugar" jam, that means that for the 6 cups of fruit we use 4 cups of sugar (just follow the recipe on the low-sugar pectin box) instead of 7 cups of sugar, or something ridiculous like that. I read a blog the other day and she sang the praises of freezer jam; she said the jam tasted fresher. I don't like trying to find the room in my deep freeze for jam, but I'm tempted to make a little batch so I can do a taste comparison. With freezer jam you use 1 box of pectin, but only 4 cups of fruit, so your yield isn't nearly as much.

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Umm, so those are all of the pictures I downsized to load quickly on the blog. Other general stuff about us, I had a funny mole removed, but it was tested and came back normal. I guess that I'll now just have a one-inch scar. I've been seeing a chiropractor for some back pains. For about 3 months I was waking up in pain everyday, I saw him and it helped. I had a follow up this past Monday, and now I'm in lots of pain today. I don't know if I can wait an extra week to see him, or if I'll have to return next week.

Brien was excited to realize that a pair of pants fit again. Yeah, he lost 12 pounds. He road his bike the 7 miles to work today. The nice weather (we've had rain for almost 2 weeks) and the trailer full of sod hitched to his truck encouraged the bike ride. It was an easy downhill ride. He's going to call me before he heads for home, uphill. The deal is if he isn't home after an hour I'm supposed to go looking for him.

We are supposed to be preparing for the stake youth pioneer trek that happens in July. We were asked to be parents on the trek. Theoretically, we don't have to actually pull the handcart, that's the youth's (ages 14-18) responsibility. We'll be traveling about 12 miles a day for 2 days and then just a few miles on the last day. We've been busy on the weekends, and the weather hasn't cooperated, so Brien and I haven't been going on out "training hikes." We need to make the time to get ready for this.

Now that's all I have to say! Congratulations if you finished reading all this!