Jam and Cross Stitch

I am loving this lax summer schedule we have going on here!  It's giving me time to indulge in lots of simple pleasures, making Felicity's challenge pretty darn easy.
Yesterday I made 6 jars of apricot and vanilla bean jam.

Now until yesterday, I have never eaten an apricot that I liked.  They were always mealey or tasteless and blah.  I do enjoy apricot desserts and jam; both of which we always looked for in France.  The apricots I bought for making my jam actually smelled like peaches and were the most beautiful shade of orange.  I wish I had taken a picture of them before cooking.  Why the vanilla bean? The last time we were in France we were lucky enough to eat someone's homemade apricot jam, and it drove us crazy for three hours trying to figure out what that extra flavour was.  After much looking through and trying to translate French cookbooks, we found a recipe that called for a hit of vanilla.  While I was cooking down the fruit yesterday I added a whole vanilla bean to try and infuse the flavour.  I think it worked; the jam smells like apricots with just a hint of vanilla, but you would really have think about it to identify it if you didn't know it was there.  Of course, the little black dots of vanilla seeds are kind of a giveaway...

I have also been able to do some stitching outside while the kids play in the kiddie pool.  Someone here is having a birthday on Monday, and I have been stitching their card.

Since I started cross stitching almost six years ago I have been making cards for my kids on each of their birthdays.  I am proud to say that My Favorite Boy will now have six of them come Monday.

Yes, life is good in my Crafty World on these lazy summer days.

Food: A Find; Some Fun

I love to cook for my family, but in the summer it gets to be a bit of drag.  I want to enjoy life outside, not menu plan.  The rotation of hot dogs/hamburgers/pizza/salad gets a bit monotonous.  So, I devised a plan.  Starting last week, I have implemented French Suppers.  Every day for supper we eat salad, grilled something (veggies, meat, fish) and a demi baguette.  You probably think that sounds monotonous!  However, salad is never the same.  I have been putting everything on our salad, including left-over wild rice and cold roasted chicken.  Mr. Crafty World comes home, puts something on the grill; I put the baguette in the oven and chop the lettuce.  The kids eat the lettuce  (minus the dressing), eat  the meat/ veggies/ fish, and the bread.  Everybody's happy.  I had to take a picture of last night's salad because it looked (and tasted) sooo good:

Grilled veggies, Israeli couscous, goat cheese and fiddlehead ferns.  I shamefully told the kids the fiddleheads were forest worms just to gross them out so I wouldn't have to share :o

A big bonus to eating salad is that you can't just scarf it down.  You have to eat it slowly, thereby enjoying it and giving your body a chance to realize it's full before it's over full.

Now to totally negate any benefits of salad, I have been baking.  Actually it's for the school bake sale, so we're OK!  I made vanilla cupcakes with buttercream frosting and lemon bars. 

I have been thrifting a little lately, and found a small bag of silk thread on wooden spools.

The colors are very pretty, and combined with a few other wooden spools I have make a neat decoration displayed in one of my vintage canning jars:

And lastly I did a bit of card making last night.  I love how this one turned out:

It's actually more green than the grey that you see here.  Although, grey would have been nice....

I love making cards but it usually takes an hour per card, just because I have to go through every possible combination of paper/stickers/embellishments.  By the end of it I'm out of creative ideas for the verse, so it's usually just "To... From Me"  Hardly inspired!  So if you get a card from me, just know all the love is in the outside!

I can't see straight...

and therefore I can't sew straight! I find few things more frustrating than spending oodles of time sewing and having a crummy finished product. I decided to sew another portfolio for our little neighbor, who's having a birthday party on Saturday. I love the fabric, love the ribbon, love how the princess stationary coordinates with said fabric and ribbon... What I don't love are all the crooked lines and seams. It's so bad there's no way I can give it away. Now to a six year old, it's not a big deal. In fact, I'm pretty sure she won't even notice. It's all the parents who look at it (and they will look, because a home sewn gift is a true rarity around here) and see the crooked lines and seams, who wonder who this cheap, non-talented neighbor is. Ay-yah! So it's off to the toy store this morning to get something else. I really should have known better than to sew when I wasn't feeling good. Problem is, I love to sew, and when I don't feel good it really helps me out. Maybe I should just sew sacks or something when I feel like that. Except they require straight lines too...

Onto other things. I finished replacing the skirts on the ballerina quilt sham. To be honest I didn't think I would do it, because I kind of prefer not to have a sham on My Favorite Girl's bed. It hides all the pretty pillowcases I have for her room. Anyway, I had the sham and the dresses and finished it in a few nights. Until I get a pillow for it it's housing her winter quilt. Here it is on her bed (beside her messy dresser) with the Hello Kitty pillow she made on my sewing machine. I'm now glad I finished it off, because they do look good together.

While we're on the ballerina theme, here is the card I made for My Favorite Girl to go with the carousel horse she received for her year end dance recital. I stitched the ballerina about three or four years ago and it's been sitting in my jewelry box. The pattern is a Bette Davis design that came as a freebie on one of those UK cross stitch magazines. I figured this was the right time to put it to use, so I mounted it on a card I made and added the little resin ballerina slippers to the bottom. I'm very happy with it, and I plan on making sure she keeps it!

Tomorrow I'm in full cake decorating mode. I am making the cake for our little neighbor's birthday party, and it's a two tier job with fondant icing and brush embroidery decoration. I'm really hoping it goes better than the portfolio did! I haven't made a cake that size in quite a while, so I have to get my notes out. If it goes well I'll post a picture. If it doesn't you'll hear me crying on my blog :o