All Fired Up for Jam

It's jam time! Last year we made 5 batches. This year we got an earlier start and made 9 batches! Strawberry, cherry, raspberry-blueberry, plain blueberry, triple berry, and mulberry. The cherry recipe used blackberry liquor which we had to burn off. This caused a bit of excitement as the flames got MUCH bigger than expected and came way too close to the cookbooks! Watch the video...

Chicago Beam

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We took the train to Chicago again, as a family, to see the sights. The girls thought the giant "bean" was called a "beam." Can you spot me, my mother and father, Carmina, Ember and Cheyanne in the picture with all the people under the bean?

Music in the City

Last week I drove to Illinois and took the Metra to Chicago with friends to see the Pitchfork Music Festival Preview show in Millenium Park. With a cool breeze off Lake Michigan, it was wonderful! Some strange music and some good tunes. Lots of flugelhorns.

Bag Lady

iMy knitter friends here think I am a bag lady. It seems all they see me knitting is felted bags. They think I'll just keep making bigger and bigger bags and that perhaps the next project will be a sleeping bag. Not a bad idea...

Here is the latest one. It is the same patter I made earlier this year, only bigger so perhaps I can use it for my job. The pattern is the Sheep Tote from Fiber Trends.

Bountiful Harvest

I've been wondering around my yard and picking things to eat: Raspberries, snap peas, shell peas,broccoli...and today I picked my first squash of the season. I'm not a big veggie lover, but I do like veggies fresh from the garden. The peas from the pod taste like candy, they are so sweet.

We're Happy Together

We threw a 4th of July party weekend here at the cottage. Besides me, 14 people came and stayed for varying lengths of time. 2 sleeping tents, a shower tent and a porta-potty were hauled in. We grilled, ate s'mores, listened to someone play a guitar by the camp fire, picked cherries, went to the flea market, bought 50 pounds of blueberries, and played hard! Some people went tubing or water skiing. 3 of us women even swam across the lake! Thanks for coming! For those of you who couldn't make it, you're welcome anytime!

Life is Sweet

It is one of our favorite times of the year...when sweet cherries are ready for picking. It only lasts about a week and the trees are weighed down with so many sweet cherries. We picked at Fruit Acres in Coloma, MI. $1.99 per pound for sweet cherries and 75 cents per pound for sour ones. We tasted as many different sweet varieties as we could find and enough sour cherries that it took all afternoon to pit them. Thanks, Mom, for diligently pitting nearly all of them!