I got those raspberries and made my raspberry-peach jam today. Two batches of gleaming goodness.

I don’t know of too many other small pleasures that make me smile more than jam. I will often go to the fridge and eat a couple spoonfuls. Oohh, and on warm toast with pools of melty butter.

Or just on crackers. Perfect. I polished off almost an entire sleeve  for lunch.

That is probably why this is my current view of my feet:

This is actually more than I can see because I held the camera out a little. I’m trying to be good but all I want to eat is carbs. We have all of this beautiful fruit but I have no interest in eating it. I do much better with smoothies but I don’t like to run the blender when Scott’s sleeping. Maybe I can plug it in on the front porch…(runs to get blender)

Berry season is here! We have moved on from strawberries after stocking our freezer with jam and each ate our weight in cherries so now its time for raspberries. We thought it was going to be a nice day yesterday so Evelyn and I went back to momma’s house to hang out.  It was cloudy and cold but she had black raspberries ready.

Evelyn was eating them faster than you could put them in the bowl.

Momma was good enough to go out to my Aunt Janet’s house this morning to pick red raspberries and said she will be bringing me two ice cream pails this afternoon. I’ve got plans for some raspberry-peach jam and some baked goods. Bran muffins with streusel topping sound great filled with raspberries. These also freeze well and will make for a great breakfast or snack when I’ve got one hand on a newborn.

As for right now I’ve got a nice glass of blackberry-sage lemonade and am enjoying a quiet moment in the sunshine. If you ever go to The Melting Pot I would recommend this drink but it is crazy expensive.  I think it is around six dollars. For lemonade. That doesn’t even include any alcohol in it, which you can add. So I just mash up some black raspberries in the bottom of a glass with a spoon, add a few fresh sage leaves, ice, and lemonade (Simply Lemonade is my favorite).

Enjoy your day!

♥ Andria

Those always seem to be the days I try to bake cookies.  Coincidence?

We picked strawberries last weekend (I should say mom picked me strawberries while I wrangled the girl as she tried to drag her white blanket through the fields) and I still had a lot left over after we made jam (again, mom made the jam). I found this recipe to make strawberry shortcake cookies.

Easy enough but I have issues with cookies.  Out of two batches that make twenty-fourish cookies each I have 16 that are edible. That’s right. Not even half. The rest are burnt and eleven of those are on my kitchen floor cooling. I am trying to type this with one non-dominant hand as the other is on ice because I burnt the tips of my fingers as I tried to keep a falling cookie sheet from burning my bare legs and feet. I had an oven mitt on but I grabbed a cookie as the sheet slid down the front of the oven and It stuck to the mitt and burned through. Ay yi yi.

My cookies always burn, though not to this extent.  The recipe calls for a 375 oven and I know mine runs hot so I turned it down to 350. I am sure the problem was my new dark cookie sheets.  They are really shallow bar pans but they are bigger than my gold cookie sheets which take forever to make anything as you can only fit six cookies on one sheet. I think I need to just get some plain old silver ones and an oven thermometer.

Sigh. Well, the cookies I did get are really good and I would surely make them again. After I get new bakeware. And I have use of my right hand.

Just checking in.  Things have been so busy (but I can’t remember what we did) and I haven’t been feeling too well.  This little guy is giving me a hard time! I was having some contractions for a few days but I saw my doctor and things are better now. Not exactly better but at least I’m not going into labor. Now if I could find a thin brace to keep my hips from falling apart. This has been my main problem from the start with both pregnancies. Not just a waddle with some back pain. I’m talking about not being able to even walk, taking the stairs one at a time, not being able to get out of bed, and my pelvis clicking because its so misaligned. Really painful and my current brace doesn’t fit under my clothes. Ah. Only three months left.

Miss June is giving me a run for my money, too. Her personality has gotten so big over the last month even if she hasn’t. She is currently at 19 pounds and is still wearing 9-12 month clothing at 16 months. She is starting to talk more but still uses sign language for most of her communicating. I think she picks up a new sign everyday. She dances all the time and walks on her tip-toes, just like her mama did (she already has my legs!). She now has five teeth and enjoys standing in the driveway to wave at passing cars.  So far the only ones to wave  back are motorcycles.

Yesterday was the first time we were able to go to our pool and Evelyn loved it. There were so many kids she didn’t know what to do with herself.  She was just walking around saying ‘hi’ to everyone. She kept trying to give a toy truck to a woman lying on a towel and by the third time the woman sat up and  said “Oh, hi, Andria!’ It was our friend Stacie (her husband, Damon, works with Scott) and she was there with her daughters, Grace and Ella. Evelyn loved playing with them and we hope to see them again soon. The best part about being at the pool was that she was so tired when we got home that she went to bed by seven. I hope we will be able to go at least a few times a week and that Scott will have some chances to go, too. Maybe then I can get some time to actually swim. Or at least float around.

My little sister, Gretchen, graduated this last week. She is the baby of the four of us. The last one.

She has such a busy summer so I hope we can spend some time with her before she goes off to college.

Then we went to my cousin, Amanda’s, wedding on Saturday. Evelyn had such a great time dancing I could hardly get a picture of her because she was moving so fast.

As you can see, she was much more interested in what was going on on the dance floor than in having a family photo taken.

That’s a little better.

In between the ceremony and the reception we were able to sneak over to see my cousin Kari and her husband, Elliot, who were up from Texas with their littles, Siri and William. William is just a month old. It was the first time Evelyn has seen me hold another little baby. She was very interested in him at first and was signing ‘baby’ like crazy and wanted to touch his eye but she did well.  She just wanted to be held at the same time.  Then she thought Siri was pretty fun and was on to better things. I hope that’s the case when baby brother shows up.

Congratulations to Gretchen, Amanda and Tim, and Kari and Elliot. Thanks for the good weekend. Now on to quieter days of feeding the dog our sandwiches and putting cereal in the kitty’s ear.

For me it’s all about the cake doughnut. With thick icing. And sprinkles.

Read more about the little round pieces of goodness here and how the day started here. If you are fortunate enough to have a Krispy Kreme  or a Dunkin’ Donuts close to you you can score one for free. Or try this list to see if you have one of the best doughnut shops near you (apparently there aren’t any in Wisconsin).  I so want to try some of them at Voodoo Doughnuts in Portland, Oregon. Especially the maple and bacon ones. If you feel adventurous today you could search the glorious recipes on tastespotting and make your own. Just be sure to search for both ‘doughnut’ and ‘donut’ or you might miss out on some good ones.

It’s here. My favorite month. June.

The word itself elicits so many feelings for me, all of them wonderful.

Popsicles, lemonade with ice tea (half and half, please!), windows wide open, icy cold watermelon juice dripping down dimpled elbows and leaving a sticky trail across the kitchen floor, sprinklers, picnics, evening fires with campfire songs sung by Papa Sauey, s’mores, weddings and graduations and eyes filled with saddness, excitement, fear, pride, and hope, clothes and baby necks that smell like sun lotion, the ring of dirt left on the tub after the bedtime bath has been drained, nail polish the color of a Fijian sunset on toes, the smell of grilling almost every evening about 5:30, crisp and cool sheets, strawberry shortcake and cherry jam spread on Saltines, garage sales. Warmth.

And two of the most important things to me- the month we started our life as husband and wife and, after a long, dark time and almost being okay with the fact we might not have children, the month we found out we would have Evelyn. Evelyn June.

It’s the start of the summer. Those three precious months when everything and everyone seems lighter, happier. Easier. I want to enjoy the short time we have left as a family of three before things get more difficult. Maybe go to a baseball game, take a trip to Chicago, spend some time at the pool, just hang out in the back yard with Kool-aid mustaches and skinned knees- a sure sign of a productive day.  Sew some summer clothes to fit a little girl and a big mama belly. Hang out with Aunt Gigi before she goes away to college.  Get things ready before the arrival of our fourth member.

To celebrate the day I made a little punch from a recipe in BHG.  It’s called a June Bug and is made with orange juice and sherbet, grenadine, and ginger ale. Very good but next time I would use less sherbet and Sour Power instead of ginger ale. Heck, next time I would make a real June Bug with melon liqueur (my favorite), Malibu rum, pineapple juice. Just sayin’- it would be gooood.

Enjoy the warmth.  Enjoy the sunshine.  Enjoy the good.

Have a happy June.

There is a group on flickr called Braid Wednesday that I check periodically for hair inspiration.  Here is my first attempt at a side French braid.  My first attempt at a French braid in general, ever.

I’m just looking for someone who knows something about sergers.  I have quite a few sewing projects I would like to accomplish that would be made easier with the use of a serger.  Not so much of the fold 1/4 inch, press, fold a 1/2 inch, sew for hems and edges. I’m wondering if the cheapy models for about $100 would get me by or if I should spend a little bit more money on a better model. Sometimes the cheap ones are nothing but frustration. Thanks for the help!