Piddling All The Time

This is the first year I’ve grown red onions, and wanted to find a recipe on the internet to make a sweet jam/marmalade.  While searching the internet, I came across a recipe from Canning Homemade! Sustainable Living and Preserving the Future!  The recipe is called Canning Red Onions – A Marmalade!  . 

This recipe was very easy to follow, and the marmalade turned out really good.  If you have red onions and can’t figure out what to make with them, I would recommend trying this recipe.

Over the weekend, we went up into the Oklahoma City’s farmers market where I picked up some squash.  My plans were to cook this squash with dinner; instead I canned it and put it up in my pantry.  Over the next several days, I will revisit the market and pickup more squash to can; because, our squash plants failed to provide vegetables for harvest due to the excessive amount of rain and squash bugs.  

We had several fresh peaches, blueberries, and raspberries left on the verge of being overripe, and I decided to make a fruit crumble instead of letting the fruit go to waste.  While the crumble was baking, our house smelled amazing………fresh baking fruit always smells amazing.  Once out of the oven, I couldn’t wait any more I had to make sure and spoon out a couple of bowls to the guys, and myself.  Now, most people will top a fruit crumble or cobbler with ice cream, we didn’t!!!

With our first harvest of tomatoes, several blogger friends said they would be more than happy to take my Sunrise Bumblebee tomatoes off my hands.  So sorry………you’re too late!!!  I made some eggs, with my tomatoes and had a handful of grapes for lunch right after I picked them.

Here’s yet another wonderful harvest of tomatoes (these are already claimed so don’t ask), jalapeños, and beans!!!

Speaking of tomato plants, remember I mentioned a volunteer tomato plant was growing out of my raised compost bin?  Well here it is, doing really good for itself.  Notice, there’s a second plant coming out of the bin.

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On to creating things………

While hanging laundry out on the clothes line, my clothes pin holder fell off the line.  Because it’s been exposed to the weather, the holder actually ripped when it hit the ground.  

Instead of buying one, I decided I was going to make one; with some material I had on hand, from a yard/estate sale I went to last year.

I pulled out the material, folded it over, making sure to double the material, and started to cut out the shape I wanted. Once done, I pinned it together, and sewed it by hand.  Yes, I said by hand; that’s because I was too lazy to clear off my old singer sewing machine cabinet to access my sewing machine.   Bulldog Man has been using it as a desk for his computer which is tied to his ham radio; truthfully, I didn’t want to disturb my husband’s stuff, because he had it setup just the way he left it the night before. 

Here’s what the new handmade clothes pin holder looks like, a quick and easy project complete :-)

Ever get annoyed trying to find a coaster to put your drink down on a table?  Well I have, more than once!  Each and every time I go to look for a coaster, there’s none available. 

We had two complete sets of beautiful hand painted clay coasters.

In the move to Oklahoma several of these coasters went missing or were broken.   Instead of buying coasters, I decided to make some out of our son, Tank’s old jeans.

Periodically, Tank will come up to me and say “mom, I have jeans which I no longer can use because they’re too worn, or too big….do you want them?”  Of course I want them! Instead of throwing them out, I will take them apart and use what I can of them.  Now we would donate good jeans but these jeans were worn out; terrible to give to someone. 

I cleaned up each ripped out seam, using scissors to remove unwanted strings and excess material. 

I then put them aside until ready to start the rolling process. After every seam was cleaned, I heated my glue gun, and pulled out two seams to start making my coasters.

To begin the process, take one of the seams and place glue on the inside of the seam, then start to roll the seam up like you would a cinnamon roll.  

Continue this process until you no longer have a seam to roll.  Now add another seam to the rolled seam, make sure the ends are against one another, and repeat the process making a large coaster. 

Once the glue dries, you have a coaster to place your hot or cold drink on.  The coasters come in handy, because they absorb any liquid your cup leaves behind. 

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Flowers and Critters………

My sunflowers have started to show their flowers.  As you can see this bee is really enjoying the pollen found on this flower.

Here’s one of my flower beds at the front of the house with gorgeous Zinnia’s growing like crazy.

While working on another upcoming project, which I will share with you very soon, this dragon fly decided to hang near me on one of my clothes lines. 

Finally, I wanted to share a picture of Beans looking at me as if to say, “I wasn’t anywhere near the bird mom………trust me!!!!”  As one can see, there’s a parakeet feather on his nose. Do you believe he wasn’t anywhere near the bird?