I sewed a new cover for Winter’s bicycle seat using leather scraps we had. We’re going to make some covers for her handles as well as repaint her bike in the next couple of weeks. From the garden, we harvested grapes, a few tomatoes, figs, a pear, 2 Armenian cucumbers, a zucchini, basil, and green…
I’ve had a lot of questions about what we eat when it’s hot. We have 5 months of above 90º (32ºC) temperatures. Hot is normal for here. Right now temperatures have cooled a bit, and weather.com predicts an average of 105º for the next 10 days. We don’t like to barbeque in the summer. That…
I spent some time this past week writing down all of the blog posts I’d like to feature between now and the end of the year. I have a lot of projects on my to-do list that I’m excited to share with you. I also am planning to share more photos of our home on…
This past week, I did a lot of rearranging of pictures in the house. I changed out some pictures in frames that we already had and hung pictures in the house in new places. I also redesigned my gallery wall above the dining table. I had to steal three matching frames from elsewhere in…
It’s the middle of summer and temperatures here reached 114º (45ºC) last week. We’re mostly staying indoors, but we did get some things picked from the garden, including table grapes and Concord grapes. I’ve had a Concord vine for many years, and this is the first time I’ve harvested from it. I have 2…
This post contains affiliate links. I spent a lot of time organizing this past week. We moved furniture around in the house to other rooms, filled several bags to donate (and dropped them off at the thrift shop), sold furniture on the local Facebook garage sale page (and put a price tag of $0…
We picked peaches, apricots, and grapes from the garden. I canned 4 quarts of applesauce, 10 1/2 pints apricot vanilla jam, 9 quarts of peaches, and 9 quarts of grape juice from our garden produce. I canned 4 quarts of cranberry juice and 4 1/2 pints of cranberry sauce with cranberries I had bought in…
With so many fruits ripe in the garden all at once (which are normally spread out from June through August) my first priority is to take care of the fruit in the garden. I need to cover grapes from the birds, pick apricots, peaches, and grapes. I’ll also be canning. Because so much has been…
Peaches and grapes are ripe in my garden, albeit a few weeks earlier than normal. This year, the mockingbirds have appeared in my garden, and they have figured out that my green grapes are ripe. I’ll be covering as many grape bunches as I can with paper bags to allow them to continue to ripen…
Note: This post contains affiliate links. My 14-year-old daughter, Winter, has been working on a sewing project for the last couple of months. She participated in a Pioneer handcart trek, and everyone was supposed to dress for the time period. This is a living history event where groups of people recreate a Mormon pioneer handcart…
Last week did not go at all as I had planned. The garden has a myriad of fruit ripe all at once, which is normally ripe over a three month period, leaving me scrambling to harvest and preserve it. Normally we would just eat most of it fresh and preserve some of it, but the…
We picked apples, plums, peaches, and apricots from the garden. I cut two bunches of grapes from the garden. We cut larkspur, gladiolas, and lilies from the garden for three flower arrangements inside. I planted seeds for cucumbers yet again in my garden, as most of my seedlings have once again disappeared. Though I…