Twenty nine...

I'm glad that my husband married me. Even though my birthday is during the muzzle loader deer hunt every single year. It's his favorite hunt you know, always has been. Thankfully we've avoided this predicament for the past 7 years that we've lived out of Utah. This year though... it was back.

I honestly don't care if he hunts on my birthday anymore. We can always celebrate later right? I would rather him go and have a good time with his friends then worry about hunting on my birthday. Well, I guess there was this situation a while ago... on my 21st birthday... where I was left by myself at a cabin for the whole entire day without any phone service or sight of another human being until late into the evening. Yep, I really did spend my 21st birthday all by my lonesome, and was a little sad about that. I'm over it... really I am! But my husband has taken a personal vow to never have that happen again, and to no longer hunt on my birthday.

My boy and I decided to drive out to where he was hunting this year and camp over on Friday night. Such a good decision! I didn't want to spend the whole week with a bunch of smelly hunters {no offense}, but one night was not bad at all.

This was my view when I woke up Saturday morning...

And I just knew it was going to be a beautiful day.

 

Twenty nine this year... my golden birthday. I don't know why but I've been looking forward to 29 for a long time. Still in my twenties, but hopefully a little wiser than I was in my early twenties.

 

The boy needed to use the potty, which was a few miles away. We normally would not drive to the potty while out camping in the woods but I felt like going on an early morning drive to see this beautiful place we were in.

 

Best decision of the day.

 

You see, mother nature had a {few} wonderful birthday presents for me on this drive. I left camp, turned a few corners, and found myself in the most beautiful golden aspen forest. 

For miles, and miles, and MILES all you could see were golden aspen trees! I drove slowly along the dirt road trying to soak in as much of the sun reflecting off these golden beauties as I could... it was magical to me.

It was one of the most amazing drives of my life. I know that it's the time of year for leaves to change, and I was up in the mountains, but it almost felt like someone had painted all the trees gold the night before just for me on my golden birthday. I shed a few tears at the beauty I was beholding and considered it a gift.

The next gift that was on my drive... sheep. Lots of sheep. I love seeing wildlife outside and Utah has a lot of it. But seeing hundreds of sheep brings me back to my college days when I went to Snow College. There were many mornings I would be walking to school and the roads in Ephraim would be covered in sheep. This city girl {who wishes she was a country girl} loved it when the farmers would do that.

So we slowed down even more and watched the sheep.

I took the most awesome movie of the hundreds of sheep surrounding our car... but I can't for the life of me get it to load. So sorry, that you have to miss out on that one ;). It was pretty amazing to see all these sheep out there.

Even with all my tree gazing and sheep watching going on, we still made it to the loo in time. I love that my birthday started out with something so simple yet special. It's the small and simple things that sometimes bring us the most joy. When we got back to camp we packed everything up and headed home. My cute husband was true to his word and did not hunt on my birthday. He made me feel very special. Mother nature made me feel special. My wonderful friends and family members made me feel special. It was a great day. I'm lucky to be so loved and have such great people in my life.

Command center...

 I'm not a very big fan of the stacks of paper that seem to accumulate in my house. I would even say I downright hate them. I love the idea of a command center in my home that has all my important things right there where I can see them and find them. Here us phase 1 of my command center.

I walk by this little wall so many times a day. The main things that this one houses is my calendar and my to do list. I print my calendar off of word every month. It's simple, I can scribble all over it. It helps keep the three of us more organized. I found this awesome to do list from Wit & Whistle which I love! It was very simple to put together and I'm a sucker for mustard colored anything.

 I bought this magnetic board from Roberts a while ago and really love it! I painted the border black when I bought it and hated it. So recently I sanded off the black paint, stained it a dark wood color, and painted on the chevron print. I love it now! It makes me super happy. I used this template for the chevron which was really helpful. Just a word of warning if you try this, don't be a cheapskate like me. Buy the frog tape!!! Don't even waste your time with blue painters tape because it is $2 cheaper. You will regret it! Also, don't use cheap craft paint. I started with that and it looked awful. I ended up going with the sample can at Home Depot that is paint and primer in one. Much much better. I had to re-sand and stain the bottom of the frame because I was too cheap to do it the right way the first time. Trust me on this one...

The other little wall in my kitchen is going to be phase 2. I was going to put up a frame with chicken wire in it to hold my bills, coupons, etc on this wall. Well... the chicken wire is in a mangled heap in the backyard right now with a beat up frame. It did not go well. So I'm scratching that idea and going to find something like this for the wall. The moral of the story is, sometimes crafting ideas go bad in a bad way. For me I would say it happens about 25% of the time. No worries... take a deep breath and figure something else out. But for now the wall will remain naked and my bills and coupons will remain in a stack of papers on the counter.

 

How do you manage stacks of paper in your house from taking over and swallowing you alive? Please, do tell...

Quiet book...

Here is another one of those projects that I've been working on for years..... Something you should know about me, I'm really great at starting projects but not so great at finishing them. I usually have about 10 projects in various stages of being done sitting around at all times. It's frustrating. I don't know why I do this to myself! So please don't think that I'm actually super productive and getting all these things done at record speed. I am not. At all. I just gave myself a self imposed deadline so things are magically getting done around here. And I'm about to pull my hair out. Anyway... here is the quiet book.

Now the truth as to why this has taken me so long is that I didn't just make one quiet book... I made two. One for my boy and one for my niece.

You see, my sweet little niece is the big sister to triplet babies. So I felt like it was my responsibility as the "aunt with only one kid" to make her a quiet book too. I'm glad that I did! The joy I felt as I sat and watched her play with it and smile at each page yesterday was worth all the time it took to put this little book together.

I wanted this book to be one that could be added too. For the covers I used duck cloth and used a freezer paper stencil to put the first letter of their names on it. The sides have rings so that pages can be taken out and added whenever it's desired.

All the pages are 10 x 12 thick muslin that are sewn together with the edges fraying. I like the rustic look.

The first page is one that I came up with myself. It's the lets go to bed page.

Little mini quilts with little mini people dressed in jammies, ready to go to bed. I took pictures of the kids and then printed them out onto iron on paper and ironed them onto some muslin. They both have a favorite book and a special blanket that I made little replica's of for this page.

Here is little "a's" page.

Blankets snap on and the pillows are removable with Velcro.

Next page are farm animals with removable heads. FYI this one can be a little bit rowdy in church {oops}.

Again I printed the pictures on iron on transfer paper and ironed them onto the fabric. There is Velcro on the back of the animals. {If anyone would like me to e-mail them my word document for the pictures let me know! All the pictures are from Getty Images}.

Hanging clothes on the line. Little tiny clothes pins and a vinyl laundry basket at the bottom.

Counting the beads.

Weave your own pie crust.

Check out the apples! I was really happy with how those turned out.

Fishing page. This was my most difficult page by far! And the reason why they sat in a drawer for so long...

My husband said that I couldn't put a fishing pole by fish in a bowl because you don't fish for fish out of a bowl. But I had already made the bowl and didn't want to change it so I went with it anyway. The eyes on the fish are stick on magnets and I was planning on just having something metal on the end of the pole to pick up the fish. However, the eye magnets are super weak and I could not get them to attract to anything metal!

I ended up getting a super strong magnet with a hole in it to put on the pole so that they could get the poor fish out of the water. Sounds like a simple solution but it took me about 9 months to come up with it... sheesh.

Build a pizza. Here is the crust with the top not sewn down and a snap holding everything else inside.

Inside we have sauce, pepperoni, pineapple, olives, mushrooms, anchovies (why not), peppers, and cheese (everything is cut out of felt here).

This page is a messy one with lots of little pieces but it is one of the favorites to play with I've noticed... some messes are worth it aren't they?

There is all the I've gotten done. I have great intentions of adding more pages to the book someday, but that is on hold while I find my sanity from this one.

Unfortunately we've also discovered that our IPOD touch is a great quiet book for church, and doesn't take any time to make. But they are not as cute now are they...

Hope Valley...

 There are a few things in life that I really strongly believe in...

I believe one should eat butter instead of margarine.
I believe that hot baths and walks in the mountain are healing for the soul.
I believe the best way to mop a floor is on your hands and knees with a bucket of vinegar water.

I also believe in handmade quilts.

There is nothing else quite like sleeping under a handmade quilt. I've yet to sleep under a store bought one that was nearly as comfortable or satisfying. Maybe it's the love that goes into hours upon hours of quilting it... I'm not sure. But they are wonderful! I've been very spoiled and have benefited from other's quilting skills in the past. My sister in law Nicole made us a quilt for our wedding that we have used to shreds, literally. We had it shipped out to Hawaii when we lived there because we missed it too much. But we have used it and loved it over the past 10 years and it's now falling to pieces so it was time for a new one.

I first blogged about working on this quilt here. That was two years ago! So yes, this has taken me a long time to put together. The fabric and pattern are by Denyse Schmidt, the fabric is from her Hope Valley line. The fabric was inspired by the creative, homey economic era of the Great Depression. There is a very vintage-y feel to it and I loved it the moment I first saw it. I wanted to use fabric that wasn't too feminine and the blue, teal, gray colors were perfect for this. I also loved the name of the line. When I started getting the fabric for this quilt I felt like I was in my own hope valley era just overcoming my 2009 crisis. It felt very fitting, and I love that I now get to slumber with peaceful dreams under my Hope Valley quilt every night.

I've had the top done for about a year but was pretty nervous to quilt it. I tripled the pattern size so that it would fit our California King bed. It's pretty massive, and I wanted to use really thick batting so that it would be nice and warm for the Utah winters.

I didn't want to pay a fortune to have someone machine quilt it on a long arm machine, but there was no way I was just going to tie it. I was so nervous to do it on my own machine!!! I had spent so much time on this I really didn't want to screw it up.

What I ended up doing is machine quilting with my walking foot down each of the rows by stitching in the ditch. Then I started in the top middle and stitched in the ditch down the different pieces. It worked just fine on my machine! I don't know why I was so chicken and waited so long to do it. It's not perfect by a long shot... but it works for me and I'm really happy with how it turned out.

I decided though that binding a quilt is like child birth. You're almost done, you just have to bind (or birth) your quilt. But the only way to really do this so that it looks good is to do it by hand... which takes FOREVER! One centimeter at a time, by hand... until it's done. Then you swear you are never going to make another quilt again because you don't want to go through the pain of binding again. But again like childbirth you forget how awful that was and you start piecing together another quilt ;). My thumb still hurts from hours and hours of binding, so texting has been minimal this week (oh the pains of life huh?).

I'm so happy that it's done though. This is a huge project that I've been working on for so long, it's quite the feeling of accomplishment! And I may not be birthing another quilt anytime soon... but maybe I'll forget about how much I hate binding one day.

Weekend getaway...

My cute husband had a whole 24 hours off of work this weekend and we decided to be a spontaneous and go on a little weekend getaway. Poor husband has been working so much lately, and poor wife and son have been missing him, so we packed an overnight bag and headed east of here. We literally only had about 24 hours before we needed to be back so it was a quick trip. We went to Flaming Gorge with three things in mind that we hoped to see on our trip.

 

1- Fall leaves changing color.

2- Kokanee Salmon spawning in the river.

3- Big horned sheep (I've always wanted to see one of those!) 

 

I tried to sneak a fourth one in there which was to see real dinosaur bones in Vernal, but we got there just at closing time and had a very disappointed little boy (why does everything close so early in Utah? It wasn't even 5 pm yet!). So we will have to go back there sometime when we have more time to do it.

 

However, our disappointment in missing out on the dinosaurs was soon forgotten when we pulled into Ashley National Forest. We saw wild turkeys, deer, raccoons, more deer... and the thick trees were breathtaking!

 

We pulled off the road to explore the trees a bit and then headed into Manila which is surely the smallest town I've ever slept in before.

We found one little diner that was open and had our dinner. We then ordered a banana split for this little guy who had never had one before.

It was a hit to say the least... even though it didn't have sprinkles (the boy really wanted sprinkles).

We found our hotel thankfully by the bright yellow sign blaring in the trees... otherwise we may have missed it all together!

We were one of two people staying at the hotel that night. I guess mid September for Flaming Gorge isn't a very popular time to be there. Even with it being Kokanee Salmon Day!?!? Are we the only people in the world who would drive hundreds of miles to see salmon spawning in the river? Yep... we pretty much were. At least for the first ten minutes, then a few other cars trickled in (phew... I was starting to feel a little silly being the only ones there).

And here they are in all their red glory...

 
We stood on a bridge and watched the salmon spawn in the river bed. Here is what I gathered from listening to the DNR guy who knows a whole lot about salmon. These salmon are land locked salmon who live in Flaming Gorge. When they are about 3-4 years old they start to swim upstream and their bodies change from a greenish gray to this vibrant red color. They find a place in the river where there are lots of rocks and gravel and there they hover for a few weeks and get fertilized and lay their eggs (both male and female fish are involved in this process... obviously... don't know why I felt the need to point that out). Once the eggs are laid the fish die... and thus the circle of life for the salmon goes on. New salmon are born and flow downstream and live in the lake for the next 3-4 years until they swim upstream and do it all over again.

This little monkey was awfully friendly up there on the bridge. Two older men pulled up and got out and he said, "Hey guys, there are three fish on this side! Come on over and see!" And sure enough they followed my four year old to the other side of the bridge to see the three fish. My own little fish is growing up... and surprising me every day with his ingrained traits and habits. I love how outgoing and polite he is.

So there you have it. We went to see fish "spawn" aka make fish babies and then die in the river... moving right along.

I still wish I could wake up every morning, look out the window and see beautiful trees like this. And look at that blue sky! I was in heaven.

And we did manage to see many beautiful colors of trees up there. Yellow, orange, red... they were so lovely.

We did not, however, see any big horned sheep. We drove around for a long time hoping to spot them but we were unsuccessful. I guess they are all making their way back down from the high Uintah's to the gorge right now and will all be back in November for their "rutting" season. However, I don't really want to be around for that one, so I think I will pass. I'm fine going on trips to see the beauties of nature, I do not want to base all of our trips on animal mating season though... aren't you glad you read my blog today?

After that our time was almost up and we headed back home via Wyoming. We pulled off in Evanston for some lunch but the variety of fast food did not look good to any of us, so we held off until we got to Morgan and went to Taggart's.

Trust me. It is worth the drive to Morgan from wherever you live (in Utah... or Wyoming) to eat at Taggart's. That place is so yummy!!!! Just to tempt you here is my lemon poppy seed cheese cake.

The boy loved his extra large frosted cookie as well.

There you have it! Our quick yet eventful weekend getaway. Is it just me, or would you go on a trip with your hubby because he wants to see fish... oh never mind! I don't want to say the "s" word again! I hope you have a lovely Monday!

Diced Italian Tomatoes...

I've been dabbling at canning the last few weeks, and I've been canning my own home grown tomatoes. I wanted to do something big like large batches of spaghetti sauce or salsa... but I've only had enough tomatoes turn red at the same time for 12 jars of diced Italian tomatoes. I think I need more tomato bushes next year... 6 just didn't cut it for a large scale canning operation. I might be able to do a few more before the growing season is over, we'll see.

I owe a big thanks to my sister in laws for letting me use their pots and for moral support at a moments notice. I had no clue what I was doing, but they know how it goes so they were super helpful!

There is something magical about picking your own tomatoes and then canning them. And at the end of your hard work when those little buttons seal on the lids... now that is success! I may have only gotten 12 jars so far, but that is 12 more than I've ever done before so I feel good about that!

I used this recipe which is also in the official Ball canning book. What do I plan on using these for? Taco soup, it's super yummy!