Fall doings....and a quilt!

I've been absent from the blogging world for a few months. Last post was in August. I was taking advantage of the last few days of warm weather. As of today, we have about 4" of snow on the ground with more to come this weekend. I'm just not ready for it yet!

I have been quilting but the 2 quilts I have finished in the last few weeks are already at the quilter so I will show those when they come back.

In the meantime here are a few pics of what I have been up to..........

Here is Baby Annaly (named after her 2 grammies---one of them ME!---Jana and Lana). It was her blessing day so she is with her proud parents. She is such a good baby and I can't believe she is already 3 months old!

Oh the green tomatoes!!! We had a cold front (with snow) come through and so I picked all the unripened tomatoes. I like to make salsa with the red ones but wasn't sure what to do with these guys. I searched the internet and found a blog that said you could ripen them by placing them in a covered container with a banana. Here they are one day after putting them in the container.

Sure enough it worked! Here is a pic taken only 3 days later showing the tomatoes turning red.

I also searched for recipes using green tomatoes. I came up with ketchup, fried tomatoes, salsa, bbq sauce, etc. The one recipe that really caught my eye though was the sweet one! It was a green tomato spice cake. It was SO VERY YUMMY! I made it several times (I was overwhelmed with green tomatoes!) and everyone that ate it was surprised to hear there were tomatoes in it.

Just finished this quilt and will take it to the quilter later today. This was a pattern that I have been itching to make for 4 years now. When we moved to this town, one of the first things we did was attend a benefit auction for a member of the community. A similar quilt was auctioned off there and I fell in love with it. The quilt had been a BOM from our LQS but the pattern had not been replicated for those of us who were new to the valley. I have been bugging--begging--bugging the designer to make it in pattern form for me to buy. She finally did. I just love the scarecrow! Will add the eyes, etc when I get the quilt back from the quilter.

Geralyn is a wonderful, generous designer. Many of her designs have been our BOM's at the LQS. You can find her patterns here.

That's it for now! Hope you all have a wonderful weekend!

It Always Snows in September!

In preparation of the storm that we were (are) going to be getting today, I worked in the garden yesterday.  I knew that pumpkins start to shrivel when cold comes and we are suppose to have low temps into next week, so I picked all of them to put in the garage.  A few had turned orange but many were still green, as you can see.  A friend told me that they will still turn yellow.  We will see.

I had lots of red tomatoes but oh so many more green tomatoes.  Again, I had to pick them so they wouldn't freeze.  I have them in sacks now and in dark closets to try to ripen them just like my friend told me to do.  I hope they will turn red.  Such a shame to have bag after bag of green tomatoes!  I'm just not sure I can eat green spaghetti sauce!

It took all day to clean out the garden.  After picking a plant, I would pull it up and get it ready to put into the garbage.  I'm not sure what other gardeners do.  Do you wait until Spring to clean it up or do you clean it up now, like I tried to do?  Remember this is all a first for me.

And the weathermen were right about the cold and the storm that would be moving in today!  Can you see the snow?  It has been spittin' and rainin' all day today.

It was the best kind of day to finish these up!  This is for the D9PS with Jane.  Yea for me!  I had electricians here all day so I tried to stay in my sewing room to keep out of their way.  Perfect time to get these done and mailed.

Here's some different ways to put the blocks back together.  I really enjoy these blocks since they are so versatile.  Reminds me of a log cabin block.

And here is my finished pile!  All cut and ready to be mailed tomorrow!  I can hardly wait to get this swap back.  Will be fun to see what other aqua and red fabric other ladies found to use!

Now to go check on my potato soup for the evening.  I love soup on cold days like today!

Fruits of our labors

Well my lil' garden is still coming along. I am hoping we won't get a cold snap so my tomatoes can keep turning red. Pumpkins are looking good and a few are beginning to turn orange. Zucchini is still producing and I have actually been able to pick a few beans.

Here's a pic of what I picked Wednesday a.m. My plate says "Mama always said eat your veggies". To some seasoned gardeners, this probably looks silly but keep in mind that I have never had a real garden before. Even though they are few in numbers I love seeing even my little beans! I am even getting potatoes! Corn is next to be picked and then I think I will have had success with everything I planted this year.

 

Remember how I was gone all last week? I didn't pick these big guys because I didn't want to deal with them right before we left. Lookie how huge they grew! The little one is about the right size of what you would buy in the store. I love these lil' monsters!

 

Saturday

Since I talked about my trying to have a garden this year, I thought I would show you what it looks like so far. Today we have been setting up the soaker hoses in each box. It's all going to be trial and error...we really have no idea what we are doing...but it is kind of fun. My goals are small....just to get a few veggies out of it and I will be happy.

 

Look what we got today! 2 puppies! Just as cute as can be.......until they wanted to sit in the garden boxes.....

 

Just kidding kids...they really aren't ours...it's deja vue from when we found the Great Pyrenees on our property in BP.