Stacks of Wonderful Things

We have undertaken a change to our schedule....

homeschool.

Summer is over and our real life routines begin again. These routines have been keeping me from sharing all these lovely stacks of things that have come my way lately.

It was my birthday not that long ago, and it was a very booky birthday indeed! I was surprised and thrilled to find all of these wonderful books wrapped on the table waiting for me to open them...pour over them and love them!!!

I am excited to make my next quilt project with my neighbor and new quilter from the book Simplify. I have already ordered a jelly roll of Ruby fabric. I can not wait!!!

Then there was this stack of utter and total yumminess. Hubby asked what cake i wanted for my birthday and i said i wanted a pan of rice krispie treats. Apparently that seemed to simple so he took that simple idea and went big with it....ending with a multi layered neapolitan rice krispie tower complete with its own set of calculations to make sure that it would fit in all the pans he had chosen. I love it when he nerds it up!!!

Oh the chocolate ones were my favorite!!! I think i might make another pan of those very soon.

Last of all the stacks is this set(stack, only if you look at it just right) of domino rocks we made. Avery, Chris and I collected up lots of flat black rocks from the beach at our cottage in Maine and made them our own rock dominos!!! Fun right....do you think anyone has played this yet? Nope, but they were a fun idea and fun to make. Just used a paint sharpie and did some dots and lines. Couldn't have been easier. Maybe we will use them for school or something. Or they could be just another bag of rocks for us to move around with! :o)

She is no stack...unless you want to call her a little squishy stack of lovin!!!...but she is pretty cute!!! I was feeding her lunch and before long it all got to be too much and she just zoned out and then passed out sitting there. Like a good blog mom, i was sure to take this picture before i rescued her and got her settled into be for a real nap somewhere more comfortable than the highchair.

Leslie

The Best Book Ever

My sweet husband was ordering on Amazon, not that long ago, and asked if there was anything i wanted...."anything?" I asked.

My running wish list was consulted and we picked a few quilty books. Among them was Block Party, by Alissa Haight Carlton and Krisitin Lejnieks.

This book is ridiculous good. So good you have to go get yourself a copy. I think i have read it cover to cover now several times..studied it even. That good!!! It is so full of great patterns and amazing inspiration. I loved reading every woman's quilt story.

There are many wonderful projects to choose from but these are some of my favorites. Ones i hope to make sometime. After all that is what i buy these books for right.....they aren't just for eye candy, are they? Ok, mostly they are...but this one makes me want to sew!!!!!

As an avid blog reader i have seen this quilting bee and that quilting bee pop up...and they all look amazing, but documenting this one the way they did was genius! What a wonderful way to feel a little of that old fashioned comraderie that came with coming together with other quilters to make something beautiful.

How fun would it be to make a sampler quilt from all of these blocks?

**this is all just my humble opinion. I am getting nothing out of this!**

Leslie

books

i probably should be putting a little more time and thought into this post but i have been looking at my book list and thinking that maybe i should be commenting a little on the ones that i have recently read. Perhaps you have read the book or maybe you have never even heard of it but this is what i think about them.

BOOK 1...
I recently finished, Animal Vegetable Miracle by Barbara Kingsolver. This book definitely made me think about the food we are eating and where it is coming from. So much so that we have definitely decided to join one of our local CSA's. It basically goes over in fact and in storytelling the journey of this one family and the year that they committed to eat only local food. Not necessarily organic, although it seems that as a happy accident, local and organic often go hand in hand. It has a wealth of information on how you can make that a possibility for you and your family. I am one that is motivated by guilt, and knowing some of the processing that goes into mass marketed food and what that does to the food and the environment really has made me stop and think about what we are buying and where it is coming from. Imagine how many natural resources we could save, ie oil, if we just chose to eat local more often. Often i think these things snowball and make you more thoughtful about everything that you do within your own household. I am not perfect at this by any means but by baby steps i hope that our family is improving and by that helping to improve the world around us, saving some things for our children.

BOOK 2...
this was by no means as thoughtful a book compared to the book i was reading just before it. I enjoyed it because i enjoy Jane Austen. How fun to chose your own course through a book. Remember those from when we were kids and you could chose the outcome. I confess that i failed miserably at the attempt to marry well and wealthy, which is the whole point of this book and of Jane Austen's novels. But it was fun and for that reason i would say, "read it". And i think you could read it many times over and change course every time, almost making it a new book each time.

Sorry about no pictures....