Lauren Visits

Yikes! It has been almost a month since I posted!  Is anyone still out there?!?  LOL   I have actually been thinking about you all as I bustle about my summer.  It has been a busy one and a hot one, and from my blog reading, I can tell it has been the same for many of you.

I have taken pictures here and there, so I hope to get caught up a bit with blogging this week.  And I still need to take pictures of my CQ Journal Project blocks and to-date progress, and promise to do that this week.

Last week I had my granddaughter Lauren here to spend the day with me last week before school started. She’s 8 and going into 3rd grade.  Actually, my son Ryan and her mom Kim are getting married next June, but have been together for over 5 years and we have known and loved Lauren and her brother Easton since they were little.

The plan was to have sewing lesson #2.  The first one was about a month ago, when we made her a tote bag (visible in blue in the background of the second picture, below). She learns quickly and did 90% of the sewing. I only did enough to show her, plus I attached the handles.  No good pictures of that.

Anyway, our plan went awry as soon as Lauren saw the gold Victorian pincushion that my friend Gerry K had made for me some time ago.  Lauren fell in love with it and wanted to know if she could make one like it.

Well, luckily, I have been saving candlestick bases for just that, so, she selected her favorite (the biggest and heaviest one!) and we got to work.   There were plenty of crafty lessons along the way, but the only sewing was making the red velvet square into a round yo-yo; so I taught her about gathering stitches, yo-yos, and stuffing things.

We also had fun glueing the components together, and it was quite a challenge since both of my tubes of E6000 were dried up. We ended up using the silicone that I used to glue together my recent garden ornaments.

Another lesson was a color one. As a typical young girl, she loves anything flashy and bright. She wanted red, pink, purple, silver, gold, jewels, flowers, strawberries, butterflies, etc. on it.  So first we selected the color red, based on what I had in the way of trims that matched fancy fabrics she liked.

After that, I had her bring out everything she thought was a possibility, and once the stuffed yo-yo and trims were glued to the base, we began auditioning things.  To her credit, Lauren realized quickly that some things did not look good and others would have to be saved for another project later. It did not all have to go onto this one.

One thing she really liked was the dangly things, so even I made concessions to let her design and put on as many as she liked; a key, jewels, a tiny locket, fancy pins, vintage jewelry, etc.  I had previously made the organdy rose, and she wanted to add the gold vintage leaf brooch to it.

Lauren also fell in love with rhinestones (that’s my girl!!) and so to satisfy her Deep Need for More Bling, we included a vintage rhinestone clip-on earring on the back side.   It turned out really cute and she wants to come back as soon as she can to make another one!!

Here is a picture of some of garden produce, taken about a month ago. Our corn is gone now, so we are picking it from the Community Garden we participate in (that is also where the peppers and onions come from).

Over the last couple weeks I have made a lot of strawberry-rhubarb compote, frozen green beans, peppers, and tomatoes. And then there is the jam: strawberry was early summer, but jumbleberry peach was this past weekend (peach, red and black raspberries and strawberries).   Later this week I will freeze more peaches and make some peach jam.   And the tomatoes, peppers and squash (zucchini and yellow crookneck) keep coming.  We are eating soooooo healthily!

Talk to you soon!