Plum Tuckered

out, and the week is just getting started! Saturday we went up to my mom's house to help her get the blinds put back up in the living room. It looks nice- not only are the walls freshly painted, but she spent a lot of time cleaning the wood floor and wood trim. While we were there we found that the plums on the plum tree in the front yard were ripe, so we picked them and brought them home with us. I spent way too much time yesterday turning them into plum jam- it took me an hour and a half of to deseed them so that I could start cooking it. Hours and hours of simmering later, plus about 10 cups of sugar I have about a dozen or so cups of plum jam. It's still a bit on the tart side, I think, but I was tired of putting in sugar. The stove was a mess from when the pot boiled over and I have 3 large pots and a food mill to wash still, so all in all I'm not sure it was worth all of the trouble. I guess we will see how much the kids like it after they give it a try.

Today is officially Beth and Carissa's 9th birthday. We went out for a late lunch yesterday, and the big birthday bash is on Friday, so we aren't doing much today. I have the family presents wrapped and waiting for later tonight. Other than that, I don't think we are doing much. I went out this morning and bought a bunch of things to make the cake with- it would have been so much easier to just get a cake from Walmart. I don't know why they were advertising in their July ad if the bakery won't be able to get the parts to make it with until October. Now, I have to do it myself, and well you all know how I am with birthday cakes and that it can't be a simple creation.... Hopefully some of the stuff I got today will make doing what I envision a bit easier, but it certainly wasn't cheap! I'm sure it will all come together in the end- it usually does- and hopefully I can take a few of the things I bought 'just in case' back next week.

Mark spent pretty much all of last week (he took 4.5 days of vacation time) and this weekend out in the garage working on the set of bunk beds he is building for Beth and Carissa. He was hoping to get them done by today, but he didn't quite get there. He is very close to having one bed completely done. I think he can probably have them both done by the end of the week, even with only working on them in the evenings after work.

Speaking of birthdays.... the only LO I was able to get done over the weekend was one of Brenna's birthday party in April. Dani's new County Fair kit was perfect!

journaling: Brenna looked forward to her JoJO’s Circus party for almost a year. As it got closer, not a day went by that she didn’t mention it several times, and she talked about it almost constantly the two weeks before. We ate corndogs, peanuts, popcorn, cotton candy and had cake and ice cream. Coloring clown pictures, walking the balance beam and pinning the nose on the clown kept everyone busy before Brenna opened her presents.
credits: County Fair, Number 4 from Saturday Market, Say It Journaling Strips, Creative Crops 2, Handstitched alpha from Crazy Little Thing by Dani Mogstad; Paper folds by Karah Fredericks at BlueFlombingo; paper frame from Bohemeian Peddler by Jessica Bolton and Krista Mettler; scraplift of Looks Good On Me by Traci Reed ; fonts: ICG Carpenter and Garamond

I found out this morning that Corina Nielsen picked my LO I did of the girls in front of their school sign as one of her two favorites in her matties contest! I get one of the two paper albums that she made- see this post. I posted my link before the other person, so I got to pick one I wanted. I chose the girly one, but it was a hard decision as I think the boy one is really nice too. I'm not sure what I will use it for, but I'm thinking I'll use it as an AAM album possibly since it is done in pinks and browns and that is what I chose a couple of years ago when I started my book.

Here's a cute story about Sarah: I was putting the clean dishes up out of the dishwasher Friday night. Sarah likes to help with the cups- she stacks all of the plastic kid cups together and then hands them to me to put up in the cabinet. My mom noticed that she was walking back and forth around the dishwasher to grab certain cups because she can't reach all the way across. We couldn't figure out why she was doing that- she usually just does one side and then moves to the other to get the rest. Then, I took a look at the stack of cups in her hand- she had stacked all of the same color cups together and when she had grabbed them all she would move on the to next color. She was even getting the colors correct when they were different shades. She is one smart little cookie!

I've got digicraft chat tomorrow evening- come learn how to make a personalized pencil box!

and with that, I am off to post some info about the chat at RAKscraps, and then I should probably finish cleaning up the pots in the sink so I can cook dinner when I figure out what we are going to have. After dinner I might get to play with some new CT goodies I got from SophiaSarducci today for their grand reopening on Wednesday, or maybe I should start working on some things for the cake.....