My how time flies....

My last post was in June.  Wow.  Can't say that I've had much to post about.  Kind of got bogged down in mundane day to day life stuff and lost that crafty side for a bit.

But I'm currently working on a crocodile stitch baby blanket and will get caught up on my Craftsy and English Garden quilt blocks.  Haven't so much as laid a finger on them since then. 

My garden did okay.  Got quite a few tomatoes and I'm still getting baby tomatoes.  Just hoping the weather holds out long enough for these to get to a good size as they are from the German Giant plant I had all but given up on.  Also got some baby okra growing.  They did nothing during the heat wave and now they are growing.  Same with the jalapeno.  Go figure.

But so as not to leave this with just words, here are pictures of my flowers that I was very happy to see grow and blossom.  I'm already thinking about planting bulbs now for spring.

Red and white dahlia

Purple dahlia

One of the sunflowers

White dahlias

Pink and white dahlia

Also, I've purchased a couple of new cookbooks.  One is "Food in Jars".  I've loved the blog that inspired this book from the moment I first saw it and I love that the recipes in this book only make 3 - 5 jars instead of a dozen or more.  That means more canning for me!  The very first recipe I'll be making is the Pickled Green Tomatoes as I had a lot of green tomatoes that pretty much aren't going to ripen up with the weather getting chillier and I don't want to be hit with a bunch of ripe tomatoes at one time.  And, let's face it, I LOVE pickles.

So now back to prepping for the canning.  Shouldn't take too long as it will only be six jars.  I'm very excited about this book!

Playing Catch Up

I'm about 3 months behind on my block of the month work.  Here are blocks 3 and 4 for the English Garden quilt.

I've finished the first of the April Craftsy block but I won't post it until I've finished the second.  Then I've got to do May and June.  The creative energy kind of drained out of me for a while there, but it's back now.

I also planted these in front of the house:

I saw the bulbs at my local grocery store and fell in love with them.  We've been having a draggy spring and it finally got to the point where I felt it was safe to put them out.  Hopefully by the end of summer I'll have these gorgeous Dahlia's popping up.  The colors are so pretty.

I also planted seeds for watermelon, tomatoes, basil, cilantro and sunflowers.  The sunflowers were the first to peek out from under the dirt.

Basil

Sunflowers

The itty bitty tomato just peeked through today

I'm toying with buying some plants that are already started to transplant just to have something going already.  Either way it will be an adventure.  It looks like the sunflowers will lead the way.  Once they get 3 sets of leaves they get transplanted and I would love to see them reach their full bloom.  Keeping my fingers crossed.

Okay back to crafting, more later.