A gift on it's way

I finished this gift mei tai 10 days ago. I waited to post about it until I could get to the post office and send it on it's way. Hopefully this carrier is now with it's new owner, so here are the completed pics.

I used up the left over fabric to make a matching bag for it. I followed the directions in Weekend Sewing by Heather Ross for the bag. I'm happy I finally got to try a project out of this beautiful book! It's been on my "to do" list for months.



Earlier this week I woke up extra early (on account of my falling asleep at 8:30 trying to get T to sleep) and decided to spend a little quality time with my sewing machine. I needed something quick and easy because I didn't know how long it would be until T realized that she wasn't snuggled next to me anymore. So I decided to whip up this pair of cloth-diaper friendly (lots of room in the rear) pants for said little girl. I used the sleeves of an old shirt of mine. I'm pretty happy with how they turned out. Especially the way I was able to keep the stripes lined up! I still have some trouble with the stitching puckering up on the knit fabric. I need to work on that. But it's passable for play clothes for a 17 month old.

And here's a picture of T modeling them later that morning.


And do you remember all that picking we did last week?



Well, just today I finally finished up preserving all that produce. We've got blanched and frozen broccoli, spaghetti sauce, and lots of applesauce and apple butter. We made some delicious apple crisp. And we have lots and lots of apples individually wrapped in paper and stored in the "root cellar." It was a lot of work, but I know we will enjoy the fruits of our labor in the months to come (pun intended).

Apple picking and other stuff

Ray took off work on Friday so that we could go as a family to pick apples. And pick we did! We picked over 100 pounds of apples. With all of us working, even T, it didn't even take that long.



We also picked tomatoes and cut broccoli. About 20 pounds of each. That's not much in the way of tomatoes, but I think the broccoli will last us for a while.




Saturday was a full day of soccer.





Sunday was a little rest and a friend's 10th birthday party. All in all a very good way to spend a fall weekend.

National Zoo

We went to the zoo a couple of days ago. There were no crowds. The weather was beautiful. The animals were out enjoying the weather, too. We didn't try to see everything. We just visited a few animals, but we took our time and really watched. I think the kids enjoyed seeing the orangutans traveling on the "O-line" the best.


I enjoyed seeing a mother gorilla and her 8 month old baby.


I feel somewhat sorry for the individual animals that are in the zoo. But the kids learn a much better appreciation for those species when they can connect with a living example rather than just a picture in a magazine.

Of course, we had to climb on some animals, too.



It was a perfect day.