Blueberry Picking

My sister found a blueberry farm about an hour away from us.  She invited me to come with her and my niece to pick some blueberries.

It was a lot of fun!  Or at least it would have been if the heat index was not 105!

We arrived at the farm and there was a small building where you picked up a bucket and caught a hay ride type trailer out to the berry farms.  The buckets were lined with plastic bags so that you could just take the bag out of the bucket and take it right home when you are done.  Pretty clever!

Mary picked out a bucket. 

Posed for a quick picture.

And headed for the hay ride. 

I was not even sure what kind of plant blueberries grew on.  Turns out it is a tall bush.  I was surprised how many berries grew on each bush!

We spent a few hours picking berries.

Mary helped for a while.

But then was caught red handed eating berries out of the bucket!

After we picked the berries we returned to the same building to have our berries weighted, pay for them, and return our buckets.

I think we all felt like Mary by the end of the day.  Hot, sweaty, and tired! (Notice how wet her hair looks, that is all sweat.)  But we got about 5 lbs of berries which is enough for us to freeze some to eat later.  Blueberries are super expensive during the winter! 

We felt a lot better after we cleaned up in the bathroom.  Then we got ready to head home.

I guess that we wore her out!

 - Laura

Felt-o-rama: Story board

I would like to dedicate our final week of Felt-o-rama to Sarah Zwier.  She was the first person to leave us a comment (we love comments)!  Sarah is so brave, she grew up in the Chicago suburbs but she is currently living in Laos with her husband helping native people who are poor and uneducated.  She also has a great cooking blog that includes some Lao cooking.  You should check it out at Mak Noa.  She is really Meghan's friend, and I only know her through Meghan, but she is an inspiring lady, and I wish her nothing but the best!  She is also the inspiration behind this idea.  She suggested a story board.  I am not sure if this is exactly what she meant, but it is what my imagination came up with.  I pictured a story board being sort of like paper dolls, only made out of felt.  But of course the doll needs somewhere to live!

I started with a white rectangle to be a room.  (It is really bothering me that you can see the fold marks in the felt, hopefully those will wear out soon). 

Then I created hard wood floors by using dark brown felt and sewing horizontal lines into it, and then short vertical ones at different spacing to look like the boards of hard wood floors.

Next, I thought it required a place to sit down, so I made a living room with a sofa and a large clock.  I have a really big clock in my house, and it is one of my favorite things in the whole house.

Then I figured anyone who lives here would need a place to sleep, so I made a bed with some blankets and pillows.  And of course a dresser to store clothes in.

Then I realized that there was no person, so I made one of those too.  She was the hardest part because I had to sew the face and hair on by hand.

Finally, I made her a few different outfit choices.

All of the pieces except the little girl are just one piece of felt with decorative stitching on them.  The girl is two layers of felt to make her a little extra sturdy.

Here are all of the individual pieces laid out. 

I must be honest and say that I am not totally done with this one yet.  I plan to make some additional outfits, people, furniture and other accessories to go with it.  But I think that you get the idea.  I have three other big projects that I need to be working on, so I need to set this one aside to complete at a later date.

Hope it was worth the wait!!

- Laura

While you wait, go outside

While dinner is cooking, go outside.

If it's raining, open the door and splash.

Bubbles are on sale now, buy them.  Make them.  Use a piece of string and a straw to make a big bubble blower.

But enjoy it.  July goes by much too quickly.

-Meghan