Oh, so I had a birthday! We had our dinners with the families (pictured above w/ me and the other February birthday boy.) My mom & sisters took me out for the day of shopping and lunch. Horray for birthdays. Yipee! IT WAS SO GREAT!
Just kidding. I got older. I am old. I am older than Justin Bieber's MOM. (This is a true fact.) Maybe it's because I've been feeling every minute of my 38 years lately. Last week I pinched two completely different places in my back and even nine days later I am still hurting from it. GEESH. It's time to get a little more dilligent with the ol' yoga.
And then there was the time that I had the bright idea to have my boys sell caramel apples to help pay for their field trips and scout camp. The Great Caramel Apple Fest of 2013. I didn't realize that in only a few HOURS we would sell 52 apples. At that point I shut down any more order-taking and we got to work. Did you know that caramel does not want to stay on the apples? As in, not one teeny drop? It was the most frustrating failure EVER. All those beautiful shiny apples sitting there with a stick stuck in the tops and a nice gooey pile of caramel puddling around the bottoms of them. I began to panic that we were heading for a major disaster.
Thanks to Google, and a little/lot of trial & error, I am now the world's biggest expert on caramel apple mass production. We did about 6 "batches" over the following week, probably spent WAY more money on supplies than we earned, but the kids were amazing and worked hard, which was the whole point anyway. (Right???) Next time... (I say this, but in actuality there will never BE a "next time") we need to raise our price from $3 an apple to probably $6.
This was only one day's worth of work. We had to squeeze them in EVERYWHERE
and then get them all delivered before we could make more.
In case you were wondering, those lumpy looking unwrapped ones in the middle
were "extras" that we kept to eat ourselves.
And YES, they were INSANELY DELICIOUS.
Little Cooper got to have some caramel dipped marshmallows
since he can't eat apples :)
For spring break, we had lots of cousin time of course! One day, we threw all the kids in my crappy-nothing-will-grow backyard and tried the Sponge Water Bomb idea. These strips of sponges are tied together, they dip them in a bucket of water and throw them at each other like water balloons. Then you simply re-dip and throw them again and again.
It was a muddy good time!
Great for a warm day, but not warm enough for swimming quite yet.
I whipped out another one of these babies...
I swear this must be the 15th "CTR Towel" I've made.
They are so great!
And last but not least...
You're never going to believe how THIS UGLY MESS
turns into THIS HIDEOUS CONFIGURATION
And then actually turns into something REALLY COOL.
I call it "Cleaning out my fabric drawers to make a quilt top that didn't cost me a single penny!"
More to come on that!
3 comments:
You look 21 - sorry you don't feel it. ;)
I'm bummed I missed the apples and I can't wait to see the quilt. It's bound to be impressive.
Your family pics on the sidebar there are awesome, especially your bright pants. So stylish!
The caramel apples look divine and if you're not still convulsing from this round when we come in the Fall, you'll have to show me all the tricks and let me taste the deliciousness!
And finally, that view of all your scraps makes me want to quilt something so bad!! Keep posting pics and I'll enjoy the work vicariously through you while I'm taking a break. :)
I had family visiting and I told them "check this out" and showed them your blog because I knew there would be something amazing. Everyone came over to see the CTR towel you made. They were super impressed - The thing is, there is always something like that to see here!
Post a Comment