Happy Father's Day!

I have always considered myself blessed to have such great parents. Today I give a shout out to my dad who has shown great love for me and has taught me many things. Thanks for being a great dad. I love you! I also would like to say Happy Father's Day to Bruce, Bryce's dad, who has adopted me into their family with great love. I wish I had a picture on this computer to share of you. Have a great day you two!

We call him Danger

This is in honor of my sweet, handsome, and adventurous husband...

Bryce's birthday was this past weekend on the 13th. We are pretty engulfed in work right now being that it is a summer camp and all. Free time is just not happening lately, but we are enjoying what we are doing and loving doing it together. We managed to sneak off during lunch Sunday and go out to eat by ourselves. What a treat! We hung out at the bookstore for a little while afterwards too. While we were out I had our team back at camp decorate our house and buy all the goodies to make homemade ice cream. When Danger walked through the door he was so surprised!!! They were all waiting inside screaming and blowing noise makers as he walked through the door. It was great!! We played games, talked and enjoyed some delicious dessert with our co-workers.

We have been married over 3 years now. Hard to believe, yet I can't remember not having him with me either. This year has been particularly good to us. It is not that everything is perfect or has gone how we have wanted it, but we have learned much and grown much together over the last few years. I think we are done figuring out some of the basics of marriage and living together, and have been enjoying the hearty meat of being one. I have always been madly in love with Bryce, but I am finding ways to show him my love better. I have known since day 1 that I have a dream husband. Our prayer has been since the beginning that God would use this marriage to bring honor and glory to his name. I am because He is.

I don't have some of our best pictures on my computer to post, so these will do. Some of you have been able to cross path's with Bryce to see what an incredible man he is, I hope more people get to do the same. I have learned so much from Bryce and I can't wait to learn more. He is my adventure partner, my beloved, closest friend, my handy man, the sexiest man I know!!! and we call him danger.

9 days in

Camp has begun!!! Staff got here last week and campers this past Sunday. We have been running around like crazy needless to say. We have a great team working with us this summer and we are pretty excited to see how this season goes. I wish I had more time to write and pictures to share, but I don't right now. Hopefully soon. We will be out for the rest of the week so have a great week.

Strawberry Season

Last year was the first year I have ever harvested strawberries. We found a great farm in South Carolina near Bryce's sister Judi. We had a great time picking strawberries and eating a ton of them while doing so!! I tried out canning jam from the strawberries we picked and it turned out great. The only thing I did not like about it was the massive amount of sugar you put into it!!! 6 cups of strawberries to 7 cups of sugar...WOW! This year we could not find the time to pick them ourselves so we bought them locally from a side stand down the street from us.

This year I decided to find a way to make jam with less sugar. I found a way to do it with half the sugar and just as tasty. Bryce and I LOVE our p.b. and j's. I mean really love them. When we are near a cheap place with natural peanut butter we stock up. This year we stocked up with homemade jam that we hoping will last till next season. We shall see...

There was one unfortunate accident along the way. Have you ever done something knowing you shouldn't but did it anyway, just for it to end up like the way you thought it was...bad? I knew I grabbed too many jars at one time, costly mistake. Very sad.

Part III

The final steps were adding the batting to the quilt and making the back. I wanted just one print on the back to coordinate with the front. I found out quickly for many reasons I was not going to be able to make that work. I had to come up with a different design and now 2 different coordinating fabrics instead of 1. After a couple of hours of planning, I made the back and attached all 3 pieces together. This is the final result. I LOVE it! I like the simplicity yet touches of detail here and there. The size is 45 x 60. Hope you like the pics.

Part II

Next, I took my patch work and attached it to a nice natural cotton. Then, it started getting really fun! I started adding different hand stitches and making appliques. I kept it pretty simple, but added nice detail all around the quilt. Post III will show the finished product!

Sorry this isn't ironed! Drives me crazy I took wrinkled pics!

Part I

I have now been learning to sew for the last 8 months or so. It started out as this quest to learn the skill so I could make things for our children someday out there in the future. It has grown to be something I LOVE doing! I have always enjoyed the arts in different forms and fashions...music, ceramics, mix media collages, etc. This is just another way to create, express, and spend any extra time doing something productive.

Bryce and I have become quite the "crafters" this past year now that we have been in the same place for a little while. Bryce has been learning how to woodwork. He made our dad's knives for Christmas right out of a block of wood. They turned out great!!! He even made a leather sheath for each of them. He has been making other things like fishing lures and decoys too. Needless to say we have enjoyed spending our time creating and find that it is a great way to spend our time.

This is Part I of a new project I just finished. I created it all myself, so no patterns. I bet I spend 8 hours just writing down fractions and numbers trying to make it all work before getting started. I had a great time creating this. Most likely this will be my last project until August when camp is over. Hard to imagine, but also looking forward to a summer of being spent for others. Enjoy Part I.