Hello again! This month has been a strange month with getting sick, a blown tire, and many, many social events. We sometimes look at each other and say “did we really plan this much?!” It’s nice to see friends and do fun things, but I am grateful for the chance to just relax tomorrow. I do have some sewing and maybe even some canning plans.

Fancy was with the dogsitter this weekend, as we went to the Toledo Zoo with some friends. We got periodic dog pictures and she looked very content. This was the look I got all week from Fancy when I tried to go sew in the basement.

I made sure to walk her a bunch this week and tried to get some longer walks in. We went for two walks a mile or more and this was her face then.

Then, of course, this was her when we got home.

Silly dog. 🙂

I wore new shorts to the Toledo Zoo this weekend and since we had gone with my sewing friend, she was wearing shorts, a tank top, and a hat she had made herself! The shorts and tank had jungle animals and the hat had sea creatures, so she matched the environment very well. Here is a picture of my shorts fabric. They are very wrinkled from wearing them and are in the wash, so I don’t have a better one yet. (This was taken before we dropped Fancy off on Friday, hence the tiny dog paw in the corner.)

They are Bermuda length and a very light cotton I got at the fabulous discount store. I have about a yard left and need to decide if I want a tank top out of it, or a little cotton skirt. They have a blue cotton lycra yoga style waistband and were extremely comfortable for walking around all day in the 80-90 degree heat.

Here are a couple of other pictures from the zoo. Notice that there don’t appear to be any penguins or flamingos missing… 😉

It was a very fun day and I’m glad we could go. I have never been to that zoo and the Husband had been when he was small, but not recently.

Now for the review part of the post.

I did finish two things from the UFO box; a bag for my friend and the blue floral shirt.

The owl cardigan is done too and I wear it a lot, but it’s hard to take a picture of it, since the owl is on the back. I didn’t finish the blue striped skirt and don’t quite have enough material for the star tank top, but am working on what to do. I think I’ll pair it with a plain black back and go with that.

When I pulled out the blue stripes, I wasn’t sure that I wanted it to be a skirt. I realized I didn’t have a lot of colors to pair with it and now am conflicted. The picture makes it look like a darker blue, but it’s actually very bright. It is also more see through than I realized, so I might have to line it.

I’m still thinking about what else I could make with it if it’s not going to be a skirt.

I did make 8 pairs of the Linen Loungers, plugging a huge hole in my wardrobe. I have consistently worn a pair of them at some point during the day every day this week. There were two that I didn’t blog about, both sleep shorts. One has sharks, made at the beginning of Shark Week, and the other pair has yoga frogs. 🙂

So overall from this one pattern, I made two pairs of shark shorts, the yoga frogs, the plaid Bermudas, purple linen shorts with fancy pockets, the grey/teal/purple with lace, Minion sleep shorts, and flamingos. Whew. That’s a lot of shorts! It’s been so hot lately though that if I’m at home, they are all I want to wear. I had no sleep shorts too, just had been wearing my normal bike shorts, which then caused problems when I had no clean shorts to wear under skirts or dresses. It’s nice to have fun sleep shorts! The Husband can shake his head all he wants, but he also likes his Minion shorts I made him last month, so he really doesn’t mind.

I made two other items specifically for Shark Week this year, a shirt and a pair of every day shorts. Here is my shark week wardrobe! I enjoyed wearing them all and surprisingly, no one really commented! My fashion sense must be either pretty cool, or pretty weird, so no one really wants to say anything. 🙂

I kept thinking I had made more things this month, but I think I was remembering mending some things and doing some organization. Only 11 things got made. My brain seems to want to make 20 every month, but I had to tell it to chill out. 11 is fine. 🙂

The garden is growing well, although I did have some blossom end rot again. We’re trying to be very consistent with watering and it’s been rainy the last little while, so I’m hoping that helps. Here’s some garden pictures. These tomatoes are still orange on the bottom.

There was a bee in the zucchini blossom.

The peppers look about the same still. I’m going to harvest some peppers to use for salsa for our Big Summer Blowout Party. Hopefully I’ll have a few tomatoes to throw in it too!

Foodwise, it was a very blah month. I didn’t make a lot of new recipes. I was better about getting pictures, even if I though it wasn’t a new or exciting recipe. We did eat a lot of garden lettuce and still have some to eat up this week. When I went through my blog posts, I think I must have missed a recipe post, because I didn’t have much going on. Both the Husband and I seem to be in a food funk. Normally it’s only one or the other, so it’s enough tougher when it’s both. We’ve also been out with friends for a lot of the weekends, which tends to be when I do a lot more new cooking.

I made 14 recipes total… That’s so low! Out of those recipes, 6 were new recipes. Luckily, all of the new ones were hits. I only had one miss, the manacotti which didn’t cook.

The Husband’s favorite was the Turkey Parm.

I did use a new recipe from Voracious by Cara Nicolleti- The Olive Oil and Yogurt Cake.

It was pretty good and I ate it for breakfast. It had less sugar and was almost on the edge of savory rather than sweet. It had citrus in it, but you could definitely taste the olive oil. The Husband didn’t eat any. The olive oil weirded him out. I ate it with cream when I wanted sweet and yogurt when I wanted breakfast. It was pretty dense, with a crispy outside and tender inside. The citrus didn’t come through very much.

This post is getting super long, so I won’t type out the whole recipe, but if you want it, I can do it at a later time, or you could visit your local library! 🙂

Overall, I think my sewing is growing by leaps and bounds, but my cooking has fallen by the wayside. I think I’m a little burned out and don’t really want to plan things. It’s very confusing. I think I might go through my cookbooks and see which ones I haven’t used yet and decide if they should really be on my shelf if I don’t get excited to use them. This coming week is fully booked and I think I have mostly late evenings, so I’m going to see when and what I can prep ahead.

Goals for the month:

Food:

• Go through cookbooks and weed them out.
• Meal Plan consistently.
• Try 1-2 new dishes (main, side, dessert). I keep getting stuck on just having dinner new and I can do other things to count towards this goal.
• Use garden produce and herbs.

Sewing: 

• Work on October Bellydance costume.
• Sew/Finish one UFO.
• Catalog fabric.
• Go through craft books and weed them out.

Garden:

• Keep things alive.
• Use produce and herbs.
• Develop canning list and plan.

Wow! That post got a lot longer than I thought it would. Thanks for sticking with me! I hope you enjoyed the pictures from the zoo!