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Monday, July 5

The 4th of July!!!!!

  This year we got our act together and had a little 4th of July get together in our new outdoor living room furnished with Dave's collection of water ski chairs and the new pub table etc.  We got some comfy cushions for the chairs and even put out the plastic garage we had for the kids wedding last year!!!  Works out great nice place to hang.

We had invited our good friends Bob and Jo Lynn. Bob is the webmaster here and has made me so successful with the internet!!!yea Bobbbie!!!!  My cousin and his wife John and Kim and Kim's sister Stacey, My parents Marge and Jack and my good friend from the Sewing Guild Carolyn and her husband Allen.  so we had a crew!!!  Dave smoked beef short ribs, 8 racks of back pork ribs and 16 chicken thighs, yummmm, they were out of this world.  To start with we smoked olives and artichokes and shrimp, very good.  Amazing what a bit of smoke does to Italian olives.  Then we had a cornbread salad that was really wonderful, Swedish style potato salad and purple hulled peas fresh from Arkansas made creole style.  And for dessert we had peanut pie, lemon ice cream pie and bars from Clasens German bakery, all very good.  we were stuffed.

It was a warm wonderful day and we all had a great visit and plenty to eat.  Today is Monday and it rained half the night and is warm, humid and cloudy, thank goodness we're not boating or camping, we had plenty of years at Camp Damp!!!!  Today is suppose to be a sewing day but we had to run errands and so the day slips by, still have to walk the dogs between the drops.

I really don't like the 4th of July  time of the summer as it means summer is half done and now it just flies by!!!  I much prefer long, hot summers.

Enjoy the rest of the summer and happy sewing!!!!!





Sunday, June 13

The Pub Table!!!!

My husband Dave has wanted to build a Pub Table for the last 2 summers, finally it is almost done!!!  We haven't had a outdoor dining area so this should solve our problem!!!  He built it out of cedar so it will hold up for our weather conditions!!!!  He designed it all by himself and it is just perfect, we ate dinner at it last night!!!   As with all first projects they take a tad longer than you think but  all in all he put this together in his spare time in under 10 days.  It still needs stain and sealer and foot rungs for the stools.  We then moved the water ski chairs out and I think it makes for a really nice outdoor living room!!!

I haven't had much time to blog because I am neck deep in sewing!!!  The weddings keep on coming along with the rest of the stuff.  Good to see and love to have the biz!!!


We had our Sewing Guild picnic and our speaker taught us how to make polymer clay buttons and beads.  I have never been a fan of the polymer clay but once I got going I can see a lot of possibilities!!!  I will show you my creations next time.  This clay is pretty cool stuff and some of the buttons are really neat.  This can do wonders for a sewing project.


                                                      Today is sewing and Dolma day!!!
                                          The grape leaves are really coming so I'm going to make a big batch today. yum!!!!!  If you have grapes these are just wonderful.

Dolma's

  • fresh grape leaves, wash well
  • ground beef do not cook meat   so you will mix raw meat with cooked rice
  • cooked rice, equal portions of meat and rice
  • lots of fresh herbs, seasoned salt, pepper, garlic, hot sauce whatever you like!!!
  • mix rice and beef and herbs take a couple of tablespoons and place on grape leaf, roll like a package, place in cake pan seam side down.
  • mix a can of chicken broth and juice of one lemon pour over rolls, grate some lemon zest over the rolls for more flavor  cover with foil
  • bake at 350 for an hour
  • For the sauce I thicken up some chicken broth add lemon juice  and serve over the dolma's

This is not an exact recipe because it depends on how many leaves you have, today I will make about 40 so I'll use 2=3 lbs of meat and cook up 2 cups of rice and go from there.
Have a great week,  back to stabbin rags........

Dog Days

Dog Days
When is Dinner? Hope we don't get Vegetables again.