September 2013 – Hootido.com

Lori’s green thumb

My sister in law has an amazing flower garden in Wisconsin, beautiful mosaics and fabulous giant leaf step stones she made herself. Wish I could have packed a couple home with me–shipping costs would be outrageous! I took copious pics of her flowers, here’s a favorite.

Miss Bianca’s Birthday Bag

It was about 6″ tall by the time I was done. Wet felted the bag body then needled the flower and the scalloped top. This was my first stab at wet felting a bag, needed to reinforce in some areas. I think I’ll stick with fulling knitted bags. Had to tell em I made it myself, they thought I bought it!

My new website!

Thanks to Mike for hooking me up with this amazing website!

Oh my, tomato pie!

The skeptics at the table were instantly won over after tasting my tomato pie. Made with super sweet tomatoes from my garden. Unfortunately, there was none left over. Thanks to Linda Lou for the inspiration!

Pinterest experiment that really worked!

First you take an Ivory soap bar. Then you put it on a paper towel and zap it in the microwave for three minutes.

You end up with the most amazing soap cloud that crumbles beautifully into powder. Did three bars for my giant bucket of homemade laundry soap.

The mini men loved watching the cloud grow and shouted gleefully when it neared the top of the inside of the microwave. A truly successful Pin that doubled as a science experiment as well as saved momma a whooooole lotta time and arm strength not grating those three bars!

Sonoma County Crush is on!

Ok, so I was a little early, the wine crush is here but the Concords were not quite ready last week.

Several years ago I hooked up with my summer sister who personally delivered over 500 lbs of concord grapes from the hundred year old vines lining the drive at the vineyard where she worked. The Concords were purely ornamental so I got as much as she could harvest in the late summer heat. I promised her that I would make her grape jelly in return but over a two year period I only made jelly one time. I really did think that I would do it every time…it’s just the juice was pure perfection and we just couldn’t get past that. I did make it up to her in other ways. Man I miss that woman!

Here’s my first harvest of the year, in fact the first juice from my own vines. I just couldn’t resist picking them–every time I pass the by there is an overwhelming sweet grape scent.

(I did have to add a smidge of sugar, please don’t tell anyone!)

Who Gives a Hoot? Hooti Do!

While on vacation this summer, the boys and I dropped hooti-owl toys as part of an anonymous giving program from The (secret) Toy Society http://thetoysociety.blogspot.com/.

While waiting for my hubby to finish packing the car I realized I had everything I needed for the project so I cut out all the owl parts just 15 minutes before leaving for our trip, packed them up and sewed each owl as we went along. We dropped one in four states, Illinois, Indiana, Michigan and Wisconsin.

The mini men had a great time picking the location for each drop.

They weren’t too imaginative in Illinois and Michigan, picked the hotel elevator both times.

The vending machine at the Indiana rest stop was fun though.

And we dropped our final owl on the play structure at the park in Wisconsin late at night, in the dark. Unfortunately it rained buckets that night while we slept. Hopefully the hooti-owl was safe in it’s Ziploc bag.

What a fun project. Can’t wait for our first California drop!

Backyard Birding

Not the bird we were expecting when we hung the bird feeder in the backyard! This hawk hopped from our fence to the neighbors’ shed, then bushes. It seemed to be hunting for something in the honeysuckle but we never saw what. Very exciting bird viewing moment for the family.