August 30, 2026 - Looks Good From a Galloping Horse!

I had a quilting friend years and years ago who wasn't very precise with her cutting or her sewing. It never bothered her and she would look at what she had just stitched and say "It looks fine . . from a galloping horse, don't you think?" I've always been of the opinion that if the creator/maker of something is happy with it, I'm happy with it.

From that distance, it doesn't look too bad.

From this distance, maybe not so great. I don't even know if I did it correctly but it's done. There's one more row of it to do. I think I'll go ahead and get it done so I can stop thinking about it.

Tomorrow (Monday) I'll get back to working on the Blackbird project - Come Into My Garden. 

August 29, 2026 - A Wasted Morning

 Wasting time is one thing that makes me crazy. Of course, my idea of wasting time is probably different from everyone else's.  :)   I can sit and fondle linen or floss all day and to me, that isn't wasting time. Looking for something I can't find .. that is a total waste of time.

My plan for this morning was to get the okra cut, get the sprinklers going, pick peppers, get the okra rinsed, cut and on a tray to flash freeze, vacuum seal the cut okra from yesterday and then I could start stitching. I was going to stitch two hours on Rejoice Evermore, then get 450 stitches made on Come Into My Garden, then go back to Rejoice Evermore if there was time.

All the gardening/food storage things got done. I was out in the garden just as the sun was coming up - a little after 6:30. I was done with all the food and garden chores by 7:30. Took a shower and was ready to start stitching. 

Yesterday I pulled out the Rejoice Evermore project (bag with floss and the stitching on the scroll frame. Then last night, this picture popped up on my Facebook memories. This happened at the beginning of 2024.

Luckily, I had made a PDF for using in Markup R-XP but back then, I didn't know how to add the key/legend to my project in Markup so with the paper chart gone, I had no key.  I put the entire project away and then in May of this year, I got it out to work on it. No legend. I went back to the PDF I had made, printed myself a legend and kept the paper copy with me. I worked on this project for a couple of weeks and when I pulled it out to start working on it again this morning - no key/legend. I searched and searched. I thought . . I'll just go back to the original PDF except apparently when I cleaned out a bunch of files, that one got dumped. I decided to order a new chart but they're $18 plus shipping. Nope, not doing that either.

Then I told myself . . I have so much stitching done on this already, I can match the floss up to the same symbol I've already stitched but you know how my brain is - there's probably a little (or a lot) of OCD in there. I absolutely could not make myself stitch without a key. I would make 2 stitches, get up and look some more. In two hours, I made 11 stitches. Ridiculous! It would have been perfectly fine to match colors to previous stitches but I just couldn't do it.

Vince and I had to run an errand and I was telling him. He asked me where I stored my original PDFs that I make. I told him how in the beginning when I first started making them, I would save them to the memory card in my phone . . oh, wait! I didn't clean that off. I grabbed my phone, went to those files and found the PDF, with the key.

I have now printed three of those keys. One is in the project bag. One is pinned onto my design wall and one is in the side pocket of my chair . . where dogs cannot reach it. Surely some day I will finish this project and laugh about this. Today I am not laughing about it.

August 29, 2026 - Table Made by Chad

 Chad used a piece of wood that Vince had in storage and made a table/desk for Nicole's office.

Here's a picture of the top before it was assembled onto the legs.

Isn't that so pretty! I'm so proud of Chad. He loves doing things like that. I don't know how he's done it - he works out in the heat and then comes home and worked an hour or so in the evening in the hot garage.

Just wanted to share and . . maybe brag a little.  Moms can do that, right? Some will remember Chad's middle school and high school years . . I'm so thankful he's the man/father/husband/son he is today. 

August 28, 2026 - Sampler September

 

Because I do much better with deadlines and accountability, I try to participate in challenges, stitch alongs, etc. with cross stitching. I so rarely stick with it but it is fun to plan and start.

Since I'm committed (or as committed as I get!) to the Blackbird Academy, and I need to stitch as much as I can to keep up with that, I'm on the fence about Sampler September. Everyone pretty much interprets it differently. Some will start several (or MANY) samplers during September. Some will work on one sampler and try to get it finished. At this point, with three days until September 1, I think I'm going to do some minimum participation in Sampler September. I'm thinking about working two hours each day on a WIP that is "sampler-ish" - something that could reasonably be finished some time soon. I dug through some projects and came up with these two. 

This is Rejoice Evermore and I'd like to think I could finish this in a couple of weeks working two hours per day.

The second one is Winter Rose Manor.

I don't think I could finish this one in two weeks working a couple of hours a day but I could make some good progress and getting it closer to being finished so this is my Sampler September plan for now.

The Blackbird Academy project will remain my main project and if I don't get Come Into My Garden finished in September, I'll chose a smaller project for October and try to finish that quickly and then get Come Into My Garden completed. I do not want to end up with Blackbird WIPs after the end of Blackbird Academy.

Dasher & Dancer

 For several years I have wanted to stitch Dasher & Dancer. I told Debbie in January that this is one I am going to get done in 2026. Not going to happen but I am going to start it!

It isn't HUGE but it's big. It's 355 x 168 so it will be about 17-3/4" x 8-1/2" on 40 count. If I use 36 count, it would be 19-3/4" x 9-3/8".

Yesterday I was watching flosstube and Sara W. (Stitching With Sarah W.) showed her Dasher & Dancer (at about 11:10). 

The struggle for me with starting it, besides having too much else I want to work on, is that I wasn't sure what color floss to use. I've seen it stitched in green and loved it. I ordered a Colour & Cotton green and then decided maybe I'd rather have silk so I ordered a green silk. Then I decided  . . no, I'd rather red. I ordered a Vikki Clayton Red silk, then I ordered several colors of red. This takes a good bit of floss so I have quite an investment in floss for this project. 

But, yesterday, watching Sarah, she was using Colour & Cotton's Dracula. It's so pretty. That might be the winner of the floss contest for this project. I ordered the Dracula and at some point soon, I will choose a linen. If I decide to go with 36 count, I may have to see if Vince will make a longer scroll frame for me. Maybe I have a longer frame that has something else in it . . so much to think about!  :)

Let's hope the Dracula floss works and if not, I just pick one I already have and don't order more floss for that project.

August 25, 2026 - A Bit of Stitching

 As you might guess, there hasn't been much going on around here. Yesterday I went back to bed after getting up and watering the garden and slept from about 7:30 until 10. Then I still slept well last night. About noon today I told Vince I was going to take a nap until almost 4 p.m. That's just a crazy amount of sleeping going on. So . . not much to report!

The first thing I need to explain is that I did not stitch 991 stitches on the 17th. That's when I switched everything over to a test project on Markup and I marked off ALL the stitches I had already stitches. The second thing is that on the 22nd, I got home from the hospital and thought . . no one will expect anything out of me this afternoon. I can stitch for hours. I made one stitch and decided I should go to bed. :)

On the 24th, I did meet my goal of 400+ stitches. I think I will again today.

Here's where I am on this piece (Come Into My Garden by Blackbird Designs. Actually, I'm just a tad farther because I've outlined the whole border. There's still more border stitching though. The border has double rows and I did half stitches on only one row of the border so there's still quite a few stitches there. I thought finishing this before the end of September would be a piece of cake but I'm not so sure right now. I will not be able to keep up with my percentage done because I had to break this chart into two projects because of the crazy formatting on this one. It's ok . . it either gets done or it doesn't.

 

I've been quite disciplined . . stitching the border, starting at the top and going down but . . there's only so long I can remain disciplined and I want to stitch that house. So, the new plan is that I'm going to stitch over to about the lower case "c" and "d", then stitch probably 1 - 10 on the row below, then I'm going to work on the house! My plan MAY be to stitch what's left and right of the house, fill in the border on both sides towards the top and I believe I'll be close to halfway done by then.

I'm going to change some of the bottom so I'll have to make some decisions by the time I get that far down.

As far as the kidney stone, the stent comes out tomorrow and I'm so hoping I'll feel MUCH better once that's done. I still don't have a lot of energy. Yesterday I decided to put a roast in the slow cooker for today, make cookies, make homemade pasta for our lunch and about halfway through the cookies, I realized . . I am going to struggle to finish all this. I did it but today I stayed out of the kitchen and will plan my projects a little better until I'm back to 100%.

August 23, 2026 - A Messy Garden

 The heat and lack of rain has taken a big toll on the garden. It's ok . . it had a good run and I won't be sad to see the summer garden end. This is the time when every year I say I'm not having a garden next year but I know I will . . in some form. One thing I learned this year is that I'm not growing anything that will not stay contained. I had squash vines and cucumber vines everywhere - totally out of control We couldn't use the weed whacker or the lawn mower in a big chunk of the back yard because of vines that were producing. I suppose it's a good thing we had the drought because that probably helped with the weed reduction a bit. 

I'm pretty confident in saying I'm not planting squash next year - maybe a bit of zucchini that I start in the greenhouse and can get planted and producing before the squash bugs and vine borers move in. I love the Thelma Sanders squash and the Georgia Candy Roasters but it's just not worth the fight with the squash bugs. 

I have such limited space for growing and I need to get some elderberries growing in the back yard (they're outside the fence now and I don't have a good way to water them. They didn't produce much and what they did produce shriveled up and got crunchy.

My grandparents were such neat gardeners. I often look at my garden and wonder if they're happy I'm a gardener or if the shake their heads at the mess in my garden. Here are a few photos. Please let don't judge!  :)

Those Cooper tomatoes are still EVERYWHERE! They're actually Sweet 100 tomatoes. I think they should change the name to Sweet Millions or Sweet Invaders!  :)  The area above is the space between two raised beds and nowhere near where Cooper's plant was last year.

I forgot what we originally put this bed here for but whatever it was didn't do well . . oh, I remember. We bought some raspberry plants from a lady down the road last year and not one of them lived. We had already planted this same size bed of grapes and raspberries on the other side of the yard. I had never grown raspberries and then the babies started popping up around the edge of the other bed, I dug them up and brought them to this bed and this is how much they've grown since about May. They have produced quite a few berries and still have more to ripen.

The raspberries are doing so well that I think I'm going to plant some blueberries. We planted quite a few in Texas but never could get them to grow. So, if I want to plant blueberries, something has to go . . no room to add anything but I can substitute.

On the back side of this bed is where I planted my three eggplants. There were no raspberries in this bed at that time. The raspberries are not leaving the eggplants much room but they're still producing too.

On the other end of the back side of that bed is where I planted 5 or 6 okra seeds. They should make til we have a hard frost.

I have okra growing in two of the 4 x 8 raised beds, in one of the big containers that a friend gave me (he had built them for growing peppers and when they moved away, he gave me his container gardens). Vince decided to drill holes in an old fridge and plant okra in there. Not terribly attractive but the okra seems happy.

In fact, I missed two days of cutting okra and ended up with three trays to flash freeze and get vacuum sealed. Okra is another food I love that is high in oxalates (kidney stone producer!)

Once I got all the squash out of the pepper bed (squash seeds in the compost), the peppers have done quite well. I always have pretty good luck with peppers. This one is the candy cane pepper. It's basically just a pretty bell pepper but it is a bit slower to mature that plain bell peppers. I think the plant is so pretty.

The pepper will eventually get to be red with pinkish stripes but then it will turn all red.

The jalapenos that get full sun are turning red but still producing so I'm not complaining.

I planted several of these Zucchino Rampicante squash. Everyone says "Plant squash late . . the squash bugs will be gone." Not true at my house. They are everywhere! They're so aggravating. Not sure if I'll get any of these to mature or not. I saw a couple of the vine borers moths yesterday so I'm sure the squash doesn't have a chance.

Remember the bay leaves from Texas? One of these I thought was dead and tossed it out in the woods and a year or so later, I saw something green growing and it was the bay leaf so I grabbed it, re-potted it and now don't even know which one it was. That is a lot of bay leaves!

I guess I should say I have okra growing in six places. An okra seed ended up in a 5 gallon bucket with a little soil and it started growing. I've been getting a few pods of okra off it so it can grow as long as it wants.

The bright spot in the garden! I had planted marigolds in the buckets with the tomatoes, which are history, except for Cooper's tomatoes, but the marigolds are bright and happy among the weeds and vines these bright orange flowers make me smile!

With seven raised beds, I have one that's asparagus, one that's peppers, two for okra, one is rhubarb. That leaves two. I think I could put two blueberries in one 4 x 8 bed so I think I'll plant two blueberries in each of those two remaining beds. The blueberries, rhubarb and asparagus are permanent. That leaves the two okra beds and pepper bed that will get replanted each year. The peppers don't have to be transplanted until after the garlic is harvested so that gives me one "dual purpose" bed. I'm going to try that next year. I can plant a few tomatoes and some overflow peppers in the mineral tubs. Maybe I have a plan for next year's garden!

August 22, 2026 - Kidney Stones Against

Not that it really matters but I wish I had kept track of how many times I've had kidney stones. As best as I can piece it all together, I think this most current episode is #18. How ridiculous is that? I have really been drinking a lot of water with this heat and not drinking so many Dr. Pepper, because I'm trying to lose weight and also, because Dr. Pepper costs have surpassed the price I am willing to pay. But, yet, here we are with another kidney stone story. My parents both had kidney stones ONCE and my sister has had them ONCE so they doctors tell me heredity has as much to do with it as what I eat but honestly . . how can they all have had them once and I have them every time I turn around. The last time I had lithotripsy was January, 2023. Before that, it was 2016. And, here we are, not even four years from the 2023 incident and it has happened again.

Please note I am not feeling sorry for myself, even though this one was a bit different, it was fairly easily solved and more importantly, if this is the worst that ever happens to me, I am very lucky. I was going to say blessed but I don't think I need a qualifier to say I am blessed because this or that happened or didn't happen. Hands down . . I AM very blessed and am thankful every day for my good health . . even with a blip every now and then.

Friday morning my goal was to get the rest of the ground beef that I had defrosted canned. Thursday, I chopped a gallon of bell peppers - really it was giant marconi peppers and roasted about three dozen poblano peppers and they were going in with the new batch of ground beef.

About 4 a.m. Friday morning, I woke up with a stabbing type pain in my lower right side. I sat up in bed and thought . . what was THAT?? It went away so I went back to sleep. Then I woke up about 5:30 and thought . . that might have been a kidney stone. I'd better get busy getting that meat canned in case I have to go to the ER. I got 17 pounds of ground beef browned (not really browned but most of the pink was gone and that's sufficient for canning). It ended up being 26 pints. I put the poblano peppers and some of the giant Marconi peppers in 9 jars, which will be used for chile rellino casseroles or maybe pizza. The rest of the giant Marconi peppers were split between the 17 remaining pint jars. I got those filled with broth and between the All American 930 and 915, they held (barely) all those jars. It was probably about 10:00 a.m. when both canners came up to pressure and I started the timer for 1 hour, 15 minutes. 

I sat down to start stitching and oops . . the pain was back and it was INTENSE. Vince was out cutting grass. I knew I couldn't leave to go to the ER in Carthage until the canners stopped so I waited until they had been going about 45 minutes, then I went outside and told Vince (for the first time) that I thought I had a kidney stone and needed to go to the ER but had to wait until the canner was done and could be turned off. He wasn't happy that I was hurting and wouldn't leave until the canners were done but I was not about to lose 17 pounds of ground beef and so many of my home grown peppers.

Probably TMI but for me, maybe for everyone, when the pain gets to a certain level, I start throwing up. That started when the canner still had about 15 minutes to go. This was probably the worst kidney stone pain I've ever had.

The minute the timer went off, I turned the canners off and we went to the Carthage E.R. People there are always so nice. They did a CT with contrast and the results were an 8 mm kidney stone partially blocking the right kidney, which already was showing Hydronephrosis (swelling) so the doctor wanted to send me by ambulance to the Joplin hospital because Carthage doesn't do that kind of stuff. NO! I was not going by ambulance. We could drive 20 or 25 minutes to the hospital for way less $$ and I doubted anything would happen before Monday anyway. The doctor wasn't happy but said fine . . drive yourselves but then, there were no rooms available in Carthage. He checked Springfield and there were no rooms there. He was going to check Tulsa but Vince said he would rather go to Kansas City.  Why in August are there no rooms available or is it that no one has a urologist or are there certain rooms on certain floors that are used for that and they weren't available. I have no idea but it was after 4 p.m. when a room opened up in Joplin. The Carthage ER doctor called the Joplin cardiologist who lives in Arkansas and was on call and he said he could come to Joplin "tomorrow", which was today and do the "surgery" which was insert a stent. The room was "reserved", we drove straight over there, found our room, put all our stuff in it, went to the nurses' station, introduced ourselves and got all settled into a very nice room. The nurses couldn't believe we drove ourselves. They said "We didn't even know you could do that!? Vince said "You don't know my wife!" I had not eaten anything since Thursday about 3 p.m. and it was now Friday night but they still had NPO on my chart. One of the VERY nice nurses called the hospitalist who called the urologist and he said I could eat but had to stop by midnight. About 10:30 p.m. they brought me a "sandwich tray" - sandwich, baked chips, a container of chopped pear with juice and a Shasta Cola. Delicious!! I was so happy.

This stent installation was scheduled for 9 a.m. Vince got back to the hospital about 8 so we had a chance to visit for a while before they took me back. The urologist looked at the x-rays and said there were four other stones in the right kidney but only the one was causing a problem but he thought he could go in and grab the others with some kind of stone grabber (my term . . not his). He was able to get the big stone and the four smaller stones out so for the first time in a very long time, there are zero stones in the right kidney. Not happy to have the stent to deal with until Wednesday when I get it removed but so happy to be stone free in both kidneys, according to the CT scan.

About 1:30 p.m. today, they let us leave the hospital. Even though I feel like our medical care here isn't great, mostly because I'm not a fan of Mercy and from the rumblings I hear, I am not alone with my feelings, but I am very, very happy with the nurses, doctors and other staff I dealt with there.  More so, I am happy to be home in my comfy chair, with my good lighting, my husband and my dogs!

The funny thing was . . I thought I'd be in Carthage for a couple of hours, they'd give me pain meds, send me home with instructions to call the urologist Monday and go home so I didn't bring a book, or cross stitching or knitting. I had NOTHING to do. I cannot sit still and do nothing but the pain meds helped and I slept through most of it. Lesson learned . . keep a grab and go bag with something to keep the hands occupied. I do keep a grab & go bag with clothes for a couple of days, toiletries, phone charger, etc. so I was good there . . just nothing to do! Won't happen again.

August 20, 2026 - Thursday Already!

 It's after midnight so it's Thursday already but Wednesday, which still seems like "today", Debbie and I spent the day stitching. I think every time we're together, we spend more time talking and laughing than we do stitching but . . that's what it's all about and we're loving it. At least I am!

I stopped to get gas on the way to meet Debbie. It was $3.89/gallon. I'm sure many are paying more but that was kinda painful. I use my car on Wednesdays and that's it. When I get home from stitching day, it sits parked in the garage until the next stitching day so I'm glad I don't have to fill it up very often. Actually I pass by a gas station I like and feel safe at so I fill it up every other Wednesday and it takes between 7 and 8 gallons. Could be a lot worse if I drove more and if the car got worse gas mileage. Today I was very thankful that, even though we aren't in the same town as Chad, we aren't 10 hours away and I'm going back and forth often.

We were totally out of milk so I ran to Aldi after Debbie and I were done stitching. Aldi is pretty much across the street from where we stitch. 

Tuesday Vince had PT and he was going to go by Walmart. As he was about to leave, I said "Would you add ricotta to the list?" He said sure. He came home and said "I got your Moscata!" I said "I didn't ask for Moscata!" He said "Yes you did!" so I said "OK. Thanks!" When I finished putting away the couple of things he got, I said "Where's the ricotta?" He said "Oh!! Ricotta . . not Moscata!"  That was funny. So I grabbed a carton of ricotta at Aldi.

I haven't had great luck lately getting eggs from local folks. The pasture raised chicken eggs at Natural Grocer are good, with bright orange yolks, but they're $7/dozen. Aldi has several varieties of Golden Chick (I think that's the brand . . it's Golden something) eggs and one of those is pasture raised and has consistently good, orange yolks. I cannot eat eggs with pale yolks! I think they're somewhere between $3.99 and $5/dozen so I always get a few cartons of those when I'm at Aldi. They also had beef tallow in jars that is new so I got those.

Enough rambling from me tonight (remember, it's still Wednesday night for me since I haven't been to bed yet) so I'll have more to say later . . today . . which will seem like tomorrow!  :)

August 17, 2026 - Cross Stitching - Come Into My Garden - A Start!

 This may be my most favorite project ever! Do I say that about all of them? Maybe but, I do LOVE this one.

Look how pretty that flower is!

I'm so in love with the linen! If Denise were here, I would say I love, love, love this project! We used to laugh about how it sent us over the edge when floss tubers would say "love, love, love". Some still say it but several years ago, some of them would say it a dozen times in one video. Then Denise and I would write each other about something we had found or stitched, and we would say "I love, love, love this!" OK . . a happy memory and no tears! Good job, Judy!

Sunday I started working on the border. I'm making one side of each "x". I just wanted to get the border "outlined". The green for the border is Oscar (my favorite color and the reason I named my sweet baby Oscar!) and I wasn't sure it was going to show up well so in the area around that first flower, I made both sides of the "x" and it shows up fine.

I stitched the first flower, which is in the center of the top border, just to get the placement going for the border. Another reason to start with the border was that this is 36 count linen and I only have 2" on each of the left and right sides. I'll be framing it myself so I'm not concerned about 2" but just wanted to be sure the linen is straight and I wasn't going to get near the bottom and have only 1" or less on one side.

That's another thing about linen from Fabrics by Steph, while I can't guarantee that her linen will always be cut perfectly straight, the few pieces that I have are cut perfectly straight. It's pretty aggravating to get a piece of linen and lose an inch or more because it's cut so crooked. I understand . . it isn't easy to cut it straight but . . 

OK . . no more complaining!

Wait, I take that back. This chart! It was published (or at least delivered to the printer) in 2020. It is not formatted to be used with Markup R-XP. I barely know how to use the app so I should probably not even try to explain this but for a chart to work, say it's six pages and 1, 2 and 3 are at the top and 4, 5 and 6 are at the bottom, the three that are lined up together need to have the same number of vertical stitches. Then the ones that sit on top of each other need to have the same number of horizontal stitches.

Say page 1 is 63 x 102, page 2 is 55 x 102 and page 3 is 28 x 102.

The page 4, could be 63 x 90, page 2 would be 55 x 90 and page 3 is 28 x 90. I have no idea how the designers make it all work but they do but . . not this chart. I fiddled with it for several hours yesterday. Then I decided . . forget it! I'll work from a paper copy. No. My brain said "NOT doing that!"

I was thinking if I copied it, then cut and pasted pieces of the pages together, I might could make it work but, in the end, I decided that Chart #1 will be pages 1, 2 and 3 and Chart #2 will be pages 4, 5 and 6. It's two different projects on the app. It's working. Thank goodness I thought of that!

I didn't want to unroll the whole piece but the border matches up. So thankful for that. I'll be able to stitch mindlessly to complete the other half of the x's and there's a second row of the border but it's just under the first (you can see some of it on the top left). When I'm tired or easily distracted with other things, I'll work on finishing the border.

Canning Ground Beef

 The way I cook is probably different from how many of you cook but I think my way works so well for us. We have food in jars that I've canned; sometimes it's a "meal in a jar" and sometimes I have to open several jars and combine this and that to create a meal.

Today I canned ground beef, which is one of my favorite things to have in jars. There's so much I can do with a jar of ground beef! We have quarts and pints of canned ground beef canned. 

We have quarts but we were out of pints so that's why I have two days for canning ground beef. Quarts will hold about 2 pounds of ground beef; pints will hold about a pound. The ground beef I have has very little fat so a pound of 80/20 wouldn't yield quite as much meat as does 93/7. I count on getting 1 pound per pint but today, 17 pounds filled 23 pints. I did weight the meat but I'm kinda surprised I got that many jars. 

Probably Thursday I'm going to can about that same amount of ground beef but I will add bell peppers and onions to that second batch, maybe even a few jalapeno peppers.

Meals are so easy when all I have to do is open a jar of already cooked ground beef. Some of the dishes I love using the canned ground beef for are:

• Pizza - The first time I used canned ground beef for pizza, I was not sure what Vince would think but he said "You would never know it was canned! So . . why defrost ground beef, brown it (and have a skillet to clean), when I can open a jar, drain it and put it on the pizza!
• Ground Beef with Mushrooms - my favorite! Saute sliced mushrooms in a bit of butter, add a bit of flour to make a roux, pour in a bit of beef broth, add the drained beef from a jar (pint or quart), season to taste. Before serving, add a bit of heavy cream to the gravy. Serve over pasta or rice or mashed potatoes. 
• Soup - There are so many soups I can make with a jar of ground beef. I can add a jar of beans, a jar of carrots or fresh carrots, shredded cabbage, maybe add pasta or not. I can add taco seasoning, corn, black beans or pinto beans and have taco soup. This site has 24 soups using ground beef. Most of them would work with canned ground beef.
• Pasta sauce or lasagna.
• Pioneer Woman has 50 Ground Beef Recipes and many of those would be perfect for canned ground beef.
• I don't even know if this is something that sounds good to anyone else but I have jars of split pea soup I've canned and sometimes I like to add ground beef to that!

Before I was able to start canning this morning, I still had to clean up the 30 jars of soup I had canned last week. One batch had a bit of siphoning - not even enough to really show that the level was down inside the jar but there was LOTS of grease on the jars so I got those all cleaned up. Thankfully, the ground beef jars aren't greasy at all. Tomorrow I will remove the lids, wipe them down but that will be an easy job, and get them on the shelves.

August 16, 2026 - The Next Blackbird Academy Project - Come Into My Garden

I've already written about this project, Come Into My Garden by Blackbird Designs, but I am so excited to get to start it.  The September project should be something with a bird and Come Into My Garden has a bird!

The linen is Sassenach by Fabrics by Steph and just look at these gorgeous floss colors.  The floss is the called for floss - all Weeks Dyeworks.

Today is a leftovers for lunch day and I hope to get at least 400 stitches made today.

Last night it was about midnight when I finished Christmas Rose. I immediately got up, took it off the stitching frame and pulled the frames I might use to fully finish it. By then it was almost 1 a.m. but I grabbed the bag that contained Come Into My Garden, the floss and the linen and even though I knew I needed to get to bed, I went ahead and put the linen on the scroll frame, and I actually sat down and thought about stitching but then I said no . . NO!! So, this morning I finally get to start Come Into My Garden!

August 16, 2026 - Cross Stitching - Christmas Rose is Finished!

 Last night I finished Christmas Rose. This is my first project for Blackbird Academy. 

It was late last night when I finished it and the photos are kinda blown out with the lighting in the basement. I had already grabbed a few frames to see if anything I have here might work.

I'll just number them so if anyone wants to let me know what frame you like best, just tell me the number (or  you can tell me anything you want to tell me!)  :)

No. 1.

I like my pieces framed a bit tighter but these are standard 8 x 10 frames and since it's a piece that won't be out all year, I figured this size would work since any custom frame is going to be at least $50. And, once it's laced and pulled a bit tighter, I don't think the space on the sides will be quite so wide. But, I could change my mind. Here are a few other options. Any thoughts (on the specific frame or the spacing)?

No. 2.

No. 3.

No. 4.

No. 5.

I pretty much like all of them but I feel like #2 might be kinda wide. I think this is the order in which I like them:  1, 3, 4, 5, 2. Help me please!!  :)

For anyone who isn't familiar with Blackbird Academy and may want to join, there's a Facebook group, Blackbird Academy SAL, with over 2,000 members and quite a bit of fun activity there. The project is the brainchild of Holly Jones (Mrs. Jones Stitches) and Leah (The Blooming Stitcher). Both are fun flosstubers so please take a look at their videos if you're a stitcher.

August 16, 2026 - It's SO hot and SO dry!

 I haven't kept up with it but I believe our temps have been above 100 at least since August 1. I don't think we've had rain is about two months. Fall cannot get here quickly enough to suit me.

Please ignore that my weather station seems to be a day off. Today is Saturday, August 15. Maybe the weather station is also anxious for August to end. I will fix it today -- no telling how long it's been off.

Today (Saturday - I started this post yesterday and never finished it!):

Yesterday:

Friday:

The good news is that the basement stays cool, even with the A/C set on 76. The thermostat is upstairs and yes, 76 can get a bit warm up there if I'm cooking but 66 in the basement is cold for me. We stay in the basement (it's a walkout); TV is down here, cross stitching and dongs are down here. 

I usually end up opening a window for a while. Today it's 68 in the basement because (1) I have a window open a bit and (2) I had been cooking upstairs and with the stove going and the thermostat on 76, it got I down to 63 in the basement so the thermostat got changed to 78.  I don't like doing that because it takes forever to bring the temp back down and that's hard on the a/c unit - that's what Vince tells me anyway, but 63 is TOO cold!

The weatherman said today that we likely have 10 - 12 more days of this heat. I'm pretty sure we've been over 100 for at least 30 days and it's been probably two months or longer since we had a drop of rain.

On the local FB groups, there's been so much talk of the high electric bills. Some people in small homes are having bills (one month) over $1,000. I know so much goes into the amount of electricity used - things we can control but a lot that people can't control - homes that aren't insulated, leaky windows, etc. I was nervous about seeing our bill. It was posted this morning and it was not bad at all. Not funny but it made me chuckle - our water bill was more (quite a bit more) than our electric bill. Not sure that's ever happened and definitely not sure the amount of produce I'm growing right now was worth the cost of that much water. I suppose the squash bugs appreciate the water and the squash plants they're ruining!  :(

The experts say this has happened before (this many days without rain and temps above 100) but never when we've lived in this area, which has been 10 years between the first time and this time.

To say I am ready for fall and then some snow would be an understatement!

August 14, 2026 - Azure Pickup

Today was our Azure pickup. Going to the Azure pickup is so different from going to the grocery store. Pretty much everyone there buys like I buy, cooks mostly from scratch, cans, has a garden. Everyone seems so excited with what they're getting - it's just a fun experience.

This week (we get deliveries once a month), I got the following. For anything "weird", I will explain why I got what I got. Canning jars were on sale last month and there must have been over 100 cases of jars that were delivered to our drop location and I think there were only about 15 people who ordered this month! Azure's jars are SO much better, in my opinion. They can be ordered with lids and rings or without lids and rings. I have plenty of lids and rings but I go through a lot of lids and rings often have to be tossed. It's cost effective to get the jars WITH the lids and rings because it's more to buy them separately but I don't mind buying them without lids and rings. When there's a sale, they often will sell out so if there's a size jars I NEED, I will order them with lids and rings and without lids and rings and I hope I get one or the other and then sometimes, I get both but I never complain about extra jars!

• Pint jars - wide mouth with bands and lids - 4 boxes (12 each)
• Quart jars - wide mouth without bands and lids - 4 boxes (12 each)
• E-cloth Dust Wand
• Honey - Raw, clover - 12 pounds
• Raw Apple Cider Vinegar, organic, gallon jug - 2
• Organic Green Lentils, dried - 36 ounce bags - 4
• Stain & Odor Eliminator - lavender - 1 gallon
• Desert Essence Coconut Shampoo
• Desert Essence Coconut Conditioner
• Desert Essence Coconut Defrizzer and Heat Protector
• Once Again Nut Butter - Sunflower Butter - 16 oz. x 6
• Safe Catch Skipjack Wild Tuna Steak - 5 oz. cans x 3
• Azure Homestyle Flour Tortillas 10" - 24 pack x 3
• Azure Market Whole Milk Mozzarella Cheese - 6 pounds x 2
• Peanut Butter - Organic, no salt added - 16 oz. jar x 3
• Paprika Powder, Smoked, Organic - 1 pound
• Thyme Leaves, Organic, Fine Cut - 1 pound
• Black Pepper, Organic, Ground - 1 pound
• Baking Powder, Organic - 1 pound
• Ceylon Cinnamon, Organic, Ground - 1 pound

That's it for this month.  Here's a bit more explanation on some of the items:

Raw Apple Cider Vinegar - one thing I will get done today is make fire cider. I've made the same recipe for 10 or more years. I'm going to make the same recipe but I'm also going to try a couple other recipes from this book.

The green lentils - I want to cook more lentils. They're good for you and quick to cook so I'm going to do my best to cook them at least once a week.

The stain and odor eliminator is something I use when washing dog bedding and sometimes in Vince's clothes if he's been working outside.

The skipjack tuna - I've never tried it but have wanted to so we're going to have tuna salad roll ups today for lunch and use the tortillas I got today.

The mozzarella cheese - I will grate some of it, vacuum seal it in 2 cup portions and freeze it. I will cut the rest into about 3" sections, vacuum seal those and freeze them also.

The spices are just to have on hand because those are the ones I'm almost out of. I will put about 4 oz. of each one into the small jelly jars, put the rest into pint or quart jars, vacuum seal them and keep them in the coldest, darkest area of the basement.

That's about it for this month's Azure haul. I will probably place an order next month but then won't place an order again until probably April. We don't drive at dark and it's about a 35 minute trip to our pickup location. Then there's the snow and ice, not only that we have to drive through but the delivery trucks (18 wheelers) can get delayed because of the weather. This past winter we had a pickup that ended up being after 8 p.m. and the wind chill was below zero with snow on the ground so whatever we need, we'll get it next month or we'll buy it local or do without!

August 13, 2026 - Slow Cooker Chicken with Feta and Basil

 You know how I'm always seeing little hidden meanings or messages in things - some things. There are things I can't seem to find any meaning or reasoning to sometimes. Today I was re-arranging (actually - cleaning!) a spot and there was the cutest Dachshund bag that Denise had sent me a couple of years ago. More tears! More questioning WHY!!

The other day I had stuck my favorite canning book over on top of the cookbooks on my bookshelf. I had two packages of chicken breasts - 8 breasts per package. I had hoped to can 8 chicken breasts today (which usually fills 10 quart jars with a chicken meal) and 8 tomorrow and be done with chicken canning for a while. I just wasn't in the mood to can today but . . duty calls and I have to get it done.

I went to grab the canning book this morning, turned around to say something to Vince, thought I was grabbing the canning book, got upstairs and realized I had grabbed this book.

I figured that meant I should make something in the slow cooker today. 

For years, I followed Stephanie O'Dea's blog and she has the best slow cooker recipes. You might be able to see all the little slivers of paper towels in this book where I marked recipes I wanted to make. It's probably been 6 or 8 years since I opened this book so I had no idea what recipes were marked.

The first one I flipped to was Basil Chicken with Feta. I had breasts and the recipe called for thighs so I just split the breasts lengthwise so they wouldn't be so thick. I had everything else. I got the olives out to slice and thought . . no, I have Boscoli in the fridge . . I can use that so I scooped out 1/2 cup of the olive salad. Done! No slicing olives today. I'm actually out of home canned garbanzo beans so I had to use a can of storebought garbanzo beans from the pantry. That means I need to can at least 24 pints of the beans before winter. Told you - a canner's work is never done! :)

Vince walked by the slow cooker after I had taken the lid off and he said "That looks like something from a restaurant!" Yay!! I served it over linguine with a bit of grated parmesan cheese. 

It was delicious!

There was enough left to make two more meals. One went into the freezer and one went into the fridge and we'll have that Saturday.

Here's my system where I'm trying to keep track of the "ready to eat" foods that are in the fridge and freezer.

This is the fridge where the leftovers go. Obviously I didn't know today's date! I'm starting with a clean slate. Today was trash pickup day so anything that had been in there longer than I feel is ok . . that was discarded. There is some leftover pizza in there but it doesn't usually go on the list because we never forget there's pizza in the fridge.

This is the dry erase sheet that's on the freezer. For this one . . obviously I can't write straight!  :)

I try to end every month with at least six meals in the freezer. That gives us about a week of eating out of the freezer. The first week of each month is "eat out of the freezer week". The third week of the month is "eat out of jars week" so really, I only have to cook complete meals for two weeks each month.

Maybe I can get more stitching done next week than I've done this week!