July Meet?

Any ideas for the July meet? I think you all heard about Rhonda & her breast cancer. Maybe our project could be something for her? Maybe like meals we could freeze or something to cheer her up or even an IHLA trip out to Mollala? I'm always up for hosting (although I can drive now, yippee!) If something else is already planned then please disregard my suggestion.

local shout out in the blogosphere

check it out - Anisa's wonderful little shop was featured in DesignSponge this morning - and Maggie's work got a shout out! Sweet!

Jam Documentation

Proof we made home cooked jam! From the plant to the jar - we did it!!

Naomi washed the berries

Ann and I plucked the tops off the berries - isn't this berry plucker amazing! Its Maggie's moms' strawberry plucking tool. I want one now.Maggie washed all the jars and got the pots ready for boiling and jamming

Oh and we wore super cute aprons from Maggie's awesome collection

Micah helped wash some berries

Ayla ate some berries
Maggie pureed the berries

And then we cooked them

At one point it almost boiled over

we made about 30 jars of jam
Micah hung out with Colonel Mustard, the dogs kept him company

UPDATE: okay, so it seems we may have made syrup rather than jam. Don't tell Tim but we forgot to use his thermometer to check the temp of the boiling berries... whoops... and evidently we coulda boiled em' longer (the book said 15 minutes, so that what we did! And it didn't even dawn on me till later to check the temp with the thermometer). Ah well, we have made tastey pancake syrup!! Now I want to go and make pancakes :)

Okay - Update #2 :) I just tried some on yogurt and it was SCRUMPTIOUS! Totally liquidy, but divine none the less. Next time we'll use the digital gadget and make it more jammy!

Pictures of Strawberry Picking

We picked 25 lbs of berries!
Plenty of berries for jam making.
Here's a pic of the ladies picking
And here's Micah getting some sun :)
Micah picked a few berries with us, but I couldn't get him to eat one!
Here are the kiddos in the strawberry patch
I can't say I picked very many of the berries :) I was too busy hanging out with the cute kids. I'm so glad my friends have great kids!
The baby in the picture below was not with us, I don't know who he is, but he was so cute crawling around in the patch! I had to take a picture of him :)
Here is Orson in the snuggly, checkin out the pregnant pig

And wait - Orson says Time Out! Where are all the cute baby pictures of me!?!? He knows that Aunty Leah took 5 zillion :)

Here they are:

Sweet Picking

Hey Ladies do you want to meet at mi casa on Monday for picking? I can be a car pool wench. I'd love to. I'm cool with that or if you have another idea, I'm game. Shall we do Monday morning at 10 a.m. for pickers.....?... Talk to you soon.

Also, I need to send an e-mail out about this:
If you ladies need an excuse to get out tomorrow at 5pm, we are meeting at Mint for a drink. They do great blends leaded or unleaded. It's Suzy Q's B-day! You know that Mugwump chic that never attends our crafty days... She likey to meet us! I think if we combined crafty time with Happy Hour some how she would show all the time!! She'd be Queen IHLA! Just sayin'.