The garden has been going crazy. A friend from church came over last week to help me can tomatoes – we got 24 1/2 quarts canned that day. That was a very tiring day but I’m SO thankful for everything that got done!

At the moment there’s a 3-gallon bucket full of lima beans to be shelled, and that same amount of tomatoes to be canned again (which should work out to 5 quarts or so of stewed tomatoes if I remember right). There are also green beans that have been snapped that need to be canned. I’m hoping to get those done this afternoon but we’ll see how the day goes.

We planted potatoes for the first time this year, but the millipedes ate most of them.

We’re having VBS at church tonight, tomorrow, and Saturday. My kids are thrilled.

This silly boy fell into the crock and couldn’t get out. We all laughed before getting him out – it was just too funny!

God has sent an amazing amount of jewelry orders lately. I have been absolutely overwhelmed at His goodness.

My last piano lessons were this week. Was that ever bittersweet. It hit me more the next day though, when I started packing things up in the studio to store them. I’ve had a wonderful arrangement for years – including a keyboard/computer setup to allow easy typing and printing of music. Now that I’m no longer teaching the keyboard will go into storage. I didn’t expect packing it up to make me sad, but it did.

My brother-in-law is coming over today to move the piano out of the studio and into the living room. The studio is now going to be the girls’ room. Anna slept in there last night and did fine in there by herself, but I’m anxious to get the rest of the music equipment moved out to turn it into a regular bedroom for her.

Before the piano can be moved out of the room, we’ll need to move the bookshelf that’s in there, so sometime soon I’ll need to box up all my music reference manuals and extra teaching books. . .not looking forward to that either. Wow, I’m really going to miss teaching.

We’ve been rearranging things throughout the whole house. That’s been fun. What has been even more fun is I haven’t had to move any of the furniture myself (not that Stephen would let me at this point anyway), and I just get to decide where it goes. THAT has been fun.

Pregnancy-wise things are going well. I’ll be 30 weeks on Monday. I can’t believe things have gone this quickly! I feel okay, but keep forgetting that my energy level isn’t what it used to be. These three keep me so busy to start with, but thankfully they have been really understanding about me being slower than usual.

I have had a lot of Braxton Hicks contractions this time, like I did with Anna. They serve as a reminder to keep drinking my water and not to push myself too hard. :O) Next week is my glucose tolerance test, and we find out if baby is still breech. Hopefully she’s turned since my last appointment though.

Lord willing, I’ll be delivering at a local birth center this time around and I am SO EXCITED about it. My midwife is wonderful. The hospital births I’ve had weren’t exactly terrible, but there were quite a few interventions both times that I didn’t feel were necessary. I’d hoped to deliver Anna at the birth center, but they opened about a month after she was born, so that obviously didn’t work out. This time though it has worked out, and I’m loving it so far. The facility is beautiful and the midwives there are wonderful. It really sounds like a huge dream come true.

After buying the Little Girls, Big Style book a few weeks ago, I decided a ruffle foot for my sewing machine would probably make things easier. I’d been wanting one for a while, but just hadn’t gotten one yet.

Finally I was able to order one. It came, and I was excited. Until I used it. :O) It wasn’t as easy as it first appeared.

This morning I was looking around the internet for good ruffle foot instructions because I really needed help with it. Have you ever heard of the site www.youcanmakethis.com? They have a free 30-page pdf file all about how to use the ruffle foot, and it even includes instructions for how to calculate the amount of fabric needed for each ruffle! Most of the other instructions I’d found just tell how to ruffle without actually giving any indication of how much fabric is needed.

What a help! It’s getting me excited to get out my machine to try the ruffle foot again. Anna’s birthday is just a few weeks away and the girl LOVES ruffly and frilly dresses. Looks like I’d better get busy, and I’m hoping the process is easier now that I *think* I know how to use the ruffler. . .

We’ll see!

I was washing dishes last night and happened to read the lid of this cookie dough container.

Look closely.

Shelf life:
Frozen: 1 year
Refrigerated: 6 months
Room temperature: 21 days

21 DAYS? What is IN this stuff that makes cookie dough shelf stable for 3 WEEKS????? YUCK!!

Now as for how the container got in my house. . .my inlaws use a variety of containers to store their homemade ice cream when they make it. It just happened to hold the homemade ice cream that I brought home with me last week when we were there.

The ingredient list is really long and honestly I didn’t take the time to read it. Just the shelf life label grossed me out!

I love being a piano teacher. I started teaching as soon as I moved here after our wedding, and have only stopped once since. That was the year we spent in Indiana. When we came back to South Carolina, I reopened my studio and resumed teaching almost immediately. I absolutely love being a piano teacher, though I very rarely blog about it.

Things are about to change.

Several weeks ago, Stephen and I decided that it would be best for our family if I closed my piano studio for the time being. It was not an easy decision and honestly, I really struggled with it. However, since deciding it was something that needed to be done, I went ahead and started making the preparations to stop teaching.

I told my students one month ago. One student found a new teacher almost immediately. Last night and today, I heard from three more students that they have found teachers. Suddenly, I find myself with too few students to keep my studio open any longer.

My original plan was to teach until the beginning of October. My due date is mid-October, so we thought that would give me enough time to stop before worrying about going into labor early. However, since many teachers tend to follow school schedules, I ended up telling my students in June that I’d be stopping so that they could start looking for new teachers.

I knew it was possible that they’d all find new teachers right away, but I was not expecting that to actually happen. Guess I was wrong there. Now my last lessons will be next week, since most of my students are starting with their new teachers in August.

It really surprises me how things ended up working out. I never really considered having two full months of break before baby’s expected arrival, but I’m thankful for it. We started school this week here so it will be nice not to worry about overlapping schedules.

One student brought a scrapbook she made me to her lesson tonight. In it, she outlined her feelings and reactions to each year studying piano and how much she loves it. Her assignment notebook and theory book each had little notes scattered throughout: “Please don’t go,” “I don’t want to stop,” “I love you,” “You make music fun,” “I’m going to miss you.” The tears almost started right then. I have kept all the little cards and pictures from students over the years, but this is one thing I definitely treasure and she caught me off guard when she gave it to me.

I didn’t realize it would be this hard to stop when we first started discussing it. While I am completely confident that this is the right decision for our family for right now, I am definitely going to miss it.

Maybe someday I’ll start teaching again, but for now it’s time to concentrate on my family. It’s hard to let go of something I love so much, but I’m looking forward to having more time to spend with my children now because of it.

This little somebody kept popping up over the edge of the couch this morning when I was trying to take some pictures of jewelry for a customer. I’d go to take a picture, and she’d pop over the edge of my lightbox saying, “Cheese!”

Bees bearding – they often do this on hot nights to cool down the hive. I think it’s fascinating to watch, and interesting to consider that they will “sleep outside” when it gets too hot inside the hive.

On Monday, I made an apple pie. It looked all right and tasted pretty good.

The crust was a complete flop though. I tried a new recipe from Allrecipes.com – just searched for pie crust and selected one based on high ratings. Then I substituted coconut oil for the shortening. What a total failure.

It was actually kind of puzzling. I’ve been using coconut oil instead of shortening for a long time now, and have never had any bad results in any other recipe. But this time was different. The crust wouldn’t hold together for anything! All I can think of was that I didn’t let it chill in the fridge long enough (the recipe didn’t call to chill the dough at all). The bottom crust I started working immediately, and put the rest of the dough in the fridge to chill until I was ready for it. It just kept breaking and falling apart. I called my mother-in-law for help and she probably thinks I’m completely inept in the kitchen from our “my pie crust looks awful!” conversation. It was easier to work with the top crust, so chilling it did seem to help some.

It was the flakiest pie crust I have EVER eaten. It also would have been better with a touch more salt in it as it tasted a little bit bland. But other than that. . .I think I just might try the recipe again. . .maybe. . .

There is a reason I don’t make pies that often. Pie crusts and I just do not get along!

We don’t need to go anywhere to watch fireworks. Many of our neighbors put on HUGE displays each year at their homes. Last night, the kids sat out on the front porch and enjoyed watching. Caleb wasn’t too sure about it since he really hates loud noises, but eventually he sat down and enjoyed it a bit too.

Here are some of the ideas I’m considering to put up for when baby comes. A lot of it will be determined by space in the freezer as we just downsized to a much smaller one. I’m also thinking to just make double at mealtimes and freeze the extra, rather than having a couple huge cooking days.

Breakfasts:
Waffles
Pancakes

Quick Lunches:
Corn dog muffins – used a different cornbread recipe but my family loved these
Sloppy joe muffins
Tacos in a sleeping bag
Burritos

Just meats:
Taco meat
Chicken strips for fajitas/wraps – some taco seasoned, some plain
Hamburger patties (maybe not; need to figure out how to make these come out not so dry)
Meatballs

Meals:
Chili
Enchiladas
Lasagne
Pizzas (if there’s room)
Tomato soup (canned)

Breads:
Breadsticks
Garlic bread
Hamburger buns – I’ll wait on these until the very end since our freezer is really small

Sweets:
Cappuccino muffins (can’t find the link to this now – I’m sorry!)
Sweet breads – zucchini, apple, banana, pumpkin – or make into muffins
Chocolate chip cookies
Topping for Fresh Fruit Crisps – not frozen but jarred

Mixes to make:
Soup mix – rinse beans ahead, add dry seasonings
Bread – one loaf size – all dry ingredients minus yeast, add yeast when making (for some reason mixes made up with yeast added don’t do as well for me)

Also plan out meals for months of October, November, and first part of December ahead of time. I’m working on complete menus for July and August right now.