2 reasons new blog posts are not happening

Record-breaking hot weather has been around since the first of June

with very few days under 100 degrees.

It is not fun at all.

These 2 little urchins are sweet as can be and are spending lots of time with me while their parents go to work.

Here they are doing high-fives while they wait for their breakfast.

So between busy toddlers and this heat wave,

I am just not doing much extra.

Fall will be here soon and hopefully when it is cooler, we will all be more cheerful.

my kitchen assistants

Up until today, Gavin and Elizabeth have only ate food from my kitchen.

They are getting bigger, so today,

they learned how to make a family favorite,

salad crackers.

My grandmother made these at least 30 years ago. I know it was then because son Bobby ate them when he was a toddler and he is 30.

We have been eating them ever since.

Salad crackers are oyster/soup crackers moistened with salad oil so the seasoning mixture of dill, onion and garlic powder, and dry ranch dressing mix will stick.

The grandbabies had fun making and eating them.

And just a few crackers flew out of the bowl onto the floor.

salad crackers are popular with everyone in this family.

We all like them on top of salad instead of croutons. I think most recipes for these seasoned crackers call for 1 or 2 bags of crackers but I always make a big batch of 4 bags.

This makes a lot but they won't last long here,

especially since we have 2 more salad cracker fans.

Daughter Nina's latest project

Nina saw some very cute and very expensive fabric playhouses that fit over card tables on Etsy. At their home, the play area is in a nook beside the dining room and Nina wanted to use their tall dining table as the base.
She used low-cost brown sheets for all the walls and roof. Her big shortcut was using the finished edges of the sheets as the bottom of the walls so she would have less sewing.
She used fabric from my stash for the curtains, window boxes and door. _the door is not quite tall enough and will need to be adjust though.

The windows have clear vinyl in them, she bought it at Hobby Lobby and it looks good but my machine did not like sewing over it.

Pretty cute isn't it? And it can easily be moved and folded up at meal time.

Spice shelf - make do and mend project

BEFORE

My spice shelves just looked so messy to me.

I had some of the Starbucks bottles left from Nina's party so I started with those.

I painted the lids cherry red with a can of spray paint in the cabinet.

Then I printed off some free labels from

http://eatinginisin.wordpress.com/2009/01/25/round-labels-for-spice-jars/

I just printed them on regular paper, cut them out with scissors and glued them on with glue sticks. You could certainly use a cutter, sticker paper, pre-made labels - all kinds of ways to be more high-tech. There are also many free printable labels on line, just look around until you find ones than suit you.

AFTER

I also had a dozen tiny 4 ounce canning jars. I used them and the labels in their package to hold the smaller spices.

labels on top - easy to read

a few of the spices needed to be shaker jars so I re-used some of the original plastic containers with shaker tops. I covered them with red paper and added labels.

to see more Make and Do Mend Projects or to join in with Heidi with your own Make do and Mend

go to The Cranberry Chronicle

Now if only all of my house was as neat and tidy as the spices

Monday nights storm

July was the hottest month ever in Oklahoma since records have been kept sometime in the 1800's. It has also been dry. So we were really happy to see a storm that moved into our area last night. We got 1/2 inch or so of rain that was very welcome.

But we also had some straight line winds.

The only damage to us was all the toys in the backyard blew around and we had a lot of leaves and mulch blown around in the front.

Many of our neighbors had more damage.

Our neighbors on the west side lost their backfence.

Our 2 neighbors on the east side lost the fence that divides their yards and that big Bradford pear tree split.

this house about 200 yards behind us lost a good size section of shingles.

On our walk this morning, we saw more fences blown over, garage doors blown in, debris all over the place.

The worst part of the storm was our power went off about 7 p.m. and was off until 1:38 a.m. Half our town was without power and we are very appreciative that our electric workers were able to get the problems repaired, even with more rain and lightening that continued through as they worked through the night.

Storms are scary but aren't the rainbows, God's promise, beautiful?

Boudreaux's Butt Paste winner

Thank you all so much for reading about and entering the giveaway for Boudreaux's.

The contest is now closed and the winner is Anne Marie.