She's Crafty!

The title is from an old Beastie Boys song, but I don't think they were referring the 'craftiness' that I will be discussing in this post. Anyways, I was truly inspired by my friend Jill when I read her post about Stawberry Jam, so to Jill I give you all the glory and accolades. I know you will appreciate that! BTW I want your recipe for the Beer Batter Bread, it was devine....You hear that Emily?? I said devine!

Anyways, after reading Jill's post, I wanted to make some strawberry jam in a bad way. I hadn't done it since I was young and I really got a hankerin'. So coincidentally my Mom mentioned to me about 2 days later that she wanted to make some freezer jam and wanted to know if I was interested in doing it with her. I love how these things always work out. So yesterday was the designated day for out fun filled jam making extravaganza.



I loaded Chloe up in our new Expedition...yes I am still excited about our car...and we went to Nana's house. Chloe didn't quite know what was going on, but as soon as we got her apron on, she was excited. She helped us stir the sugar and pectin together and smash the strawberries. She felt very much like a big girl!




This is Chloe holding up our first completed jar of strawberry freezer jam. She was very proud of her self, and I don't think I need to say how stinkin' cute she is in this picture. She is actually saying 'Strawberries' instead of the always faithful 'cheeeese'.

We made 3 batches, but it only took us an hour. It was quite a team effort and I was very pleased with how it went!

Now that I felt all crafty with my crate of Strawberry jam, I went home with another hankerin'. I decided to finish making the quilt I had started for Chloe 2 years ago. So, when I got home I started up the old sewing machine and went to work. I am proud to say that I finished it last night a 9pm! You will see below...however not too closely because I am by no means a perfectionist and it looks better from afar! Now you may notice some strings hanging off the bottom of it. This is not a design errror on my part. If any of you know my daughter well enough, you will know that she has carried around her bumper from her crib since she was about 2 years old. It is long and annoying, but she loves to run the strings through her fingers. So being the loving mother that I am, I cute 4 sets of the strings off and sewed them to the top. I brought it in to her at 9pm as she was almost asleep. Her eyes got huge and she said in a very Anne of Green Gables way, "Oh, thank you Mama!". I could get used to being crafty!

This is my brother Daryl, and my other brother Daryl.

I just thought I would share a little tidbit about my children. We've been talking about baby names with them for a long time. We thought it was good to get their input and make them feel like their were part of the decision. Chloe at first said she wanted the baby to be named Bella. Then she quickly decided that she wanted to marry the neighbor boy Marshall, and when they sleep in the same bed she was going to have a baby and name HER baby Bella. This freaked us out a bit! Then she decided we should name the baby Alice.....all I could imagine was a housekeeper in a blue dress. Payton's only request was that if we have a boy that we name him Shark. I was glad when we found out we were having a girl, so I didn't have to get into a debate with Payton about why we could not call our baby Shark. (He's great at arguing, and actually comes up with valid points....which is frustrating being out debated by a 5 year old!)

Anyways, we finally told them we were going to name her Stella Rose. At which point Payton told us he like the name Ella and thought we should name her Stella Ella.....right. He told us that was what he was going to call her. Chloe then started crying and said we needed to name her Chloe. I told her that that was her name, but she insisted that we have 2 Chloe's. All I could think of was Payton saying...."This is my sister Chloe and my other sister Chloe". Then we could officially say we have Banks blood running through our veins!

Goodbye my dear old friend!

I finally had to say goodbye to my '97 Ford Expedition this weekend! It has been a faithful companion for me since Chloe was 5 months old. However, our history goes back further than that. This fine vehicle was bought with my college money, when I decided that I did not want to attend college for lack of a direction. I was in Mexico on my amazing vacation that my Aunt Diane took me on after graduation. I decided to call my Dad and see how things were going without me. Apparently they were going well because he said they had just bought an Expedition. He told me they used the loan that was going to be for my college on the car. Since then, we as a family have taken this amazing beast of a vehicle on 3 road trips to Disneyland, and racked up 179,000 miles on it. Sadly, the last year has been very hard on it. As it would not pass DEQ after several attempts. We replaced the spark plugs and then the wires and dropped over $500 on the two repairs. However, it still did not fix the sputtering and stalling. Aaron took it in again and they said it was the transmission, which is a $3,000 to $5,000 fix. Now, as much as I love this car, it was not even close to worth that much! The mechanic told us it would be better off to scrap it or trade it in before she completely died....tear!

This is not completely a sad story however! We have purchased a new very fuel efficient Ford Expedition....ha ha! When we went into the dealership, they asked us why we really wanted to buy an Expedition right now. Not that they weren't completely thrilled to get one off their lot! They even took our old Expedition in on trade, although they will be scrapping her!

Anyways, this is our 2003 Ford Expedition. It has tan leather interior, which I am most excited about because my kids! It also has a 6 disc CD changer, which our former Expo did not have. I had a nifty little tape deck in it....very useful!

Its such a cool car, that I can park on the sidewalk now....actually Aaron told me I'm not allowed to drive it into the garage. Whatever! I bumped our other expo 2 times pulling it into the garage and I will forever have a bad wrap!

Never mind the Beavers license plate....it was there when we bought it. Aaron is thrilled, but I am fearful for my life sometimes. My dad hasn't seen it yet!

Anyways, I am very happy with our new car, and it only cost $90 to fill up. UGH!