You Go Girl!

CSI: You Go Girl

There has been some mischief afoot in the land of You Go Girl. A full investigation was conducted.

Follow-up: Victim of aforementioned crime spree has mitigated the damages caused by the vandal(s). She is very thankful that she put a stitch marker in her project to keep her stitches from unraveling. If she had failed to take such a precaution, she fears she would be filing a Missing Hat report in addition to the other charges.

Suspect is still holding tight to the Miranda rule.

Cuckoo for Coco Fluff

Ga-Ga.

Over the Moon.

Head Over Heels. 

Cuckoo for Coco Puffs Fluff. 

Meet Olive. Such a distraction. We are in love.

I've Been Gone...

Where? Well here's a clue.

 

Need another hint?  Here you go.

 

I know.  These pictures could be taken in lots of places. Here's another more obvious clue.

  

You're getting warmer, aren't you? But just so there's no doubt...

Yes. We just got back from our yearly trek to Yellowstone. We almost always go the week after school is out. Love that place!  No matter how many times I see it, I am always amazed by the beauty and majesty.  Who wouldn't be? 

Yellowstone makes us jump for joy.

 

Woo Hoo! Let the summer games begin.

Home...

If you put your ear to your computer and listen carefully you might be able to hear my washer and dryer congratulating each other on a job well done. They just finished the last of fourteen gargantuan loads of vacation laundry. Yes. Fourteen.

Before summer slipped away from us, we decided to take a little road trip. The seven of us piled into the Suburban with our luggage and a lot of cough syrup (I wasn't the only one to have the 'ick'), and away we went.

 

Our first stop was Seattle.

Our last stop was Seattle, too.

In between, we visited one of the most fabbity-fab-fab beautiful places in the whole wide world...Orcas Island.

On the island, we enjoyed amazing vistas.

 

We played in enchanted forests.

We poked around in the tide pools.

And the creme de la creme... we hopped a boat to watch the Orca whales that summer in the San Juan Islands. Shooting a picture of a whale is a bit like catching a shooting star. You just don't know where they're going to show up or what direction they might be traveling. This picture is so inadequate. It doesn't begin to illustrate the magnificence of these creatures. I have gone whale watching two other times. I never cease to be amazed by these giant guys. They rank pretty high on my wow-o-meter.

It's hard to say goodbye to a magical place like Orcas. 

We are home now. School has started. The mornings are cool. The afternoons are warm. I've said goodbye to August (gulp).  It's beginning to feel a little like fall. Life is good.

Unsupervised...

Not just one spotted fawn,

but FOUR! 

These four little babies were leisurely eating, completely unsupervised, in a field that I drove by on my way to the grocery store. Lucky for me, I had my camera handy and snapped a picture. I wonder where their mommies are? They're probably scouting out the best garden to raid when darkness falls. Sometimes I think the deer look at my planters and say to one another, "Oh! Look dear. (No pun intended. LOL!) A salad bar. How nice. I think I'll try one of each." Grrrrr...it's very maddening to work hard to make some thing look lovely only to have the whole thing munched down to nothing in a matter of moments. Oh, and if the deer don't like something you've planted, they pull it out by the roots and drop it beside the planter for you.  How rude! As much as I love to see the deer, they are certainly little masters of destruction.

And speaking of unsupervised masters of destruction...Have you ever wondered what eleven year old triplet girls do when left to their own devises for a few minutes.  Well wonder no more.  First they take crazy pictures of themselves.

When the fun wears out of that, they harass the cat and take more pictures. 

They think all of this is wildly funny.  I think they are wildly funny. Tink the cat? Not so amused, I'm guessing.

This and That...

Holding my attention this week is...

A robin family that is living in the apple tree right outside my window.

The little robins hatched sometime this weekend. I'm not sure how many babies there are, but Mr. and Mrs. Robin are very good parents. Doesn't she look cozy sitting in her nest guarding her little family? Every so often Mr. Robin shows up and spells her for a bit. This morning both parents were busy feeding the newest members of the Robin family. This, by the way, is the same apple tree that the bears visit in the fall. The tree should probably listed as a sanctuary for wildlife or something like that. 

 

 
All the lovely things blooming in my flower gardens.

Nobody can create quite like Mother Nature. These are just ordinary petunias. When you really look at them you notice that they are absolutely stunning.

 

A rockin' redo on an old piece of furniture.

Round one of painting is done.  I'm sure there will be a big reveal when the project is finished.

A wee bit of stitching.

In all the craziness and busyness that is summer, I still find a minute to stitch now and again. I sneak in to my craft room and get my stitch fix when Mr. Handsome is watching his beloved Dodgers on my computer.

 

 

This Zippy Wallet is stitched out of Anna Maria's Garden Party fabric.  I think this fabric is perfectly named. Don't you? And the match up with Sandi's red Stripey is divine. I love it when that happens.

 

Toodles,

Cassie

About a Bear

Bear Sighting--We thought we were pulling in to a turn-out for a second look at a moose we'd seen earlier.  As luck would have it, we were pulling in to see a GRIZZLY.  Here he is.  Isn't he a beauty? (It might be a she.  I wasn't going to get close enough to peek. LOL!)

I've been to Yellowstone many times. This is only my second up-close look at a Grizzly Bear.  It really was a treat to see this big bear.  His location couldn't have been any better.  He was only about 30 yards away, but there was a wide swift-moving river between the two of us.  I felt completely safe. Plus, I knew I could run a lot faster than most of the other people that stopped to look at him. I think there's a saying that goes something like this--I don't have to run faster than the Grizzly Bear.  I just have to run faster than you!  Ha-Ha!

Black Bear Facts and a Question--A Black Bear can be brown.  A Black Bear can be blond.  A Black Bear can be cinnamon.  And, yes, a Black Bear can be black.  So if it can be all those different colors, why is it called a Black Bear?  It causes a lot of confusion. When a group of people gather to look at a bear, you often hear a conversation like this:

Frank:  Oh, look Marge, a Black Bear.

Marge:  That's not a black bear, Frank. That's a brown bear.

Frank:  Yes, but it's still a Black Bear. It's just brown in color.

Marge:  Oh, whatever.  Looks like a brown bear to me.

Well, it is a brown bear.  It's a brown Black Bear.  Brown Black Bear. Blond Black Bear. Isn't that a contradiction in terms or something?

This blond Black Bear was sitting on a ginormous ant pile right beside the road.  

He would scoop up a pile of ants and put them in his mouth.  

Then he would rub his face with his paws to get the ants that had escaped his mouth off of his nose. It was very funny to watch.

Bear-ly Had Time To Doodle Stitch-- Or, would that be barely had time to stitch? I usually do a lot more doodle stitching in the car. We were so busy spotting things that I didn't stitch much this time. This is all the stitching I did...

When I finish this, I plan to pair this doodle with some red Full Moon Polkies.  I think the two will look very bear-y smashing together.  I know.  Lame.  I should probably go now.

Until next time,

Cassie

Yellowstone

We are home from our annual trek to Yellowstone National Park.  I am a nut for that place.  There are wild animal sightings galore.  You know my affinity for seeing animals in their natural environment. Shucks. I even get excited when I find their poo.  Remember this?  I had to apologize here. I promise that this post has NO poop. (Check out this book, though. I didn't write it, but I could've.  LOL!)

The wild animal count in Yellowstone went like this:

• many birds of different feathers
• one pika 
• one marmot 
• two jack rabbits
• two coyotes
• several big horn sheep and one little lamb
• herds of elk and their babies
• lots and lots of bison and their calves
• one moose
• five black bear, and...
• ONE GRIZZLY BEAR

Yep, we saw him.  The biggest bear in the park.  His picture is on a different memory card than I downloaded from today.  I'll sneak you a peek of him on my next post.  For now, here is some of the glory we saw.

Animals big...

This guy was eating ants right beside the road.

Animals small...

Isn't that blue the best color ever?

Some geyser action...

We drive by this geyser every year.  It is the first time we've seen it spouting.

And the amazing Grand Teton mountains...

It is hard to capture such magnificence in a single frame.

And the wildest beasts of all...My girls.

Picture all seven of us in one hotel room. Every night when we headed to bed, I wanted to yell "Dog Pile". It's a good thing we like each other!

And my favorite...

Who says there's no such thing as a free ride?  Doesn't Mr. B look thrilled?  

That's kinda how I feel about the laundry piles I need to tackle.  Oh, well. Loads and loads of laundry is a small price to pay for a few days visit to The Park.

Hoping all is well in your corner of the world.

Happy Day,

Cassie

Off Task, Again...

I should've been planting these.

Or pulling these.

Or capturing these.

 

But was I?  No.  I was working on this.

Remember this doodle from many moons ago?

 

 

I finally turned it in to a Glory Bag.  

 

I would've stitched this together a long time ago but for the fact that I lost the linen I needed to create the bag.  How do you lose a yard of linen?  I looked in my green fabric stack.  Not there.  Looked in the linen stack.  Not there. Looked behind the craft table. Not there. I moved my whole studio to a different room in the house...The linen was not there.  So the little doodle sat, and sat, and sat just waiting for something exciting to happen to it.  I finally admitted to myself that I had lost the fabric and would need to purchase a bit more to finish this little beauty.  Luckily my favorite local shop still had the same bolt of linen and the glory bag finally came to fruition. 

And for those of you who are wondering why I am capturing squirrels...Well, they taste just like chicken.  Just kidding.  I'm not making squirrel coq au vin. I'm involved in a covert mission called Operation Squirrel Relocation.  These little squirrel-y guys eat the bark off the giant willow trees in my back yard. Their gluttonous feasting makes huge limbs on my trees die.  These little villains cuties are killing my trees. The tree man that came to my house to diagnose the problem recommended that we, ahem, "knock them off" since they are not a native species to the area even though they inhabit almost every neighborhood in town.  Well, as you can imagine in a house with six girls, squirrel extermination is not an option.  Instead, we catch them and release them in the willow-tree-free park that is about a mile away.  I don't know if there are any rules prohibiting such activity, or not.  Just to be sure, I only take the squirrels to the park under the cover of darkness. Just kidding, again.  I do feel a bit funny, though, when I am letting them go in the park--kinda like I'm flushing a pet alligator that's not so little or cute anymore down the toilet. This is different than that, though.  Really. It is. The squirrels already live in the park.  I'm just bringing more to the party.  

I won't take the time today to tell you about the squirrel that got loose in the car when we were relocating it.  Just know that there was a lot of girly screams, followed by million-mile-an-hour chatter and fits of giggles. We know there is a squirrel out there somewhere with a nervous tic and a tale of high-stakes adventure that he tells his squirrel buddies when he visits the local watering hole.

I best get back to what I'm supposed to be doing.

Toodles,

Cassie

Someone's Been Eating My Apples...

 

Do you want to know where Papa bear hangs out while Goldilocks (me) is sleeping?  He is in my back yard eating apples off a tree that is less than 10 feet from my house.  How do I know?  Well, everytime he visits he leaves me a present.  No, it isn't a jar of huckleberry honey with a bow tied fancy around the neck.  It's a more natural present.   It's a gift from within.  Oh, do I have to spell it out?!?  It's POOP!  Big poop.  Icky poop.  If you must see it, you can click here (View this photo).  Go ahead.  I'll wait.  Don't be mad at me. I told you it was icky.

I have been stalking trying to sneak a peek at Mr. Bear.  I really, really want to see him.  Mr. Handsome and the triplets saw him on the hill behind our house a few evenings back.  On a different evening, Paige and Hailey had to stop on their way home from dance and let Mr. Bear cross the road.  I get up in the black of night and peek out the window every time I hear a rustle in the bush or an apple fall from the tree.   I've seen lots of deer, but no bear.  It's so unfair! He's been to the tree at least five times because he's left his special present on five different occasions.   He's very tricky!

I don't think I will get to see him this year. We have lots of signs like this up by our house. 

 

The responsible thing for me to do would be to go out and pick the fruit from our tree.  I think I will do that this sunny afternoon.   Even though I've never seen Mr. Bear, I don't want him to get into trouble because he is used to humans.  For now I will have to be content with his presents, not his presence.  LOL!  That was a joke.  Did you get it?

I can see why Mr. Bear likes our apples.  Apples are yummy.  We don't eat the apples off of our tree because they are full of worms and don't quite get ripe enough for eating.  We do eat the apples from my parents' tree, though.  My mom and dad gave us a large quantity of Macintosh apples.  Aren't they pretty?

I think Macs are the best baking apples ever.  I have made a couple of not-so-pretty-but-very-tasty pies, a large pot full of applesuace, and a batch of applesauce cookies.  Next up is caramel apples.  YUM!  To make up for that nasty picture of bear doo, I will share my applesauce cookie recipe with you. 

Recipe for Applesauce Cookies

1/2 cup margarine        1 cup sugar    

1 cup thin, hot applesauce    1 tsp soda

2 cups flour    1 tsp salt    1 tsp cinnamon    1/2 tsp cloves    1/2 tsp allspice

1 cup raisins    1 tsp vanilla

Cream margarine and sugar.  Add thin, hot applesauce and soda.  Mix in dry ingredients. Stir in raisins and vanilla.  Plop cookie-sized lumps on to greased cookie sheet.  Bake in a 350 degree oven for 10-12 minutes.  Cool on rack. 

This is a family recipe.  It is a good one.  To thin and heat the applesauce, use 3/4 cup applesauce and 1/4 cup water.  Heat for one minute in the microwave and then add soda.  You will see science in action when you add the soda.  I love that part. 

Enjoy!

Cassie

Editor's Note:  I am trying to get that poop link to work.  Sorry to have published so many times.  Cas

Another Editor's Note:  Duh!!! I think I have finally figured it out.  I was trying to link using Flikr, but I didn't want the icky picture to show up in my photostream.  For some reason, a picture of poop seemed out of context in all the handmade goodness.  I finally figured out how to link to the photo in typepad.  Seems obvious now.  Oh, well.