Oh, summer

I fell in love with summer this year, friends. I fell hard. I'm so in love that I'm sad that it's almost over, even though fall is usually my favorite season.

I fufilled many tentative plans these past few months, and I'm sure that has something to do with my new found passion. I'll tell you about those activities soon, but you can look at some photographic documentation over here until then.

Maybe once I write down some new tentative plans I'll remember my real true love. Who doesn't look forward to a cup of tea and a puzzle on a crisp fall evening?

Making carrot cake cupcakes

Robyn celebrated her birthday while she was in town, so we made cupcakes, naturally. This is the recipe we used: Carrot Cake with Maple Cream Cheese Frosting.

They were good, but I'm not sure I'd make them again. Instead, I'm more interested in making these babies: Peach Cupcakes with Brown Sugar Frosting. Yes, please.

I especially like that Smitten Kitchen says this recipe can be adapted for a breakfast muffin. If that doesn't inspire me to fulfill my tentative plans to find a quick breakfast alternative, I don't know what will.

Guest post: Making the Victory Lap

I'm almost finished the quilt I started for my Mom and her husband that I first told you about almost a year ago. (!!!) I am currently doing the victory lap, or handstitching the binding. I have to say, this is an apt expression, so congratulations to whomever (?) coined it. There is nothing like binding a quilt. It has a two pronged attack: the first prong it that all of a sudden your layers of business become a quilt, and the second is that you are FINISHING THIS QUILT! Hallelujah!

I have taken a break from working on my crafting projects generally this summer. I think it was just too hot. Since it's cooled off a bit, I have rediscovered the soothing ecstasy that is quilting for me. I love it, you guys. It pretty much has it all.

I hand-quilted this one, and all of those hours were so worth it. It's hard to do it justice in photos, but hand-quilting really communicates, you know? In all examples of it that I've seen, there's some extra mojo* in there. I don't think I've ever been more excited about something that I've made. And it's for my mom, which makes it even better. Yay!

* Read: abiding love, for a more gooshy/accurate version of how I feel about this whole business!

News in Saskatoon

Quotes

"You're dumber than you think I think you are."
Jack Nicholson as J.J. Gittes in Chinatown (1974)

"In America, where anger is the most validated emotion, even the feeling that things are actually pretty good in one's life is considered best expressed as fury that they might not continue to be that way."
- Tabatha Southey in her recent Globe and Mail column: In the U.S., rage against the heart machine

"Somehow everything will be."
- My baba on my sister-in-law handling identical twin girls, due in November (she said it in Ukrainian the first time around)

Lydia and Kelly August 9, 2009