Someone got in BIG trouble...

This is why we don't have any dog pillows for our two dogs. Jada was very busy this morning tearing apart her brand new dog pillow. This pillow was in our house less than 24 hours. It's kind of hard to see in the picture, but this is the mess that I woke up to this morning. Darn dogs.

Balloons & Eggplant

Balloons and eggplant...these have nothing more in common than being in the same blog. :) First, on Saturday, I ventured down to Lincoln IL for the hot air balloon festival. After trying some great wines (including pumpkin wine - just in time for fall!), we sat in the sun while it rained....yeah, that was odd. Very weird rain shower. As we were drying off, we watched the balloons fill up and launch. They didn't go far because of the weather. Here are a few pictures:

(My favorite balloon)

Finally I harvested our eggplants, and tonight I made eggplant parmesan for the first time. I really liked it - but Sean wasn't a big fan. It wasn't my cooking, necessarily, he just doesn't like eggplant. There are no more eggplants on the plant in my garden, but there is one more blossom. We'll see if that turns into anything.

Remember those tiny tomatoes???

Well, they aren't so tiny anymore! And there are tons of them! Before we left on Friday for our camping trip, I picked the ripe tomatoes and took them to our neighbors. And today, TWO days later, this is what I picked:


That basket is full of tomatoes, green peppers, and few jalepenos! I used the tomatoes and green peppers to make homemade tomato sauce tonight. That was quite the chore, and a big mess. Hopefully the sauce is worth it...it's still simmering downstairs!

Our Summer Home

A few of you may recall last spring that Sean and I bought a used pop-up camper (AKA our summer home)...well, we finally got to try it out this weekend! We took it north about 10 miles to Comlara Park - the weather was fantastic and all went well with the camper. Here's a picture of our portable summer home...

I also had fun playing around with my camera. I found quite a few beautiful butterflies to take pictures of, and as always, I came home with many, many pictures of the dogs. Here are a few of my favorites below...

The Butterfly Series

The Rottie Series

Sadie

Sadie taking a snooze while still keeping an ear out for passerbys

Jada

Jada again

Ready to head home

Cupcakes!

On Sunday I'm hosting a small baby shower for a friend from church. Instead of ordering a big cake, I decided to try my hand at making somewhat-cute cupcakes. Tonight I did a trial run on the cupcakes and I'll take them into work tomorrow for speedy consumption. :) I was slightly impressed with myself, so I had to share. I'm now thinking of opening a sewing/cupcake shop. :)

Sew ready for tailgating...

Like my corny play on words above? :) There's more where that came from! Anyway, I am officially addicted to sewing. I've been dabbling with it for about a year now, but lately I've been dreaming up new projects one right after another! I just finished this one, and I'm pretty excited about it! Picture is below...a special shout out to my lovely model...