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Dear Reader

  Bring on the midnight canning!

  It got much to hot here today to finish the canning in our non-breeze kitchen, so we have put it off until it gets darker and cooler, so that is what I like to call a midnight canning. That is were you can until all hours of the night because you would rather go swimming during the day, and save what really should be getting done late at night.

  So in my spare time I thought I would share pics from yesterday.......

That is a lot of cherries!

Me pitting (I hate pitting)

Sarah cutting the cherries up.

Yum!

Making the goo.

Sugar!

Boiling the jars

Jam!

31 pints of cherries went up yesterday! That is a lotta work.

 In the words of Joseph Addison, "I value my garden for being full of blackbirds than of cherries, and very frankly give them fruit for their songs." 

~Mary-Ann~

Dear Reader

   Ugh! we are only half done with cherries and already I never want to see another cherry again. It took all day! and I still have four flats left to pit and chop up! SO guess what we will be doing today?......If you were going to say soap, you would be wrong.

  When we are done all together I think I am going to paint my fingernails, just until the stain is gone from them.

  Well, got to get to my cherries.....

Sincerely,

~Mary-Ann~

Dear Reader

   Well......we did not make soap......again. Instead we went and picked cherries yesterday.....a lotta cherries......67.8 pounds of cherries! So, I don't know if we are going to can today or make soap today, I am kinda hoping for soap, but that does not look likely.

   I am really in the mood for making soap, since we now have enough molds to justify making shaped soap (instead of the old tray that just makes ugly square bars) and I finally talked mother dear into using soap colour dye, and oils! Unfortunately we keep putting it off.......

   In fact! This would be the perfect day to make soap, because Kristina will be here and we can finally teach her how to make it.....like she has been asking us to do (hint* hint* mom).

  Oh! we could can cherries now and make soap this evening! Or not........

  Well, I geuss I will go and find some breakfast, I need to feed this broken hearted child who's mother refuses to make soap with. Sigh*

  In the words of Sir Walter Scott, "He that climbs the tree has won right to the fruit."

Sincerely,

~Mary-Ann~ 

Dear Reader

   I thought it was time to start writing on my blog again, so here is the first post in a hopefully long series. So, um, what can I say? Let's see.......

   Well, we finally got the garden in (I need to get pictures so that I can post them). Now we are working on the front flower beds, weeding and getting new plants in. The veggies are doing great in the big garden, but the corn got torn up by Sarah's baby goats (Ugh!), so that needs to be re-planted along with a row of peas (also lost to the baby goats).

   We are making soap this week, LOTS of soap. We planned on doing this on monday, but time just slipped away from us. SO hopefully we will be doing that today or tomorrow (I will be sure to take pictures of that too).

   Sarah and I will also try a hand at candle making with bees wax this week. We have made candles in the past, but never dip candles and never with bees wax, so this should be interesting and hopefully successful.

   What else can I say?.......

   My book is going rather well, but I am having trouble with a few parts, as it is hard to explain something that you have never done or tried.......like eating a squirrel.lol (don't ask).

  Um.....

  We put up several jars of jam last week, strawberry and strawberry/blueberry mix (neither of which I can eat). 21 pints of strawberry and 20 pints of the mix. Thats a lotta jam for us, and we still have cherry, blueberry, blackberry and raseberry jam to put up through out the summer.

  Okay, I have offically run out of things to say. I will try to post again very soon. Oh, I lied, I forgot to mention we got a pool and got to swim in it for the first time yesterday (that is,  first swimming in it where it was actually full and clean)

   In the words of Celia Thaxter, "There shall be eternal summer in the grateful heart."

Sincerely,

~Mary-Ann~

Dear Reader

     I know it has been some time since I posted last, so I thought I would do so witht he free time I found this morning. The past few days have been extremely busy, with the house undergoing Spring/Summer cleaning. This is the time of year where the whole house gets moved around. Not an easy task, especially when you let the house cleaning fall to the wayside while the gardening was getting done.........So here I am, enjoying some computer time in a room that looks like the bomb dropped.

    Well, I am not going to bore you with boring house cleaning details, instead I thought I would talk about and share pictures of something Sarah, Maddie and I did about a week ago.

    While the girls were cleaning out mom's sewing shed they came across yards and yards of that pre-made skirt material, the kind you find at Wal-Mart. I asked mom if I could make a skirt from it, but she said that I did not need a white that I would stain in just a matter of time. So, I came up with the first excuse for a new skirt that came to mind, "I can dye it!" Of course, I did not stop there, and before I knew it I blurted out "I could tye-dye it!"

    Sarah and Maddie thought the tye-dye was a great idea, and they wanted to do it too. So we made a barginingship with mom, and told her that if we finished the shed in a reasonable amount of time, could we all tye-dye skirts that evening? Mom gave in and went and bought the dye.

^ Me mixing the dye ^

^ Sarah and Maddie mixing some more dye ^

^ Maddie starting her skirt ^

^ Sarah tying her skirt ^

^ Maddie and I dying our skirts ^

^ Maddie showing off her partly done skirt ^

^ Me showing off my partly done skirt ^

^ Maddie ^

^ Sarah and I dying ^

^ Maddie and I undoing the bands ^

^ Maddie ^

I hope you enjoyed!

~Mary-Ann~

Dear Reader

    I know that I have not been posting much lately and I would like to explain. You see, I have been working on writing a new book. Almost all my computer time is used to work on it, and by the time I am done, I just don't feel like typing anymore. So, the blog goes neglected. This is my third book I have written, and I am hoping this is the one that gets me published, so you can see why I spend all my spare time working on it.

Well, I just wanted to explain.

Mary-Ann

Brownie Cameras

 As I was adding this post about my new camera I realized I never posted about my previous camera find a few months ago, so I will start with that camera first.

Brownie Target Six-20

This camera was introduced in July of 1946 and discontinued in May of 1952. This was the only style the camera was made in. It's original price was $3.50. Today the camera is priced between $8-$15. I paid $11.00 at a local antique shop.

No.2A Brownie (model B)

 Two models of this camera were made, a model B and a model C. Model B's were made between 1907 and 1924, model C's were made from 1924-1936. The model C is worth more because they were sold in colours other than black. This camera was pat. in 1916 and introduced in Jan 1918, the age is known by a metal plate on the back that only appeared from 1918-1920. The original price of this camera was $3.00. Today it is priced between $10-$16. I paid $5.00 on Ebay.

Sincerely,

~Mary-Ann~

Dear Reader

  My friends and family have begged me to write a long post. I really have nothing of my life to write about, so I will post about a subject that has been on my mind lately. These types of subjects are what I go on and on about at home, so I think I have bored everyone to tears here, I must agree with them, my pionts of conversation can be rather annoying or boring. It is their faults, I am afraid, that this post is going up, so if it is boring, you can blame them for forcing me on you.

 "Who did they pay to make that mistake?"

  As of late, I have been engrossed in the study of the Regency Era. "Why" you may ask "has this caught my attention?" That is simple. I have been working on a Regency costume for a friend's birthday party in August, and being the perfectionist that I am, I have to study every aspected of the Era. The clothes, hair, manner, popular books, hobbies, sports, etc. I am going through my second round of reading through Jane Austen's books, Watching all the movies based on those books or that era and pouring over informational books and the internet. Obsessed? I know.

 Now to the point of this article, "Who did they pay to make that mistake?". As I was watching over the Jane Austen movies, I noticed a great mistakes in two of them, "Becoming Jane" the story of Jane Austen and "Pride & Prejudice". In both movies their manner of dress is not in facted based on the Regency Era, but rather a mixture of Georgian and Regency, The Georgian over powering the Regency through most of these two movies. True, the Eras did run into each other in actual history, but by the 1800's, the Georgian had almost completely died out, with few exceptions in the manner of clothing for men. So why in "Pride & Prejudice" do they push the Georgian Style of dress, when the book was not published until 1813, long after the Georgian era had come to an end? And why did most of the women have long hair and wear it down in the movie? In the Georgian Era, most women had cut their hair quite short to wear under their powdered wigs, some starting when they were only 15 years of age (and in some cases, younger). So by the time the Regency Era rolled around, hair was not terribly long, and thus became a style, so those that did not cut the their hair to fit under wigs, did cut it to keep up with the style. Hair would be tied back in a bun, or what is called a "fountain", curling the short hairs. letting your hair go was considered valgur.

  In both movies, it was as if they did not care what anyone was wearing except for the main characters, since through the movies they were the only ones correctly dressed, and even sometimes they were pushing it. By 1800, the dresses were completely Empire, with few exceptions. They kept adding in dresses that had waists, again, from the Georgian Era. Yes, I know that the Bennet's in Pride & Prejudice were middle class, but most middle class tried to keep up with fashion, so that others would think highly of them.

I could go onlike this for hours, but I think I will bring this to a close. Now you can see why I drive my family crazy. I think if they hear one more thing about the Regency Era, there will be an extra seat at the dinner table.

Sincerely,

~Mary-Ann~

Happy Pie Day!!!

   Soon we will be heading out to go and celebrate Pie Day with CaraDD and her family. I know this isn't a very long post, but O'well.

Sincerely,

~Mary-Ann~

How could I keep from shearing this???