And he's off...

Adventures in Vacationland...

Wait, that's Maine. I guess in the land of "live free or die" just doesn't have as nice a ring to it...get a better slogan, New Hampshire!
We're in the midst of 10 days at the lake, and the first real rain we've had since we've been here brings this:
Yup. That's a tree. On our lake house...here's another view:
And from the inside:
That's Peter and Sadie's room, the ceiling above their cribs. We are so so so blessed that no one was hurt! And now the roof is already patched, the tree is chopped into firewood, and we can get onto our vaca! Enjoy your weekend :)

hot...

I know we're not alone in the heat wave, but can I just say, enough is enough!! Luckily for us, there's lots of water nearby for cooling off--so much, in fact, that we have been swimming in 4 different places in just as many days...

The Lake in NH

The Kiddie Pool

The Big Pool at Grandma and Grandpa's
(do you see that big girl swimming by herself!?!)

And, The Ocean
(Chloe kept losing her bathing suit bottom. Clearly she has inherited her father's derriere!)

Did you see my post about making popovers? Well, as soon as it cools down, I am excited to try ALL the other recipes in that book (I think we'll do the pretzels first). Speaking of which, pop over to the author's blog for a fun giveaway--then visit Betz White's blog for a chance to win Homemade Fun for yourself!

Popovers from Homemade Fun

I was so excited to get this book just in time for summer-fun for me and Chloe:

There are tons (101 to be exact) of activities to do inside, divided up into various categories: sewing, papercrafting, and baking, to name a few. Since Chloe and I love to cook up a yummy snack (and before the heatwave hit us with full force!), I flipped right to the Popover recipe. With 4 ingredients and 4 steps, I was sure it was something we could do before losing focus...
Whisking the eggs...
Adding the flour...
Pouring into ramekins (the recipe calls for popover cups...never heard of such a thing! Apparently, muffin tins will work as well, but I didn't find this out until after)
Watching excitedly as the popovers begin to "pop."
...and, here they are--our quickly sinking popovers :( They looked so pretty when I first took them out, but quickly deflated. I also read later that I should have poked a hole in the top to allow steam to escape once I took them out of the oven (would have been good info for the recipe).
They ended up being eggy-muffins instead of popovers, but this was my first time making them. Others tricks I found online were to use room-temp ingredients and mix them quickly in a blender to get lots of air incorporated into the batter. We'll try again in a few days--can't say I mind making them again, they were so quick and easy!

I do still scrapbook...

Just not as often as I'd like! Here are 2 pages I made for July at ScrapGal:

We got goodies from Ki Memories (they're our manufacturer of the month), and I was surprised at how much I enjoyed playing with them!

Next are a couple using papers from The Girls' Paperie--a new company with fun designs!
The ones below are all about Sassafrass--love those little monsters!!
I have been blogging on alternate Tuesdays over at the Galblog, but that's changing to every Wednesday as of July! Here are a few projects I have posted there over the last few months:I wrote about making this purple-icious picture frame here.
Aren't these pictures my MIL took of Peter and Sadie adorable? I love that they're almost holding hands :) Here is my Galblog post about embellishing the frame.
I made this little banner back in May.
And challenged folks to scrap using red-white-and-blue for Memorial Day here.
And going all the way back to April, I wrote this tutorial for embellishing t-shirts.