Checking In

I have a few moments, so I thought it might be good to check in.

• We took our annual trip to our favourite pumpkin cart. It was a crisp day, but still lovely.

• A friend crocheted these adorable hats for my littles. We all love them!

• I am excited to start Christmas gift shopping and sewing etc. The music came on a little bit late for me this year. It was too hot in September for me to be thinking about Christmas, but October's cooler days have got me in the mood.
• Summer list wrap up - tore down the poster and well, we did pretty good. I've decided to skip the wrap up, but you can read my old posts to see the bulk of what we did. Here, here and here.
• I'm hosting a group baby shower on Tuesday. I started to decorate today... didn't want to run out of time. I'm very interrupted during the days and don't want to feel rushed. Thankfully, my David is totally cool with it.
• My Dolly has been working on large scale colouring. She's been taking it very seriously... so cute!

• I have our 2012 family Christmas card pretty much designed, just need a few more details and a new family picture. I am toying with the idea of selling custom digital designed Christmas cards this year. Maybe $18/card, you print as many as you want. Anyone possibly interested? (I also do birth announcements)

2011 card

2010 card

•  Sad nursing story... Micah gets tummy aches when I eat/drink dairy. This is hard! I LOVE dairy and milk in my tea. I can drink almond milk and I'm pretty sure lactose free milk as well. The almond milk is TERRIBLE in tea, otherwise I like it. The lactose free milk is okay in tea, but I confirmed this week that Micah also can't handle my favourite teas. The good news is that it won't last forever and I'm grateful that I am able to nurse and don't have to mix bottles!
• Family pictures with Twila next weekend! We always look forward to this, Twila is amazing!

from last year's photo shoot

• I am going to be making roman blinds for my living room window. I'm looking forward to getting rid of those terrible vertical blinds!
• I was inspired by a crocheted afghan I saw on Pinterest and have begun my own. It won't look like that one, but I'm enjoying how it's going so far. Fall is such a cozy time to crochet. A good cup of tea would make it even better, but by the time I'm finished I might be able to curl up in it with said cup.
• My Pinterest boards have been hopping lately. By that I mean that I have been pinning a lot of Christmas gift ideas, party ideas and sewing tutorials. A lot of which, I intend on using very soon. I have begun a board "Pinned it and did it!". I was pleasantly surprised to find that I've actually done a lot of things that I've pinned. Makes me feel a bit better about the time I've spent on there. 
• I have a dishwasher! The electrical is being worked on as I type and we'll hopefully have a functioning dishwasher by the end of the weekend! HUGE blessing! More sewing time - woohoo!
• Oh, and to answer Donna's questions: the rest of my cabinet still needs organizing, but holds coffee maker, tea pots, napkins etc in one cupboard. Tablecloths and placemats in the drawer and misc. junk in the bottom cupboard. My plan is to organize it to be my "hosting" cupboard. Special serving dishes and accessories will be in there. As to where the cabinet is, it's to the right of the microwave counter. I couldn't find a picture with it in there, and my dishes are dirty right now *wink*, so not going to snap one right now.

(directly beside the cupboard on the bottom right of this picture)

My Tea Cabinet

I am thrilled with how this project turned out and though it took some time, it was worth it. I have a bit of a sad recycle fail story to include. I wanted to keep this project cost effective and really liked the idea of reusing. I shopped my favourite thrift stores for jars and scored 45 matching jars! I was thrilled. They cost 25¢ each. There weren't many lids and most were rusted and in rough shape, but I wasn't too worried because I knew you could buy lids at most stores in canning season. Home with my jars. Washed my jars and they sat waiting for lids. Well, turns out that it costs about the same to buy whole new jars with lids than just the lids. In fact, I soon realized that the jars I bought are GEM jars and need a special lid. $9.00+ a dozen. Ugh! I could get a dozen jars with lids for around $7/doz. This was so frustrating. After several days of research (my David even looked all over the internet) it became apparent that it was best to buy new jars. Being ever so gracious of my love of projects, my David bought me new jars.

Truth be told, these ones fit even better in my cupboard. As you can see on the top shelf, I did need some larger jars to hold some tea that I have a lot of. Including my current favourites, White Vanilla Coconut and Honey Vanilla White Chai (which I sadly discovered is discontinued....WAAAA!)

I found printable labels online for mason jar lids. I was going to copy the idea, designing my own version, but my little Print Shop program didn't quite have the effects I was looking for, so I adapted the free printable labels to suit my needs better. I colour coded the kind of teas and included the brand of tea so that I could easily replace a tea as it ran out.

Doesn't it look beautiful? Oh, and just before I forget, if you want to store tea in clear jars, be sure that they go into a closed cupboard. Tea is best stored in airtight and light free containers. Tins are perfect, but the cost was too high for me to consider. I do have 50+ different kinds of teas.