" title="Our Homeostasis"> Our Homeostasis

I have had a tiring week.

It’s only the second week of school, so I am still getting the swing of things, we’re in the process of moving to a new house, and we’ve both been sick with a nasty cold.

But tonight, alongside my exhaustion and box-filled house, I feel amazing. It is raining! After months and months of literally no precipitation, I hear thunder. I see flashes of lighting outside my window. I know the storm will probably only last a short while, but while it is here I feel excited by the change of seasons, and happily anticipate the green hillsides that will soon fill the landscape!

This was definitely my high for the day. What was yours?

cherry and grape tomatoes ready to be made into salsa

Today I finally used up the last of my tomatoes from my garden. The gophers destroyed a lot of my plants, biting them off right at the root.  Time and time again this Summer and Fall I felt like the frustrated Rabbit from Winnie the Pooh. Darn Tigger, I mean gophers… Anyway, this left me with quite the assortment of very green cherry tomatoes that were unable to finish maturing. I didn’t want them to go to waste, so I found a canning recipe for salsa that allowed me to mix green and red tomatoes. SCORE!

Ingredients in the pot!

I ended up using a mixture of  green and red grape and cherry tomatoes from my garden, and some large meaty heirlooms from the school’s garden. My favorite part of cooking is definitely chopping everything up, so this project was a lot of fun for me… but I did tire of chopping and called in Roddy for backup knife skills.

Salsa Family Photoshoot

After tasting today’s concoction I decided it was too mild for my liking; I like my salsa to be spicy. However, it does taste really fresh, and I’ll definitely use it once tomatoes go out of season.  I would love to find a salsa that has the kick I was looking for, though. Are there any canners out that know a good recipe?

I decided to delve into the world of leather crafts this summer in an attempt to make a homemade anniversary gift for Roddy. Early on in our marriage we decided it would be fun to exchange traditional anniversary gifts as a creative way to celebrate. This year the gift was leather, and I felt like making, instead of buying something.

Roddy's Present

Luckily, while browsing pinterest, I came upon this really fun book made by Kelly from Trans-craft-inental  out of a deck of cards. It contains 52 things that she loves about her husband. I thought the idea was genius and decided to do a spin-off! Mine is different though; I did not use a deck of cards and instead I made a miniature leather bound book. Luckily, I was able to acquire some scrap leather for free from a saddle maker in town for this project. Oh, and mine has 55 things I love (It was going to be 50, but I miscounted the pages and already had it assembled before I figured it out! The more the merrier!). This project was so much fun, and I really enjoyed coming up with my list of “loves”!

Roddy and I both really like Celtic designs, so after searching online I found the symbol for eternal or undying love (appropriate for such an occasion, don’t you think?) and decided to give it a go. I am no expert in leather crafts, but with a little imagination and experimentation I was able to come up with something that actually resembles a book! Yay!

My leather bound book- "55 Things I Love About You- A Subset of a Much Larger List"

Anyway, on to what I did:

1. First I prepped my lighter colored leather by wetting it down with a sponge until the color turned a shade darker.

2.Then I put it aside to dry for a bit. During this time  I traced the Celtic design to a sheet of tracing paper.

3. As soon as the light colored leather started to dry up I transferred an indentation of the traced image to the leather by using a stylus ( I made my own stylus by taking the ink out of a ball point pen). Tandy Leather Factory has a demonstration of this process that I found really helpful.

4. After tracing I cut out the design with an Exacto knife and secured it to the other piece of leather using rubber cement.

5. I perforated the edges around the cover prior to sewing the leather cord around the outside.

6. As far as the actual assembling of the book pages, I primarily used Squidoo’s Leather Book Binding tutorial as a guide.

One of the many things I love about my husband...

I did not have any proper leather tools, so I did a lot of ad-libbing. I suggest getting a simple leather working kit if you choose to experiment in such crafts. You will be able to do a lot more and not be burdened by the frustration of having inadequate tools. Next time I’ll make the investment.