JELLY!

Yesterday we canned chokecherry jelly. 

OK, OK, so my mom and brother canned while I took pictures. Hey, I've got a blog to keep up, yo! 

And as punishment for keeping you happy, I had clean-up duty.

You're welcome.

;)

Anyways.

The canning process:

First fill a pan part-way with water, and put jars upside-down in it. Then bring it to a boil. This sterilizes the jars. 

Do the same with the lids. The heat also makes the rubber part of the lid soft, so it seals better.

Then pour in the jelly! (Basically the jelly is chokecherry juice, sugar, a little lemon juice, and Sure-Jell fruit pectin, which makes it gelatinous)

Then wipe the top of the jar so it's clean:

And screw on the hot lid!

 Then turn the jars upside-down. This heats the lids so they seal.

After a while, flip the jars up-right. And then for the next hour or so, we hear little pops! The lids make that noise when the air inside cools off, gets smaller and pulls down the little suction button on the lid. Those little pops sound so much like late summer to me!

Canning jelly can be a bit of a pain, but mostly it's fun and easy. Have you ever canned anything?

Guest post ... again!

Hey guys! By the title, I'm sure you guessed what this post is about. :) I recently did a guest post for Hannah from IrishGirl! You can see my post here. (It includes three DIY's!)
Thanks, Hannah!

P.S. I'll try to do a "real" post soon. ;)

Green Bean Gardens

Hey everyone! Recently I've had a few requests to do guest posts, and one of my very first ones just got published today. And it's on my sister-in-law's blog!
Her blog is pretty sweet. She's posted about making her own cheese and knitting a stuffed sheep, among other things. That should tell you how cool she is. :)
Be sure to check out my post here. And take a look around her blog, too!

Mismatch

I have a question for you. Why do people always wear matching shoes? Hmmmm?

Why do the expected??

100 posts! And why I love garage sales.

As of now, I have posted 100 times on this blog! Dude. I can hardly believe it. AND I can hardly believe I have 60 followers! This January, I had exactly five followers. One was me. And one was my mom. 

Yeaaah ... 

When New Years rolled around, I was going to put "Get ten followers" on my New Years resolution list. But then I thought that it would never happen, so I left it out. :) 

Thank you for following! You helped blow my wish out of the water! 

Anyways, this week I went garage sale-ing with my sis in law. And I found this beauty for $10. 

Can you guess what's inside??

A 1930's Remington typewriter! The man said it belonged to his grandmother.

At first when I tried typing with it, the keys got stuck half way to the paper. I was pretty sure there was a button that would 'unlock' it. And my sis in law found it! When you slide the button, it lifts the keys up. Sweet, huh?

Close ups of the sliding magic button:

I do so love typewriters. :)
Oh, did I mention that it works? As in, it still has ink on the ribbon and everything! Win! 

The sticker says, "To save time is to lengthen life." :)

I love history. Not necessarily the history book kind (which I do like sometimes), but more the daily life of people long ago. The music people listened to, their hair styles and clothes, the machines they used ... life.
It's so strange to think how different life was just a few years ago!

Favorite pic:

Have you ever used a typewriter?

Attack of the Sharpies

Last week I found a pair of converse at the Salvation Army for $3. And this is what I did with them!

I gotta say, doodling on shoes instead of paper? Awesome. It's like a 3D coloring book! :)

I doodled on the bottom of one, and wrote on the other. I wrote really random stuff on the one. Everything from, "I like nonsense. It wakes up the brain cells"  (Dr. Seuss quote) to Isaiah 41:13 (See side bar), to "Be a fruit loop in a world full of cheerios," and "DFTBA!"
Brownie points if you know what that means. :)

Have you ever sharpied shoes?

Blue Angels

Ever wondered what it's like to be in a Blue Angel's plane? You can see video from the pilots point of view here! (On the left side you can scroll down and click on videos from different stunts they do. Some of the ones in the middle are ridiculous.)

I can't describe how amazing the videos are. Must watch.

And a couple more pictures from the air show, cuz I can't resist. :)

Air Show!

Today we went to an amazing air show in town. They had a B-25 from WWII flying around. Can you imagine? A plane from WWII still in good enough condition to fly? What a privilege to see.

At one point it "dropped" a "bomb". It was pretty sweet! Especially since I got a picture of it. :)

I couldn't resist editing some of the photos to look old.

Notice that the bomb bay is open:

This random kid had the right idea. :)
It was LOUD.

There were tons of planes sitting around that you could look at.

An unmanned plane!

Me sitting in an awesome helicopter:

Then Miss Mitchell the B-25 landed so people could get a close look at her.
One of my favorite pictures:

I got to stick my head inside and snap some photos. What a surreal feeling, being in a piece of history. I could just imagine the people who flew it years and years ago. Wow.

I love just staring at the next picture. After photoshopping it, it looks so old I can hardly believe I took it!

It's looking into the tail, and the light at the end is from the gunner's dome.

The bomb bay:

Later they had a stunt plane. It was simply amazing! The pilot did things I didn't know were possible. He did sideways rolls and stalls that made it look like the plane had technical problems and was spiraling out of control. And then he'd pull up again! At one point he was only ten feet off the ground! Once he turned upside down and flew that way for a long distance, taking one hand off the controls and waving (still upside down) at the crowd below! You could see it, he was so close.

 And then! Then the pilot flew over the crowd, opened his hatch (!) , stood on the seat (!) and waved at us! Zero hands on the controls!

Heheehe! 
What a show-off.
I love it. :D

Then the Blue Angels came out! In this first picture, their wings were only 18 inches apart. And they were going well over 100 miles an hour. o_O

Notice that white mist on the wings of the top plane? I'm not sure what caused it, but whenever they went incredibly fast, that would appear.

At one point the announcer told us to look to our right, so we all turned that way. And then ROAR! A plane flew over us from behind and startled everyone! It was super funny. :)

 And lastly, one of my favorite pictures.

Have you ever been to an air show?