A very good day

What makes a good day for me? Well, most days are good days really, but you know how some days at the end of it you just think "ahhh, what a lovely, lovely day"? That was what I felt last night at bedtime.

My day started out early with some coffee and some quiet time before anyone else was up. I spent some time in the garden gathering tomatoes and basil to make sauce. E helped me out with running the tomatoes through the mill. (if you want your boys to help you with preserving just get yourself a contraption like this - they won't want to quit and will be looking around for other things to run through it. I actually had thought of this as only a tomato mill until I noticed yesterday that it says on the box that it can be used for many different fruits. When E was helping me he immediately came to the conclusion that we could use the mill for all sorts of different things so I think he will be trying it out on apple and pear sauce next)

With this contraption it doesn't take long to process these tomatoes into sauce and all you are left with is this little bowl of seeds and skins.I spent some time working on a quilt for W, we're calling this his "John Boy" quilt. He and I have been enjoying watching The Waltons on DVDs from the library. He wanted a quilt for his bed that was similar to what the Walton kids all had so we have been picking up plaid shirts at the thrift store. We were laying out the squares the other night to try to figure out a pattern (although we still need a solid soft green fabric too) and realized that if we had one more plaid it would make it much easier to make a pattern. We looked to S and asked if perhaps he had any shirts that he would be willing to part with. :-0 This one met the scissors pretty quickly.

And this is what we have to work with. We will search out a solid green today when we go into town and then every other navy one in the picture below will actually be a green. We think...it depends if he wants the solids to run in the same colour diagonally or if he wants them to run the same across rows. Too many choices! I can see that deciding on the pattern might be the trickiest part of quilting for me. I don't do well with too many choices.

We spent our whole day just puttering at home. I had a good chat over the phone with a wonderful friend and then started making a simple dinner while the boys played with their friend. We had lots of zucchini so I made the Disappearing Zucchini Orzo again from Animal, Vegetable, Miracle. Amanda, you should try it, it's true that it has zucchini but...you don't even know it's there...it's disappearing. ;-)The plums are ripening on the tree so it was finally time to make my favourite September pie.

And then, I topped off all this goodness with Northanger Abbey. I'm not sure how things could get any better. ;-)