July Sweet Stuff

(see ADVENTUREinPROGRESS for our recent mountain blueberry picking experience)

Mama Speak

• Make your own cloth pads from Keeper of the Home. I wrote a post about my experience switching to these.
• That Nicola is one talented thrifty seamstress, posting a tutorial about sewing a girl's dress out of man's button-up shirt. If she wasn't so busy being a mom I think she could get a little business going. Maybe she will anyway??

Homeschool

• Recycled craft jars from Playful Learning.
• Pressing Memories from the Garden, simple flower pressing tutorial.
• Making stamps has been on my list of "crafts-to-with-the-kids" for ages. Of course, SouleMama makes it look just so beautiful.

Urban Homestead

• We use the envelope system for budgeting (super easy and it works!) but our envelopes aren't near this pretty.
• Keeper of the Home shares how to freeze blueberries. I totally lucked out and got a wicked good deal, through a buying club, on already frozen organic Maine wild blueberries but I'll do this next month when we pick high bush berries.
• The Winter Harvest Handbook, reviewed at GardenDesk. I see this book by Eliot Coleman, popping up everywhere. I dream of some year gardening and harvesting year round. If this Mainer can do it then technically I suppose I can too.

Neighborhood

• So cool to know that we aren't the only family who love camping and backpacking in the outdoors. Earthy Crunchy wrote one, two, three posts about their summer adventure with their 3 kiddos. Yeehaw for hiking and sleeping in the outdoors.

Gallery

• Extension tubes a great way to take closer photos with your dslr. I hope to own a set of these someday...
• Tips for photographing bubbles, quite a bit more spectacular than my own bubble post.