Christmas preparation and aftermath

The truffles were great, best I have made in a few years. The sugared pecans were a huge hit, and I have had to make two more batches. My oldest three grandchildren, 6 and 10, joined me for a cookie decorating extravaganza. I think I made too many cookies!

I made about 10 dozen cookies, way too many!
Notice the fully covered table and fully aproned cookie decorators

Our Christmas cantata at church was a roaring success. The choir sounded fantastic, and the instrumentalists (two violins, viola, cello, trumpet, flute, and a keyboardist filling in for an oboe) brought it to the next level. We might not do as challenging of music as the choir in Utah, but the sound was actually just as good. I guess it does help to be in a college town with a strong music program!

The two oldest girls also came over for a crafting afternoon before Christmas. We made Christmas ornaments with vinyl decorations, decorated multi-purpose boxes with vinyl, and used HTV vinyl applied to shirts they brought with them. We were busy for 4 1/2 hours, and I was exhausted! The girls really did have fun, and they were operating the vinyl cutter independently before we were done. Too bad I didn’t take pictures of the shirts or boxes. We even made a set for the younger brother who just wasn’t quite up to the afternoon.

Christmas was held at my oldest son’s house, and it was also a success. I had three of the four children there plus spouses and most of the grandchildren. Luckily my son has a big house, though we didn’t stay with them (we live only a few minutes away). My contribution to food was all the makings for a pot roast, made in the Instant Pot, plus carrots and red potatoes for roasting. It was delicious, as was the ham and sides made by my daughter in law on the previous day.

I also got some sewing done! The quilt I made for the motorhome shrunk more than I expected, and it was about an inch short on all sides, I added a new 4” border to make up for it. Of course I couldn’t find any fabric of the same design, but I found some that coordinates well enough. It was a real pain, but I have it done except for the binding. I always serge the edge of the my quilt before binding, so it is good for the bed now if I don’t get the binding finished. I plan on getting the binding cut and pieced tomorrow, but I may or may not do the top stitching before the trip. I’d rather spend the time cleaning up the house and getting the laundry all done.

The bad thing that happened was with Lily, our cat. We had planned a preventative ultrasound and a tooth cleaning, but the vet found a small mass with a sore on her leg while shaving it before an IV. The vet had removed a basal cell cancer from Lily’s neck earlier in the year, so she was concerned. They called me, and we agreed to excise the small mass while she was already under sedation. Luckily the mass was benign, but we had one very, very unhappy cat for the almost two weeks it took for her wound to heal.

She already looked like a bit of a bobble head doll because of the neck skin removed in her earlier surgery, but the cone rubbed off even more hair! She will fill it out in a few months though. She is somewhere between 11 and 14 years old, and she has started losing enough weight we have moved her off her diet food to a more traditional senior diet. She had gotten above 10 pounds a few years back, and she should be about 8 pounds. She finally made it to 8 pounds, 2 ounces so she can go back to regular food. She does like her food!

We are now packing up for the next trip. We leave Iowa on Wednesday, New Yearks Day, and pick up the motorhome west of Oklahoma City. We will stay there a few days visiting family and restocking the refrigerator. We have reservations at Big Bend National Park beginning 9 January so we have quite a bit of time to get there. When we were on our way to Iowa, i wasn’t sure I wanted another long trip, but I am definitely looking forward to traveling again.

 

Thanksgiving and preparations for Christmas

Be prepared for a long post since it has been so long since my last post. I just don’t seem to get around to putting a post together when we are at the “sticks and bricks.” When I last posted, we weren’t quite at Thanksgiving. We had dinner on Wednesday because my daughter worked on Thursday. I used the Alton Brown brining recipe, and it was phenomenal! Absolutely the best turkey I have ever made. Even the white meat was good, and that is from a dedicated dark meat person. I made too many pies, but I have finally mastered a good pie crust made in the food processor. I splurged last summer on a Breville food processor, and it is phenomenal. Mashed sweet potatoes with butter and just a touch of brown sugar, mashed white potatoes, and braised green beans in the Instant Pot finished up dinner for seven adults and four children. The baby wasn’t interested 😁.

It tasted better than it looks.

I have also been sewing a little. I made some stuff toys for the almost 3 year old grandson, but I forgot to take pictures. I tried making the baby granddaughter a pair of knit harem pants off a free pattern. The baby is very long though, so they needed to be longer. I will adapt the pattern before I make it again. They were just a trial run made with scraps I had around.

I guess these are the latest style

I have also been doing some vinyl work. I made a onesie to go with the pants that said “The Snuggle is Real” (forgot a picture), and a tshirt for almost 3 year old with reindeer names on them, both with heat transfer vinyl. I also did some Christmas ornaments with Oracal 651, a regular adhesive vinyl.

Cute, isn’t it?

I have an assortment of them with different designs, and I have more I am going to do.

Kevin was busy outside. Looks pretty good! He has also ordered a lighted nativity scene that will sit on the porch. Kevin likes his lights.

Lights on the house and tree plus some deer and trees

We have also had some challenges. Our cat, Lily, had her teeth cleaned and a growth removed from her leg. She had a basal skin cancer removed a year and a half ago, so I am worried. It will be a few more days before we get the pathology report. The other really challenging news is my son’s dog, Lexi, who used to belong to us, is in final renal failure. She will cross the bridge on Saturday. She had a good life at 15 years, and she only had serious health problems in the last year. My son is devastated. He has had Lexi as his best bud for a number of years beginning when he moved to Montana for grad school 8-9 years ago.

Enough of bad news. My kitchen is also preparing for Christmas. I also made about 120-150 rolled sugar cookies. My oldest grandchildren will be here Saturday to decorate them. I might have gotten carried away though! I made some wonderful sugared pecans and the chocolate truffles will be finished tomorrow. They are a multi day process. I haven’t decided if I will make pressed cookies too, but I am thinking about it. I have an interesting ginger recipe that I would like to try. The Christmas music is also going full bore. I have been to a number of rehearsals for our church Christmas concert on Sunday afternoon. It is a variation of the traditional Lessons and Carols service.

Kevin and I were lucky enough to go to a production of Cabaret by the local university. It was a very moving show, and the ending was shocking and disquieting. As we left in silence we walked by a container of shoes, a nod to the Holocaust that many of the characters experienced. I did not expect such a professional show by a mid-level college; my error!

I will try to be more regular in my posts going forward.

Home again

No pictures for this post. We spent Tuesday night in Albuquerque at the American RV Park. Nice place, but close to the highway. Luckily it was more of a continuous hum rather than intermittent jake brakes. Wednesday we headed rest of the way across New Mexico and all of Texas. It was long enough that Kevin got to drive some, a rare thing. We ended up at a tiny RV park 1 mile into Oklahoma called Double D. It was a very inexpensive park since we used our Passport America membership to get it half off. Otherwise I wouldn’t recommend it. There were maybe 2 spots that had the trees trimmed back enough for us, and they were having water problems so only an electrical hookup was available. It would be fine for most travel trailers or small motorhomes.

We got up early and headed to Yukon, a suburb of Oklahoma City. Maverick Run RV Park is quite nice with roomy sites and clear views. It was quite empty this time of year, but I understand it is really busy in the warmer parts of the year. We spent a full day getting the motorhome ready to go into storage. We are going to live dangerously and keep the refrigerator turned on, hoping the solar keeps the batteries charged enough. That mean cleaning out everything that wasn’t sealed, just in case. Kevin cleaned the tanks as well as he could, and I got the last 4 loads of laundry done. I even got the sheets and towels all washed! It will be nice to come back to a clean place.

Both of us were excited to head home, and we were up early on Saturday. Kevin and I winterized the motorhome, dropped it in the storage lot, and headed on the 600 mile trip to Iowa by a little after 9:00 am. We made it home around 8:00 pm The house seems huge, and Lily seemed quite impressed. She kept running up and down stairs, playing with the stuffed mice Kevin gave her. The housekeeper had come on Friday, and the place is as spotless as she usually leaves it. I doubt it will stay that way long!

So far we have gone through 4 months of mail (!), renewed car and utility trailer tags, had dinner with our oldest son and his family, lunch with the second son and daughter, and talked to our third son. I also picked up more allergy drops and got my Viking sewing machine looked at. Oh, and I had a birthday with a lovely dinner! Now I am in the midst of planning Thanksgiving dinner (planned for Wednesday) along with practicing for our church choir concert in a few weeks. Enough to keep busy, for sure!

A Grand Canyon detour

It always takes a long time to restore order in the motorhome whenever we have been in one place for a while. After two weeks at Furnace Creek NPS campground, it took us about an hour and a half to get ready to leave. It is amazing how much stuff gets pulled out of the storage bays when we are stationary for a while – grill, Dutch ovens, picnic table cover, chairs, mats, and even more. The inside was a mess too with dust and dirt everywhere. I do vacuum every 4-5 days so the tile floors don’t get scratched, but that wasn’t even close to enough. Wiping counters and other surfaces, dusting, vacuuming, and even mopping was the order of the day. We didn’t leave until just after 10:00.

Sunday night we stayed at Fort Beale RV park in Kingman, AZ – back to mountain time. Not a bad place, though we just barely fit in the big pull through we had. The Grand Cherokee is a big vehicle, and we didn’t want to unhook. We did do some serious thinking about the route back to Iowa though, and spent some time on various weather apps checking forecasts for later in the week. It is nasty in the central part of the country right now, but it is forecast to be much better by when we would be driving through. Therefore we decided to take I-40 instead of the longer (and more boring) I-10/20. The other major consideration is when we will travel through Albuquerque, the only big city on the trip. I much prefer going through any big city between 9:00 and 3:00, so that generally means staying close to the city one night, if possible. Balancing all of that, we chose to spend last night at Twin Arrow Casino that provides free overnight stays in their parking lot. And since it was only a bit over 120 miles from Kingman, we took a quick detour to the Grand Canyon!

I love this view because it shows the river

Even with the smoky haze blurring the view, the canyon is amazing.

We did get a bit of a surprise at the southern edge of the park with these horses.

They were just grazing at the side of the road.
A shy foal was hungry. Mom was keeping an eye on us.

Since they were right by a sign for a riding stable, we called the number, thinking they were escapees. Nope, they were wild horses the man responded. What a nice thing to run across.

We are now at the American RV Park on the west side of Albuquerque, a drive of about 300 miles. Nice place, and mostly empty this time of year. We have a huge pull through so no unhitching needed. Tomorrow we will be in Double D RV Park in Texola, OK, right at the TX/OK border. It will be a long day, 400 miles, so I may even let Kevin drive some! Then we will arrive in the OKC area for two nights, setting the rig up for storage. No more posts probably until I can recover at the house in Iowa.

Titus Canyon, Artist Palette, 20 mule team, and heading home

Folks, you just thought I had a lot of pictures in previous posts! Get ready for even more.

The most amazing thing we saw at this year’s Encampment was a 20 mule team pulling newly built borax wagons. The wagons are 2 years old, and carefully created by a wagon builder in Montana to the original specifications. They are huge! The Death Valley Conservancy paid for them, and they helped fund the mule team too. The mules are from Bobby Tanner, an outfitter and packer in the Sierras, and he is one of only a handful of people able to manage such a team.

See the FedEx truck? Yeah, so did everyone else! The road was closed, but he thought he could get past the NPS, CHP, and the Sheriffs. Didn’t work out too well for him.

This is Kevin’s picture, taken from a high hill so you can see the bigger picture. The wagon train consisted of two huge wagons for borax, a water tank, 18 mules, and 2 horses. Yes, the term “20 mule team” is a bit inaccurate, but that’s the way it was done historically. And the team isn’t driven from the wagon but through a “jerk line” wielded by Bobby Tanner in the blue shirt and hat on the horse in front.

And I got the most amazing video I have ever made! Click on the link to see it, and turn up the volume to hear the mule bells. Watch towards the back of the team to see a mule “jumping the chain” to change the wagon direction. The wagons had solid axles, and they had to be turned by brute force.

IMG_3382

We didn’t hit many of the standard places for Death Valley pictures because we have done them so often. We did make an exception for Titus Canyon and Artist’s Palette. Titus Canyon requires a high clearance vehicle and some confidence, but it is a lovely drive. It is one way on a very rough gravel/rock road with tight turns and steep climbs, but the views are well worth it.

Layers and colors
A small window
You eventually drive down a wash with narrow walls
Water means everything here.
It is all about the layers
The town of Leadfield boomed for about 6 months and died. It was a hoax.
Someone didn’t believe the road needed high clearance. This resulted in a dead car and two days of the canyon shut down until they could tow the car out.
I did say something about layers
On the road into the canyon from Beatty.
From the top of the pass
A lovely isolated grouping
Look at the layers curling more than vertical! That is an example of the stress the land has undergone

The Artist’s Palette is another famous section of one way road. The formations has different minerals that provide a wide range of colors. And no, the green isn’t copper.

It is pretty, isn’t it? I hope you now believe Death Valley is more than sand dunes and dull brown rocks.

We left this morning for the 1200 mile trip back to Iowa. We made it to Kingman, AZ at Fort Beale RV Park. Quite a change from the spacious spot we had at DVNP, but such is life. We did get rewarded by a fantastic sunset tonight though. Too bad it is the result of smoke from the fires in California.

 

Emigrant Canyon, Skidoo Mill, and the 49er Encampment

On Monday we took a 4WD trip with ten other 49er vehicles to Emigrant Canyon and Skidoo. We had a good time, saw cool stuff, and gave the Jeep a good workout! We started up Emigrant Canyon to the mines and mill remnants near Emigrant Spring. It was a fine gravel road.
Mine remnants
Mill remnants
Not much left, but this cabin is in reasonable shape
Not all mine shafts are closed. This is one near Emigrant Spring
Head frame left in Emigrant Canyon

We continued to the townsite of Skidoo, an important gold mining area in the mountains just southwest of Stovepipe Wells. There isn’t much left of the town, just some old roads and metal fragments.

Not much left of the mine either, and we had too many vehicles to get there
The mill is in great shape. Notice the fifteen stamps still in the frame
Lots of mining remnants all over
Many of the mines were covered with bay friendly covers
It was over a 20% grade. Jeep made it just fine.
Looking toward Mesquite Dunes by Stovepipe Wells

We spent the next few days just hanging around and doing Encampment stuff. I participated in the amateur night known as Coyote Howl doing the Robert Service poem “The Shooting of Dan McGrew”. It went quite well. The professional music has been good too. We spent time watching the blacksmith and chow wagon crews too.

The Dutch Oven demos provided cobbler samples. Yum!
Portable blacksmith shop was making things. They let visitors help too.

One of the highlights is the historical character re-enactment by Steve Hale. This year he portrayed Snowshoe Johnson who used some of the first skis in the US. AS A Norwegian, he had grown up with them, and used them to run the first mail route over the Sierras in winter.

Steve Hale portrayed Snowshoe Thompson

Oh, and we had dinner with friends from the RV Forum.

I will save the posts about the 20 mule team, the borax wagons, and the wagon train until after we leave tomorrow. I should have cell service in Kingman where we hope to stay.

Death Valley

We tried to camp in Valley of Fires on Thursday, but the two rigs in front of us got the last two big sites. We didn’t win that specific lottery, but I will definitely come back another time. Yes, the rocks are really, really red.

We decided to push on towards Death Valley. The plan was to stay at Stovepipe Wells, but the NPS campgrounds was closed due to no campground host. The private campground was full, so we drove south towards Sunset Campground. It is a NPS campground that never gets full; if it is getting close, they just open up an overflow area! Lovely place with a great view of the Funeral Mountains to the east. We stayed there 3 nights than moved into our reservation site at the NPS Furnace Creek campground. Huge site, incredible views, and full hookups! I have tried to score a campsite here for years, but we got lucky this time with the reservation. We will try here until after the 49er Encampment is over on 10 November, then start working our way home.

While we were at Furnace Creek we got a huge windstorm. It came in with a blast at 4:00 am, and it was obvious many weren’t prepared. It was making the slide topper flap so loudly that we ended up bringing in both of the front slides. They are so long, especially the kitchen slide, that the wind can catch them badly. We saw the poor camp host picking up pieces of broken awnings and pop up shelters the next morning. The Texas Springs campground popular with tenters is closed due to no custodians (!!!), so the tenters are forced to stay in Sunset when  Furnace Creek is full, which is most of the time.

One of the interesting things at Sunset Campground is the music provided before the Encampment formally opens. A few guys setup a complete stage with sound system, and people come to play and jam. They are always considerate, and the music stops promptly at 9:00 or before for quiet hours. I had a picture, but it was so blurry I am not posting it. They played every night we were there, and it was a pleasant evening listen.

On Saturday we went to Pahrump to eat at a really great Thai restaurant we visit once (or more) each trip – Chat Thai. We actually tried again today, but the were closed! We ended up at Qu BBQ, which wasn’t bad, but the Thai place would have been better. Kevin is making a big Walmart and grocery run while I am posting this. There is no significant data service at the campground because Furnace Creek has a private network, so I have to drive quite a ways to get any service at all. Voice and messages work find though.

We have been able to take some nice 4WD trips though. We visited Echo Canyon, going by Eye of the Needle, and ending up at Inyo townsite and mill. Warning: lots of pictures ahead!

I told you I liked rocks! Look at the itty bitty window at the top.
The washed away parts look like they left a waterfall of rock
Lots of glory holes were near the road
Eye of the Needle is appropriately named
Eye of the Needle is actually about 10’ high
Contrary to the sign, the mine was up the hillside quite a ways. This is the remnant of the mill
Fascinating subterranean house in good condition
Inside the subterranean house
Lots of items left at Inyo
Lots of artifacts were collected on this table in front of another decrepit building

I can never have too much of the rocks in DVNP
Looking down from the canyon towards Badwater Basin with the Panamint as a backdrop

Today we visited Hole in the Rock and an old travertine quarry.

Rabbitbush is about the only thing in bloom.
My favorite cactus, the many-headed barrel cactus
The weathering looks like little goblin houses
The “Hole in the Wall” is between the light and dark walls, 40-50’ wide and hard to see until you are on it
The quarry where travertine was taken for the Borax Company headquarters in Los Angeles

This has taken way too long! Even in Pahrump I am on a relatively slow data connection, so I am now done. Well, until the next dump of photos from wonderful Death Valley!

Salt Lake City #2 and St.George

It was quite cool and wet on Monday, so we didn’t do an awful lot. We did get some shopping done, and we had a good meeting with our financial planner. We have a short term financial contract that expires next summer, and I will be going on social security next year at age 66. So we really needed to chat face to face about some options. Now that we have talked through it, we can do the rest over email and the phone when the time comes. We ate dinner at a lovely Mediterranean place called Mazzo’s. I recommend it.

Tuesday was a very enjoyable day though. The weather cleared, and the mountains were beautiful. There was no way I could get a good picture, so you will have to take my word for it! We also did a major shopping trip to Trader Joe’s for the last time this year.  A follow-on trip to Smith’s grocery stores for a pork butt followed. We were having friends over, and I wanted to make pulled pork. A good rub, a bit of chicken brother, and 60 minutes in the instant pot (plus 20 minutes pressure release) made a gorgeous base for pulled pork.

Part way through the “pulling” part

I decided on a baked potato bar with pork, cheese, broccoli, butter, sour cream, and green onions. I did debate how to cook 10 potatoes in the motorhome. Should I use the “automatic” function? Combo micro/convection but manual? Or do I do it the old fashioned way and just oil them, sprinkle with kosher salt, and bake them at 400 for an hour? I ended up old fashioned because I wanted a nice crisp skin on the potatoes, and it worked. Of course we also had the complication of the campground power going out! I had to run the generator for about 3 hours since I was using the Instant Pot, the convection oven, and the washer and dryer. Luckily no one was around to bother with the noise, though the in-coach generator isn’t terribly loud. Any generator is annoying to me though, but the bigger heating appliances don’t work on battery power.

We did have a great time with a bunch of my choir buddies. They even did the dishes! We were able to finish off the flan too.

This morning we were out of the campground a little after 9:00 am for the drive through town and on to St.George, UT. I timed it so I didn’t have to drive in heavy traffic, but oh my, was the road bad for about 5-7 miles in northern Utah county! It was a construction zone, and the road was uneven and had little wiggles, not curves, just wiggles that were hard to see the marking for. Once we got through that it was smooth sailing.

As we got near Kolob Canyon, the landscape started showing its renowned red rock beauty. The land is so big that I just can’t get a picture of it, but you have probably seen them other places. I started feeling I could breath again in the dry, clear air with space all around.

We are saying at our normal St.George spot, Temple View RV Park. We got a huge pull-through site, and the temperature of 80 degrees at 4:00 pm convinced me I could start wearing sandals again. We sat outside for quite a while, then went to dinner. As we left the restaurant, the hills were just finishing some reflected beauty. Again, my camera can’t capture the breath of the view, but I at least tried.

The view was somewhat spoiled by businesses
But I cut the businesses out of this one.

Tomorrow we head towards Valley of Fire State Park in Nevada. It has a no-reservation campground, so we are going to get there early. Hope we find a spot!

Salt Lake City #1

It isn’t that I think SLC is the best city in the nation/world, but that I expect to  have two posts while we are here.

We did have an easy ride through SLC on I-15 because we timed it that way. I have found pretty much any city is the easiest to drive through between 10 and 2, so we cruised through between 12 and 1, arriving at the KOA around 1:30. This is a nice KOA with lots of trees and even some grass. The sites are big for a RV park, with maybe 10’ between rigs. We got settled in and generally just relaxed. The. Verizon signal is ok here, so I downloaded a number of television episodes in preparation for no signal in Death Valley.

Saturday we took a drive to one of our favorite places, Antelope Island State Park. Weather was definitely coming in, and sadly there was quite a bit of haze. I still took a couple of pictures of the mountains across the lake.

The lake surprisingly wasn’t too low, or at least not for late fall. When I first moved to the area in 2012, we could canoe all around the island. Now you can only paddle around the western side because Farmington Bat on the east is only a couple of inches deep near the island. Sad. All the people on the Wasatch Front are using up the mountain water before it reaches the Great Salt Lake.
We also did some shopping. A particularly interesting purchase was a dozen 4 oz. canning jars to make flan sous vide, as described by the server at the Basque restaurant a few days ago. I use my immersion blender to mix these up, and it works great. Here is Kevin’s sous vide setup using a small ice chest.

A cover makes it much easier to cook.

And inside were 8 jars of flan plus one jar of left over custard.

Sorry for the poor quality. My high res version got deleted!

The results (samples this morning) were fantastic! Smooth and silky, though not easy to get out of the jars.

This morning we went to our old church, First Presbyterian, and I sang in the choir. It was great fun hanging out with my old friends and singing again. A small group of us went to lunch at a great Greek place called “The Other Place.” It has been around for years, but we never went before for some reason. That was definitely our mistake! It has been family run for about 40 years, and the food was food was great. We both had breakfast, but some of our friends have the lunches, and they were huge. I want to come back because they also have liver and onions, a weakness of mine.

Boise

We left Oregon on Monday, headed to Idaho. We are staying at Country Corner RV Park just north of Boise in Caldwell. Nice place. It is about a mile from I-84 so it is remarkably quiet, unusual for a traditional RV park. There are obviously a number of long term residents, but the place is clean and orderly. It was a long drive so we just ate some pre-cooked food from Trader Joe’s. It was, as usual, lovely.

Tuesday we were very lazy. I made a full recipe of puffy pancakes instead of the half recipe I usually make because I wasn’t thinking when I looked at the recipe! It was tasty though.  Once we ate breakfast we decided to visit the Boise Zoo. Interesting little place almost right downtown along the river. The weather was a bit cool in the shade, but these three seem to be frozen.

Not quite life size, but close

Actually the zoo had lots of statuary all through it, though I didn’t get any other pictures. It was interesting how so many of the animals were lounging   the sunniest spot in their areas.

The African exhibit was interesting in that it included interpretations that included the people of the area. There was, among other spots, a section of recreated village and a safari camp set up.

As a long time tent camper, the set up was interesting. Lots of furniture inside the tents.

In general, the zoo still had many of their animals in far too small exhibits though they had done as much as their limited space allowed to improve. They obviously cared about their animals and conservation, but it was still rather sad. I think that is the reason I didn’t take many pictures.

Today we took the Viking Opal 650 sewing machine to a technician in Boise. It has become really hard to change needles. The tech worked on it a bit, but says I probably need a new part, and he didn’t have one. I can get needles in and out with some effort, so I will just wait until I get back to Iowa to get it really fixed. It seems like some kind of an assembly error.

We also ate lunch at the same Boise Basque restaurant we at in the last time we were here: Bar Gernika. It is a small place next to the Basque museum and heritage center. It advertises Basque comfort food, and the lamb grinders we had were excellent. Nice selection of brews too, but the star was the flan! I have never in my life had such silky flan. Luckily our server also does some of the cooking, and he helps make the flan. The key seems to be the sous vide cooking for 2 hours at 180. Since Kevin is always looking for good things to cook with the sous vide system, I am sure we are going to try this.

I also finished the mini-quilt for Lily’s carrier. I used a new technique for binding that uses invisible polyester thread. It looks nice, but I want to make sure we wash it every time we do laundry to make sure it lasts. Isn’t the fabric cute?

Tomorrow we are spending the night in Twin Falls, ID, then on to Salt Lake City.