Back to blogging...

Happy fall everyone! It's that time of year when less and less time is spent outside and more and more time is spent in the coziness of the indoors. This summer was all too short but I am happy to feel the chill in the air and wake up to rain falling on the roof. It's time for making lots of hearty soups, stews and homemade bread. Believe it or not I am actually getting more out of my vegetable garden right now than I did in the summer. I have all kinds of broccoli, parsnips, carrots, onions, potatoes, collards, lettuce, cabbage and a few sugar pumpkins. My poor little rutabagas and turnips didn't do so good. They ended up long and skinny. Must have been the soil and I don't think I spaced them properly. I will work on that next year. And now it's time to start blogging again.

Unfortunately I didn't get as much hiking in this summer as I would have liked to due to a sprained ankle I received when walking across a small snowfield on a hike up near Mt. Rainier. I wasn't paying attention and walked right over a creek running under the snow, my leg broke through and down I went. This was back on August 15th and I am just now starting to feel like it is finally starting to heal. I keep hearing that by the end of it I will wish that I had just broken my ankle as bone breaks tend to heal much quicker than soft tissue damage. But we did go on a couple of camping trips, the most epic one being camping in Glacier National Park in Montana for a week, all before my sprained ankle thankfully. (My actual x-ray.)

I have started scrapbooking again. I stopped for several years but felt the itch return this fall. Fall is the perfect time to scrapbook all the past summer events. I have been having lots of fun cutting out my own little page decorations. I don't have the money for a big expensive Cricut machine that cuts all the pieces for you so I just cut them all out by hand. I discovered chalk ink which is perfect for putting around the edges of cutouts and picture mats. It gives an almost antique look while also highlighting the image. These are some of the pictures from our camping trip to Banks Lake in Eastern Washington.



I had fun making all the little cutouts. I made several of each so I can use them on my Glacier scrapbook pages too. I still have more ideas for others as well. I think the trees and the little campfires are my favorite pieces.