DD returned home on Friday night. We were so happy to have her home; we missed her a whole lot! While she was gone, I took the opportunity to really clean her room! I also picked her up a few new things for her room, and made her some new curtains. I had a hard time with the curtains; I wanted very much to just pick up and hang a commercial set, but they are incredibly (and un-justifiably) expensive, so I really had to get some fabric and make some. Besides that, she's crazy about dolphins, so I wanted something that works with that, too. These are her new curtains!

Yesterday we tried something new. We went strawberry picking! Thanks to the encouragement of Melissa (check out her blog, Fruit of Her Hands) and several others on one of my email lists, I have decided to try making jam and jelly. I already make bread, thanks to my very good friend Pam, who got me a new breadmaker for Christmas. I'm tweaking my recipes at this point, and DH has been told that we may soon be able to switch over to homemade bread exclusively. We did that five or six years ago, and I'd really like to get back there. I think making my own jam and jelly to go on homemade bread would be awesome, and it's something I've wanted to learn for many years.

Hopefully, this will soon be in jelly jars. Don't they look delicious?



I've also found a great website called PickYourOwn.org. They have lots of information and recipes on learning how to do home canning, and also state-by-state lists of places you can pick your own fruits and veggies. The one we visited yesterday was Monahan Farm in East Kingston, NH, and it was marvelous. I'm looking forward to finding lots more fresh fruits and veggies this summer!