I like #24

Welcome to another round of I Like Thursdays!  I'm grateful that there's a lot to like this week!

1. I like having a bit of time to get caught up on blogging!  For quite a while I haven't had time to blog much except my I like posts, but I finally had a bit of time over the weekend to get posts written up about some of my recently completed quilts and sewing projects.  Check back in over the next couple of weeks if you're interested in seeing them!

2. I like 4th of July!  I like the celebrations and I like having a moment to pause and think about why I'm proud to be American, and grateful to those who have fought and served for our country, even if I don't agree with everything happening now.  Mike and I got to go to a couple of fireworks displays too which was fun.  One of them got rained out, but it turned into something of an adventure.

3. I like public art!  This giant sculpture is called skydance bridge and the top portion was inspired by our state bird, the scissortail flycatcher.  It's over the freeway, and is really neatly illuminated at night.  I caught this picture while Mike was driving us home from the rained-out-fireworks the other night.  So cool!

4.  I love my grandmother!  She's 89 (or maybe 90?) this year, but she and my grandfather still live in their home in Ruidoso where I grew up.  She's such a great lady, always interested in everything we're doing.  She worked for many years in the post office, and started collections of plate block stamps for each grandchild when they were born.  I love looking back at the old stamp albums she made us.  As a result though, she has tons of leftover stamps from the 60s-90s and just uses them up now as postage. Getting a letter or card from her is even more wonderful because of all the cool stamps!

5.  I love my crabapple tree!  My crabapples just got ripe and I decided I should pick them all before the birds go them.  It's not a big tree but I got enough to make it worth doing some jelly, so on 4th of July I made the juice.  I put it in the freezer and I'll make the jelly later in the year.  I don't have any canning jars right now and I was going to buy some, but my mom has tons and tons, so I'll just wait until I can get to NM and grab some of hers.  The crabapples were a bit wormy, in fact, one live worm crawled out on my cutting board! (That's the bottom picture)  Jelly's a good thing to do with wormy fruit though, you can just hack off the gross parts and proceed without having to throw the whole thing away.  Don't worry, no worms in the jelly!

Thanks as always to LeeAnna for keeping us going!