*** Hello! Welcome to my website. Thank you for stopping by. My name is Catherine Steele and I make beautiful glass beads!! Every one is made with tremendous care and I’m very proud of every bead I sell. All my beads are properly kiln annealed for lasting durability. I post beads often so do stop by and see what’s new. ***
Nothing bead related at the moment.....
June 30th,
Yesterday Craig and I celebrated our 13th wedding anniversary, WHA-WHO! It doesn’t seem that long ago we go married, but the date doesn’t lie. Time flies when you’re having fun :o)
I guess it’s been a few weeks since I updated last. I take pictures for my chat, but I often don’t get around to posting them. I’m not a real lover of writing. My life isn’t all that exciting anyway, so you haven’t missed much.
My vegetable garden overall has been doing really, really well. I’ve had a few setbacks with critters eating my seedlings (or my seeds not germinating) and I have to replant, but other then that, it’s growing really well. I have lots of green tomatoes on my early tomato plants, peppers on all my pepper plants and some pretty big eggplants too. My pansy bowls are really goreous. My hanging flower baskets on the other hand are UG-LEE. Some of the stems hang down, some are up straight. Ugh.... They also aren't covered with flowers like the premade baskets you can buy. I'll try to get those stems down so they aren't as embarassingly ug-lee as they are now. Maybe that will help... The flower seeds I planted out back are not doing well at all. If they did germinate, slugs got to them. Some were doing really well and the deer came and ate them all down to just a few inches. Hhhhhhhhh I might see just a few flowers from all those seed I planted, if I'm lucky.
Last week the fam and I went strawberry picking at Mason farms. This is funny....as we were driving down to the STRAWberry patch, we noticed this tall grassy crop in the fields. We wondered out loud what kind of crop it could be? Hay? Maybe oats! It was only after an hour or so it dawned on me it was straw growing in those fields! LOL Not the quickest on that one….
Over all, picking the berries was a good time. Emily ate way more then she put in the basket (LOL) and was really pleasant and chatty. Ryan on the other hand, did a lot of heavy sighing and complaining and hardly picked any berries at all. He used to be my little worker??? We picked 20 quarts (5 baskets) that first day. We went back a few days later and picked another 20 quarts. The berries were just SO perfect. There is nothing like having fresh berries right off the plant! After each day I would process all the berries. I froze 33 pounds. I cleaned and cut the tops off each berry and put them on a cookie sheet to freeze them individually. The next day I put 1 lb of strawberries into each bag and then sealed the bags using my vacuum FoodSaver.
I also made 5 batches of strawberry jam (40 jars). I personally think it's a lot of jam and it might be too many. My family assures me that's it's not too much. They are all excited about all the jam. Strawberry jam is a favorite around here. I hope none go to waste!
We also just ate a lot of strawberries. I made a pound cake and we ate that covered with sweetened cut strawberries. It was REALLY good. I also melted some chocolate and we dipped strawberries in that. Then I made some strawberry muffins…yummy!! We are all strawberried out now…
Craig finally started working on the bluebird house Ryan received back in March. The birdhouse did get put together. It’s not perfect and there are exposed nail ends showing, but it’s together! I’m sure the birds will love it :o) 
One more thing, an update on our cat Milo. He is showing more signs of being stressed out/anxious. He has begun licking all the fur off his paws, legs and tummy. He not only licks off all the fur but he bites himself and creates all these sores all over himself. Then to top it off, he barfs up hairballs from all the licking! It’s getting really frustrating. He has stopped coming up to me to watch TV like he used to. He used to be my purr/love machine. Now he’s just a bundle of nerves who wants to be left alone to just lick himself to death.
