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Yesterday, Kayla took a big leap and moved to Columbus! She will be an hour and 40 minutes from us. I've had multiple questions and I will do my best to answer them in this post. (the black marks on the house are me marking out the address)
In June, I did a google search looking for the beach closest to our house. Imagine my surprise when it is only 15 minutes away!!! It's called Wallace Lake-so obviously not a beach with an ocean, but a beach with a lake, no matter, I will take it! It is in Berea.
I was pretty excited about being able to go to the Columbus Book Festival this year. Granted, there were only seven authors I was familiar with, but I planned to try and meet a few of them, and attend the Summer Big Book Sale that was going on at the same time, in the same place! (I only realized they were in the same location the day before, LOL!) We (me and Matt) had planned to leave our house at 7:30 so we would hopefully be there in plenty of time to park at the library. We got started a little later than planned because we had a showing scheduled for that afternoon, so had to leave the house show worthy.
In May Matt and I went to another Cain concert. We were celebrating our anniversary, and I love Cain's music. The concert was at the Akron Civic center, which is a beautiful venue. However, I think the acoustics were not as good there as other venues. The openers were John and Caleb, Ben Fuller, Joseph O'Brien, and Katy Nicole. My favorites were Cain and Katy Nicole.
June went by in such a blur I can't really tell you what all happened! July completely snuck up on me, and I am still struggling to remember it is already July, LOL! June was a blur of house hunting, house showings, job hunting, and lots of cleaning.
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As I mentioned in February I am do
ing a book blanket with classic granny squares. Instead of doing a classic granny square with five or six rounds, I am choosing to do mine with four rounds. In the post I shared last month, I had pictures from seven squares that I had completed.
I figured if I planned out what blog posts I wanted to write in April, that I would be more consistent with publishing them.
I have been wanting to do a bookshelf quilt for a year and a half (ever since I saw the idea in a quilting magazine!). But, with running our own sewing business I always had things to prep for that and didn't have time to start it. As we have gotten better organized (and decided not to do camps this summer), I have had more free time. Once I finished my Ohio Quilt, I couldn't wait to dive into my bookshelf quilt. It's been up a few weeks, so I am glad to finally get around to finishing this post!
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I bought tickets back in September for the Toby Mac Hits Deep tour as one of our Christmas presents. Matt has always enjoyed Toby Mac (back when he was with Third Day), and Elijah has kept up with his music as well. I had the opportunity to see Cain in concert in the fall of 2023 while on a ladies retreat. I LOVED it and have been wanting to see them in concert again. So, they were the band I was most excited to see. Ryan Stevenson, Crowder (another of Elijah's favorite's), and Terrian also performed. We had a blast enjoying our final Christmas present 
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Today, 2/22/25, we went out to Edgewater Park in Cleveland to see the frozen Lake Erie! It was partially frozen earlier in the year, but we were not able to make it out there. This is the first time since we've moved here that it has been frozen. We went to the part of the park where there is a sandy beach and a swim area. It was 19, sunny, with a brisk wind when we got there. Most of the sand is covered with snow, and the lake is as well. In case you are wondering what frozen sand feels like, it feels like frozen dirt (Elijah made that observation 😂). We went a decent way out onto the lake, but not as far as other people had gone. The snow was pretty deep on the lake, and it was hard to walk in, plus super cold! I would love to go again and see it when it is frozen without snow, which I think would be even cooler than it was today. I will make comments on some photos, but basically all the uneven terrains are frozen waves.
Winter seems to be here to stay. We had snow the entire month of January (which made for a lot of great pictures!). We've had a wintery mix several times recently, which left our sidewalk and driveway covered in ice for quite a few days (even with salt having been thrown down ahead of the storm!).
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Before Christmas, I was talking to Matt and I told him that I had come across a blog talking about reusable paper towels. I LOVED the idea and couldn't believe I had never thought of it before. Essentially, you use old towels, washcloths, or flannels to make the paper towels. Who doesn't have old towels laying around? But, you can pretty them up with other fabric. To see how it is done, you can click here. I love how the blogger lists all the reasons you should switch to reusable paper towels, it is a great article and they are so easy to make.
Brunswick Lake Nature Preserve-one of the first places Matt and I hiked/walked after moving to Ohio, but I never got the post posted. So, here are pictures from September 2023 (gah, how has it been that long?!)
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