Mavis Travel Log Day 1 – Visiting with JJ, Zoe and Valerie

Saturday morning began in JJ’s kitchen making pizza dough and getting caught up on the latest news.  She had snow at her place in Virginia {along with cows, chickens, cats and dogs in her backyard} and wood burning in the woodstove. It was pretty much all this suburban housewife from the Pacific Northwest could ask for.

While we were busy talking, her son was whittling popsicle sticks into mini spoons on the kitchen table. 

The finished product. I think he should move on to large wooden spoons next and then open his own Etsy shop. What do you think? Aren’t those tiny little spoons cool?

Multi tasking.

My current project. I started it on the airplane.

JJ’s braided bread recipe.

Around noon The Girl and I headed off to our next destination… Lancaster County, PA.

The Girl has a friend in the area so I dropped her off and then drove over to Zoë’s mom’s house {cookbook author Valerie Baer}. When I got there Zoë was making kit bags for the MCC and Valerie was putting dinner in her Instant Pot.

Zoë is amazing. She’s kinda like a cuter version of the Energizer bunny. Everytime I talk to her she has about a million and one projects she’s working on. In addition to sewing potholders and quilts for her Etsy shop, these days she also homeschools her 4 kids, works on custom quilt and curtain orders as well as cooks all the meals for her family from scratch. Oh, and this year her family started tapping trees on their property to make maple syrup. Ya. So you know, she never stops moving.

Neither does her mom.

Saturday nights dinner.

After dinner Valerie showed me the progress she’s made on the rug hooking project she started when I was at her place last winter. She’s soooo close to being done!!!

Valerie’s house is AMAZING. It was built sometime in the 1700’s and it is stuffed with all sorts of goodness. There is so much to look at I’m pretty sure she could open a craft store with all the supplies she has on hand. One day, I hope I have such an eclectic collection of supplies to pull from. Seriously. I could go in and not come out for a week because I’d be too busy in there creating stuff.

The back room is AWESOME. Plus, she can sew just about anything. In fact she used to sew wedding dresses on the side!!!

I spotted an apron at the garden show last month and wanted to get one but they were asking $62 for them. So I hunted down a free pattern for a Japanese style criss cross apron online and asked Valerie and Zoë if they would help me make one using some linen I already had on hand. The pattern looked pretty straightforward so I was thinking we’d totally whip it out in an hour or two.

Well, one thing led to another and in the end Zoë cut out all the fabric, I ironed it and Valerie stitched the apron together. We stayed up until around 11:30 that night but we finally finished it and the end result was gorgeous!!! I’ll have to take a picture of it when I get back home so you can see how it turned out.

Some ladies get together and drink wine, some ladies go to home shopping parties on the weekends, but the three of us, well, we all get a kick out of new sewing/craft projects and catching up on the latest news.

I had a blast and I can’t wait to go back again.

Oh, and when I went up to bed saturday night, Lucy the stuffed puggle was on the bed in Valerie’s guest room. Seriously. How cute was that? 🙂 🙂 🙂

Peace Out Girl Scouts… I’ll check back in tomorrow.

~Mavis