Arizona visit

So, for my mom's birthday she flew me to Arizona and it was the first time I had been back in 8 months.
The first thing we did when I got off the plane was go shopping(my nephews were in school until after lunch)! I am not one that can shop for clothes online unless I try them on first, and I have had a hard time shopping in Michigan. The malls and department stores are smaller and the selection is different here. So, I got shoes, pants and a couple purses on my first day back.
Then I ran to see my nephews and family, something that I had been looking forward to for 8 months (since I left). I miss them terribly, and my nephews are growing so fast, its been really difficult for me to be away from them.
And of course friends and food!!! It felt so good to be around my friends, we caught up like I had only been on a short vacation. It's almost like we barely missed a beat.
I realized how much I have missed the restaurants that we frequented while living in Arizona. Its not surprising that MI does not have good sushi, but it is surprising that AZ does, and boy was it good.
On Saturday Teresa Robinette of TuttiBella Designs hosted our annual trunk show at her place, and all our friends came by to visit and see our new designs. I feel so lucky to have such amazing friends!

Wendy wearing both mine and Teresa's pieces.

Gary and Tara

Jen and Francesca 

The host and one of my dearest friends, Teresa

More dear friends: Carol, Anita and Gail. Some of the best bead friends one could ask for. This was taken after a fantastic night of awesome food, drinks and conversation. 

Green tomatoes and the end of summer

It's hard to believe that it has been almost a month since my last post. I have been very busy with life and friends.

My last post was all about the tomato crop that we had this summer, well, fall is here and it has dropped below 30degrees F a few times and we still had about 30 pounds of green tomatoes on the vine that I did not want to throw away, so I searched far and wide for ideas and asked friends for green tomato recipes.  Here is what I came up with.

Thats a huge bowl of chopped tomatoes. 

I chopped 5 pounds of green tomatoes, 6 onions, 3 red bell peppers, 1 head of garlic, jalapeños, and cilantro, cooked them down and make salsa.

Here is the caned salsa.

And there was another 20 pounds of tomatoes left, so I pickled them.

Spicy dill cherry tomatoes.

And bread and butter tomatoes.

And still I had more tomatoes....... So the remaining green tomatoes are in the cool basement where they are slowly ripening. It was sad to see the tomato plants go, as it is a reminder that the winter months are upon us, but that means we can eat winter squash and pumpkin pie!
Good bye summer, see you next year.