Jig Saw Puzzles & Log Cabins & Catch-up

I can hardly believe that a week has gone by but here we are in mid-August. The weather has cleared out a little bit and so we can enjoy a few days of temps that are not in the 90s. It still seems like many people have blog-fatigue and I guess I can count myself among the lost.

My brother Pete and his wife Dawn came bringing with them the ever-adorable niece Alicia this past weekend. They were attending a reunion and so I got to hang with Alicia. She's an only child and very easy to be with. Whatever you want to do she's happy with. Since the weather was crappy-hot we decided to tackle a puzzle. Roger found an old drawing board somewhere and so we were able to do it in comfort on the kitchen table rather than having old Aunt Dee turn into a pretzel around the coffee table on the floor-Oh! my aching back!! Let's not even discuss the knees.
As you can see we all did fairly well until we got to the upper right hand corner pumpkin patch...there aren't enough evil words to describe how hard the dreaded pumpkin patch is. Every piece looks the same and my eyes were getting crossed. Even Alicia passed on that part. We will now put away that one and begin work on the other shown above. I love jig saw puzzles. Don't know why we don't do more of them. Everyone got involved including James who made me get all teary-eyed by shouting for joy when he saw it. He actually said to his girlfriend on the phone that he was so happy to be doing this with the family again. It was a great weekend. Our next group of visitors don't come until Labor Day weekend so we have a weeks respite from entertaining. The next group of visitors are our close friends Rich & Diane. They entertain themselves and everyone else so it will be no sweat for me.
As you can see, I am mindlessly making log cabins and I know, I know, they're not really log cabins I just forget what you call them-is it Bento boxes? Whatever you call them, I had this great, dynamic colored fabric waiting to be used and it caught my eye for just this thing. I have several gift to make and a very late wedding gift or 2 still due and these little boxes will become one of those things.
Other than the puzzles and bento boxes(this is what I'm calling them regardless) there isn't a lot going on. James and Dani are driving to PA this weekend to a car race somewhere in the western part of the state. BIL Bob is going to visit friends upstate and Roger & I are just chillin' here alone. A little BBQ-a little puzzling-a little DVDing and whatever. My BIL Bob isn't able to eat beef much anymore so it will be an all-steak weekend, with some shrimp thrown in to the mix. I may do the Meme on Deb's Red Shoe Ramblings (see sidebar) in the next day...or not. Talk to you soon.