Before we leave for awhile

I'm crankin' out the tasks today, crossing things off my to-do-before-leaving-town-for-a-week checklist.

1. Feed friend's cats and scoop 2 deposits of fresh cat shit out of her kitchen sink because apparently these felines do NOT like to be left alone. Check.
2. Make a quadruple batch of pralines to take to Husband's family reunion on Tuesday, using 4 pounds of sugar, 4 pounds of light brown sugar, 2 pounds of pecan halves, 1/2 a cup of bourbon, and 1/2 a pound of butter. Oh, and a measly 1 cup of heavy cream. Check.
3. Finish basting the twin bed quilt of little Bean so that I can take it and its mate on our trip and do some big-stitch quilting on those suckers, maybe get 'em knocked out and ready to bind once I get home. What possessed me to whip up 2 matching twin bed quilts for my girls, I don't know. I've been working on them off and on for about 8 months now. It's tablecloths and the occasional crib quilt gift from here on out. Oy vey with the quilting hobby! But check on the basting.
4. Seriously clean Sister's room while she's gone for a week with her Dad and can't protest my tossing her priceless paper scraps with her most brilliant inspirations on them. I've tried having her help me on room deep-cleaning to instill in her the lesson that not all we make and work on is valuable and fabulous. Sometimes we make works of genius that we should keep forever, and sometimes we make crap. This is a hard lesson for an almost-8 year old, so I've decided no more end-of-school-year room purging while she's anywhere on the premises. Anyways, I got a start on it before I gave up in disgust because I've let her accumulate vast mountains of crap over the last 6 months and it's really dismaying. Maybe when we get back. Half-check.

And that's about all I can manage today. My energy is petering out at this point and I still have to pack for me and Bean. We're leaving tomorrow morning and won't have internet access up in them thar hills for the next week. But I hope you all have lovely long weekends and a happy 4th!