Summer starts today!

Tomorrow, my daughter is leaving to be a summer camp counselor with aboriginal children in the north.
She hopes to be a teacher one day, and it both excited and apprehensive about the new adventure.
She will be living and working in the communities, and getting to work with kids everyday, focusing on reading and literacy -- two of her great passions.
During the past couple of weeks, she has been packing based on the final weight of her luggage. She will be working in remote areas, only accessible by bush plane, so she has to travel light.

The agency she is working for sent a packing list and cautioned that 50 pounds is the limit. Her bags weigh 40 pounds in total -- including sleeping bag and backpack.

Since she won't be home for her birthday this year, we had a little celebration on the weekend.

I made her a composition book cover based on a pattern in Pretty Little Mini Quilts. I like this series of books, but I find they are a bit short on templates. So, I made my own and re-sized it to better fit the book cover. I had a lot of fun putting this together. It involved a bit of quilting, hand embroidery, applique, and I printed a quilt label using some antique French post cards from the Graphics Fairy. It's a great website offering free copyright free vintage and antique images. I did the labels in my desktop publishing program and then printed them out on inkjet fabric.

My daughter loved the book and will use it for her lesson plans. We tucked a gift card for some new titles on her e-reader -- about the only way she could bring 150 books on her northern adventure!!! Happy Summer everyone!