Bells Canyon Hike and Summer Fun

Last week on July 10, my kids and I took a 5.6 mile roundtrip hike to the lower water falls at Bells Canyon.  Here are some photos of the area.

Bells Canyon Water fall (pictured above from blurry cell phone camera).  I was too exhausted at the top to get any closer to the falls for a better picture.

View of Salt Lake Valley from Bells Canyon Hike

This hike has a lot of great shade and cooler air temperatures the closer you get to the falls.  Even though I'm used to walking or jogging 3.5 miles a day, the steep climb up to the falls left me tired and sore for two days afterwards.  This hike is a great workout!  Here are my two hiking buddies:

Some more summer fun from June 27:

 These giant inflatable human gerbil balls in a pool were a fun activity at Taylorsville Days.  The kids kept falling whenever they tried to stand.

Ice Is Here Again!

I finally replaced our broken ice maker!  It actually wasn't that hard to do.  We have a bottom drawer freezer with a refrigerator on top.  It only took a few simple steps to remove the old ice maker and replace it:

1-First, I unplugged the refrigerator.

2-I moved all of the food out of the fridge and freezer and put them in our basement fridge/freezer.  (You could use a few coolers filled with ice for this part if you don't have a second refrigerator.)

3-I cleaned and removed the entire insides of both the fridge and freezer with a simple solution of one part distilled vinegar to one part water.  This step took the longest because we had a lot of hidden spills underneath shelves and in crevices.

4-Vacuumed the coils beneath the freezer and wiped down all exterior components with the water/vinegar solution.  Removed all the dust I could possibly reach or see.

5-Removed the freezer drawer door and removed both interior baskets.

6-Took 3 quarter inch (1/4) screw/bolts off of the ice machine/freezer wall and unplugged electrical wires of ice maker to remove it.  This part was the quickest and easiest!

7-Replaced old, damaged ice maker with new one I purchased at appliance repair shop.  Simply had to swap out the electrical plug to make it compatible with my fridge and replace the new plastic hanging bracket beneath the maker with the old metal bracket from the previous maker.  Then I just re-directed the water tube into the new maker, screwed the three bolts in place, and re-connected the electrical wires.

8-Re-hung the freezer door, and reinstalled all newly cleaned baskets and shelving into the fridge and refrigerator.

9-Plugged in the main electrical plug of fridge.  (Didn't have to re-connect the water line because I never disconnected it.)

10-Waited 2 hours for freezer to cool down below 5 degrees Fahrenheit, and could hear water flowing into ice maker.  Another 1 to 2 hours later, we had our first ice cubes!

This is definitely an easy DIY job.  It just required a 1/4" socket tool that resembles a screwdriver.  

Tessellating Pinwheel Baby Quilts

I've already pieced and quilted two baby quilt tops on the Janome 6500, and I love it! The 1/4" piecing foot made the piecing so easy!  Quilting with the even feed foot was easier and fed more evenly than the walking foot on my Viking machine.  I used stitch 28 and variegated thread to quilt all 16 pinwheels on each of the two quilts.

It took hours to make the quilts, but the extra throat space on the machine's harp made it so much easier to move the quilt all around while stitching.  The needle up/down feature set to down allowed me to pivot around corners easily.  I used the automatic bobbin thread cutter several times, too.  These features actually saved time and made a better quilting experience than I've had in the past.

The drawbacks to my new Janome machine:  large size and weight, price tag, and thread lint build up in needle uptake lever area of the machine.  I still love it, though!  Also, the machine was only available at one brick and mortar dealer nearby for purchase.  Luckily, that one dealer actually let me test drive the machine for myself.

Another odd drawback of the machine was that it continued to stitch even after I removed my foot from the pedal.  It took three or four more stitches by itself.  Not sure why, but I suspect possible overheating from hours of sewing--or maybe the foot pedal jammed somehow.  Not a big deal.

I used the Sizzix Bigz Tessellating Pinwheel die to make all the fabric cuts for both quilts.  The second quilt (not pictured) has a pink binding, but is otherwise nearly identical to the one shown. The die made fabric cutting easy and much safer for me than rotary blade cutting.  The 2 1/2" strip die made the bias binding strips for both quilts really easy.  I like how the die only has blades along the sides of the strips and not at the top and bottom.  That enables me to control the length of the strips.