Apple Cider and Mama's Civil War Dress

Yesterday Daddy stayed home, and we made apple cider! We got somewhere around five and a half gallons, and it is delicious! Our new cider table worked great, only we had a slight problem with the tabletop coming off on the pressing side. Daddy fixed this defect though, and it works really well now! We also found out that we need not hurry. The disposal will overheat with such constant use, but it didn't do this to us until we were cleaning it out on our last batch! We had two different kinds of apple on hand, so we tried them both. The cooking apple's cider turned out sour, and the eating apple (we're not too fond of this type of eating apple) turned out very sweet. They mix really well. Alone, I prefer the sour one when they are at room temp, and the sweet one when they are chilled.

I have finally gotten to see Mama in her Civil War dress! She looks great in it, but she is going to have a larger hoop than mine. So, until she gets it, she cannot hem her dress. She did finish her hooks and eyes though! Yesterday she got a beautiful piece of fabric at Wal-Mart! We are all surprised because we can hardly ever find anything like that there! She says that if there is enough she wants to make Sense and Sensibility's Regency dress pattern (pardon the lack of a link, I don't feel like putting one in right now).