Jelly Belly Basket Weaving - Fun time with the girls

Yesterday was a momentous occasion.  Bethany wove her first Longaberger Basket.  I wove my second and had a great time with my mom, sister, niece, mother-in-law, sister-in-law, Bethany and Naomi (all though she just watched).  Longaberger has become somewhat of a family tradition. 

My mom loves Longaberger and gave me my first basket a hand-woven doll cradle as a young girl.  I now have a house that is adorned with many baskets and even sold them for awhile.  I have wanted to go to the Longaberger homestead for years, but the trip has not happened.  But we did get the next best thing.  Longaberger came to us.  We went to the Jelly Belly Factory in Fairfield, California and with the assistance of expert basket weavers we got to weave our very own one of a kind basket. 



Bethany and I with Ray our Professional Basket Weaver.



We also got to sample Jelly Bellies and fudge.  What could be better?  Naomi loves all the different yellow Jelly Bellies.  Bethany loves to try all of the Jelly Belly recipes to make different appetizing flavors like root beer float (2 root beers and 1 cream soda) and Blueberry Muffin (2 blueberry and 1 Buttered Popcorn).  We discovered it doesn't matter what language you speak Jelly Belly has the recipes written out for you.  There was German, Greek, Arabic and Japanese to name a few.

The whole family was going to go but alas poor Sam woke up in the morning with a 102 degree fever so daddy and Sam stayed home.  We left Mary too.  Please don't tell her she missed anything special.  And Elijah chose to spend the day with Papa.  We opted not to go on the tour this time.  We've been at least half a dozen times already.  The tour isn't that spectacular that multiple trips are required but the abundant free samples at the end, they even give them to the babies, now that is special.  The kids really like the paper hats they give you to wear as well.

What we thought was going to be a family outing turned into a fun multi-generational girls day out where we got sweet treats and came home with beautiful baskets woven by us!  Today was a success for sure.


Me, my niece, Bethany, my sister and my mom in front of the Longaberger Basket.



Cousins.