Oh my goodness!

Three things to be happy about:
(1) gifts from afar
(2) great exhibits
(3) being thought of

I was thought of by my neighbor, as he sunned himself (I guess) in St. Thomas last week - yesterday he presented me with a delicious world famous Tortuga Caribbean rum cake!

The size is just big enough, because this cake is so unbelievably moist and rich, rich, rich!

Just so you know, it's "officially recognized as the #1 souvenir of the Caribbean..."

My other goodness was a scrappy-licious bag of scraps from my friend Robin...

Just look at all the possibilities!

Some really big chunks in there...

These can be cut down into any number of sizes and shapes!

I can use these as the corner squares for my lozenge leader-ender project...

Quilt seeds!

Shall I add these blocks to my "parts department?"

 A long pieced one... I wonder how Robin used the piece this was left over from?

These five inch squares can be cut into 3-1/2" squares for my x and plus project.

The stack I recently cut is slowly dwindling as I kit up the pieces and parts!



Can you tell I'm feeling scrap-happy??  Thanks Robin!  I just love me some scraps, especially if they are gifted to me!

I needed these two happy gifts because I'm still having issues with my PC - it reboots without warning.  Time to take it back to the Geek Squad and see if they can find out what's going on.  This is so annoying, I bought this PC in January 2014, just enough time for the warranty to run out!

That's it for now, have a great Friday... sew forth and sew on til later...

Soup's on!

Three things to be happy about:
(1) fresh fruit
(2) red watering cans
(3) reading food magazines

Home made chicken vegetable soup!

Just the thought probably makes your mouth water, but "home made" and "Linda's home made" are probably far, far apart!

I like the rotisserie chickens you get at Costco - at $4.99 the price is always right!

But after I've eaten a certain amount I'm a bit tired of it.  Some people debone and make chicken salad, but any amount that I made, I would toss some of it out... so I don't bother.

I just toss the carcasses into the freezer til I want them.  Yesterday was a good time to bring out two for chicken soup, frost and all!

Into my crock pot they went, along with 4 cups of chicken broth, on the high setting.

An hour later, I deboned (and de-skinned) them - had a pretty good amount of meat to work with!

Tossed in some Bird's Eye frozen veggies, water and other secret ingredients.

Added a bit too much water though; thicker would have been better!

After slow cooking for a time, it wasn't too too bad!

I give it a "B"

"A" means I'd gladly serve it to company
"B" means it's sorta okay, needs pepping up a bit but I'll eat it!
"C" means I've had better but I'll eat rather than toss it out and waste food!

So - chicken vegetable soup with a peanut butter and jelly sandwich - not a bad lunch!

Have a great day, sew forth and sew on til later!

Moving right along

Three things to be happy about:
(1) a good start
(2) a great finish
(3) the process in between

Well, my 10-year anniversary top's all done - Marei was right, the top sashing border was too small!  I cut 3-1/2" sashing for the sides, so I needed the same size for top and bottom.

Now I need to decide how to quilt it so as to enhance the applique and embroidery blocks.  I never thought to take close up shots of my block collection before I put them together, there are two pretty ones that are 3-D!

The four black blocks were tricky to place, I wanted to have one in each vertical and horizontal row, sort of a suduku (?) effect.  Then I placed the red/pink/orange/red blocks along the other diagonal.  (Wee Bee members, if this quilt is supposed to be secret, please cover the picture while you read the text!)

On another subject, here's a great example of what NOT to do with bread pudding!

I thought it'd be a good idea to make little bread pudding muffins, so I wouldn't have to serve it out of the larger container.  They came out just a bit dry on the top and sorta dense in the middle, yikes!

Next day when I nuked one the top was okay but it had a light, slightly spongy (or airy) texture in the middle... maybe it's the breads I used - cinnamon bread, wheat bread, raisin bagel...

They don't taste too bad, I just wouldn't want to offer them to comp'ny!

We learn, we make adjustments, we move right along ... sew forth and sew on!

A little side trip

Is this Thursday already?  Where did the week go!? 

Sometimes when I look at my log I'm intrigued to see where my visitors are coming from - places like Colombes, Opelousas, Madrid, Oswego, Sheffield, Kaposvar... if you have a minute leave me a "location" comment!  Just say "Hi, I'm from _____"  I think it'd be fun to see how many different places check in!

I wanted to stop playing with triangles for a little bit to make a baby quilt, and I thought I'd back it with fleece without a batting.  My friend Renea mentioned that the soon-to-be-closed Hancock Fabrics had a lot left, so Monday Felicia (The Slow Quilter) and I went to check it out.  I'm glad we did!  They had a whole section of fleece, and I got a nice 2-yard piece at $1.10 a yard.

I wanted a pattern that was quick and easy and fuss-free, so I went to the cobblestone pattern that I've used before.  I highly recommend this pattern if you want to make an attractive quilt on short order, the blocks work up very quickly.  The most "difficult" part is deciding which fabrics to pair together - piece o cake!

The blocks for this one are sewn at 6x6 and 6x12 (finished); my goal was to get a 36 inch center.  As I sewed each block I just put it on my design wall in no particular order, I'll rearrange them and start sewing the quilt together today. 

There were some cute fabrics in this quilt...  I like these little animals:

is that Curious George on the green?  I've seen a lot of sock monkey fabric lately!

I didn't just buy fleece at Hancock's, I also bought three pieces of red fabric that I couldn't resist.  They had some very pretty Christmas fabric that I got at 90 cents a yard, what a deal!  At that price I didn't mind buying two yards; I understand they'll be closing Wednesday or Thursday of next week (April 10 or 11).  At this point the discounts were 70, 80 and 90 percent off.

Of course we had to eat after shopping!  We dropped into a Japanese restaurant next door to the Hancock's but we only stayed a hot minute - it was dark in there, but not too dark to notice how grungy the menus were, yuck.  I was forward enough to ask the waiter why they were so dirty, "Uh, well, we're about to order some new ones soon, I don't know when but they're coming."  Pu-lese!  There was hardly anything on the menu that didn't include beef, which I don't do very well, so Felicia was nice enough to agree on someplace else.  So, we had a nice lunch at Appleby's - I had the shrimp alfredo with side salad.  It was pretty good!

That's it for now, enjoy your Thursday.  The cherry blossoms haven't peaked yet, I think the official date now is in one or two weeks.  Sew forth and sew on til later!

Gearing up

The weather has been so roller-coaster lately, with the temperature swinging from cold, warm, cold again all in a one week span.  Now it's back to cold, so that means it's time to bring out a bold new plan - grits!!

When I was growing up our main breakfast food was grits - you either got grits and sausage or grits and fatback, but it was always "grits-and".  I was so tired of grits, I promised myself that when I "got big" (which was another way of saying "when I grew up and moved out of mama and daddy's house and got a job and my own house and be able to do whatever I wanted to do and they could kiss my foot and nobody could tell me nuthin'") I would not eat another spoonful of grits!  But one day about 35-odd years ago I got to wanting me some grits - hello!!

So now I'm not only a reconverted grits eater, but I'm also a grits lover.  One morning when I reached for my box of grits (I had a taste for grits and salmon cakes) there was barely a spoonful left in the box, I had forgotten to buy some.  I was going to Costco that day so I acted on impulse and got the three-package deal... I think I might have gone a bit overboard that time!  Anyway, I have enough grits to last me awhile, don't you think?  You only need a quarter cup to make enough for a generous serving, and they're so creamy!

In between other things I'm playing around with the little houses I made from scraps.  When I was doing these I wasn't thinking in terms of setting or sash colors... I was just doodling.  I didn't want to set them smack together, I was afraid they would lose their individuality somehow.  So then it came down to sashing decisions...

I tried black; my first impression was "oooh, I don't think so!"  On most of the blocks the bottom of the house was made from a dark fabric and the black sort of melted into it.  I tried a few with a white sashing but that completely killed the blocks!  I didn't think I liked the black but I left them on my wall a couple days and you know what?  They didn't look half bad! 

For the bottom row I sashed the top and bottom of the blocks and added a side sash with the corner stones attached to top and bottom.  This is how I'm making rows 2 and 3 -

The sashing goes on the top only, with a sash/top cornerstone combination for the side.

Here's a layout of two rows combined - I think this will be a cute little quilt!

I might have made the sashing a little narrower - they were cut at 2" and finish at 1-1/2" - but I here I have to play my "it's just a quilt" card!

That's all for now, have a great Thursday - sew forth and sew on!

4, 4, 3-2-1

Three things to be happy about:
(1) shoes with wiggle room
(2) opening a new container of coffee
(3) being alert to changes

In my last post I described the kewl new printer I bought, I don't think I mentioned I got it at Costco.  Well, the day after I bought it I got my new Costco sales book and guess what goes on sale January 31 with an additional $75 off!???  You guessed it - the very printer I bought!  I didn't get around to installing it - thank goodness for procrastination - so guess what I'll be doing in a few days...

I didn't get a chance to really get into any sewing yesterday but I did make a couple more of those four inch blocks - remember them?  Here's the completed group.  I like the way this one turned out (sorry about the fuzziness):

I wanted to make the top outer border narrower than the other three, and the left inner border a bit wider. 

And this one was made using a leftover piece from the one above:

hmmm... I should have put the light piece at the wide end of the triangle, but it'll fly.

Two four inch blocks to add to my group, that makes a total of 37!  You can see all my four inch blocks on my flickr page, the link is at the right.

And now for the 3-2-1 part of the post - I saw this recipe for a 3-2-1 cake on someone's blog, I'm sorry I can't give credit but I don't remember who it was.  I googled it and found the recipe, and believe me it's super easy to make! 

If you want just a little bit of sweetness and don't want to buy (or bake) a whole cake, this can do the trick.  You mix together two boxes of cake mix (one of which has to be angel food) and place it in a baggie - I chose lemon for my second flavor.  Be sure to mix them really well.  When you want a quick fix, measure out 3 tablespoons of cake mix, stir in 2 tablespoons of water, microwave it for 1 minute.  They suggest putting it in a mug, but I used a one-cup sized glass bowl that worked perfectly.

I placed a piece of dark chocolate on the batter before I baked it - you really need a little something, maybe a spoon of icing or marshmallow creme to ice it with.

The cake comes out very spongy and it's a quick, tasty treat!  Now I'm stuck with a big ole bagful of cake mix, LOL.

That's it for now, have a great Wednesday... sew forth and sew on til later!