Happy Sunday! I hope those in the States had a wonderful Thanksgiving. Mine was full of family and food (so much food) followed by a few relaxing days at home. Perfect! Our little trip west was also great. We did a few days in Vegas...
Then headed to the Hoover Dam.
And did an awesome 6 mile hike to the Colorado River through a neat little ravine.
We also spent two days at the Grand Canyon but I haven't even gotten to those pictures yet! You could say I was a little picture crazy on this trip. It was a wonderful trip but it's great to be home.
Labels: photography, travel
Wow, I can't believe I made it to November 20th without missing a post! Unfortunately I won't make it the whole month. We leave tomorrow for Las Vegas and the Grand Canyon, I am so excited! I don't have anything set to post while I'm gone, so it will be quiet here until we're back next Thursday.
Thanks for sticking out my crazy posting this month! It was fun to challenge myself to share something even when it wasn't a finished project. I hope it didn't get boring!
Happy Thanksgiving!
When it starts to get cold outside the puppy gets especially cuddly. And I think he just might know how cute he is.
Labels: family, simple pleasures
I finished the red necklace and got that idea out of my system! I've decided the necklace is for a coworker of mine who has been having a tough year - she is super supportive of my crafty endeavors and also loves handmade jewelry!
52 Nights Update - Night 37 - We had a volleyball double header last night so there wasn't a whole lot of time to misbehave once I got home!
Labels: 52 nights, jewelry
Sometimes, when trying something new, everything just works. I can't believe how easily I accomplished a beaded cast on! Remembering knit vs. purl on the other hand... Good reference pictures
here (pdf).
Labels: knit/crochet, wip
My love of owls is well-documented, but maybe not as well-documented - my love of Target and stationery. So in the true spirit of
simple pleasures, can I just share how much it made my day to find these adorable owl notecards at Target today?
Labels: simple pleasures
I finished the
black/white/red bag and I love it! It's basically become a standby pattern for me but these fabrics look so good together.
I was literally hand-sewing the final opening on the way to deliver it, but we'll just say I work better under pressure.
Labels: bags, sewing
We had our church dinner group over the other night and I was going to be away all day, so I made a big batch of lasagna in the morning. We've been increasingly busy this fall, so I made a few extra pans of lasagna to have in the freezer. This is so easy! Here's my recipe:
Ingredients:
1 lb lean ground beef
1 jar spaghetti sauce
1 pkg no-cook lasagna noodles
4 c mozarella
1 tub small curd cottage cheese
1/4 c parmesan
2 eggs
1 tsp basil
1 tsp oregano
1 tsp garlic powder
Directions:
1. Brown and drain the ground beef. Stir in the spaghetti sauce and set aside.
2. In a large bowl mix 2 c mozarella and remaining ingredients.
3. Take three aluminum loaf pans and spray with cooking spray. Put a little of the meat/sauce mixture in the bottom. Put a noodle in each pan and press down. Spoon in a scoop of the cheese mixture and then a scoop of the meat mixture. Spread really well so that the noodle is completely covered.
4. Repeat noodle-cheese-meat two more times. Top each pan with remaining mozarella.
5. Cover each pan with alumnium foil and write the cooking directions on it with a sharpie - 350F, 75 min covered, 10 min uncovered, let sit 10 min.
6. Freeze!
There is no need to thaw before baking, just put it in the oven as you heat it up and cook for the times given.
This is another great recipe to help stock up the freezer!
Note: If you want, you can do 1 loaf pan and 1 8x8, or 1 9x13, or double the recipe and do three 8x8's, etc, depending on how many people you need to feed!
Note 2: If the noodle doesn't fit in the loaf pan for the first layer, I break it into pieces to get full coverage.Labels: cooking
I have bemoaned my long to do list on here often enough, so what do I do? Start a project not on my list. We decided to relax and watch a movie last night so I got out my beads and started another necklace. Oh well, I have this weekend to get back on track!
Labels: jewelry, simple pleasures, wip
I love getting mail. I am getting a start on some Christmas shopping and it is fun to see the packages pile up. I might have sneaked one or two things in there for me but for the most part I'm behaving!
Labels: simple pleasures
I just ran across these pictures I forgot to share from the Quilt Show.
Click to see the amazing detail.When I first saw these quilts, I assumed they were quilted on a long arm machine, impressive enough.
But when I looked at the quilt information, the "techniques used" listed hand quilting, not machine quilting.
These are all large quilts, completely quilted by hand, at a stunning level of detail. Amazing!
52 Nights Update - Night 36 - I forgot to update last week! Last night was great. I had to take Addie to the vet for her last round of shots, then I went to viist a friend who is in town with her 7-month-old son. What a cutie! When I got home I finished unpacking from my trip and took care of some chores that didn't get done while I was gone. I was up late, with plenty of energy, instead of zoned out in front of all the shows I have on Tivo!
Labels: 52 nights, quilting
Wouldn't it be nice to have a
Martha pantry, all pretty containers and well organized? Well, when we were taking inventory of our supplies before the hurricane I realized how much random stuff we have in our pantry and I decided to try to use some of it up.
First up,
this easy stew recipe because I've had a can of pinto beans in there for ages. Next,
this Asian chicken soup but made with the bag of rice noodles that are at least a year old.
Noodles don't go bad, right?
Labels: cooking, homework
Earlier today I was in Virginia (don't you love airplanes?) and I got to hang out for a few hours with Pete's brother and his family. In Texas we don't really have leaves that change color and fall from the trees, so we can't do this:
And then this:
I remember doing this as a kid! If I hadn't been looking at a three hour plane in the same clothes, I would have been diving in after them!
Labels: family, travel
I knew I had accumulated a fabric stash for a reason. I am making a bag for a friend to give to his sister, and he really wanted it to be black and white with red after seeing
this bag.
I planned to just use the same fabrics, since I couldn't justify buying new fabric when I had plenty on hand. Then I found I had already done just that!
Great, now I have no hope of resisting pretty fabric!
Labels: fabric
I found this neat little trunk at Hobby Lobby a while back. I store my threads in here for current hand stitching projects, under our end table in the living room, so I can grab a little hand-sewing when I find myself on the couch in the evenings.
It's a good plan, and it works sometimes. Maybe my November resolution needs to be no TV without a project...
Labels: needlework
At the Quilt Fair last weekend I got to help out with an organization the makes quilts for orphans in Ethiopa. The three ladies that run the group are amazing - their goal is to send quilts to all the orphans in the capital city of Addis Ababa.
The Quilt Show donated the floor space (this amount of space would cost a retailer about $8k!) and Janome donated the sewing machines.
These two ladies made quilt tops using these great geisha panels. They were visiting from Melbourne, Australia, just for the show.
I spent my time in the booth ironing miles of binding (my mom captured this on film), and getting one quilt completely bound. This organization is completely volunteer based - fabric is donated, quilt tops are made/donated, long arm time is donated for the quilting, volunteers do the binding... I went around all day telling my husband I made a quilt for an Ethiopian orphan - it sounds so noble!
Andover Fabrics donated all of their samples they had brought to Quilt Market the week before, and I brought home this huge pile to make into quilt tops. (After the holidays! My new motto!)
If you'd like to see a little more about the organization, the Houston Chronicle did a piece on them and you can see a video
here.
Labels: quilting
Whenever I'm confronted with an overwhelming selection, I usually freeze and can't decide on anything. So you can imagine how I felt when I saw this:
I think this might have been my favorite booth, wonderful little treasures, all arranged by color:
Nifty Thrifty Dry GoodsAfter all that, I came home with a limited selection of goodies. One of the local quilt shops that was devastated by hurricane Ike washed/ironed all of their flooded fabric and was selling it for $4/yard.
I couldn't resist this colorway of
Flutterby to make a throw quilt for our living room. (After the holidays.)
And finally, I had to grab these two fat quarters in honor of our Westie at a booth full of wonderful reproduction prints. The holiday print will be a throw pillow for the couch.
Oh! If you're into cross stitch, check out
this website. The site is a little hard to navigate but
check here for some great samplers. Their booth was full of stitched samples I was drooling over. Of course the two I picked to take home were out of stock. I'll order them and get to work. (After the holidays.)
Labels: fabric, quilting
After seeing so many wonderful reports about the Quilt Expo in Houston last weekend, I was even more excited to go to the International Quilt Festival yesterday!
The sheer size of the festival was somewhat overwhelming. Sunday is supposed to be the quiet day, so I am glad I didn't brave the crowds earlier in the show.
This applique is all done by hand and hand-quilted. Unbelievable!
Throughout this post are just a few of the amazing quilts I saw. I took a ton of pictures and will be sharing a few more posts dedicated to the show.
I can't believe I haven't gone to this before! I will definitely be making it an annual activity.
Labels: quilting
This was out on my kitchen floor. It is what is left of my nice
wound ball of yarn. Sigh.
