House of Bad Cats

Happy Birthday, Mr. Bat!

2012-02-14T08:05:00.000-08:00

photo by jacey

today mr. bat turns seven! i had to guess at his birthday, because i got him from a shelter, but he was still very young when i got him and they were able to make a good prediction of his age in weeks. so, mr. bat was designated a valentine's baby.

i love you, my cuddly friend.

Meal Plan Monday

2012-02-12T02:54:00.000-08:00

last week was an epic fail at following the meal plan. with M out of town, i knew it was going to be difficult, but then i got sick. i didn't follow the plan even one single day while he was gone! here's to trying to do better this week . . .

monday - shredded chicken tacos
tuesday - carne guisada tacos
wednesday - chicken spaghetti
thursday - bertolli frozen meal for 2
friday - date night
saturday - dinner out
sunday - pizza

WIP Wednesday

2012-02-08T14:02:00.000-08:00

if you're wondering where my black and white log cabin quilt i posted about last week is, well, it's still the cats fave napping spot.

since i can't bring myself to take it away from them yet, i took some time last week to go through some pink and orange blocks i had lying around. i had 9 wonky ninepatch blocks from when i taught the other members of the Houston Modern Quilt Guild how to make these blocks using Elizabeth Hartman's technique back in February 2010. i also had a large stack of coordinating wonky stars made by a virtual bee i was in around the same time. my initial thought was to mix both blocks into one quilt top, but then i saw that i had more stars than i'd remembered. i ended up piecing 20 of the star blocks together into five rows of four blocks each, making it 36" x 45". i immediately set out to select backing, and had made what i thought was a good choice of two fabrics to piece together for the backing and a third to use for binding. i made the mistake of asking M what he thought, though. he really disliked my favorite of the two fabrics i'd picked for the back, and so i let him sway me and set the fabrics aside for an entire week.

last night i had dinner with some friends, also quilters, and then we came back to my house for some sewing. i showed them the fabrics i'd picked and they re-affirmed my initial choice. with the decision made, i went ahead and pieced the two fabrics into a backing, then cut strips of the third fabric for the binding.

i'm pretty sure this little quilt is destined for a baby girl who will be making her appearance in a couple of months, but who knows . . . i could change my mind!

Meal Plan Monday

2012-02-06T06:18:00.000-08:00

this week is where things start to get a little difficult around here for meal planning purposes. you see, M has an out of town job to do where he'll be gone from sunday afternoon/early evening through late thursday night for the next few weeks. and left to my own devices, i tend to be a grazer, wandering through the kitchen eating a chocolate here, a handful of chips there. i find it hard to make myself eat an actual meal when it's just me. this week, though, i'm gonna try, and i think having a plan in place might make it a little easier, especially since i've tried to include meals that will provide at least one dinner plus a lunch to take to work later in the week. so here goes . . .

monday - shredded chicken tacos (i'll cook the chicken in the crockpot while i'm at work to make it super simple, and since i'm cooking up a whole bag of frozen chicken breasts i'll have enough for a lunch or two, plus enough to freeze to have tacos again next week!)
tuesday - birds eye frozen meal in a bag
wednesday - chicken spaghetti
thursday - bertolli frozen meal for 2
friday - date night
saturday - dinner out
sunday - chicken quesadillas

Swoon!

2012-02-05T09:48:00.000-08:00

lots of people i quilt with and lots of my online quilting buddies have jumped on the swoon bandwagon recently. i've been admiring all the lovely blocks, but really couldn't justify a new project when i'm finally gaining momentum working on my long list of UFOs.

when the need for a star block for a project came up, i struggled with making a choice, and finally figured out that i really wanted to make the swoon block, except it was too big. the swoon finishes at a whopping 24" and i needed a 12" block. fortunately, my quilting friend frieda helped me with the math, and i whipped up a mini-swoon! at first i wasn't sure about my fabric choices, but i love love love it! and now i want to make a ton of them. in fact, i signed up for the first quarter of 2012 3 x 6 bee, and i may end up making these for my hive members . . . we'll see.

Friday FInish

2012-02-03T08:56:00.000-08:00

this past week i had another small finish - a quilt to be donated to the charity that Houston Modern Quilt Guild is supporting this year. last fall i had made a stack of red and aqua stringblocks with bits left over from other projects, intending to sash them together for a quilt for charity, but never got it done.

i got them sashed, then was motivated by safieh to try out free motion quilting on my Singer 301A i bought last year but hadn't really used yet. i ordered a darning foot from amazon, and got everything set up. an initial test showed my machine just needed a slight tweak of the tension, and i was good to go.

safieh came over for quilting and brought her Singer 301A to free motion quilt a charity quilt she had assembled. and we were off . . . everything was going great! until i ran out of thread in my bobbin. i stopped, and wound a new bobbin, then ran out of upper thread. the only white thread i could find was a vintage spool of polyester blend, which usually doesn't pose any problems for me with my other machines. well, the 301A was a bit more particular! nasty knotting in the bobbin, big gnarled loops on the bottom of the fabric, a huge mess! even after replacing the needle and changing back to "good" thread, i still couldn't get the tension right again and finally just decided to let my 301A have a rest!

i finished the FMQ on my brother, then finished up the binding by hand. and viola - another WIP crossed off my list! the quilting is just a swirly random pattern only within the blocks. the border and sashing were narrow enough that no additional quilting was needed.

note: apologies for the crappy iPhone picture. i'll try to get some better ones and upload them today.

WIP Wednesday

2012-02-01T09:32:00.000-08:00

i really do have a WIP for this week, you just can't see much of it. underneath the cats, providing (apparently!) the perfect nap spot, is my black and white log cabin quilt that just needs the binding added. unfortunately, it's folded with the top of the quilt to the inside!

after looking high and low and everywhere in between, i gave up on finding the binding i'd previously prepped for this quilt and made new binding last week. now if i can just get the cats off of it long enough to get it bound and finished!

12 in '12 - January Finish

2012-01-31T08:09:00.000-08:00

while i had a smaller finish of a wallhanging for my mom last week, my "big" finish for this month was the batik bento box quilt i've been working on as a birthday gift for my dad, whose birthday is coming up lickety-split on february 3rd!

i finally finished the last bit of handstitching on the binding last week, and safieh came over sunday to take some lovely pictures, which i included above.

although i hated these blocks, and even still hated the top, i have to admit that i love the finished product! turns out i'm not alone in this love, as my husband and two out of four cats have tried to claim this quilt as their own! maybe i'll have to make another . . . i did find an oversized ziplock with a lot of batiks while cleaning out this week!

so, what did you finish this month? don't forget to go over to safieh's blog to link up to your finish and enter our giveaway!

Meal Plan Monday

2012-01-30T08:00:00.000-08:00

last week we did great with sticking to our plan and not eating out, except as planned. hopefully we'll do great again this week! we modified our sunday dinner last week to be a chicken roasted in the rotisserie, so that we'd have leftovers to use for chicken and dumplings one night. we also had scalloped potatoes, which resulted in a lot of leftovers to be factored into this week's menu

monday - ham, scalloped potatoes, green beans
tuesday - carne guisada tacos, salad
wednesday - chicken and dumplings
thursday - king ranch chicken casserole, salad
friday - date night
saturday - veggie lasagna, salad, garlic bread
sunday - pizza

a small finish

2012-01-27T08:00:00.000-08:00

a long time ago - in other words, i really can't remember, but it was no later than 2005 - i saw a technique for making watercolor quilts that intrigued me. i'm pretty sure it was in a book i no longer have. anyway, the method was really pretty simple: you picked three floral prints (large, medium, and small) in similar colors, and one solid that matched the background of the prints. then you diced your florals up into 2.5" squares and sorted the squares into piles based on how much of the square was floral vs background. after that, you arranged your pieces on a piece of grid-marked interfacing into the shape you wanted (say, a heart or a wreath). after you ironed all your pieces into place, you stitched your vertical and horizontal seams. easy peasy. and it turns out a really pretty effect.

so, i read this in a book and decided to try it. i remember trekking down to joann and trying to find fabrics. i was pleased to find three florals in shades of blue and periwinkle on a yellow background. i even found a pale yellow solid to match, though i was less pleased with this because it was kind of thin. i went home, cut my fabrics, arranged my pieces for a heart shape, and sewed them onto the grid. i even added a border to make it a bit larger. and then i stuffed all of the pieces - the top, the remaining fabrics, the rest of the gridded interfacing - into a bag. and they sat, ignored, for ages.

over a year ago when saf helped me clean out my sewing room, we found this and added it to the UFO pile, where it stayed until last week. when i was pulling my UFOs to take to the HMQG meeting, i saw the watercolor heart and decided it was the perfect valentine's day gift for my mom! before the meeting i cut backing and batting and strips for the binding. at the meeting, liz helped me spray baste.

earlier this week i loaded up my machine with pale yellow thread, then on my lunch break on a day i worked from home i spent a half hour free motion quilting it. this time i tried a looping swirl, and i quilted around the heart and in its center, leaving the floral heart shape unquilted. later that night, i prepared the binding and stitched by machine to the front then turned and handstitched the binding to the back. viola! a lovely present for my mom!

WIP Wednesday

2012-01-25T11:26:00.000-08:00

Saturday at the Houston Modern Quilt Guild meeting members showed off their works in progress they hoped to complete this year. I showed the smallish quilt pictured above. There are 9 blocks, each with an eight-point string pieced star, sashed with scrappy pieced 1/2 inch sashing. All of the prints are 1930s reproduction fabrics, and the background is a tone on tone white. I started this quilt, which measures roughly 40" x 40", about 10 years ago. The procrastination came about because I started handquilting it, which is pretty difficult on the stars themselves because of all the seams.

When I showed this to the group on Saturday, I had only quilted around the inside of each of three stars. Motivated by the challenge to "get 'er done" I went home and quilted around the inside of another star, and around the outsides of those four stars. Yesterday I had a few friends over for sewing, and I quilted inside and outside of two more stars. Now I'm 2/3rd of the way done with the quilting involving the stars! I'm not entirely certain how I'll quilt the rest. . . I'm thinking I'll quilt around the sashings, but I need to pick out a pattern to quilt in the border. I'll have a 2" finished width for quilting, and I'm considering making a template the same diamond shape as used to make the stars, and laying them out end to end around the border. I haven't measured for length, but I could just center my diamond chain so that I have the same unquilted distance on each end of each border strip as needed.

Sadly, I noticed when I was putting the quilt back in my bag on Saturday that there are lots and lots of stains on the quilt. I guess dragging it around for ten years got a bit messy. Looks like it has had several run ins with diet coke or something similarly colored, so as soon as I get the quilting finished and a binding on I'll have to see if Oxi-clean can work some magic! I'd hate to have invested all of this time (and ended up with raw, bloodied fingertips from the hand quilting!) just to end up with a stained up project I can't display!

Meal Plan Monday

2012-01-23T08:12:00.000-08:00

last week we did great with sticking to our plan and not eating out,except for date night as planned. hopefully we'll do as well this week! I cooked both days this weekend, so we're incorporating leftovers this week. . .

monday - leftover green chile stew
tuesday - leftover pot roast and veggies
wednesday - baked potato soup w/salad
thursday - ham, scalloped potatoes, salad, brocolli
friday - date night
saturday - ~~roasted cornish game hens, spinach and wild rice stuffing, salad~~ Niko Niko's using free sandwich coupons earned by curbside recycling
sunday - chicken piccata, pasta w/pesto sauce, salad

WIP Wednesday (a day late)

2012-01-19T08:28:00.000-08:00

last saturday, during a sewing day at safieh's i made a pieced strip from my leftover batik scraps and mis-sized blocks to insert in the backing for my dad's quilt. on sunday, liz and gabi came over to sew. i pieced the back of the quilt together, then liz and gabi helped me take the pictures you see above.

after that, we spray basted the quilt, then liz adjusted the tension on my sewing machine and showed me how to pebble quilt. between that afternoon and a little time later in the evening i got about 2/3 of the way through!

ozzie approves!

last night, gabi came over again, and i finished the quilting AND got the binding made and prepped.

the quilting is far from perfect, but i'm pretty pleased with my attempt to deviate from my standard straight line quilting. in fact, i only ripped out one small patch to do a second time.

my goal is to finish sewing on the binding and handstitching it to the back this weekend. and the biggest surprise of all about this quilt - i hated the blocks, and mostly hated the top, but now that it's quilted i actually like it . . .a lot!

meal plan monday

2012-01-16T14:09:00.001-08:00

i really slacked off at the end of last year with making and posting a weekly meal plan. with M traveling so much, it was more difficult for me to make "real" meals plus i just got lazy and we ate out a lot. so, new year, and it's time to get back on track

monday - grilled mesquite chicken breasts, creamed corn, green beans with new potatoes
tuesday - stuffed pork chops, spinach
wednesday - M has a meeting, so i'm taking the easy way out: Birds Eye Voila frozen meal
thursday - chicken spaghetti, green beans
friday - date night
saturday - green chile chicken stew
sunday - roast with potatoes and carrots

January finish in progress

2012-01-13T12:41:00.000-08:00

my goal for this month's 12 in '12 challenge is to finish up the batik quilt i'm making my dad for his birthday. i've got the top pieced (it's 57" x 57", though you only get to see a portion in the picture above), and today i dragged out my scraps because i want to piece a strip to go on the back.

tomorrow i'm having a sewing play date in the afternoon, so my goal is to get a strip pieced using the extra blocks and strips of the batiks that's 20" by 60". i plan to insert the strip between two sections of kona coal, then bind the quilt in the kona coal as well. i had planned to have my friend liz pebble quilt this one, but my foot is doing so much better post-surgery than anticipated that i'm now going to have her teach me how and quilt it myself! liz is going to come help me baste it on wednesday, so i can get started on the quilting after that. i'm pretty excited that it looks like i'll have this done in time to send it to my dad for arrival on or before his bday (february 3rd)!

mega scrap giveaway over at the plaid scottie

2012-01-11T08:09:00.002-08:00

kaelin over at the plaid scottie is having an amazing giveway: a scrap bundle from pink castle fabrics, more scraps from her own stash, and a second prize of a lovely pocket clutch. check it out here.

12 in '12

2012-01-09T08:45:00.000-08:00

a week or so ago, i was enjoying looking at all the mosaics people across the interwebs were posting of their finished projects from 2011, but at the same time i was feeling a bit down because i felt like i hadn't finished much in 2011. a pouch here and there, a bag or two for swaps, little things mostly.

then my friend safieh came to me with a proposal: co-host a challenge with her and our friend liz to complete twelve quilts (or other projects) in 2012. it sounded like a great way to stay motivated to fiish more quilts this year, so i said "yes!" especially since i was feeling like i hadn't accomplished much in 2011. but then saf started listing all the quilts i HAD finished in 2011.

in the end, i didn't have as many finishes as i'd have liked, but i did pretty well. my bigger problem was that i didn't take pictures and/or blog about my finishes, and then i couldn't remember them! turns out that in addition to the four quilts pictured above (pictures of two of which were just finally taken yesterday!), i also finished at least 4 more quilts that i don't have pics of!

so, on to the challenge . . .

It's very simple. Each month you should:
(1) Finish a quilt: You can start something from scratch, finish a WIP or assemble those bee blocks you've been holding on to. We'd love for all 12 finishes to be great, big, snuggly quilts, but bags, potholders and other projects count, too!
(2) Join our link party: On the last day of each month, one of us will host a link-up where you can link us to a blog post or a flickr pic of your finish. At the end of 12 months, we hope you will share a mosaic of your fab finishes!
(3) Stand back and pat yourself on the back: A job well done deserves a reward! Each month we will have a little giveaway for those who participate and link to their finish. At the end of the year, there will be a bigger giveaway for those who participate all 12 times and link their mosaics!

i plan to make my first finish a quilt for my dad's birthday in early february.

Hope you join in, too! Remember, the first link party will be on Tuesday, January 31 over at safieh's blog . . .

bunnies tea towel set

2012-01-04T09:28:00.000-08:00

i have a friend who really, really likes bunnies, and who is just about to move across the country to start a new series of adventures. a few months ago, i purchased this embroidery pattern on etsy. when i bought it, i wanted to stitch some bunnies up for myself, but i also had bry in mind, too.

when i found out bry was moving, and the timing coincided with my being bed-bound after foot surgery, i knew the time was right to start stitching! i picked out the images i wanted to use from the pattern, resized where needed, and had a friend print them off for me. Another friend took the patterns home, along with some white Kona fabric, cut out squares, and traced all the patterns on her lightbox, then delivered them back to me the next day.

once i started stitching, it's gone pretty fast, and i'm already halfway done with the embroideries! i had some fabric in mind to use for the tea towels themselves, but turns out bry isn't a big fan of the fabric i had picked. so i let her rummage through my stash the other night and she picked out some lizzy dish fabric from my stash for me to use instead.

hopefully i'll finish the remaining six months' of embroideries this week, though i'm not sure when i'll be able to start putting the towels together!

happy new year

2012-01-01T18:30:00.000-08:00

every year i make resolutions for the new year, and mostly, i fail at keeping them. i can't remember what i resolved for 2011, and i'm too lazy to see if i blogged about them. [update: i blogged about my 2011 new year's resolutions here. i'm prety sure there was a low rate of success. i did manage to lose some weight, and i even kept off half of what i lost. i did start exercising, and kept that up until just before the foot surgery when a break to my toe made me have to put pilates on hold a bit earlier than planned. of course, having now looked back at my 2011 resolutions, there were no weight loss or exercise resolutions made! i did however finish a few sewing and quilting projects and i did pay off my student loans!

here's a recap of the 2011 resolutions and whether there was a success or fail:

- complete the january no-spending challenge with safieh (no spending for non-necessities) I'm pretty sure this one was a FAIL

- Fabric Diet Challenge (january and february) - no fabric purchases (swaps and trades are okay!) I'm not sure this was a 100% success, but I recall that I did pretty well, and even took the opportunity to swap out a good bit of fabric I didn't want anymore for stuff I liked better.

- make a meal plan for each week so that we're not tempted to eat out, even though we have a freezer full of food (correlative resolution: throw out less food!) Half success/Half fail I started out strong on this one, but as we reached a point where M was gone a lot during the week due to out of town jobs, I slacked off

- complete (at least) one sewing/quilting unfinished project (UFO) each month Ha! In January, I finished a wallhanging I'd started a few years back that was no longer my style, but I gifted it to someone who loved it. In February, I finished a mug rug for Saf that I'd started in November. In May, I finally finished Emily's big girl bed quilt I'd started over a year earlier. In November I finished a table runner for my mom I'd started late 2010, and in December I finished a quilt for my mom made of blocks started in 2010. In restrospect, that's not a terrible FAIL, but I'd like to have done better!

- spend more time with friends, especially those we haven't seen as much lately We did all right with this one, seeing our friends the Van Courts three times in the last half of the year.

- pay off my student loans DONE!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

- finish more sewing/quilting/crafting projects than i start (ha!) FAIL

in 2012, i'd like to work on the following:

continuing to exercise, even though i likely can't start back with pilates until february.

getting back on weight watchers and keeping to a reasonable and healthy weight, which for me means less than 140 lbs.

getting back to following a monthly budget, so i can see where our money goes. i set up a new budget spreadsheet today to help me track our expenses. . . especially my discretionary spending.

using fabric from my stash instead of hoarding it. i plan to dive in and use some of my hoarded denyse schmidt for the set of tea towels i'm working on now that i started yesterday.

finishing the bed quilt i've started for M and myself. the sooner the better, as i've had most of the blocks done for over a year and a half now. the procrastination is just ridiculous.

finishing some of my lingering sewing and quilting projects. i can start with a quilt for my dad's bday in february. just before christmas i finally trimmed and quartered the batik bento box blocks i had sitting aside for this, sewed new blocks from the quarters and stitched them into rows, then into a completed top. all i need to do is locate the batiks i'll use to piece the back, then i'm commissioning liz to pebble quilt this one for me, or else i won't have it done by early february for his bday.

and last, but certainly not least, i'd like to get M's house sold. y'all know what that entails, if you know me in real life, so i'll just leave it at that.

hopefully these goals are reasonable enough that i can stick with them and have a higher success rate.

day four . . and counting

2011-12-31T15:50:00.000-08:00

recovery is boring, and as of yesterday, the vicodin is making me sick, so now i'm queasy and feel sick to my stomach, although cutting my vicodin dosage in half has helped a bit. at first, it seemed that the lower dosage had caused the queasiness and edginess to cease, but seems i was wrong about that.

last night liz and saf brought me thai food, which was really, really, really tasty, and kept me company for a bit. liz brought my christmas present, a kliban cats memory game, so now i'll have to con someone into playing with me! they also brought in the mail, which included a package of fabric from a swap with bookwormbethie. then M was home for a whopping 14 hours, most of which involved sleeping. i did, however, get to change pajamas after a sponge bath, the highlight of my day.

this afternoon, saf brought back a stack of fabric squares onto which she had traced embroidery patterns i sent home with her last night. i hadn't expected all 13 to come back to me today, but it was nice to have something to work on. i've already finished the first of the set of twelve, which are for a set of tea towels.

i have the second one hooped up and ready to go next time i feel like stitching.

other than that, this next picture is most representative of my day: a bed full of lazy cats keeping me company.

Meet my new friend

2011-12-29T02:38:00.001-08:00

This is my new BFF, the special boot. It goes with my old friend, the special shoe. Stylish, isn't it?

In the left side of the picture you can catch a glimpse of my other new friend, the walker. Additional new friends, the crutches, are not pictured.

So. . . Surgery went well, but it was a pretty long day. Liz picked me up at 8:00, since I was supposed to check in at 8:30 for a 10:30 surgery. Then Doc Haase was running late so they didn't take me in until just after 11:30. Liz picked me back up around 2:30 then we went to get my drugs and some lunch. The pharmacy only had my antibiotic, not the good stuff, so we had to go back after lunch to give them a chance to call the doc's office and then fill the scrip. By the time I got settled into bed, it was already 4:30!

M was out of town last night, unavoidably, but when he left in the morning he put out double kibble for the cats so I wouldn't have to get up. Not surprisingly, Bat started in at 3:00 and at 3:30 Ozzie joined in with trying to get me up. Finally, at 4:00 I needed to pee anyway so I used the walker to manipulate my way all the way to the opposite end of the house. Guess what????? Full kibble bowls. Um. . . displeased.

Now I'm back on bed, have taken my next dose of vicodin, and can't sleep yet.

Unlike the surgery last February, where the doc went in through the top of my foot, this time she had to go in through the bottom, which means harder recovery. She had to cut the nerve back further, cauterize it, and wrap the end under the muscle. I'm supposed to be completely off my foot for roughly three weeks, then on crutches after that. It hasn't even been 24 hours yet and I'm already bored.

I have within arms' reach: laptop, kindle fire, iPhone, huge book of sudoku puzzles, at least 14 actual books, a large baggie of hexies and a handsewing kit, an ice chest full of diet coke and snacks, and assorted cats.

I've given myself a pass on work until Monday, since I probably will be constantly doped up until then, but at least I have work I brought home for after that, since I'm out of the office until MLK day at least.

Well, I'm sensing drug-induced rambling here, so I'll shut up now, leaving you with the saddest news of all- when we got back from surgery a lovely box from fabric.com was waiting for me. Liz opened it, and at least I got to see it and pet my new pretty fabrics, but now they've been tucked away in the craft room where I won't be able to play with them for ages. Sigh.

uh-oh!

2011-12-20T10:12:00.000-08:00

last spring, in april, i started Weight Watchers, and for about three months i did really well, losing 19 pounds. in july, i started doing pilates on the reformer. subsequently, i started eating what i wanted again, not counting points, not making a plan. even so, because of the increased exercise, i only gained about 2 pounds and kind of levelled out at 140. i could live with that, especially since my new skinny pants still fit.

then came the holiday eating season. . . you know what that means. this morning i was at 147. and no, saf, that's not my billable hours for the month so far!! to complicate matters, i haven't been able to do pilates for the past few weeks due to a broken toe, and now i'm scheduled for foot surgery on the 28th of december, which means i'll be out for pilates until at least the first part of february.

so, it's time for a reality check. if i can stay under 150 through the end of the year, then i can start back on Weight Watchers again and get back down to 137, which was my low weight back in the summer, or even a few pounds lower than that.

How Ozzie helps wrap presents

2011-12-19T19:13:00.001-08:00

Yippee!

2011-12-16T11:21:00.001-08:00

i did it!!!!!!!!!!! today i paid off my student loans!! i consolidated several years after i had begun making payments so i don't recall my original borrowings, but when i consolidated in early 2005, my balance was just over $108K. in january of 2008, when M and i made a conscious decision to get out of debt, my balance on my student loans was around $115K. and today i paid them off in full!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! i can't really put enough exclamation points after that!

Umm... Sorry

2011-12-13T22:42:00.001-08:00

Wow! Almost four months without posting. I cant believe it's been that long! I've been sewing and crafting, but I've also been working a ton and just haven't had the time to blog.

Tonight at dinner a friend mentioned a blogging app someone she had met used. I said that I might blog more if I had such an app. Fast forward a few hours, and here we are!

For now I'll leave you with this pic of the salty caramel sauce I recently made to give as gifts. I hear it's pretty tasty.

Modern Quilt Guild Habitat Challenge

2011-08-31T11:38:00.000-07:00

please excuse the fuzzy iphone picture!

The Houston Modern Quilt Guild is participating in the Jay McCarrol Habitat Challenge. Our entries are due at our September meeting, on the 17th. Free Spirit, who generously provided the fabric to us, asked only that we pair the Habitat fabric with solids, so that the Habitat was showcased.

Based on the number of people we had participating, each person received a fat eighth, more or less, of each of eight fabrics from the Habitat line. Each person got the same fabrics, too.

At first, I didn't really love this line. Some of the prints I really liked, but others I was unsure about. In the end, I decided to make a zig zag quilt, and since I had only limited amounts of each fabric, I made the zigs and zags in each row a different print. I used the leftover bits to make a scrappy outer border, and ended up with a quilt top that measures approximately 40" square. All but the teensiest bits of the fabric were used!

Despite my initial hesitation, I love the finished product! Even M, who I was sure was going to declare it ugly, loves it! The funny thing is that my two favorite rows are the two he likes the least, and vice versa!

a little bit of this, a little bit of that

2011-08-15T19:56:00.000-07:00

M picked me up at work today since i had to leave my car at the shop overnight, so by the time we stopped at randalls on the way, it was almost 7 om by the time we got home. he needed to do some wuick paperwork, so i went ahead and prepped my lunch for tomorrow. then he asks what we're doing for dinner. i don't know. he suggests we just forage and offers to eat the leftover pizza from saturday night. i agree, since this means i won't just be tossing it next weekend when i clean out the fridge. for myself, i make the tasty salad pictured above - fresh spinach, tomatoes, feta cheese and thinly sliced filet mignon. while i'm eating i finally realize the ulterior motive behind M's suggestion: pre-season football was on tv tonight and he wanted to watch without missing any of the game.

during commercial breaks i did manage to get him to vacuum seal in one pound bags all of the roasted hatch green chilies we bought this weekend. sadly, a pile of vacuum sealed bags filled with roasted chilies just doesn't photgraph well, at least not for me!

so, while he watched football, i whipped up a little gift for my cousin. her birthday was earlier this month and we're having a belated b-day dinner at benihana on wednesday. anyway, i stitched up this mug rug using hexies i've made stitched together and machine appliqued onto a linen background using my machine's herringbone stitch. i machine stitched the binding, too, but wish i hadn't. it would have looked much better if i'd done it by hand and wouldn't have taken long on something this small. nonetheless, i decided not to pick it out and redo, since she won't notice anyway.

while i was handstitching the hexies for the mug rug, ozzie came to keep me company, then bat joined him. first there was grooming, then wrestling.

this week's fixations

2011-08-09T22:57:00.000-07:00

. . . embroidery. i've whipped up the embroidery for one of the blocks for this quarter's embroider-bee. when the last round ended, i bought this book, determined to learn how to do more than just a back stitch and french knots. yesterday i took the plunge and tried out the chain stitch on a block for fiatcat1. i enjoyed myself so much that i stitched up a small pattern i had traced weeks ago and had hooped up and ready to go:

mr. rabbit is done entirely in a chain stitch, except for his eye. the pattern is a freebie from Lucky Kitty.

. . . the kids. miss kitty had been acting lethargic and not herself, so on monday i left work early and took her into the vet. they took blood and urine for tests and did some type of ultrasound, but i won't get results until tomorrow (well, today really, since it's after midnight). i did make sure she nibbled on a bit of kibble monday night, and tuesday morning it was clear she was feeling better because she joined the rest of the herd for the morning feeding, which she hadn't done for days. tuesday night she was active and engaged, and you could just tell she was feeling better.

mr. bat has developed a new habit in the past week or so - sleeping in my bathroom sink. clearly, i must work in brushing my teeth around HIS schedule.

. . . skinny cow. tonight i picked up these at HEB after pilates. i ate one before dinner. i wanted another after dinner, but resisted. seriously. these.are.tasty. go get some. now. and bring them to me.

meal plan monday

2011-08-01T18:30:00.000-07:00

i haven't done a "meal plan monday" post in quite awhile. to be honest, i haven't made a meal plan in quite awhile either! i also sort of fell off the weight watchers wagon and for the last few weeks have kept cheating and eating crap i know i shouldn't in quantities i definitely shouldn't be eating them! being sick last week and stil this week is no excuse, either. anyway, i intend to get back on the wagon this week, stay on plan, eat healthy, and lose some more weight! (did anyone else buy into that mini peptalk there, because i'm not sure i did?)

so, without further ado, here's the plan for this week:

monday - leftover beef brisket from M's BBQ cookoff this past weekend
tuesday - leftover pork ribs from M's BBQ cookoff this past weekend (seeing the trend here?!)
wednesday - crockpot carne guisada
thursday - leftover chicken from M's BBQ cookoff this past weeekend
friday - date night at chuy's
saturday - grilled spicy honey chicken, corn on the cob, asparagus
sunday - grilled kingfish steaks, corn on the cob, veggie kabobs

Mini quilt

2011-07-24T18:51:00.001-07:00

Mini quilt, a photo by scruffycat1970 on Flickr.

I made this for Mark's best friend's mom who we're seeing next weekend.

Productivity!

2011-07-24T11:19:00.000-07:00

i've had a shockingly productive weekend! friday i saw a picture of a pouch someone made for the pretty little pouch swap that had a herringbone desing. i've seen this before and had wanted to try it. so i googled and found this tutorial. i modified it, and made a block for alison in the fresh modern bee 2. then i made a second block for her, with wonky pinwheels.

yesterday i used some tiny scraps of alison's fabric, plus some of my own, to make a tiny herrinbgbone mug rug for myself. i rarely make anything for myself, but i'm still using a christmas mug rug on my desk at work, and i needed a non-seasonal one. i used the opportunity to practice my free motion quilting, too.

on saturday morning, M had asked me if i would make something for a woman we will be seeing next weekend at his BBQ cookoff in Moulton, Texas. she's the mother of his best friend, and a long-time quilter who quilts everything by hand! so after i finished my mug rug, i decided to make her a wallhanging using the herringbone design. i dug through my pile o' scraps, and pulled out all my solid scraps and came up with enough to use. the herringbone part is about 9" square, and i bordered it with a lovely neutral linen, backed it with a stripe, and bound it with another solid. i free motion quilted in the border and stitched in the ditch around the herringbone piece. all that's left is to stitch the binding down by hand, and i'm saving that for some tv time later. M loves it and is certain that Ollie will, too.

saturday i also gathered up everything for my partner's A Little Fabric A Little Chocolate swap package and have that packaged and ready to mail on monday.

in between all of this quilting productivity, we also whipped up a huge vat of spaghetti sauce made with 3 lbs of ground deer and 1 lb of ground turkey. then we bagged it up for 10 meals, with leftovers. i also made up a double batch of stuffing and we sliced up a 9 lb pork loin into fat chops and stuffed and seasoned them, then bagged those up individually for later cooking. with each meal comprised of an 8 oz chop and a 6 oz chop, that's 10 meals there, too, though we'll be sharing those with my freezer-cooking friend.

all in all, this is the most productive weekend i've had in ages and it feels good!

wherein the contraction of strep throat leads to time for blog updates

2011-06-14T12:25:00.000-07:00

i haven't posted in AGES, but i've been almost overwhelmed at work. i've been putting in lots more hours than usual, and when i do get home, i've been too exhausted to do much besides lie in bed and play spider solataire.

saturday a tickle in my throat when i awoke turned into a raging throat pain, swollen lymph nodes and a fever by mid-afternoon, leaving me unable to attend the boss' daughter's wedding. alas. fortunately i had finished my bag for the goodie bag swap on friday. anyhow, sunday was a nasty feverish pain-filled day, as was monday, at which point i went to a doc-in-the-box since my real dr couldn't get me in until wednesday. the diagnosis: strep throat. yay. the upside is that a) i'm getting a much needed break from work and b) i have a chance to update my blog so you all (all 27 measly followers) don't think i've disappeared into the void.

i have squeezed in a bit of crafting/sewing time lately. i finished bee blocks for several bees that were languishing on my sewing table and got caught up in all but 2 bees. okay, when i think about it, that's pretty sad, since i'm only still in three bees, as the others have all finished. i also made a bag for the goodie bag swap, and am fairly pleased with how it turned out, especially since it was the first-run at a pattern i'd never tried before, i had to modify said pattern, and i also added a recessed zipper, which i'd never attempted before.

i also have worked on my embroideries for the embroider-bee. i have to make four blocks with embroideries, based on the four people's preferences for embroidery and color schemes. i've got 3 of 4 embroideries done, and have the fourth traced out. i'm feeling a bit better today, so i really should work on it. maybe after i have another nap. . .

meal plan monday

2011-05-23T12:15:00.000-07:00

it's been a while since i posted a meal plan, but i have been making them, except for last week. last week M was out of town most of the week, and i didn't bother with a plan. as a result, i ate really crappy, though i did manage to stick with the Weight Watchers program. (i started my 6th week on WW today, and so far i'm down exactly 10 lbs!) i'm on my own again this week, but this time i'm making a plan.

sunday - chicken rogan josh with basmati rice
monday - taco salad with ground turkey and baked tortilla shell
tuesday - bbq chicken, green beans with oranges
wednesday - spaghetti with arrabiata sauce
thursday - chicken spaghetti, salad
friday - tacos
saturday - leftovers

i finished!

2011-05-22T18:53:00.000-07:00

*FYI - for those of you who don't know me in real life, the man on the right is NOT M. that's ray, a close family friend. M can be seen on the left in the top picture. please note his socks. i have tried my damnedest to get him to stop wearing socks like this with shorts, but you can see how effective it's been. last night he came home from a bbq cook-off really late, and i woke up and did notice he was wearing tennis shoes without socks. this morning he made sure to inquire whether i noticed and acted like i should be so proud. i think he probably just forgot to pack socks!

wow. it's really been awhile since i blogged, hasn't it? let's just say that work has been really, really busy and leave it at that, shall we?

i have managed to squeeze in some quilting and sewing time. in fact, i finished (finally) the quilt pictured above. i started this in february 2010 for my neice emily, when she moved up to a big girl bed. i whipped out the top in a weekend, and got it basted, too. i got it 2/3 quilted by april. then i'm not sure what happened, but for the next 12 months it languished in my sewing room, used by a variety of cats for a nap spot. at the end of april, knowing i'd be going home for mother's day and getting to see emily, i pulled it out and in one day made short work of finishing the quilting and stitching the binding on. over the next week i stitched the binding to the back by hand, just in time to give it to little miss emily when she woke up from her nap on saturday! i think she liked it, and i'm pretty pleased with the way it turned out.

now that i've finally gotten this project out of the way, i'm ready to move on to my next UFO next month after i finish up two swaps i'm in. last summer i got M's approval on fabric and block choice, and then the ladies in Fresh Modern Bee 2 made string blocks for me, in shades of lime green, with a center stripe of kona stone. i think i need to make a few more blocks, but then i'll have enough to make a bed quilt for M and myself. it should be easy enough to whip out a few more blocks, and no trouble setting them together, since there won't be any sashing and just a single outer border. BUT . . . all the blocks are paperpieced and i'm going to have to remove all the paper, and that's going to take forever! i'd like to send this one out to be professionally long-arm quilted when i'm done with the top, and my goal is to have it completely ready to give to M for his birthday in November. that should be easily doable, i think, even with the increased load at work.

meal plan monday

2011-05-02T11:19:00.001-07:00

last week in review: we mostly stuck to the plan, but sunday night we had leftovers we brough home from lunch with M's family, so we shigfted sunday and monday and omitted tuesday's meal. also, the redfish wasn't thawed enough to grill on friday, so we went to chuy's on friday and had the fish sunday night. i also stuck it out on weight watchers for another week.

sunday: grilled redfish, corn on the cob, stuffed jalapenos
monday: grilled lemon chicken, asparagus, corn on the cob, grilled pineapple
tuesday: green chile stew (leftovers)
wednesday: PF Changs frozen meal Beef and Broccoli, steamed rice
thursday: chicken spaghetti, green beans
friday - sunday: visiting my parents

meal plan monday

2011-04-25T02:05:00.000-07:00

we ended up switching things up a bit last week, but we only ate out for date night and i managed to stick to the Weight Watchers program!

here's the plan for this week:

sunday: grilled chicken breast, roasted red potatoes with rosemary, grilled zucchini with balsamic vinegar
monday: stuffed pork chops, blacked green beans with oranges
tuesday: chicken spaghetti, salad
wednesday: grilled chicken breast, leftover veggies, Baskin Robbins ice cream for desert - it's their annual 31 cent scoop night!
thursday:DATE NIGHT (going out with friends)
friday: grilled redfish, corn on the cob, salad
saturday: chuy's green chile stew*

Chuy's Green Chile Stew (recipe from www.recipegoldmine.com)
Source: Chuy's - San Antonio, Texas

2 cups (approximately 6 to 8 chiles) fresh Sandia
green chiles *
1 (3- to 4-pound) whole chicken, cut into 8 pieces
1 to 2 tablespoons vegetable oil, or as needed
6 cups onions, sliced 1/2-inch thick
4 cups carrots, diced into 1-inch cubes
6 cloves garlic, minced
4 cups tomatillos, husks removed, rinsed and quartered
4 cups Roma tomatoes, quartered
1 tablespoon salt
1 tablespoon pepper
10 cups chicken broth
6 cups new potatoes, cut into 1-inch cubes
1/2 cup chopped cilantro
1 cup diced green onions
Flour tortillas for serving

* You can substitute a mix of New Mexican Anaheim and poblano chiles if Sandia chiles are unavailable.

Broil green chiles in the oven 2 to 3 inches from the heat or lay over open flame on grill, turning chiles as the skins blacken. Peel chiles and discard skins; dice chiles.

In a heavy-bottom pot, brown the chicken pieces over medium heat in vegetable oil, about 15 minutes.

Drain all but 1 tablespoon of drippings. Add onions, carrots and garlic; sauté until onions begin to brown, about 10 minutes. Add tomatillos, tomatoes, salt and pepper and cook another 5 to 10 minutes. Add chicken broth and new potatoes. Bring to a boil, turn heat down to a simmer, and cook for about 30 minutes. Chicken should be thoroughly cooked and vegetables tender.

Remove chicken from pot and pull meat from the bones; discard bones and skin. Return chicken to pan.

Add green chiles, cilantro and green onions. Simmer for another 5 minutes. Serve with fresh flour tortillas.

Makes 6 to 8 servings.

fruits & veggies

2011-04-23T20:01:00.000-07:00

if you know me IRL, you know i'm not much of a fruits & veggie girl. i'm more of a chips & other snacks kinda girl. if i could, i'd survive on chili con queso (preferably from chuy's) and tortilla chips.

anywho, the weight watchers thing has been interesting as i try to figure out what to eat to stay on track. it's also been interesting to note how much more i'm spending on groceries. we've spent more on groceries this week ($184.94) than we have over probably the past two months! now, in the interest of truth, some of what we spent was stockpiling approximately a year's worth of cooking oil with a raincheck for an amazing sale price coupled with coupons ($9.99), stockpiling about 6 weeks's worth of laughing cow cheese wedges (see below)($19.04),(kitty litter
($8.99), 4 bags of charcoal ($9.76), 4 slabs of pork ribs ($21.92), and a couple cases of bottled water ($3.96) for M to take to his next BBQ cookoff in a few weeks. nonetheless, as i get used to changing my eating habits, i think i'll have more energy to try to keep "healthy" eating on track with what i'd like to spend out of our budget for groceries.

i have done well in a couple of areas. first, laughing cow cheese wedges are looking like they're going to be an integral part of my staying on track with WW (1 point for 2 wedges!). on wednesday, when the new grocery ads came out, i saw they were on sale at HEB for $2.88. since i'd just seen that the regular price of them at kroger was $3.59, this looked great. then i saw that a recent sunday paper had a $1/2 coupon, so i hopped on over to ebay and ordered 20 coupons for about a buck. they arrived yesterday, and M and i made a trip to HEB where we each picked up 4 packages of laughing cow cheese for me which got us up to the minimum purchase amount to get pork ribs for 99 cents per lb, limit 2. so i got inexpensive (relatively!) cheese and M got ribs for a couple cookoffs. we'll repeat this deal before the sale ends tuesday, then he'll be stocked on ribs for all of his summer cookoffs and i'll be stocked on laughing cow cheese for the next 6 months! (and before you ask, yes, i did check expiration dates, and because it's a processed cheese product, the stuff is good for almost a whole year from now!)

next, my friend liz introduced me to the tasty goodness of skinny cow ice cream bars, which clock in at a wee 4 points each! tuesday night i was at kroger and noted that the 12 count packs were on sale for $6.99. today i found out that on their facebook page you can print off two $1/1 coupons. well, i printed out my two coupons, and before the sale ends on tuesday, i'll pick up two packages at a pretty great price for diet treats that taste good (50 cents each).

but back to the produce. . . produce coupons just aren't that common, and the few that are more available are generally for pricey organics. so, i'm trying hard to check out what's in season (i.e. at the best price) and looking for new recipes to try. i also heard about an HEB branded store called Joe V's Smart Shop recently, so we drove over to check it out this morning. really, really good produce prices, and some great deals on other stuff as well. i got boneless, skinless pilgrim's pride frozen chicken breasts 2.5 lb packages for $3.75 (an EXCELLENT price), and zuchinni and tomatillos 2 lbs for $1, green beans 77 cents per lb, strawberries $1.27 per lb, and bananas 3 lbs for $1. M got jimmy dean reduced sodium premium cut bacon 2 pkgs for $3 and ribeye steaks (albeit thin cut) for $1.97/lb.

[NOTE: i got out all my receipts, and totalled up all the produce and it was just $25.58, for about a week and a half's worth of fruit (maybe 2 weeks) and a week's worth of fresh veggies). that being said, maybe the high total on all groceries had something to do with the fact that we hadn't really been shopping for a while.]

Meal Plan Monday - Weight Watchers Edition

2011-04-19T16:29:00.000-07:00

yesterday (monday) i started weight watchers, since i've now exceeded my previous "fat weight" and i'm carrying the extra around my middle, which is dangerous in terms of health risks for diabetes, stroke, heart disease, etc. M doesn't have to watch his weight at all, but he does like veggies and fruit, so i'm hoping that it won't be too hard to balance staying on the program with making meals he'll eat.

monday - i was helping a friend pack, so i ate there
tuesday - italian flank steak pinwheels, blackened green beans with orange segments*, salad
wednesday - eggplant parmesan for me/chicken parmesan for M, salad, steamed carrots & broccoli
thursday - spicy honey chicken (grilled), salad, grilled zucchini
friday - date night (i calculated that i can use my 49 "extra" wekly points to have 1/2 c. chili con queso and 111 tortilla chips!! yay!!!!)
saturday - chicken spaghetti, salad, blackened green beans with orange segments
sunday - filet mignon, grilled veggies, grilled corn on the cob, salad

blackened green beans with orange segments*

1 lb green beans, trimmed
1 large navel orange
2 Tbs canola oil
1/4 tsp kosher salt
1 tsp ground black pepper
1 Tbs olive oil
1 Tbs rice vinegar

Zest orange, and set zest aside. Peel orange, break into sections, and reserve juice.

Heat canola oil in cast iron skillet on high until it starts smoking. Add green beans in a single layer, and sprinkle with 1/8 tsp salt. Stir every two minutes, until half blackened and blistered, about eight minutes. remove beans to a dish, add orange segments and 1/4 tsp zest. In small bowl, whisk juice from ornage, olive oil, rice vinegar, remianing salt and pepper. Pour over green beans and toss well.

This recipe was copied from a House Beautiful magazine, but it seems to be the same one as here. It's a keeper!

long time no (interesting) post

2011-04-18T12:11:00.000-07:00

photo by Karamat
a lot of my time in recent weeks has been taken up by a super secret project. a good friend is getting married, and i spearheaded a project with some of the other members of the houston modern quilt guild to make her a wedding quilt. it was a bigger undertaking than i had anticipated, and keeping the secret from her was pretty darn hard, too!

this weekend at our monthly meeting, we presented safieh with her new wedding quilt, and i think she was pretty pleased with our efforts.

now we can go back to our regularly scheduled programming!

meal plan monday

2011-04-11T15:19:00.000-07:00

last week's efforts at sticking to our meal plan were an EPIC FAIL. sunday and monday night we ate as planned. tuesday i ended up being at a friend's house for dinner. i honestly can't remember wednesday, thursday we ate out, friday we ate out for DATE NIGHT, and saturday we picked up pizza because we were both too tired to cook. whoops. that's a lot of eating out.

sunday - leftover pizza (can you say tired?!)
monday - i'll be out with friends, M is supposed to eat some leftover steak
tuesday - hatch green chile and chicken enchiladas, lime cilantro rice, charro beans
wednesday - spaghetti and meat sauce, salad
thursday - lemon chicken, mashed potatoes, broccoli
friday - DATE NIGHT
saturday - PF Changs frozen meal in a bag, steamed rice

foxy!

2011-04-06T10:46:00.000-07:00

a few weeks ago i tested a paperpieced pattern of a baby fox for kirie of shape moth. he's pictured above. subsequently i appliqued a piece over the cream down the center of his face, so it's now the same color as his red fur.

she put up my sample block on her website. she's got some other great paperpieced patterns for sale in her shop, including two more foxes and a darling squirrel.

menu plan monday (a little late on tuesday!)

2011-04-05T10:28:00.000-07:00

sunday: rib eye steaks, rosemary new potatoes, fresh green beans, grilled pineapple
monday: chicken spaghetti and brocoli
tuesday: i have plans with friends, and M is eating a leftover t-bone steak
wednesday: hatch chicken and green chile enchiladas, cilantro lime rice, salad
thursday: chicken parmesan, broccoli
friday: DATE NIGHT
saturday: spaghetti and meatballs

finally

2011-03-28T15:17:00.000-07:00

photo courtesy of safieh

every other cat i've had has loved to help with quilting and sewing. in the three months we've had ozzie, he hasn't hardly shown any interest, aside from wanting to play with thread while i'm hand sewing.

this weekend that all changed. safieh was over working on her quilt for a swap, and ozzie kept claiming it as his own. everytime we turned around, he was lying on it.

hurrah!

Quick & Easy Pasta

2011-03-24T20:06:00.000-07:00

tuesday night's dinner was my own creation. it started out inspired by a pasta dish i had for lunch at ciro's. the one i made was so yummy, and such a big hit with M, that i thought i'd share the recipe.

[note: this pic is of my leftovers for lunch on wednesday. ignore paper plate and masty fork. i'm at the mercy of the office cupboards!]
ingredients:

1/2 box mini farfalle pasta (cooked)
8 oz sliced mushrooms
1-2 Tbs minced garlic
4 oz cream cheese, softened
italian spices to taste (i used penzey's pasta sprinkle)
2 medium tomatoes, diced
1/2 c. canned whole kernel corn, drained
8 oz cooked, sliced chicken breast
3 oz fresh mozerella cut in small pieces

put on water to boil, and cook pasta as directed.

meanwhile, add mushrooms and garlic to a large skillet and sautee for a few minutes. add cream cheese, break up with spoon, and stir until melted. add italian spices, corn and chicken breast, stirring until heated through. add diced tomatoes, and cook for 2-3 more minutes. here, i added a few fresh mozzarella balls, cut in half, and stirred until melted.

add drained, cooked pasta to sauce and serve.

you could also add sliced black olives or kalamata olives to this if you'd like. M is not a huge olive fan so i skipped them, but if i were making this just for myself i'd definitely add some! you could also add some julienned carrots to get in more veggies, too. and i think this would be just as good without the chicken, though that would be unheard of in this house!

bottled rainbows quilt along

2011-03-23T14:12:00.000-07:00

Rachel is hosting a wonderful quilt along to make bottled rainbows. i love the way she has her scraps stored in mason jars - makes me want to do the same!

i'm not sure i have time right now for another quilt along, but i'm adding this to my to-do list for later.

meal plan monday

2011-03-22T15:44:00.001-07:00

well, last week did NOT go according to plan. M worked late virtually every night. wednesday i convinced a friend to go eat mexican, then thursday mark ended up not working late, and he wanted to go to the same restaurant . . .so we did. maybe we'll do better this week:

oh, and i'm starting with sunday, since that's kinda how things roll at our house.

sunday: raspberry chipotle chicken breast, green beans, salad, mashed potatoes (this chicken was SOOOOO good!)

monday: sausage, green beans, mac n cheese

tuesday: pasta with tomatoes, kalamata olives, garlic, parmesan and basil (M can have some sausage with his)

wednesday: M is eating leftovers, and i have a play date

thursday: spaghetti with meat sauce

friday: date night

saturday: ribeye steaks, baked potatoes, salad

lily's quilts QAL

2011-03-18T13:35:00.000-07:00

this week i decided to join a quilt along hosted by the fabulous lynne at lily's quilts. her sample miniquilt made of a single block from her pattern for the QAL was the deciding factor. it's a large dresden plate and she quilted around it in circles. she also used the sherbet pips line, and it's darling!

today is the day we're supposed to be cutting our fabric, but i haven't printed out my templates yet, nor have i selected my fabric. gasp!

i'm auditioning several choices, and i'm also considering making a smaller quilt for a neighbor's new baby boy.

one option is to cut into my jay mccarrol stash, and use kona coal as the background fabric:

another option is to go with black and white prints and chose a kona solid for the background:

a third option is to use this QAL as a stashbuster and just use a bunch of prints from my stash (this is just a wee portion of my stash):

if i choose to do fewer blocks and make a baby quilt, i'll use these fabrics:

i may just go with the baby quilt option, since i do need a quilt for him. that way i could use it as a practice, and make myself a full 6 block quilt later.

meal plan monday

2011-03-14T21:47:00.000-07:00

well, we managed to stick to the plan last week, mainly because it wasn't really a plan, with so many skipped meals.

up for this week:

sunday: cheese enchiladas with chili gravy
monday: jalepeno sauage, green beans, white cheddar macaroni
tuesday: M has a rodeo shift, so i'll have soup or something
wednesday: eggplant parmesan for me, baked ziti for M, salad
thursday: raspberry chipotle chicken, broccoli, mashed potatoes
friday: date night
saturday: M's rodeo committe has its annual Steak Night

TGIF

2011-03-11T14:56:00.000-08:00

i'm tired. and cranky. i didn't get any work work done today, but i did make myself a small pincushion to take with me to corpus this weekend. i realized as i was packing that all of my pincushions are HUGE. so i whipped up a smaller one out of scraps. no pic of that, though. maybe next time.

this week i tried out making a covered notebook. here is my first attempt:

i didn't like the way the linen stretched, and the corners were bulky. i tried a second one, and it's way better, but no pic as i have to applique some stuff to the front.

some friends and i have all been making lots of zipper pouches lately, and hate paying retail prices for zippers. so, we bought a lot of assorted zippers on ebayL

a couple of days ago, another friend sent me a link to a picture on flickr of a patchwork bag for which some of the patches had been stamped with rubber stamps using small images. inspiration! well, my black staz on ink had dried out, but i found a dark purple with some life left in it. then, turns out my rubber stamps, for the most part, had been reorganized onto a high closet shelf. whoops. i did find a couple in a drawer, as well as all my alphabet sets, so i tried a few things:

that's all for today folks. hope everyone has a great weekend.

check out this giveaway . . .

2011-03-11T14:53:00.000-08:00

kaelin over at the plaid scottie is having the most fantastic giveaway to celebrate her blogaversary. but i'm not gonna tell you what it is! you'll just have to go see for yourself!

meal plan monday

2011-03-07T13:15:00.000-08:00

recap of last week - well, the first part of the week, we stuck to the plan. wednesday i didn't want pork, so we bumped the cheese enchiladas up. thursday, M had to work a rodeo shift, and i felt crappy, so i took myself out for chinese. by friday, i realized that my "allergies" had become a full-blown respiratory infection, and M had to work late. he brought home a frozen pizza for dinner. saturday M endedup working a rodeo shift for someone who was sick, which left me sick and on my own for dinner. i ate ritz crackerfuls, which though quite tasty are NOT dinner, and a half croissant. sunday i insisted on chinese food and whataburger.

here's this week's plan:

monday - whoops! i forgot to take something out of the freezer this morning, so maybe we'll just eat spaghetti
tuesday - i'll eat leftovers or soup since M has a rodeo shift
wednesday - hatch chicken enchiladas, mexican rice
thursday - i'll eat leftovers or soup since M has a rodeo shift
friday - sunday - hanging with my parents, so no meal plan needed

have a great week everyone!

ozzie and the box

2011-03-07T10:03:00.001-08:00

miss kitty, about a year or so ago, became a box cat. she likes to have a box she can get into and hunker down. i think it makes her feel safe. her current box is in my sewing room, and M put a towel in it to make it soft for her.

sunday, ozzie decided he would like to nap in the box.

miss kitty is most displeased. sharing is NOT her forte!

the boots and the epic fail

2011-03-03T18:58:00.000-08:00

so, remember this post from two weeks ago? well, the boots arrived, but because i had one foot bandaged up, the box sat, unopened. until tonight. i worked late, grabbed some chinese on the way home, then got in around 8:30 pm. i was tired, and knew i didn't really have the energy to work on any sewing, but since i'm feeling better foot-wise, i decided that i'd try on the boots, at least on my right foot, just to make sure they fit around the calf.

EPIC FAIL.

the david tate black boots are apparently "plus size" wide width. um, yeah. before any give related to the expandable panel in the back, the calf measures 20" at its widest. my calf only measures 15". epic fail #1.

the bruno magli brown boots however, can't be zipped past a few inches above my ankle. seriously guys. my calves aren't fat. they're not stick thin, but they're normal sized. epic fail #2.

and then there's the lovely corso como boots. the ones that snap up the back, with the removable shaft so they can be worn as ankle boots. well, after much stretching and struggling i was able to get the boot snapped all the way to the top. only the top two snaps were an issue, and mostly just the 2nd from the top. well, while i could get them snapped, they reveal an unfortunate sliver of skin bulge where the two sides of the shaft come together in the back. according to the product description, the shaft circumference was supposed to be 15 1/2". well, i measured, and my calves are 15" exactly. i really, really like these, though, and they're such a lovely color, though darker than picture, that i think i'll keep them and work on slimming down the calves before next winter. i mean, how hard can it be to take off a mere 1/2"? [update: while looking for new boot possibles, i found the corso como quaint on amazon for $23 les than i paid, so i think i may just return these anyway, then order the ones from amazon, since shipping is free.]

in other news, i knew i was getting an increase to my hourly rate, because the rate at which my work is billed to the client had been approved for an increase. today i got the $$ info, and it was applied to my february invoice submitted today. yippee!

show and tell tuesday

2011-03-01T17:07:00.000-08:00

well, i feel like i haven't been working on much lately, due to my foot, but i do have several projects in the works.

sunday before last, saf and liz took me to the outlet mall near my house and pushed me around in a wheelchair. sadly (snort) i have no pics of that. however, at the kate spade store, liz saw a little pouch she liked, and we joked about making it and embroidering "kate spade" on it. well, it was a shape of pouch i haven't made before, but it looked simple enough, so i sketched it out. then, i got to work piecing together some of the bazillion hexies i've made. so far, i've got a pieced panel for one side of the pouch, a zipper the right length, and linen for the rest of the outside. i still have to pick lining fabric and actually stitch it together.

i also promised saf a hexie pouch. i swapped on flickr with someone for a bunch of little charm squares for hexies, and she included a set from Anna Maria Horner's Innocent Crush line. saf liked those, so i whipped up hexies out of them, stitched them together, and let her pick a grey linen for the base of the pouch. after three trips to joanss (while on painkillers!), i finally ended up with a zipper in a proper color. i've got some AMH Innocent Crush yardage left over from a purchase for a swap partner, so i'll pick one for the lining.

maybe i'll manage to get both of these done this week. crossing fingers . . .

and just because he's super cute, here's ozzie napping today:

meal plan monday

2011-02-28T16:34:00.000-08:00

well, it's been 11 days since i posted, and 12 days since the foot surgery. i'm STILL hobbling around, and tomorrow i go to get my stitches out. seriously, this is annoying. i fully expected to be all better by now. sigh.

anyway, for the last two weeks, i've failed to post or even draft a menu plan. as evidenced by eating out three or four times last week alone, clearly it pays to plan. so, without further ado, here's this week's plan:

monday - lemon chicken breasts, garlic mashed potatoes and green beans
tuesday - basil chicken with tom yum soup (M has rodeo duties, so i dine alone!)
wednesday - paprika parmesan pork chops, mashed potatoes, broccoli
thursday - cheese enchiladas with chili gravy, mexican rice
friday - Date Night
saturday - depends on whether M has rodeo duties. if so, i'm having eggplant parmesan. if not, i may still have it and just bake him a chicken breast.
sunday - grilled spicy honey chicken breasts, mashed sweet potatoes, broccoli

and there you have it. hopefully we'll stick to the plan and just eat out on date night.

NOTE: M is a Captain on the Rodeo Operations Committee fro the Houston Live Stock and Rodeo, and it's that time of year again.

what's up this week

2011-02-17T11:57:00.000-08:00

well, i haven't posted my "regular" posts this week, and here's what's partially responsible:

yesterday i had a 5mm neuroma excised from my left foot. earlier in the week i was trying to get stuff done so it wouldn't be so bad to be immobile for a few days. i'm much less mobile than i expected - i'm pretty much bedbound today and tomorrow, too. lots of icepacks and vicodin. to say i'm bored and irritable would be correct. fortunately M has been taking good care of me, though he did make me eat a healthy lunch today instead of grazing on seven layer dip and chips. he did let me have peanut butter and choco ice cream after, though. he's also as i type on his way to pick up some work files for me so i can get in some billable hours instead of just lying here thinking about how much my foot freaking itches!

on monday, these arrived in the mail:

needless to say i won't be wearing them anytime soon! i have to wear the "special shoe" for two weeks then lace-ups for 6-8 weeks after that. but then i'm wearing these!

all of you that know me IRL know that i'm a pretty frugal person. i've never understood those friends and one of my sisters-in-law who spend hundreds of dollars on a single pair of shoes. well, these shoes (by Costume National) retailed for $600 (gasp.). i paid under $200, which for me is still WAY more than i usually pay for shoes. i think i only have one pair of boots that cost near that amount. anyway, i saw these online, and they were perfect to go with a particular dress, and they looked so much nicer than the other possibilities, so i ordered them, along with some others to try. the others are going back. these are freaking incredible shoes! not that i'm going to start buying $600 shoes all of the time, but i can certainly tell a difference both in comfort level and in quality.

okay. enough about shoes. except to say that i continued this trend today when i ordered new winter boots. it's better to buy after-season when things are on sale and/or clearance. and i needed to replace two pair. so i ordered three pair. yes, i CAN do the math. i'm blaming it on the vicodin (see above). i got all three pair for right around the retail price on the corso como boots, which was $325. but my two pairs i'm replacing were 10 and 5 years old, respectively, and these should likely last even longer because they're better quality.

david tate - valentine
bruno magli haialle
corso como quaint

And the winner is . . .

2011-02-13T19:29:00.000-08:00

Random.org chose number 13:

Mommarock said...
Hexies and giveaways is pretty much all I blog about LOL. Hexies take a LONG time to work on.. so I think it will take me a while to reach 100 posts.. Congrats! Hope you make 100 more real soon.

congrats mamarock! email me with your name and mailing address so i can get your prize in the mail to you.

this grey hexie zipper pouch is your prize.

100 posts!

2011-02-08T09:37:00.000-08:00

i was going to post my meal plan monday, a day late, when i noticed that my last post was my 100th!

i think this is cause for a giveaway. i don't know what the prize will be yet, but i'm pretty sure it will involve hexies.

to enter, post a comment here. if you blog about this giveaway, comment again for another entry.

i'll pick a winner at random on sunday, february 13, and post the winner here.

show and tell tuesday

2011-02-01T20:36:00.001-08:00

i've had a busy week since last tuesday.

i finished (and mailed) my first set of bee blocks for february:

i finished the mug rug for saf that she won on a giveaway here on my blog months ago:

mark finished my design wall, and i put up all the 3 x 6 blocks i've received on it to try it out:

and i finally did something with some of these hexies i've been making.

good night, and stay warm, wherever you are!

meal plan monday

2011-01-31T14:50:00.000-08:00

status report: last week we stuck to the plan, except for saturday night when we decided to go out with friends.

the plan for this week:

monday - orange chicken, rice, dumplings

tuesday - grilled chicken breast, broccoli

wednesday - parmesan paprika pork chops, baked sweet potatoes, broccoli

thursday - chicken parmesan

friday - date night

saturday - chili

sunday - beef stroganoff over egg noodles

show and tell tuesday

2011-01-25T22:05:00.000-08:00

yay! tonight i finished all of my remaining january bee blocks. good thing since i got my first february package yesterday.

initially, when i got my fabric package from lolaoceanblue for the fresh modern bee 2, i set it aside, knowing she had asked for circle blocks. i was pretty intimidated. later, she posted some more inspiration pics and said to her hexagons read as circular. yay. i had seen blocks similar to the one above on flickr and had been considering this block for the 3 x 6 bee this quarter. when i finally opened lola's envelope and saw the fabric, i knew i could do a trial run with this block.

turns out i love it, and it's not even that hard! score! the one above is my fave, but i also made these two:

i also whipped up two pinwheel blocks for karrie in the pretty in pink bee:

i made a starflower block for krissy in the red and aqua bee 2, but forgot to take a picture.

last night i stitched up another batch of hexies. i think now i need to start making things out og the hexies instead of just making more hexies!

meal plan monday

2011-01-24T11:41:00.000-08:00

status report: last week we totally stuck to the plan, at least in terms of eating at home. i think we switched things up one night, because M brought home some deer sausage.

the plan for this week:

monday - cilantro lime grilled chicken breast, potato torta

tuesday - grilled italian flank steak pinwheels, baked sweet potatoes

wednesday - eggplant parmesan, pasta, chicken breast for M (must have meat!)

thursday - king ranch chicken

friday - date night

saturday - orange chicken, rice, steamed sugar snap peas

sunday - beef stroganoff over egg noodles, brocolli

wordless wednesday

2011-01-19T19:30:00.000-08:00

ozzie and the cone of shame

show and tell tuesday

2011-01-18T20:51:00.001-08:00

last week it was embroidery. this week it's hexies, hexies and more hexies.

i've been swapping fabric on flickr, and after christmas i also ordered some japanese fabrics on etsy, and i've been using those, plus the ones i already had and other novelty prints, to make hexagons. no idea what i'm going to do with all of them. some i've already pieced together into two panels to use for a zippered pouch like the one i received in december in the make mine modern swap.

epic fail!

2011-01-18T09:02:00.000-08:00

well, the bad thing about scheduling posts in advance for something you PLAN on getting done is that you end up NOT getting it done, and then you completely forget about the pending scheduled post, which then does indeed post, and you feel like an idiot! no lino block printing was done this weekend. really, i wanted to, but we had cat/vet issues and other stuff took more time than planned, and it just didn't happen!

meal plan monday

2011-01-17T10:46:00.000-08:00

well, it's that time again. time to assess last week and move forward. we did great last week with eating at home! we stuck to the meal plan more or less. on thursday we substituted green bean koresh, a persian stew, for the chicken chipotle corn chowder, but we still ate at home.

this week's plan - revised:

monday - beef stew (it was another epic fail, and i ended up grabbing taco bell when we went out to put gas in my car!)

tuesday - deconstructed broccoli and cheese stuffed chicken breasts, rice, salad

wednesday - lasagna, salad, green beans

thursday - parmesan paprika pork chops, broccoli, mashed potatoes

friday - Date Night

saturday - leftover night

sunday - ribeye steaks, baked sweet potatoes, broccoli

show and tell tuesday

2011-01-11T20:25:00.000-08:00

it's been a catch-up week, as far as sewing goes. i've finally finished and mailed out all of my december bee blocks, and even finished and mailed two sets of the three january ones received so far. good thing, since two more arrived in yesterday's mail!

my faves of the ones i finished were paula's for the sew 2 speak bee:

i also went on an embroidery kick and stitched up these:

sunday afternoon i was able to crank out two wonky star blocks for jen's quilts of valor quilt, and tonight i almost finished my round for jacquie's round robin.

all in all it's been a quite productive week.

in non-sewing news, ozzie had his surgery thursday, and he's doing great. we also discovered at the end of last week that a mysterious white cat we've seen around has been living in the shed in M's back yard next door. tonight, again, she came up to the sliding glass door in my sewing room and hung out watching our cats and us. M brought out the fleece on a stick and she acted like she wanted to play through the glass. he went out back and tried to entice her to come play, but she wouldn't come any closer than about 6 feet, which surprised me that she even came that close. we've put a cat sleep sack out on our covered patio for her, and M put out some more kibble. we're such suckers. looks like we have a new outdoor cat.

Meal Plan Monday

2011-01-10T20:12:00.000-08:00

so, how'd we do on last week's meal plan? so-so. we ate at home, as planned monday through wednesday. we shifted date night to thursday, but then got pizza friday night, and on sunday we took our friends out to dinner because we were too lazy to clean house and mop the filthy floors. this week we've vowed to do better!

monday - cilantro lime chicken breasts, roasted cauliflower and broccoli for M

tuesday - stuffed pork chops, broccoli, leftover cauliflower for me

wednesday - chicken parmesan, pasta, green beans

thursday - chipotle chicken & corn chowder

friday - date night

saturday - beef stew

sunday - dinner with friends (chicken parmesan and eggplant parmesan if we clean house and eat here)

note: the cauliflower i made tonight (monday) kicked ass. it was, perhaps, the best cauliflower i've ever eaten. we got it free from a friend of M who is experimenting with organic gardening. i looked online for a recipe and found the one i linked to above. i modified it, tossing the florets with a mixture of olive oil, stone ground spicy mustard, and minced garlic. i omitted the bacon, because i didn't want to hassle with it. it was sooooooo good. next time i might throw in a bit of parmesan, too.

show & tell tuesday

2011-01-04T19:09:00.001-08:00

i'm going to try to blog more frequently this year, so tuesdays are going to be show and tell days here at the house of bad cats.

this weekend i finally finished a baby quilt for my co-worker's first-born child, a boy. i started this months ago - the baby was born in mid-september, so i was glad to get this one done. i also really like the way it turned out, and i'm going to make a similar one for my sister-in-law's nephew.

last night i started and finished an embroidery. i have no designated use for this, but i'm thinking i'll send it to my january ALFALC swap partner, since it's good for valentine's day, but also year-round, too.

Meal Plan Monday

2011-01-04T11:58:00.000-08:00

okay, so it's really tuesday, but i didn't have a chance to post this last night. every monday, i'm going to try to post my meal plan for the week (see my resolutions in post below). only dinners will be included. mark eats lunch out if he's working, and i take leftovers or just eat soup generally.

Monday - crockpot beef stroganoff

Tuesday - chicken and sausage jambalaya

Wednesday - leftover chicken parmesan for me/M has a meeting

Thursday - cilantro lime chicken breast, baked cauliflower

Friday - Date Night

Saturday - dinner out for friend's bday

Sunday - friends coming for dinner (menu is a surprise)

Happy New Year!

2011-01-02T12:47:00.000-08:00

well, it's that time again, the time when we take stock of our lives and make resolutions to improve in the upcoming year. in the upcoming days, i'll post a recap of 2010, but for now, here are a few of my resolutions for 2011:

- complete the january no-spending challenge with safieh (no spending for non-necessities)

- Fabric Diet Challenge (january and february) - no fabric purchases (swaps and trades are okay!)

- make a meal plan for each week so that we're not tempted to eat out, even though we have a freezer full of food (correlative resolution: throw out less food!)

- complete (at least) one sewing/quilting unfinished project (UFO) each month

- spend more time with friends, especially those we haven't seen as much lately

- pay off my student loans

- finish more sewing/quilting/crafting projects than i start (ha!)

i think that's enough for now. and note that i didn't have a single resolution dealing with weight loss or fitness! i figured there's no need to make resolutions i know i can't keep!

sherbet pips giveaway

2010-12-24T09:41:00.000-08:00

Susanne is having a fabulous giveaway on her blog for a sherbet pips charm pack. i know you all want this, so go enter NOW.

introducing ozzie . . .

2010-12-13T16:08:00.001-08:00

i certainly didn't intend to get another cat so soon after tom's passing. truly i didn't. but i was surfing "kitty porn" at work, and i came across a craigslist posting for the montgomery county animal shelter. when i clicked on the post's link to see the "purrrls" - cats who have been at the shelter 60 days or more - i found the picture you see above, and it was love at first sight.

that night i showed the picture to M when he got home, and the next day, friday, i made arrangements to have "andy" as i found out he was called taken home with a volunteer - the photographer - so i could pick him up later that evening. M and i drove out to the woodlands, and when we first entered the room where the kitty was hanging out, we just knew he was right for us. we played with him for a bit, then put him in the carrier for the ride home. i held the carrier in my lap, and we unzipped one end so M and i could reach in and pet him. he did fantastic in the car, and even fell asleep while i rubbed his tummy.

we tried out a few different names, but by bedtime we'd settled on "ozzie." at 3:45 am saturday, we did have to boot ozzie from the bedroom because he was wanting to play and wouldn't settle down. that's the only night we've given him the boot. the past two nights he's slept between us, proving that he's an awesome cuddler. it's been funny having a kitten - he's only 4-6 months old - i'd forgotten what that was like. he discovered a ray of light reflected on the ceiling this morning frommy watch, and he was soooooo fascinated. yesterday he found a crumpled foil candy wrapper and spent a good 30 minutes just playing with it by himself. he also has the cutest meow - he sounds like a cranky old man cat! and he has a purr that pretty much doesn't quit unless he's asleep.

now, don't start thinking i just replaced tom, because i didn't. ozzie has his own distinct personality, and is not the same cat. i still miss tom very, very much, but having ozzie around to make me laugh is definitely helping.

if you're in the houston area and in need of a cat or dog, i'd recommend the montgomery county animal shelter. they have a hard time adopting out cats especially, and those that don't find homes before they've been at the shelter 60 days usually don't. they stay in tiny individual kennels, and don't get out often, though there is a playroom for some of the cats. the long-term dogs do get walked every day. but if you're needing or wanting a pet, check them out. save a cat - make a friend for life.

Rest in Peace Sir Thomas OrangeCat

2010-11-29T14:18:00.000-08:00

i don't know exactly when tom was born - we guess sometime in the spring of 2007 - but i know exactly when he passed away - sunday, november 28, 2010, at 6:24 a.m.

thomas wasn't the best cat ever; he wasn't a perfect cat. but he was a good cat, and he was my favorite. he made me laugh when he did silly things. he kept me warm when he snuggled. he meowed when you petted him. he chewed metal and pooed on the couch. but i still loved him best of all.

tom went by lots of names. when we acquired him after he had been dumped at mark's friends' farm, they had named him tommy boy, after the chris farley movie. not being a chris farley fan, i just called him tommy at first, then tommy kittykins. when he started getting to be a bog boy, we called him fat tom. we also called him mr. tom, sir thomas orangecat, and tommy rotten. no matter what name we used, we used it lovingly, even when mark called him mr. poobody because he pooed on the couch.

goodbye, dear tom. you are surely missed.

fantastic grocery shopping excursion

2010-11-15T19:19:00.000-08:00

for the past two weeks, kroger has been having a mega sale, where you get $5 off for every 10 selected items you buy. i've had my coupons in order and my list prepped, but just hadn't made it to the store. i didn't want to wait until the last day (tomorrow) just in case i needed to get a raincheck for anything and i often shop after customer service has closed for the evening.

i went this afternoon, and this is what i got:

okay, so it's not a great picture, but here's my breakdown:

4 2L sodas
11 campbell's cream of chicken soup
2 campbell's chunky soup
2 campbell's harvest selections soup
4 ricola cough drops
4 stove top stuffing
2 dole fruit in jar
1 carefree liners
4 colgate toothbrushes
2 no yolks egg noodles
2 ronzoni healthy harvest egg noodles
5 athenos hummus
1 nilla wafers
1 velveeta
2 wholly queso
1 pint half and half kroger brand
4 idahoan mashed potato flakes
1 bounty paper towels
2 playtex handsaver gloves
2 SM mounting squares
2 pillsbury refrigerated pie crusts

retail price before sales: $107.81
sale price: $60.60
i paid after coupons: $0.78

SWEET!

usually coupon snafus are NOT in my favor. this time, though, there was a crazy snafu that ended up paying for most of the things i wasn't already getting free with coupons. a few weeks ago athenos hummus had been on sale for $1, and i had a couple $1/1 coupons. i was pretty excited about free hummus, but the store was out and i had to get a rainsheck. today, there was plenty of hummus in stock, so i got my five i expected to be free. well, for some reason after the manager helped my cashier ring up the hummus at the raincheck price, when he scanned the coupons i had for it, each one took off $3.79, which was the non-raincheck price of the hummus. i didn't catch this at the store, because i was focused on dealing with the manager in sorting out which toothbrushes were part of the mega deal. so, i ended up getting "paid" to buy the hummus, and that paid for almost all of my other stuff!

in quilting news, this past week i got to "test" an embroidery pattern that michelle brown will be selling soon in her etsy shop, kiss kiss kiddo. i got two patterns, but only stitched up the little girl above. isn't she cute? i think i may make her into a tiny wallhanging for miss emily.

i also got five of my six blocks done for the 4th quarter 3x6 bee:

i got stumped on the last block because of color choices, but i think i have the fabrics picked out now!

has it really been a month since i posted?!?!

2010-11-13T08:54:00.000-08:00

i guess time has sort of slipped past me lately. i've been pretty busy with work and also lots of sewing. we've also been working on getting some stuff done around the house that needs to be completed by november 20.

the biggest accomplishment has been our transformation of what we called "the cat room" because we have a bench seat placed under a window where the cats like to sprawl and watch squirrel tv. i wish i had a "before" pic, but just imagine a room crammed with all sorts of miscellaneous crap: desk and computer, paper shredder, filing cabinet, spread-out mountains of M's paperwork, boxes of M's stuff he never found a proper home for when he fully moved in, craptons of office supplies, framed artwork that came with M that i really don't care for, a cat tower, a huge blow-up ball for pilates (um, yeah. never used), a clothing armoire (now empty), a blanket chest, overflowing boxes of M's cds, random bits comprising the stand for the flat screen tv mounted to the wall that we're never going to use not mounted to the wall but didn't want to get rid of, and so forth and so on. you get the picture, right?

fast-forward to today: the room still holds a desk with computer, filing cabinet, paper shredder and office supplies, but now the paperwork has been sorted through and either recycled, shredded or filed (except one small box), homes have been found for random crap, and we moved over a twin-sized captain's bed that belonged to M's son and bought bedding so little miss emily has her own bed when my parents bring her up for thanksgiving (and whenever else she comes to visit). i also relocated an antique vanity that belonged to M's mother as well as a chair that had been hers into the room. the armoire is still there, but as soon as M gets home on sunday, it's getting relocated to my sewing room. the end result: a room that's functional, organized and still can serve as M's office, a room for emily when she visits, and a place for the kitties to hang out and watch squirrel tv. BTW, the kitties seem to think we moved the bed in just for them to have a larger, comfier place to sprawl whilst watching squirrel tv!

in sewing news, i've fallen in love with half-square triangles, thanks to both my vintage bernette (which doesn't "eat" the fabric like my new home machine) and a handy-dandy super easy peasy tutorial! the result is my new favorite block:
for binkwaffle in the 3x6 bee
blocks the ravishing in red bee is making for me this month
originally going to be part of a wallhanging for my modern swappers partner, but since she doesn't seem to care for it, it's going to be made into a table runner for my mom for xmas

i also have some other christmas pressies in the works, but i'll post a sneak peek of those later!

and the winner is . . .

2010-10-17T18:42:00.000-07:00

. . . SAFIEH! safieh was closest with her guess of seven cents. my actual out of pocket cost for all the items in the giveaway post was a paltry twenty cents. congrats!

now onto other stuff . . .

i finally got all my september bee blocks finished and sent off, but now i have to start october, and the month is already halfway over. this is my favorite block i made - it's for angela in the ravishing in red bee:

my co-worker and his wife had their first baby, and i've started work on a quilt for little p.j. mr. bat has been very, very helpful:

two weeks ago, during sunday afternoon football, i had mark put together a cutting table i bought long before we were married. i thought i could put it in the living room in place of the folding table where i keep one of my sewing machines, and it would look neater, plus the table has doors you can close to hide stuff. i was wrong! the table's too high to sit at for sewing, though it is perfect for cutting, so into the sewing room it went. i moved a few items into it, and tom helped make sure i was doing it right:

i meant to work on my october blocks today, but instead i cleaned up in my kitchen. my house is awfully cluttered, and it drives me crazy. my house was the right size for just me and all of my stuff, but then mark and all his stuff came along, and now it's too small. it seems pretty selfish to say that a 1700 square foot house is too small for two people with no kids in the house, but we have a lot of stuff. i did go through and unload a whole lot of crap before mark moved in, and he did get rid of most of his furniture. nonetheless, he still brought a crapload of other stuff, especially kitchen stuff, and this house just doesn't have good closet space!

so, we had our guild meeting at tammy's house yesterday, and i was exposed to such a lack of clutter, despite the presence of a toddler, a dog and a cat, in addition to tammy and her husband. i wish i were that organized and clutter-free! anyway, her house inspired me to work on the kitchen today. while the kitchen isn't the worst cluttered room in the house, it's one you see when you first walk in, and it's where we (and guests) spend a lot of time. it's also a room i could tackle without having to move any of mark's paper clutter. i spent a couple of hours moving things around, putting things away, and sorting through stuff. i culled a few things to give away, threw away some broken stuff that had gotten returned to cabinets, and moved some things off of the counters and into cupboards. it's not 100% clutter-free, and i still need to find homes for some larger items like the whirlypop and a cast iron dutch oven, but it looks a whole lot better and i feel like i achieved something today. now if i can just whip the rest of the house into shape before my parents arrive for thanksgiving!

so, i'm having a giveaway . . .

2010-09-30T19:17:00.000-07:00

tonight i decided to have a giveaway on my blog. the winner will receive a mug rug in his or her choice of color schemes, but my choice of design.

here's the mug rug i made for a swap i'm in

and just so i don't forget, M made me these pancakes on sunday. they were soooooo tasty!

so, back to the giveaway. i don't really like all that random number generator crap. it's boring. so, in order to win my giveaway, you have to post a comment on this post telling me how much you think i spent on the groceries in the picture below. the one closest to the exact out of pocket cost wins. be sure to leave me a way to contact you in case you're the winner.

to make it a bit easier for you, here is a list of everything in the picture:
6 chiquita bites - apple slices
3 hallmark cards
2 edge shave gel with free bonus razor attached
1 scrubbing bubbles 2-in-1 toilet brush starter kit
3 hamburger helper
2 betty crocker scalloped potatoes
3 cans progresso chicken noodle soup
1 box nature valley granola bars
1 betty crocker sugar cookie mix
1 sobe lifewater

good luck!

freezer cooking day - the retrospective

2010-09-27T21:40:00.000-07:00

i'm so glad M has mad skills!

so, the day began with a rather inauspicious start. the previous week i had noticed the kitchen sink wasn't draining right, but M was out of town. friday night he put two kinds of liquid plumbr down it, but no success. saturday morning he went to home depot to rent a snake. um, yeah. he bought one instead. four hours and lots of mess later, i finally had a working sink, just in time!

before safieh arrived, i started a chicken boiling and chopped all the carrots, onion and celery.

after she got here and we ate a quick lunch of chicken salad sandwiches, we got down to business.

five hours later, we packed it in. we didn't finish everything on our list, but we did pretty well. we ended up with the following:

six meals of spicy honey chicken
five meals of lemon chicken
six meals of cilantro lime chicken
12 quaarts of chicken noodle soup
6.5 quarts of chipotle chicken & corn chowder
eight meals of italian flank steak pinwheels
five meals of baked rigatoni

part of the loot

sunday morning i whipped up nine meals of eggplant parmesan, and tomorrow night i'll put together three - four meals of chicken marsala

all together, that's 61 meals for two people, and some of the meals will almost certainly have leftovers.

our total cost, including ziplocs and disposable aluminum pans to pack the meals in, came to roughly $120. it was more than i had anticipated, but still comes out to less than $2 per meal.

with M working out of town for the next two or three weeks, and eating out once or twice a week, we should be set until November!

stay tuned - freezer cooking day tomorrow!

2010-09-24T10:06:00.000-07:00

two weeks ago or so i discovered this website. this woman puts together a menu for once a month cooking, complete with grocery list, step-by-step instructions, and even labels for your meals! while she includes breakfast and lunch recipes, i'm not too interested in those. however, one thing i like about her menus is that her recipes aren't just casseroles. one can only eat so many meals of casseroles, after all!

anyway, i mentioned this website to a couple of friends and asked if they'd be interested in planning a big cooking day. one said yes right away, and the other wasn't sure her fiance would go for the idea. well, my co-worker's wife birthed their first child on monday, and i had asked if they'd like it if i prepared some ready-to-cook meals for them to stash in their freezer. apparently i got a big thumbs-up from the new mom! so tuesday evening i stopped at the store on the way home and picked up a bunch of stuff to try out some of the new recipes i'd found.

here's what i bought stuff for:

freezer beef stew
deconstructed stuffed chicken breasts
ultimate beef stroganoff
baked ziti
parmesan paprika pork chops

of course, i forgot mushrooms, so the beef for the stroganoff is now hanging out in my freezer.

tuesday night i prepared the freezer beef stew and the parmesan paprika pork chops. i had leftover coating for the pork chops, so i took a pork tenderloin out of my freezer, thawed it, and prepped it with the rest of the coating on wednesday. last night i made the stuffed chicken breasts and set out the ingredients for the baked ziti, which i'll throw together this evening.

i spent $54 at the grocery store, mostly on the meat, and used stuff i had on hand in my pantry and freezer.

here's the breakdown of what i ended up with:

4 batches of freezer beef stew, each of which makes a crockpot full
8 two-person meals of parmesan paprika pork chops (some with leftover potential)
2 single-serve deconstructed stuffed chicken breasts (for my delightful friend susie)
6 two-person meals of deconstructed stuffed chicken breasts
6 two-person meals of baked ziti(with leftover potential)
8 two-person meals of beef stroganoff (well, this is what i should end up with)

that's about 37 meals for a two-person family, which breaks down to $1.46 per meal. not too bad!

lots of the meals from this round will go to my co-worker and his wife, and my friend susie, who is in her 70s and ends up not cooking much because it's a pain in the ass to cook for one.

BUT . . . i'm not stopping here. my hesitant friend heard about my achievements of the week and decided she wants in on this, so we have a date for a cooking day tomorrow! we'll be making all of the following: chicken noodle soup, chipotle chicken and corn chowder, spicy honey chicken, lemon chicken, cilantro lime chicken, baked rigatoni, eggplant parmesan, and italian flank steak pinwheels. grocery lists have been prepped and stores with the best prices on the meat identified, and it looks like, including storage bags and containers, we'll spend less than $90 and end up with 28 two-person meals each! woo hoo! funny cooking stories and pictures to follow . . .

I LOVE CHEESE!

2010-09-14T19:41:00.000-07:00

just before labor day, Kraft released a coupon for $5/5 Kraft cheese or dairy products. it's no longer available apparently, but i've been hanging on to the ones i printed waiting for a good deal to use them with. tonight i was checking out a blog i read frequently, Katy Couponers and i saw someone had commented on her post about the coupon. often readers will share where they got a good deal, so i clicked to read the comment. the reader had used her coupons at HEB. tonight is the last night of the sale, and i waffled on whether i really wanted to make a run to HEB, but decided to go.

i got 10 packages of Kraft shredded cheese, 10 cans of Wolf chili, and 10 bags of HEB corn chips. the cheese was priced $2 each, and the combo loco deal was buy the cheese, get chili and chips free. so my 10 combo locos rang up at $20, then i used 2 $5/5 Kraft coupons and only spent $10. we've still got plenty of last fall's free hormel chili from a kroger megasale, but M doesn't like it; he does like wolf, so this is for him. i love frito pie when the weather is cooler, so now i'm stocked up for lots of frito pie!

FYI - you can totally freeze cheese.

on my way home i stopped at randalls, mainly to get a bag of mission tortilla chips for cheap because i'm out of chips and i can't have chips and queso for dinner while M is out of town if i don't have chips! i spent $2.88 (two .55 ecoupons didn't come off for the chips) and got back a catalina for $3 OYNO. i went home with 3 fage yogurt with honey (YUM!), a bottle of cheer laundry detergent, 1 can of cat food (free w/coupon; going to dad for his outdoor cats), 1 bag mission tortilla chips, 1 pkg mahatma yellow rice, 2 pillsbury sweet moments brownie bites, 1 pillsbury refrigerated sweet rolls, 2 pillsbury crescent rolls and 2 pillsbury grands biscuits, and 1 betty crocker chocolate chip cookie mix. i also found coupon booklets that have $2/2 scrubbing bubbles products that i'll use next week on the cleaning supplies promo at randalls through 9/28.

FYI - you can also freeze pillsbury canned biscuit and other bread products. really.

almost done!

2010-09-10T19:07:00.000-07:00

last weekend my parents came to visit, and my wonderful mom helped me do some more rehab in my craft room. i started on saturday morning before she arrived, and had made good headway going through my non-sewing craft things. over the next few days we went through the rest, bagged up stuff for goodwill, set aside stuff for her to take back for my niece's headstart teacher to use for the class, and for my cousin to use with her kids' sunday school class. we moved furniture, and vacuumed carpet, and moved furniture again as i changed my mind. i settled on a paint color for when we paint sometime before the first of the year. we manipulated the closet so that i could move my clothes in there and out of the tiny, cramped closet they were in. then we moved the clothes. i'm excited that there are shelves for all my boots to line up where i can see them!

the best features of all: i have a sitting area, with two comfy chairs and an ottoman! right now, they're not very pretty, but i plan to recover them soon. i don't even have to buy fabric, since i'm going to use some lovely fabric i picked out for my loveseat but then decided it didn't match our butterscotch colored couch. it's a lovely chocolate brown and linen damask. i'm also recovering my chair for my sewing table. i've even already taken the chair apart.

here's what still needs to be done:
1) recover the sitting area chairs, the sewing chair and the ottoman
2) paint the black dresser white and replace ugly wood shelf with dresser, so things can be out of sight
3) paint
4) have mark put closet doors back on
5) recover ironing board
6) mount a few IKEA lack shelves on the walls to display prety things

i got so excited i even hung a few things on the wall above my sewing table. i hung a magnetic chalkboard thing so i can write notes and put up pics of stuff to inspire me. i also hung the lovely miniquilt danielle in australia sent to me as well as two other framed items.

i'll post a pic tomorrow, but i'm too lazy to get up and get the camera now, plus, it's too dark to take good pics in there now.

lest i leave you with a photoless blog entry, here's some pics of the kids:

chicken, anyone?

2010-08-29T14:27:00.000-07:00

people i talk to are constantly amazed by how little M and i pay for groceries, household items, and pet supplies. this year, just for the fun of the challenge, i decided we should try to stick to a budget of $100 per month for all these items. so far, we've only gone over budget one month, back in may when kroger had an amazing meat sale, with whole tip sirloin for $2.99 a pound and fantastic prices on other good cuts of beef. on average, we've spent $110 per month.

my friends want to know how i do this. i've tried to explain it to a few, but it can be a little confusing to the new couponer to learn things like stacking e-coupons and paper coupons, using a manufacturer's coupon with a store coupon, etc.

today i'm going to share the single most helpful tip, in my opinion, for saving on grocery items. here goes: learn what the low sale price is on an item and wait for that sale price and then stock up on enough of that item to last til the next time it goes on sale. for example, we're currently having to resock our freezer after the TERRIBLE LOSS last month of most of what was in our completely packed outside freezer. one thing we're completely out of is chicken. i like chicken; however, i do not like to deal with chicken bones and skin and strange bits for the most part. which means i like to buy boneless, skinless chicken breast. regular, non-sale price is generally around $3 per pound for non-organic chicken breast. will i pay $3 per pound? not if i can help it! this week (through tuesday for those of you who are local) kroger has their brand of boneless, skinless chicken breast for $1.88 per pound. this is just about as low as it gets. it's not quite half-price, but close. since we have no chicken, and i like to make several chicken-based meals in any given week, we bought 10 pounds on friday, and will divide it up into packages of the right size for a meal for us, then vacuum seal them and freeze. i plan to go back and get another 15 pounds or so while it's still on sale, and that should last us for a few months.

many couponers recommend that people make a price book, which is basically a small note book you carry around with you and write down regular and sale prices of items you buy. that way, you can figure out what's a good price and what's not and also figure out sale cycles. stores tend to run the same types of items at their best sale prices somewhat cyclically. for instance, ham is always cheapest around easter and christmas, turkey in november and december, school supplies in july and early august, soups during the winter months. M loves basic campbell's chicken noodle soup. regular price is something like $1.29 per can. during the winter months, it tends to run 2 cans for $1 and sometimes 3 cans for $1. this time of year is also when you see the most soup coupons, too. pair your coupons with a sale, and soup is almost free!

the correlative (is that the right word?) to this rule is to plan your grocery shopping around what's on sale. this is especially helpful if you don't have an extra freezer. for example, i tend to buy produce based on what's in season and thus on sale. summertime is corn season, and prices have been as low as four ears of corn for $1. we've had a lot of yummy grilled corn on the cob this summer, as well as yellow squash and zucchini. if i were a less lazy and more industrious person, you can apparently prepare corn on the cob in a certain manner, remove from the cob and freeze for later. i say thank goodness for that green giant! right now brocolli seems to be a good price, and in a couple months, sweet potatoes (yum!) are at their yearly low prices. so, instead of buying $4 per pound asparagus right now, ask yourself if you'd be just as happy with .99 per pound broccoli. sometimes, though, only the asparagus is going to make you happy, so go ahead and splurge. if you've been developing saving habits, the occasional splurge will still fit into your budget.

Finally getting some sewing done . . .

2010-08-25T15:32:00.001-07:00

i finally remembered to take a picture of my sewing room in its "after" state:

last weekend i cleaned off another area of the room, a shelf which had been crammed full of stuff and which now looks like this:

here's my latest stash addition. it was ordered to make christmas presents for my fellow houston modern quilt guild members, but the size of the elephants, giraffes, and owls are much larger than i anticipated. that idea got tossed, but i've come up with one just as good. no hints from me, though!

this one i'm going to use to make a new ironing board cover:

even though i still have about ten blocks i need to make for various bees for august, i've been procrastinating. how, you ask. well, first i've been working on my blocks for the 3x6 mini bee, which aren't due for about three weeks. i only have to make 6 blocks total, all the same pattern, but using each person's color choices. i finally settled on a simple block that i could use to showcase some medium to large prints. i have 4 of 6 done, the 5th cut out, and am trying to pick fabric for the 6th. i can't post pics in the flickr group yet, as i want to wait until everyone receives then, but here's a sneak peek for those of you who read this:

finally, i worked from home today, but took a break this afternoon and made two hexies - all i allowed myself because that used the thread i already had on a needle:

aren't they cute?

it's been a long time . . .

2010-08-16T20:11:00.000-07:00

i haven't posted in a month or so, but there's been good reason. first, my grandad died. i spent eight days at home to help out my mom, but that meant virtually no internet time. then, when i returned, i brought my not-quite four year old neice home with me. wow. who knew kids were so time consuming?!? no sewing or blogging THAT week either! since then i've just been trying to catch up on sew much stuff.

some of my quilt guild friends came over to sew up some quilts for Quilts for Kids. everyone either finished her quilt top or came pretty close. i finished my quilt this past weekend, and miss kitty helped out with quality control.

safieh came over and helped me clean/organize my sewing room. here is a "before" picture:

i still need to deal with the stuff for non-sewing crafts that's in the middle section of the room, but it looks so much better now! no pics yet, but my fabric is now all in one place and organized by color!

i finally decided on what to make for my modern swap partner, worked on it this week and got it all finished:

it's a sewing machine cover, just in case you can't tell, and it's a good thing it's too small for my machine or i'd be tempted to keep it!

in cleaning in the sewing room i found a small cat nap quilt i'd made several years ago when i made up several to sell for a fundraiser for an online friend whose cat had racked up some huge vet bills. all the ones i made used fabric already in my stash. this one never sold, and this was long before fat tom came into our lives. it must have been fate, though, because the quilt i uncovered had fabric with generously-sized orange cats on it! i presented it to tom on saturday, and he immediately curled up for another nap!

i was also able to catch up this past weekend on several of my bee blocks. i hadn't started any of my august blocks, but i was able to get three sets done and packaged to send to their new homes!

it's been a long, long week . . .

2010-07-16T09:14:00.001-07:00

so, last saturday night, when we got home around midnight, my new iron, just like the one pictured above, was waiting on my doorstep! turns out, i love it! sunday has been the only chance i've had to sew all week, and it wasn't exactly a stellar day.

i worked on a set of coasters for my modern swap partner, but i'm not that thrilled with them, for a number of reasons. i'll run them by some IRL friends on saturday and get their opinions.

i also finished my wonky flying geese coaster for my desk at the office. i like it, but . . . i should have graded my seam allowances, because the grey around the geese and the orange print backing seams are just a bit viewable through the white fabric. i used a white organic that i'd gotten a number of years back, and it's thinner than kona. also, i had a red fabric "melt" a tiny bit on my new iron while working on the coasters, and it came off on the white sashing on my coaster! nonetheless, it still looks better on my desk than the boring round leather coaster from some oilfield tools company that i was using.

i haven't finished quilting emily's quilt, much less attached the binding to the front by machine. i have so much to do before tomorrow's guild meeting, that it definitely isn't going to get done. yeah, sadly the house cleaing has to come first. plus, we reupholstered our love seat last thanksgiving (yes, over 8 months ago) and my job was to cover the pillows that go along the back. i got one done, then ran out of the cording to make the piping. ummm. . . yeah. i have to pick that up tonight because i really want the pillows finidhed and done so our loveseat doesn't look so weird. of course, after the fact, even though i picked the fabric, turns out i'm not so keen on the finished product. but i can't tell M since he worked so hard to get it done before my parents showed up for thanksgiving dinner!

well, back to boring title opinion, then home to clean, clean, clean and finish the loveseat pillows!

What's silver, white and green and only warm to the touch?

2010-07-07T20:56:00.000-07:00

if you guessed my rowenta professional iron, you'd be correct. tonight, for unknown reasons, my iron ceased functioning properly. last week it was working fine. so fine, in fact, that i barely touched the edge of the sole plate with my arm and ended up with a nasty burn. tonight, same heat setting and i could hold my hand on the iron with no disastrous results.

i'm really sad, because i was working on a couple of things, and they both require lots of pressing. first, i had printed off some slightly wonky flying geese paper piecing patterns at the office yesterday, and i had pieced a small strip with four geese. i wanted to make another strip, then make them into a coaster for my desk at work.

i had also started a set of coasters for my modern swap partner based on these by chickenfoot.

here are my beginnings:

i hopped over to amazon to search for my iron, but they apparently no longer make this model. however, the focus dz5080 has great reviews and seems comparable in terms of wattage and features, plus it's on sale for $80, with free shipping.

Rain, Rain, Go Away

2010-07-03T12:47:00.000-07:00

i have to confess that i do not like rain. not one bit. there is nothing i hate more than being wet, except for being cold and wet. rain means i get my feet wet (since i'm usually wearing flops or sandals). it means my glasses get wet, and i can't see. so, rainy days are perfect stay-at-home days for snuggling with M, or the kitties, or sewing, or reading. unfortunately, sometimes it rains on days when i have to leave the house. today, i really need to go to joann's to get a dress pattern (mccall's on sale for 99 cents through monday), and i need a handful of short zippers for some projects. i have tons of long, invisible zippers, perfect for dresses and skirts, but no zippers suitable for my current project. i also have a girls' night dinner tonight that requires me to leave the house. sigh. at least i have super cute rain boots.

last night, with camera battery freshly charged, i took pictures of the two blocks i made for hollie for Sewn Together Bee. i really like these, and the quilt she's making with them for her fiancee is going to be fantastic!

last night, after date night dinner at chuy's, M left for his BBQ cookoff, so i had the rest of the night to sew. i didn't feel like working on my bee blocks for july, so i was fiddling around with different pouch patterns. i had made one of these last summer, in the same size as the pattern to carry my handquilting supplies, and i love it. i had dug some fabric out of my stash and wanted to play around with some ideas for my Modern Swap partner. one of the fabrics i had is an old Robert Kaufman print of a collage of vintage train tickets. i thought this would make a nice little bag for miscellaneous stuff to take on a trip. i envisioned the bag as longer than the one in the pattern but the same height and width, or a little taller. well, i guess i wasn't thinking when i cut my pieces. my zippered pouch is about twice as wide as i wanted it to be. also, my interfacing wasn't stiff enough, and with the size of this pouch, it just sort of lies there limply.

i can make larger corner seams to make the pouch taller, so i think i'll try that and see how it looks. i was pleased with how the zipper went in, and the lining fabric has vintage maps of the Lewis & Clark expedition, so i thought it tied together nicely with the travel-themed outer fabric.

i also tried a little pleated pouch from skip to my lou. not so thrilled with how mine turned out:

something about the zipper is wonky, but i followed the instructions. maybe i'll try again later.

afte the two pouch attempts, i pulled out emily's quilt, which has been sandwiched and basted and ready to quilt since early february. i finally picked up the grey thread i needed for quilting last week, so i had set the quilt out to remind me to work on it. i stayed up quilting until 1:30 am and finally put it away for the night. i quilted for another hour or so today and stopped because my shoulder hurts. i've never machine quilted a quilt this large - it's for a twin bed, but it's 9 feet long, and wider than usual, so almost a full-size. i'm quilting free-form lines vertically through the length of the quilt, except the border, and also horizontally through the sashing only. i think i'm about halfway through, and i'm surprised by how long it's taking. i'd hoped to get in done today, but now am aiming for sometime this week. that gives me a week, then, to stitch the binding to the front by hand, and have it ready so i can do the handstitching during the upcoming guild meeting.

want to see my goodies?

2010-06-22T20:07:00.000-07:00

no, not those goodies!

amy wanted to see the fabric i said i bought, so here are some pics for her. seriously, though, i need to find a better place to take pictures than the living room, because the lighting sucks and my pictures always look strangely colored.

so, here's the loot -

some bird paisley from nest by valori wells for free spirit, which i've just chopped into bits to make a skirt:

some red and turquoise fabrics from joanns for possible inclusion in my as-yet-undecided blocks for the Red & Aqua 2 Bee:

some miscellaneous fabrics from fabric shack:

some more red and white prints from fabric shack:

more from the nest by valori wells line, plus one nicey jane:

i also got two fat quarter bundles from joanns, with five fqs each. one is moda's breath of avignon by american jane and the other is unknown prints in pinks, mint greens, whites and browns. i can't go take a pic now because miss-kitty-who-rarely-snuggles has curled up between my feet and i don't want to disturb her.

i'll leave you with a picture of fat tom:

Weekend Finishes, Goodies for Modern Swap, and Upcycled Fashion

2010-06-21T17:19:00.000-07:00

despite the fact that most of the weekend was spent getting mark ready to go back out of town this morning, i got quite a bit of stuff done.

first, i finished the baby quilt i've been working on for friends that are due in the next ten days or so. my pics (surprise!) aren't great, but the quilt is so lovely in person, and it came out of the dryer all nice and crinkly. the colors were picked based on a link the couple sent me to some picks that were inspirations for their nursery decorating. gender of baby is unknown.

pieced back of quilt (M really liked this)

front of quilt

i also did a bit of fashion upcycling this weekend. sadly, i've put back on a bit of weight, so many of my summer skirts just don't fit well right now. a month or so ago, i bought this dress from target's liberty of london line on clearance for $6.24:

dress is hideous, but i love love love the skirt fabric, which is a lightweight cotton voile, and the dress skirt was also lined. enter scissors, favorite skirt pattern, zipper in proper color already on hand, and viola:

quite lovely new skirt! i also got the dress in the black version, so another upcycled skirt is coming soon.

and i finally had a chance to take a pic of some goodies for my partner for the Modern Swappers swap - a kaffe fasset jelly roll and a robert kaufman solids charm squares pack:

the case of the missing photos

2010-06-17T19:27:00.000-07:00

um, yeah. so i was going to blog about my quilting escapades over the last week and i went to upload photos off my digital camera . . . and they were not there. hmmm. also, i finished several blocks for various bees tonight and packaged them up before i remembered to take pics. so, no photos.

tally for the week:
liberated basket blocks for Bee Liberated (two) - DONE
improvisational blocks for Bee Improvisational (two) - DONE plus one extra!
baby girl quilt top - DONE and ready for sandwiching
baby ?? quilt for friends - just need to stitch last row to rest and then sandwich

now i'm done with all of my bee blocks for the month of june, and i can work on getting the two baby quilts finished and FINALLY get emily's big girl bed quilt quilted and the binding on (it's been basted for months now and just sitting)!

i was also a very bad girl this week and ordered a ton of fabric. i almost ordered some more today, but was able to stop myself! i need to go buy some grey thread to quilt emily's quilt, and some more white thread, tomorrow, but i'm afraid of what will follow me home from joann's.

and because i hate to have a post with absolutely no pictures, i'll leave you with this shot of the naughtycats:

why do i continue to shop at randalls?!?

2010-06-05T11:22:00.000-07:00

this morning i set out to gather up my coupons and make a list for randalls, since i knew i could get free dog treats to take to jacquie's dogs this afternoon. i clipped and printed and assembled my copouns and my list and off i went.

my first frustration was that certain items that i knew were part of the "buy 8, get $4 off" sale were not marked on the shelves. now, this isn't uncommon at the randalls by my house, but it is frustrating, especially since i didn't want to get all the way checked out and find out my $4 didn't come off! my second frustration was that apparently, again not uncommon for this particular store, they're not restocking the one flavor of the chew eez dog treats that are on sale this month. i could only find 2 packages and i needed 4 to use my coupon, so i just got 2 of the other flavor.

on a positive note, while picking up the snyder's pretzels, i found peelie coupons for $2 off fresh beef when you buy 2 snyder's pretzels! yay! to make this peelie coupon even better, i found a package of 2 beef and veggie kabobs reduced for quick sale.

i collected the rest of my items and went to get in line. neither of my two cashier choices seemed likely to be hassle-free, so got in the shorter line. bad choice. immediately after i handed her my stack of coupons, she starts going through them and sorting them out. apparently she was deciding which ones i could and could not use! the first coupon was for a fage yogurt reduced for quick sale. she tells me i can't use a coupon on a reduced item. i politely explain to her that last weekend the store director checked me out and had no problem taking my coupons for reduced items. so we called the director over. in the meantime, the cashier keeps putting more of my coupons in what seems to be a "cannot use" stack! store director comes over, and he tells me i can't use a coupon on a reduced item. wtf????? i explain that he had no such problem taking my coupons last weekend when he was my cashier. he tries to tell me that i'm already getting a good deal, so i explain that the store's reduction of the price doesn't have any effect on getting reimbursed by the manufacturer for the face value of the coupon. he counters by telling me that they don't get reinbursed for the doubling of the coupon. so what! they don't ordinarily. and they've reduced these items that they need to sell fast due to expiration dates, or they'll just have to toss them and write off a loss anyhow. i don't tell him this, and he tells the cashier to go ahead and take my coupon. then we get to the $2 off beef WYB pretzels. cashier tells me i can't use it because i'm using two $1/1 coupons on my two bags of pretzels. i politely explain that the coupons for $1 are off the price of the pretzels and the $2 coupon is off the beef. store director, upon questioning, assures cashier i can use the coupon. whew! now we come to the dog treat coupon. $4/4 treats, any kind by purina. coupon won't scan. no biggie. it didn't scan last weekend and store director just pushed it through. cashier keeps trying to scan it, then finally the director tells her to just enter it manually. she does, but for $1.25 after price checking the treats. hello?!? i question this, and she appears confused. doh! then she takes off another $1.25. okay, better, but still not the $4 face value of the coupon. she takes off another $1.25 then i point out that she's still 25 cents shy of the face value. after some serious concentration, she takes off another quarter. then she has all of my internet printable coupons, which she has set aside. she starts to total out my order, and i ask her about the other coupons. well, she has to check on those. all right. she hasn't even tried to scan them. when she does - surprise! - they all scan with no problems. i've now been at the checkout for roughly fifteen minutes, and i'm hot and cranky. i pay the $3.53 she says i owe and don't even look at my receipt until i get in the car.

i think she scanned one of my $2 OYNO catalinas twice, because i had 2, but 3 seemed to come off. whatever. i'll take it as compensation for the waste of my time because my cashier was a mental midget.

so, in sum, despite the hassle, i paid $3.53 for everything in the photo, plus 4 pkgs dog treats, and got $4 OYNO catalinas for buying the ziploc containers. that's 2 boxes of cereal, 4 pkgs ziploc containers, 4 dog treats, granola bars, granola nut clusters, chex mix, 3 bags pretzels, 1 cake mix, sour cream, yogurt, and beef kabobs for dinner! was it worth my effort. hmmmm. today i don't know. ask me again tomorrow!

Busy Bee

2010-06-05T08:12:00.001-07:00

i was out of town most of the week, with no chance to sew. i got home to find a: a pkg from tamiko for her blocks for the pretty in pink bee. i also had several other bee packages vying for my attention. of course, having left M unattended for several days, the house was a bit (ha!) of a wreck, too. yesterday i worked from home and divided my time between actual work, tackling the mounds of laundry, and doing a tiny bit of tidying up. while i waited for M to get home last night i started my blocks for donna for the red and aqua bee - part two. i finished these last night after M left for the deer lease so the guys could fill feeders today and do some clean up.

before i left town, i finished up mandy's block for sewn together bee. she sent a mix of silks and satins, and the block turned out gorgeous! even M commented on what a great block it is! obviously, my photo doesn't do it justice:

today i have a quilting play date with my friend jacquie, plus plans to get a pedicure and tae care of some errands, so i'm off now to get a relatively early (for me!) start.

TGIF!

2010-05-28T13:05:00.000-07:00

yesterday, after i posted, i did spend just over an hour cleaning up. here's what got done: started load of laundry, unloaded dishwasher, reloaded dishwasher, cleaned out fridge, tidied up kitchen counters and bar area, put away a mountain of my work clothes that was taking over the top of the dresser, pulled one garbage bag full of clothes that don't fit out of my closet for goodwill, dusted bookshelves, nightstands, and dressers in bedroom. not too bad for less than 75 minutes!

today i'm working from home again, so i've folded one load of laundry, switched a load to the dryer, and started a third load, and put away the clean laundry except M's jeans, which he likes to hang a certain way.

i've also put in about four hours of work today on my title opinion, so when i "work at home" i really do work!

last night i started sylvia's flying geese blocks for the sew 2 speak bee. this morning i finished them.

they used a quick/easy method to make the flying geese units, and it really did seem a lot easier and resulted in less bias stretching. yesterday i also finished my "new" set of blocks for wendy in the Scrap Happy Bee, and i charged my camera battery and got pics this morning.

late last night, waiting for M to get home, i decided to make a spreadsheet to organize my virtual quilting bees. i thought i was in 10, but it turns out only 9 plus 2 swaps. anyway, i've already had my month in one bee, and june is my month in another. after that, from september through next april, excepting december, each month is mine in one of my bees! loks like i'd better start coming up with some ideas for what i want and gathering up my fabric!

i have a crapload of batiks in all colors, and i'm thinking the modified bento box block from a film in the fridge tutorial would make up nicely in batiks. i'm not sure how i came to acquire so many batiks, but i must have been really really fond of them at some point! this would be a great way to use up fabric from my stash without having to acquire any more just now, and maybe this could turn into a christmas or bday present for my dad. just thought of that, and i think it would be a fantastic present since he's always so hard ot buy for!

tonight is stepson's high school graduation, and then tomorrow night a party for him and his cousin who also graduates this weekend, so it'll be a busy weekend. enveryone enjoy their memorial day holiday on monday!

Quilty Catch-Up

2010-05-27T10:46:00.000-07:00

last weekend i went home and took my mom her mother's day quilt. it's made from fabrics she bought for me about eight years or so ago. all i had to buy was the solid pink border fabric, plus, of course, batting and backing. anyway, i'd had the fabrics in my stash and never used them, and they're not really my thing. but i remembered that she liked them, so when i wanted to try out elizabeth hartman's new wave pattern, i thought of these fabrics, because i had a number of coordinates from the same line. i didn't have enough to make the full pattern, so i modified to use the fabric i had. it finished at roughly 36" by 52", so it's perfect for a lap quilt while mom watches tv or reads. she loved it!

i hadn't sewn since i got back, but yesterday i got two packages of quilty goodness in the mail: one from wendy for scrap happy bee and one from donna for red and aqua bee 2. i immediately went to work on wendy's blocks. she sent a focus fabric for us to use to make log cabin blocks using certain colors from our own scraps and stashes. here are my two blocks:

i got both blocks whipped up, then when i got online to post my pics, i realized i had gotten her log cabin block confused with what donna had asked for! which means this morning i whipped up two more blocks, the right way this time!

i'm supposed to be working from home today, but i really, really don't feel motivated. what i'm working on it particularly boring, my house is a mess, and M is coming home tonight after being gone for work all week. i have to go out of town for work on tuesday, and then he's gone the next week, so we won't have a lot of time together in the near future. all that to say, i should at least have a halfway clean house for him to come home to! if i just got off my butt, i could unload the dishwasher, reload it and clean out the sink, throw in a load of laundry (unidentified kitteh threw up the biggest hairball i've ever seen on a blanket on the loveseat this morning!), and just generally tidy up in less than an hour.

well then. i guess that's that. off to make my house presentable again! i'll post pics of the "new" blocks for wendy later tonight.

Fresh Modern Bee 2

2010-05-25T14:22:00.000-07:00

okay, so a week or so ago i joined my tenth virtual quilting bee! i know, i know, enough is enough and i need to stop with ten, but they're so addictive!

anyway, i got picked to kick us off in june. M has been wanting me to make a bed quilt for us, so i thought this would be a good opportunity to get a lot of the blocks done. i made up two sample blocks, and mark approves of the block and the color scheme. most of the other 14 people in the Bee said they'd make two blocks each, so i'll only need about 3 more, as i calculated 30 blocks plus thin inner border and larger inner border to make a very generously sized quilt for our bed. each block is 16" square finished. here's my first sample:

also, our little garden is doing well. here's our "crop" from about a week ago:

last night i got 4 more cherry tomatoes and a couple carrots, and a regular tomato or two are going to be ready to pick tonight. after i got the tomato in the picture, i also pulled some of our lettuce and made a BLT with the lettuce and tomato, and it was the very best BLT i've ever eaten!

You got what for $1.62?!?

2010-05-15T17:44:00.000-07:00

this post is especially for safieh, who really should have followed me to the grocery store on the way home from the quilt guild meeting.

i stopped at the coupon-friendly randall's on shepherd/westheimer to get some more windex multi-surface cleaner for my mom and aunt while it's basically free after coupons and catalinas. i had other items on my list, too. not all of my e-coupons came off, but my Kashi cereal free coupon auto-deducted at $4.49 even though it was on sale for $2 if you bought four or more boxes and my buy-one-get-one-free Classico coupon auto-deducted at the regular price of $2.79 instead of the sale price of $2, so i only came out $1 higher than i had expected. here's the breakdown:

4 boxes Kashi Heart to Heart cereal (3 blueberry cluster, 1 honey oat circles)
1 jar Classico three mushroom pasta sauce
1 jar Classico alfredo sauce
2 boxes safeway pasta
1 Secret deodorant
1 Right Guard Total Defense 5 deodorant
1 Old Spice deodorant
1 Old Spice body wash
4 Windex multi-surface cleaners (2 "green" with vinegar, 2 anti-bacterial)
1 4-lb bag boneless skinless frozen chicken breast

Total money paid after coupons, e-coupons and OYNO catalinas: $1.62

and i got back 2 $2 OYNO catalinas for buying 4 windex.

tomorrow i will go back and buy 4 more windex at $1.99 each when you buy 3 or more, use 4 $1/1 coupons, but 2 cheap filler items (say, an onion and a jalepeno, both of which i need for a recipe i'm going to try), my total will be roughly $5, i'll pay with the 2 $2 OYNO catalinas i got today plus less than $1 cash, then i'll get back 2 more $2 OYNO cats. rinse and repeat three more times to use all my windex coupons. anyone need any windex multi-surface cleaner???

Crazy Day!

2010-05-14T18:09:00.000-07:00

PLUS

EQUALS

for a few weeks now, water has been dripping from the freezer area into my refrigerator. at first, i thought something had spilled. then i thought we just hadn't gotten all of the spill up. then mark tried to convince me it was "just condensation." now, i understand condensation happens, but when i've never ever had to clean up a half-cup of water out of the fridge every few hours in the five years i've owned it, i think it's not just condensation. yesterday i called a repair service and scheduled an appointment for today. the guy shows up, takes a look at the fridge and the freezer, shows me a layer of ice in the bottom of the freezer and tells me i probably have a clogged drain. so, this means i have to unload the freezer.

i end up filling four laundry baskets with food just off the shelves. after all is said and done, repair guy tells me i need to leave some space for air circulation. okay. so i go through the four baskets of stuff that came out of the freezer and start organizing.

wow. we really have a lot of stuff in there. so i decide that since i was planning to do some freezer cooking next weekend for my mom and aunt, that i'd see what i could do today, since nice rectangular flat casseroles fit better in the freezer than their oddly shaped components.

i had already planned to make this tasty-looking dish, and i had all of the ingredients on hand. i was able to use the following from the freezer: cooked, chopped chicken; homemade cream of mushroom soup; homemade cream of chicken soup; chopped green chilies (subbed for the green pepper and pimientos, neither of which i like); and shredded cheese. i made three small casseroles: one for M and me, one for my mom and dad, and one for my aunt's family.

i also made three small king ranch chicken casseroles, using more chicken, cream of mushroom, cream of chicken, sauteed onions and celery, tortillas and cheese from the freezer.

my last freezer dish for the day was a small pan of chicken, spinach and corn enchiladas. i also baked a loaf of banana bread for tomorrow's quilt guild meeting, using frozen bananas, and whipped up a batch of peanut butter cookies, too.

i was also able to locate enough already cooked meats for meals all this week: BBQ ribs (2 meals plus a lunch or two), grilled pork tenderloin (2 meals), and we have frozen rice and various frozen veggies we can eat to clear out more freezer space.

why do we need to clear out more space you ask. well, kroger's having a 7 day mega meat sale through tuesday. they've got eye of round and whole sirloin tip for $1.99/lb, which is a fantastice price. we got one of each last night, and want to get two more when mark gets back from his cook-off. assuming we get roughly the same size, we'll have 25 lbs of beef to fit in the freezer, though some of it can go in the stand-alone freezer out back.

but don't think i just cooked all day . . .

i whipped out three tree blocks for Leila for Bee Improvisational and two blocks for Kristin for Ravishing in Red Bee. i also signed up for two new bees, and i'm up for june in one of them, so i started pulling fabrics since i need to get my packages in the mail next weekend.

WIP IT GOOD! Challenge Report

2010-05-10T12:09:00.000-07:00

Sarah, who is a fellow swapper in the spiderweb block swap i joined, has a great challenge on her blog - to finish up WIPs before May 18. here's my report for week 5.

WIP CHALLENGE LIST
1. quilt and bind emily's quilt - still languishing in the craft room!
2. ~~quilt and bind Quilts for Kids top~~ - DONE!
3. set blocks for M-V baby quilt in top, quilt and bind - good thing the baby's not due for another month!
4. ~~block (strip) for Red & Aqua Bee 2 for April~~ - DONE!
5. finish mom's quilt top, quilt, and bind - ~~i did get the 2 missing border pieces cut, but still haven't attached them~~ quilting is 99% done and the binding is prepped but I RAN OUT OF THREAD AT 10PM!!!!
6. ~~finish all 12 spiderweb blocks for swap~~ - DONE!
7. ~~make a quilt from my own fabric to send in with Quilts for Kids quilt~~ - DONE!

realizing that there's probably no way i'd get everything on my list done before May 18, priorities had been #1, #5 and #7. #7 is now done, and i should finish #5 tonight.

WIP IT GOOD! CHALLENGE PROGRESS REPORT

2010-05-04T21:16:00.000-07:00

Sarah, who is a fellow swapper in the spiderweb block swap i joined, has a great challenge on her blog - to finish up WIPs before May 18. here's my report for week 4.

WIP CHALLENGE LIST
1. quilt and bind emily's quilt - still languishing in the craft room!
2. ~~quilt and bind Quilts for Kids top~~ - DONE!
3. set blocks for M-V baby quilt in top, quilt and bind - good thing the baby's not due for another month!
4. ~~block (strip) for Red & Aqua Bee 2 for April~~ - DONE!
5. finish mom's quilt top, quilt, and bind - i did get the 2 missing border pieces cut, but still haven't attached them
6. finish all 12 spiderweb blocks for swap - 6 8 done, 6 4 to go!
7. make a quilt from my own fabric to send in with Quilts for Kids quilt - ~~top is almost done~~ have it sandwiched and ready to be quilted; binding is already prepped

i've also realized that there's probably no way i'll get everything on my list done before May 18, so my priorities are #1, #5 and #7.