Category: Gardening

Sew Much Fun!
Crafty · Gardening · Sewing

Sew Much Fun!

LSiehLeave a comment

Ha! Sewing puns…. They go well with my sewing machine leggings!

I was so excited to finally get these made. I now want all the leggings fabric though… It’s cool to have leggings just the right size for me. 🙂

We went to our good friends’ house for J’s birthday party over the weekend and while the Husband played Halo 2, I sewed along with his wife. 🙂 I was super productive and ended up making 2 pairs of leggings, one regular and one capri length, and a new woven shirt.

The shirt is a flamingo shirt. Printed cotton front, black cotton back.

I’m going to wear it to my teen group on Monday. I don’t think they quite believe me on how much I like flamingos. I modified my regular shirt pattern for it. It’s the same as the Castle shirt. I’m trying to convince my friend to try wovens and I think this might have helped win her over a little. 🙂

Here are the leggings:

They don’t look terribly different, but I assure you, they are different sizes. 🙂 They are made with performance fabric/ athletic knit from Joann’s. I’m still working on my waistbands. The measurements on my pattern seem off. The pants part don’t stretch as much and I haven’t quite figured out the correct length yet for it.

They are very smooth and nice to wear. They aren’t see through at all and stay up. I wore the capri ones to do a spot of yard work on Sunday and they were nice and cool. We, of course, did a bunch of yard work and then couldn’t leave it alone even after cleaning up. I took down a tree wearing my lace trimmed tunic and flip flops.

I was super proud. 🙂 Fancy was very excited to help us take care of the rest of the tree.

She broke that branch off by herself after peeling all the bark off and snapping all the dry branches off. She was quite excited.

It rained a bunch on Saturday, so I did some more work on UFO’s. The rainbow railroad quilt is done! I don’t have a picture, but it’s backed with a brown doggy print fleece that was hiding in our guest room where I promptly forgot about it. Darn safe places!

I do have a sneak peek picture of a present for a friend that was finished on Sunday.  I saw the fabric and couldn’t resist. I hope she likes it too!

We’re seeing our friend soon, so I’ll show you the full picture after that. 🙂

Staying up late to sew had a lovely ending this morning, although I was very sleepy. This fabric really wanted to be a flirty, twirly dress, and now it is!

It has a pocket! Just one because I wanted to get it done. It’s big enough for my phone and keys. I will be fixing the sleeves, they are tight. It makes me feel super cute though and I love how it looks on me. There are more twirly dresses in my future!

I’m going to try to get some more of the in progress projects done. It’s lots of fun to make new things, but I’m kind of forgetting about the things waiting to be finished, which is a bad habit of mine.

The basement work area desperately needs to be organized again. Perhaps I will have an organizing day on Friday. If you don’t hear from me over the weekend, I’ve been eaten by a fabric monster. Send a search party!

With that said, I hope you have a great night!

Yearly Review- Canning and Gardening
Canning and Preserving · Gardening · Monthly Review

Yearly Review- Canning and Gardening

LSiehLeave a comment

Hello again! I thought I would separate out my canning list from my recipe list to try and make it not so long. I probably have one more review post and then it will be back to the normal posting schedule.

We were going to go to the zoo today, but I woke up with a sore neck and shoulder. Too much relentless partying! 🙂

Canning Review:

So I wanted to get more canning done than I actually was able to do. I still have the whole canning tomatoes in the freezer. I think I’ll just chop them up and use them whole.

Here is what I did get canned this year.

Apple sauce, two batches from The Ball Blue Book. I have no pictures of the second one for some reason. One batch of applesauce was canned and one is in the freezer. The Husband only likes the second one. The first one was too smooth. It works very well for cooking though and I like it, so all is not lost.

Tea Blends! I’m going to count these as canning because they are in canning jars. I made them for my vending event and when they didn’t sell, my craft ladies  happily snapped them up for Christmas. It was so much fun to put them together and I still have a bunch of the materials, so I would like to make some more up for me as well.

Pickles from The Art of Preserving. I didn’t like this recipe, but the ones with extra garlic went over very well. I will try more pickles with a different recipe for next year.

I also had my first burst jar in the canning pot. It was scary, but not as messy as it could have been.

Rhubarb marmalade from Taste of Home Canning 2012. This was delicious. I quite enjoy it on toast and on yogurt.

Strawberry Marmalade from Taste of Home 2012. This is also delicious and I like in lots of different ways.

Rhubarb BBQ sauce from the An Oregon Cottage website.   I liked this, but it’s possible the Husband is allerfic to rhubarb, so I haven’t used it since. This was a freezer recipe, it was too low of a PH level to safely can.

Strawberry Lemonade Concentrate from Ball Canning online. This is lovely. I wanted to make some blackberry as well, but didn’t get to it. I have some blackberries in the freezer, so may try it. The Husband likes it with Sprite. He was excited to have our own lemonade.

Gardening Review:

My herbs did very well. I was able to move the rosemary plant inside even though it got caught in a snowstorm.  I was excited by how pretty this picture looked and it was also exciting to get to cut my own fresh herbs for foods. My only problem was keeping them watered enough. My work schedule was not conducive to watering schedules.

Strawberries! I waged a war with the squirrels and the ants to get some strawberries for us. We actually got a bunch this year and I’m hoping the plants will survive to be used next year. They are protected in the garage.

We got one zucchini! I brought it up with us when we went up to visit my parents and we had it sautéed with other veggies. Sadly, the plant didn’t survive much after this.  It was not happy in a pot.

Gardening Goals and What I Learned:

Next year we need to get the raised bed set. Now that we know how much work it will be, we’ll set aside a gardening weekend early. We’re thinking of putting raised planter boxes by the garage with berries in them. Perhaps the ants will not get them this year after all.

What I learned was that consistent watering needs to be a priority. Also, learning what is up with my tomatoes to stop end blossom rot would be good. I can’t stop it, it seems, but am hoping that when they are in an actual bed with tomato cages they will be less prone to it.

I am not good with cucumbers either. The only one I got this year was bitter and inedible. Blech.

Canning Goals: 

Try a pomegranate or wine jelly this winter. Put aside a few full weekends for canning. Prep everything one day and can the next.

Learning: Smaller goals? Make sure I have the time to properly deal with my produce.

I hope you enjoyed this review. It’s a good feeling to have these things prepared to use in the winter time.

 

Sewing and Gardening Update
Crafty · Gardening

Sewing and Gardening Update

LSieh2 Comments

You’ll have to excuse the abundance of Fancy pictures this week. We will have had her for a year on the 17th and since we don’t know her birthday, we have settled for celebrating her on her adoption day. She’s going to get a little spoiled this week. Well, a little more spoiled than she already is. 🙂

I have some great recipes to try for treats and I need to repair her little jacket before winter. Once it starts hitting temps in the 30’s she won’t go outside without a sweater on. Her fur is too short and she gets cold very easily. I’ll make sure to post the treat recipes and her review. 🙂

I realized I hadn’t posted a garden update in a while. The lettuce and zucchini didn’t make it. I got one zucchini from the plant and then gave up. The lettuce got spiders and is apparently more temperamental than I thought.

Most of my other stuff is still growing. I have a ton of jalapeno and they are certainly living up to the massive name in terms of width. I am thinking about maybe canning some salsa on Sunday and making sure to use some of them.

I have one tiny poblano pepper. I had some starts earlier in the summer, but something happened and they didn’t really grow.

My strawberries have some blossoms on them still, which surprises me. I am hoping to be able to winterize them and keep them for next year. I’m going to try to keep them in planters, but get some longer ones or an actual strawberry planter.

There are also a few red peppers still growing. This one has a spot, but I think the rest of it is okay.

My herbs are mostly still going. I’m going to start pulling them and drying them soon. I don’t have a good spot to try to keep them growing inside in the winter. We keep the windows covered during the day and our kitchen window is a bit too small.

In sewing news, I swear the Rainbow Snowball quilt is cursed. The backing fabric is washed and looks lovely, but there is not enough of it to cover the back and I don’t have anything that matches. I am planning to go to Joann’s with supervision and pick up some fleece. The Husband is normally pretty good about reigning me in when I veer off my fabric list. 🙂

I made a new dress last weekend, but hadn’t posted pictures yet, so here it is.

The fabric was a Christmas present from my Mom and I ended up with the perfect pink lace to accent it. Excuse any wrinkles, I wore it and didn’t have a chance to iron it. I plan to wear it today for my intake appointments because it’s cute and comfy.

I am now completely out of black dress zippers. I need to make dresses in other colors to use up my rainbow of zippers.

I also finished a scrap quilt, which will be headed off to a friend for her occupational therapy room probably at the end of the week. I had tried this pattern out and wasn’t happy with how it looked. It looks lovely, but not quite what I had in mind. So instead of continuing, I alternated with the fish fabric squares and made it work a different way.

It’s roughly a 38 inch square with 9.5 inch squares 4×4 across and down. It’s backed with the same fish print and a strip of blue batik, as I didn’t quite have enough fish.

Here’s close up of the squares:

It has no batting, so it should be light and easily washed. This is one more project off my written list, so I was excited.

Of course, I finished one quilt and started another scrap quilt…. This one is another rainbow quilt. It doesn’t yet have a home, but I’m sure it will find a good one.

I still need to make the red squares and have to check how many squares are needed. It will be bordered with a black fabric, I think, unless it turns out looking too dark. My points look nicer than usual because I ironed every piece! I know. Crazy talk. Don’t tell my mother or mother-in-law that they were right…

Next up for quilts, I plan to actually finish one of the wedding quilts that are in a box waiting to be put together. No more new quilts until at least one of those is done!

So there’s my update. I think I am in my groove about being productive with my down time after work. I washed a bunch of fabrics for clothing this weekend too, so I can start on those.

It feels good to be able to work through my scrap and UFO boxes. Maybe one day, there will only be one of each!

Wednesday’s post will be all about Fancy, so be sure to check it out for your dose of cuteness!

Canning and Gardening and Crafts, Oh My!
Canning and Preserving · Crafty · Gardening

Canning and Gardening and Crafts, Oh My!

LSiehLeave a comment

We had a lovely weekend. We had friends over on Sunday for crafting and video games and it was lots of fun. They helped us cook and we used the grill two days in a row!

Fancy was in heaven with two other people to pet her, plus we got her the treat she likes the best from the dog bakery. She’s currently recovering with multiple naps.

My craft this weekend was canning. I made five jars of pickles. There were originally 6, but one popped in the pot. I have always been afraid of it, but it’s probably good it happened with pickles. The mess that exploding jam would cause makes me cringe just thinking about it.

I found out when I went to check the  pot and there was a floating jar. That’s not a good thing to see when canning. The bottom just popped right out with a pretty clean cut. All the pickles stayed right in the jar too, so it wasn’t too bad to clean up. There wasn’t  good way to take a picture of it while it was still hot, but the picture up top is the circle of glass from the bottom.

Here are the intact pickles:

My friend had the brilliant idea to cut the cucumbers into chips after I found out I didn’t have enough wide- mouthed jars. Sometimes my prep skills could be a little better, but I thought I had more and was trying to avoid having to smuggle more jars past the Husband. Apparently I still haven’t canned enough for him. 🙂

I have a few more pickled veggies to add to my list, but not during this week. We are way too busy! I need to outdo my Mom’s pickle trays though, now that it’s become a thing.

My craft ladies discussed the differences between pickle and relish trays for about 45 minutes after they heard the story. My Mom was so proud when I told her. 🙂 This year for our parties, we’ll have homemade pickles!

On the crafty front, I cut a bunch of tea wallets over the last few days. I pulled from the red, brown, and purple scraps this time. I got in a groove and found myself with a huge pile of tea wallets needing to be made.

I worked on the purple ones first this time.

Here are the insides. The blue one at the top right has planets on the back and on the inside!

The garden is growing pretty well. We have three zucchini on the plant and a whole bunch of tomatoes coming in. The green pepper plant has two peppers on it. I couldn’t get a good picture of the “massive” jalapeños. There are three of them starting, but they are so far not living up to their name.

I did have a problem with blossom end rot on three of my big tomatoes. We’ve had a few days with a lot of rain and I probably need to add some more special fertilizer. I had the same problem with them last year and the internet said it was probably due to inconsistent watering. I was really terrible about watering enough last year.

The lettuce will be a wash this year. It’s completely covered in spiders and is starting to go brown. It’s quite sad. I have successfully grown baby lettuces before, so I think in the future I’ll stick to that.

I brought home my personal clipboards from work to collage, as I wanted to make sure I could tell them apart from the work ones. I’m going to just do the backs, so that there is still a smooth surface to write on. It will also let me go through some of my art supplies, as I need to have a bit more of it in the office right now.

Have a good night!

Craftiness and Garden Update
Crafty · Gardening

Craftiness and Garden Update

LSiehLeave a comment

How did it get to be Monday again? It seems like it was just Tuesday and now I need a weekend to recover from the weekend. We had friends over for a Driveway Movie Night, where we projected “Moana” on the garage door and watched it from lawn chairs in the driveway. Fancy got to see a dog friend again and did really well when the other dog was in the house. We were happy with that, as she can be territorial.

It’s pouring rain and thundering this morning; the perfect kind of day to stay home and do nothing. I don’t have that luxury, sadly, but do have French Onion soup in the crockpot for later which will be comforting.

Fancy had the right idea this morning. She hid under the bed and refused to come out. I was making chocolate ice cream, so bribed myself with that, otherwise, I would have been under there with her.

I was pretty crafty last week. Having to be in the basement with Fancy helped me get some more fabric cut up and organized. I had to start a new box for purple fat quarters, as I kept finding more of them. I also almost completely cleaned out a box with random fabric and crafty things in it. I also made 12 new tea wallets for Twinflower Fancies, or Hawthorne and Vine, a flower shop where they are also currently being sold.

When I sew these, I organize them in color groups based on what color thread they will be sewn with. I chain sew them as well. It doesn’t make sense to do them one at a time, as I would have to switch thread colors constantly. Normally, I wait until I have three or more in each color before I start sewing them up. I tried to expand my color range this time. I know I tend to stick to colors and patterns that I like by accident, but need to remember that it may not appeal to others as well.

Here are the green ones:

These three buttons were my favorites, I think, from the whole stack.

Here are the two black ones:

And the blue ones:

The octopus one might have to be my work tea wallet. I just love it and don’t know if I can give it up, despite already having a Red Riding Hood one in my purse. It’s just too cute.

It ws fun to go through the fabrics and remember what they were from as I was sewing them. This batch had a lot of familiar prints.

The owls are from a baby quilt for my cousin’s little girl. The dark green and vine print one is from a purse that I had tried to hand sew when I first started out. It was not a good idea and I finally got up the nerve to just rip it and reuse the fabric.

The geranium one and the holiday recipe one are both made from scraps of aprons that have been made for my Mom. When I bought the geranium fabric, the lady at the cutting table asked if I could adopt her too, she was jealous. 🙂

The gold treble clefs are from pillows I finally made the Husband this year after buying the fabric when we were dating. The blue and white waves with the boat is from one of the first skirts that I made.

All the other fabrics are from the stash. It’s nice to think if those special fabrics being used for something else too. That’s why I love scrap quilts so much too, there are a lot of memories in each of them.

Now for the gardening update:

I keep accidentally almost killing my lettuces. Plus, there are spiders living in them. Gross, hairy spiders, who have made a home in the lettuces themselves and in the pots. The Husband is going to have to cut them when, or if, they survive. I am not having spiders crawl on me. I think I’ll stick to farmer’s market lettuce next year. Any tips would be appreciated.

We have been getting some strawberries before the squirrel does!

These were all from yesterday and I found another one today. There are still a bunch of green ones on the plants too.

My peppers are looking good. The Mammoth Jalapeño has a pepper started. We’ll see how big it gets and if it lives up to its name. 🙂

The tomatoes all have some started. This one is the Roma, I believe and it had the most on it. I need to get some more stakes.

Here is the cucumber. This sucker is huge! It has a lot of flowers, but no starts yet. It keeps trying to escape into the yard.

My herbs are doing alright. The basil doesn’t look good. There has been a beetle that keeps eating it and it got very leggy and scraggly looking. It has yellow bottom leaves too, which I’m sure isn’t good. The oregano seems to have bolted. It keeps sending up flowers. I’m going to prune them off and see if I can get more out of it. Everything else seems to be growing well.

This week I have a few late nights, but most of my other days have a little more flex in them than usual. The weeks that my biweekly clients all come can get a little crazy, but it evens out with a few slower days occasionally. I’m hoping to get the fabric washed for the Rainbow Quilt and get it ties this weekend. Our friends are coming over this weekend for another sewing/video game day, so I can get some sewing done then too.

I also have a goal of canning three recipes, blackberry cinnamon tequila jam, nectarine orange marmalade, and dill pickles. I have some time tomorrow and a few other times this week.

I’m considering starting a “Simple Sunday” post which would be a quote or two, either funny or inspiring. I found my quote book from a while ago and was sad that the quotes I liked were just sitting in a book and not getting shared. It would be a good way to find out other quotes too, so I think that will start this Sunday.

Have a great Monday!

Monthly Review
Canning and Preserving · Crafty · Gardening · Monthly Review

Monthly Review

LSiehLeave a comment

It has officially been six months since I started the blog! So far, I have been pretty pleased with my progress, but can always do a little more.

I’ve decided that when I do extra things, instead of my written goals for the month, I should just get to call them “bonus goals.” That way I won’t feel bad about getting those things done instead. Like deep cleaning my kitchen cupboard…I knew it should be done, but wasn’t actually adding it to any list until there were ants. I do need to start a regular cleaning list for things like that. I tend to do them when I get frustrated, which would be prevented, if I was doing them regularly.

I am going to start with the craft part of the review today, as I am proud of what I had gotten done.

Crafting Review:

I’m in a weird sewing rut right now. I want to sew, but there are too many projects to choose from and I get consumed with anxiety about what I want to get done. I’m also not sure how many elastic waisted poofy skirts I need in my closet, which is the easiest thing I feel like sewing. I want to sew rainbow scrap quilts too, but since I have been attempting to finish one for three months at least with no joy, I’m not allowed to start another.

I’m also struggling with starting new things right now. My brain is telling me that I need to fix the things in the mending or that are half done first. My brain is right of course. I did finish one thing from the UFO/mending pile, just today actually.

I made this tunic dress about a year ago, washed it, and promptly discovered all the places the very tiny bias tape didn’t catch. This included the left sleeve, which had also frayed and was literally hanging on by a thread. I took off the edging on the sleeves and neck and sewed new hems. I also blind stitched the pocket edges down, to make them look neater. Now I can wear it again!

Here’s closeup of the pocket: You can see where the wash made it a little wrinkly, but I think that won’t be too noticeable while wearing it. Really, if anyone is inspecting the pockets that closely, I will be firmly requesting some more personal space.

The dress is a beautiful cotton batik and it has a blue linen like material on the bottom to add length and interest. It’s based on my favorite shirt pattern and is pretty comfy. I’m counting this as my piece of clothing for the month, as it was unwearable until I fixed it. 🙂

Other things that I have made:

Covered boxes for the games at work.

I decided to keep the plastic bin for my Legos, but then needed a few more storage containers to keep other card games and other small games in. I had thought about buying something, but already had shoeboxes and cute fabric. Who wouldn’t want rocket boxes?

These are just hot glued and could be neater on the inside, but they work perfectly for me, and the kids I see are not going to care.

I added black buttons to the tea wallets that I made. They look really nice. I’m hoping to get them up on Etsy soon.

Speaking of Etsy, I did end up listing 3 new things and renewing a few more. I also sold one of my older bags soon after renewing it, which was nice. I know I need to get some more stock up there. I am hoping to get pictures outside.

I also organized some more in the basement. It still doesn’t look like I did anything, but I did make my way through another pile of ironed scraps to be cut up. I did get my 1 yard totes and patterns squared away, so that helped.

I decided against making a whole new purse. The vintage ones I had book marked didn’t look as fun. I switched to a messenger style one with books on it. It has no pockets though and I desperately need a wallet and coin purse for it.

Crafting Goals:

* The ever-present Rainbow Snowball quilt.

* Make a wallet and coin purse.

* Continue with basement organizing.

* Make art for office.

* Finish a UFO/Mending project.

Garden Review: 

Everything is still alive! I picked two strawberries and two cherry tomatoes today and they were delicious.

All the food plants have buds or vegetable starts. The herbs are growing well too. I’ve been using them while cooking and have had the basil in Caprese salad about six times this month.

Garden Goals: Keep everything growing! Eat everything!

Recipe Review: 

Hits were the new chocolate chip cookie recipe, the yogurt, a caramelized onion grilled cheese, and a custard based ice cream from Pinterest-recipe to come.

We didn’t have any misses, just a few recipes I need to bump up the spice as usual. This month, I promise to actually measure once in a while to make sure I’m not under spicing the food.

I used 9 new cookbooks this month and made 25 new recipes total. I made up one new recipe, which turned out to be good. I canned 1 savory item, 2 marmalades, and one juice concentrate.

I also bought three new canning books… I couldn’t seem to stop myself at an outlet store. One was a paperback set of two for $.99 and the other I blame on the Husband. He found the Southern Living Small Batch book, which includes seasonal “Putting Up” party ideas. How was I supposed to resist that? 🙂

Meal planning went pretty well and I made at least two new recipes per week. I finally made yogurt and we’re on our third batch of ice cream. I ate good lunches too and planned enough time to figure them out before I had to go.

Sadly, I wasn’t able to find a biscuit recipe for Fancy, although, I was given one by a friend. We just bought her a large bag of chicken treats, but I would still like to find a crunchy biscuit for her.

Our bacon plans had to be put on hold, as I wasn’t able to find the right salt and had to order it online. It also takes a week to cure. Eventually we will have homemade bacon.

Fancy doesn’t seem to mind fireworks, as long as they are small ones. She does not like large booms or screamers and definitely does not like the ones directly across the street. I’m going to take her with me to organize the basement and see if that helps. We’ve got lots of cuddles, treats, and chew toys at the ready too. This is her before the fireworks.

I hope your plans for the 4th are good ones. On Wednesday, I’ll share one of my family traditions for the 4th that cause people to want to be adopted by us.

Have a happy holiday!

 

 

 

It’s Alive-Gardening Update
Canning and Preserving · Gardening

It’s Alive-Gardening Update

LSiehLeave a comment

Not only is the garden alive, but it is thriving! The cucumber plant is even bigger today that in the picture. The picture was taken on Saturday and it now covers the longer stake.

I am so pleased with it and am mostly just watering it routinely. My Mammoth Jalapeño isn’t looking ll that massive yet, but the Poblano  peppers may end up being the same size anyway.  The jalapeño is in the yellow pot, poblano is in the purple pot.

My zucchini has another blossom and there is a tiny squash starting!

I picked three strawberries today and there are a bunch of green ones still on the plants. I still have ants in one of the pots, but I put cinnamon on it and it seems to be helping a little. The plant itself doesn’t seem to be too affected by them.

My herbs are getting big. I’m going to use the basil tomorrow for Caprese salad when I host craft night.

The pineapple sage has gotten very big as well. I should probably be thinking about drying some for my tea party.

The mints are growing like crazy, of course. The chocolate mint is sending out all sorts of runners, but it’s nowhere near the soil, or we’d have mint everywhere!

The lime basil and oregano are also doing well. The basil keeps insisting on flowering, so I have to prune it pretty consistently. I used the parsley, thyme, and rosemary in scones yesterday for a belated Father’s Day dinner.

There are lots of buds and flowers on my tomato plants. One of them has a little cluster of tomatoes, but it is hard to get a picture of.

 

I found ants in the kitchen on Friday and between organizing and cleaning, wasn’t able to get anything sewn. My cupboard looks beautiful though. All my spices fit and I wiped everything with vinegar and put out new bay leaves preventively. I hate bugs.

I also canned rhubarb marmalade. It looks so pretty and I had some on yogurt this morning.

Fancy has been enjoying the nice weather and loves playing in the hose when I water my plants. She’s been looking like this a lot outside when she’s not barking at the neighbors.

We met another neighbor on our walk today who forgave her for barking when she sat on his feet for pets. 🙂

Well, I am off to water the plants and hopefully, not the dog too much. Have a lovely, sunshiny day!

Crafty · Gardening

Crafty Weekend

LSiehLeave a comment

It was too hot to work in the garden, but everything is still alive! I’ve been watering frequently and the zucchini grows every time I look away. We have buds on the strawberry plants and a few of the tomato plants. I’ve used some of the oregano and the rosemary in a pot roast recipe and it was delicious.

I did some work in the basement and cut some more scraps down into squares and strips. I cut them into squares and strips measuring 2 inches, 2 1/2 inches, and 3 1/2 inches. Then I store them in baggies separated by measurements. Those bags are in suitcases. The theory is that I can then pull them out of the bag and have scrap quilts go together quickly. Most of the time it works. The quilts I’ve been working on lately have all been scrappy quilts, so I haven’t had to use them. My bags of 2 and 2 1/2 inch strips are currently overflowing, so I should find a quilt that needs those measurements.

I also cut out some new tea wallet pieces and made four tea wallets over the weekend. They just need their buttons to be completely done.

I tend to work on tea wallets in batches. It’s easier to chain piece them like you would a quilt square. I sort them into colors too, so this batch needed black thread. Two of these wallets have plain black fabric for the inside and two have black music print fabric, which doesn’t photograph well at all. It has treble clefs printed in black on a slightly darker black background.

It felt good to get some more scraps cut. I need to make some more tea wallets again. I changed out my order at the floral store and now have many more for Christmas, but not a lot of generic ones. I also need to figure out some more masculine fabrics. I figured the circle ones could go to either gender and I have more plaid and gun fabric I can use. I have a lot of floral wallets and pastel colors at the moment.

More fat quarter pieces got folded and added to the trunk. It still looks I did absolutely nothing down there, despite working for a couple of hours. My latest Netflix/fabric sorting show is called The Dr. Blake Mysteries. It’s set in 1959 in Australia. My Netflix watching gets progressively weirder the more fabric I want to cut. It’s pretty good. A bit laid back, but has social justice themes and murder, so what’s not to like?

We had people over this Sunday. My friend needed help with a bellydance costume and her husband plays video games, so is friends with my Husband. There was supposed to be an Atari marathon, but our TV is too new and they ended up playing Lord of the Rings in the Wii. I am atrocious at those games, so I was glad that the Husband had someone to play with who was actually good.

We had a new recipe for pot roast and a huge salad for lunch. It was lots of fun. My friend took some of my give away fabric too, which made the Husband very happy and her husband not so much. 🙂

Fancy was extremely excited to see them. They give her lots of love, because of course, the Husband and I never pet her…

This was Fancy shortly after they left. She was tuckered out.

In other news, I am getting ready to use my yogurt maker. It just came in the mail today. I’ve made my own yogurt in the past, but the texture wasn’t quite right. I need a plain starter yogurt and will be getting that tomorrow. I’ll let you all know how it works out. I’m excited to be making it again. My yogurt habit was getting expensive and one of the Food Network magazines has a “50 Things To Make With Yogurt” booklet in it. I see tastiness in my future!

Monthly Review
Crafty · Gardening · Monthly Review

Monthly Review

LSiehLeave a comment

I’m embarrassed about how much I didn’t get done this month… I had a lot of goals and got some of them done, but not as much as I would like. Knowing I was going to write this post did motivate me to get a few things done right under the wire. In fact, I waited to post until I had posted some flowers on Etsy, so I could cross off one more goal. 🙂

The garden was a big accomplishment too. It wasn’t actually written down as a goal, but should have been. It is going well so far. I have blooms on a few strawberry plants and my zucchini plant got bigger while I was at work yesterday. The Husband is helping me water the plants after he gets home from work, so they are staying nice. Fancy hasn’t shown any interest in digging in the containers, so that’s good.

I did make a few new recipes this week, but not really enough to write a full post, so I thought I would just combine them with the review. This week we had taco salad and mac and cheese with butternut squash and homemade sun-dried tomatoes for old recipes.

Here are the two new recipes I used:

1- Mushroom Pork Loin from the Taste of Home Slow Cooker Cookbook. Section: Pork, Lamb, and Seafood

Modifications: I was only making one pork loin, so I only used one can of cream of mushroom soup and about 2 cups of broth. I used a pre-seasoned Italian pork loin, so didn’t add much additional seasoning. I also added onions and chopped mushrooms to the bottom of the crockpot to make sure it was full enough and for additional flavor. The Husband had it over noodles and said it was good, but a little salty.

2- Asian Cucumber Salad from Food Network Magazine, June 2015, V. 8, N.5. 

Modifications: I think I accidentally got a Fresno pepper instead of a red jalepeno. It was hotter than I expected, but was still delicious. My in-laws enjoyed it as well. We had beef franks with sautéed mushrooms and onions and a side of peaches as well. I will be making this again. 

Food wise, I did alright with my goals. I used 2 new recipes each week, I think, if not more, and we did do some more meal planning. I was a little bit better at taking pictures of new meals, but have to remember to take pictures of the other meals too. Plating needs to be worked on too, since you eat first with your eyes.

I didn’t even start on sorting my recipes, but have been remembering to put the cookbooks away after meal planning. Sometimes it seems like the tables sprout piles of books when I’m not looking.

I used 13 of my old recipes, 7 new cookbooks or recipes, and 4 repeat cookbooks. I think my totals are shrinking. Maybe I need to throw another party to bump them up again. 🙂

Hits for the month were the dog treat recipes, the roasted garlic parmesan mashed potatoes, and the shrimp albondigas soup.

Misses were a pork chop dinner that was too dry, and the rosemary flank steak, which had no flavor.

The Italian Turkey/Chicken meatballs were sort of in the midway point. They were good, but needed extra seasoning. I would still make them again, just bump up the seasoning a lot.

My craft goals didn’t go so well. I did iron the Rainbow Snowball quilt, but still haven’t washed the backing or finished it yet. I also didn’t finish anything from the UFO bin. The basement is still a disaster. The area around my sewing area is slightly less of a disaster, but that’s it.

I just listed 3 of my fabric flowers on Etsy (http://Etsy.com/shop/twinflowerfancies) and finally managed to take pictures of them. I promoted the listing as well, which is something I always forget to do. They are a great hand sewing project, so I plan to make more.

I did finish my inspirational chair pillow for my office and managed to remember to take a picture of the candle jar I made.

The pillow is definitely helping me not sit cross legged all day, which hurts my back, but it does tend to fall on me when I get up.

I did have one vending event which I made a small profit at this month and remembered to take pictures of the table. I used one of the close up pictures for my Etsy cover picture and made sure to get my business cards in it.

I found myself doing things that weren’t on my list instead of focussing on things I had wanted to do, such as making these fabric trays for vending and the ones for my office. I do need some more storage options for my office and it was fun to make them, but it wasn’t exactly what I needed or had planned to do. The small ones work perfectly for pencils and my smaller fidget toys.

Another highlight for the month was getting to take Fancy to the lake. She did so well and she seemed to really enjoy herself. It was a relaxing weekend, for sure.

Food goals for the next month:

*Meal Planning: use more of what we have, spices, pantry foods, etc.-Ongoing

*2-3 new recipes per week.

*Make good lunches. Use my lunches to try vegetarian recipes.

*Sort recipe binder and loose recipes.-Ongoing

*Find a good biscuit recipe for Fancy. We go through biscuits quickly.

Craft goals for the month:

*Finish Rainbow Snowball quilt so it can go to its new home.

*Make a container for Legos at work.

*List at least one new item per week on Etsy.

*Sew one item of clothing.

*Make a new purse. I shredded my current music purse bottom yesterday while running through the kitchen on my way to work.

*Organize the basement.

Garden goals:

*Don’t kill anything!

I’m going to write these goals in my project book too, so I can have another reminder without having to go back to this post. Hopefully remembering how it feels to not achieve many of them will help me stay motivated. Feel free to check in on them throughout the month. I’m sure the extra push will be helpful.

Now I’m off to take a certain puppers for a walk, if I can get her to move out of the sunny spot in the yard. She had a big morning with lots of barking and chasing of the squirrel that lives in the yard. Hopefully your day is as happy as hers!