Tag: Fancy

Monthly Review
Monthly Review · Recipe Roundup

Monthly Review

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I intended to write this earlier, but it’s raining, gross and cold, and then this happened.

How could I be expected to resist the sleeping puppy lure? Now she’s ready to play again and the Husband and I are sleepy and ready for longer naps. 🙂

We had luckily already taken her to the dog mall before it started raining, where she was petted by several strangers, including several teens. She also saw her favorite employee at the dog bakery and got a sample treat.

I had an exciting ravioli tutorial to share before I did the review. My friend gave me this ravioli maker which made my ravioli skills much nicer.

It is the coolest thing! 

First, you put the pasta sheet down over the metal part and the gently put down the white part into it to make a depression. Then you fill the middles and put down the other sheet.

Roll over the ravioli and it seals and cuts it!

Then you have beautiful pasta, just waiting to be used for delicious dinners.

We’ve had them in a mushroom cream sauce twice.

We also used the last of the carne asada in mac and cheese.

It was pretty good, but could have been a little creamier.

So on to the review…

Sewing Review

I just finished this little purse yesterday to take when I didn’t want my big bag.

I did something silly though. I sewed two zippers, though I didn’t need the “extra” pocket piece, and now have two zippers for just the one pocket, instead of two pockets…. I wasn’t using a pattern, so got a little confused on what went where. I’m debating taking it apart to fix it, but it might not get done before the trip.

My other completed projects this month were the wedding quilt in the featured picture, the world computer bag, and the infinity dress.

I also bought new patterns. The one on the bottom right is a knit dress. I’m working on it tonight, I think, if Fancy will let me stop petting her long enough. 🙂

I have one of the other wedding quilts in progress and one pinned, so made some progress on that. Overall, I’m pretty pleased with the sewing I did this month. I finished a bunch of projects and it felt nice to check some big things off my list.

Goals for April

* Make a dress

* Make leggings

* Finish a quilt

 

Food Review

We used 17 recipes, 8 of which were new recipes. Hits were the cheese fondue, chicken and gnocchi soup, Irish Whiskey ice cream, rigatoni with sausage, chocolate oreo ice cream, and the chicken ravioli.

I don’t think we had too many misses. None horrible enough for me to remember at least. I suppose that good…

 

Food Goals

* Teach the Husband how to sear pork

* Put together freezer meals

* Meal plan

Overall, a pretty good month. I would like to do more with recipes, but my evening schedule is real weird right now. Well, I’m just gone a lot, so not really weird, just late.

Fancy-pants is staring sadly at me from the hallway. She feels her ratio of play to naps has been sorely neglected today. I’d better go fix that. I hope your weekend is off to a great start!

Recipes and Adventures!
Crafty · Life Posts · Recipe Roundup · Sewing

Recipes and Adventures!

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I only made two new recipes last week and then we went on an adventure! I did help make a new ice cream recipe on our adventure, but our friends did the cooking, which was so nice.

I have one picture of the three recipes I made before we left. I redeemed myself from the chicken potpie that we don’t speak about, using leftovers from a roasted chicken.

The chicken recipe was from The Family Recipe Keeper. We had roasted potatoes from the Better Homes and Gardens Cookbook. I threw some carrots in with the chicken.

Here’s the potpie and Fancy, being so jealous.

We also had Meatball Marsala, from one of the Food Network magazines. I’ve misplaced it, but when I find it, I’ll post the edition number. It was good. I made fancy mashed red potatoes to go with it. It wasn’t a very pretty looking dish though.

Fancy was very concerned that we were leaving her behind and started laying on our bags or sticking like glue to one or the other of us. She also didn’t let me finish the quilt I needed for this weekend.

I ended up attempting to car quilt, which just made me a little car sick and then finally finished it while everyone else was napping.

I believe it’s a split 9 patch from Bonnie Hunter, but set on point instead of regular. The pattern has something funny with it, but still looks okay. Baby S loved it and spent at least a half an hour rolling around in it. This is what happened when I first attempted pictures.

Fancy loved her time with the tiny human and was so concerned about him that she spent the whole weekend following him around and whining when he cried.

She was very gentle with him, although she did try to chew on almost all of his toys. She shared hers, for the most part, but did very nicely take the ball back from him when he grabbed it. She was a spoiled dog and got a tennis ball of her very own, but chewed some holes in it instead of playing nice.

K made some lovely baby and dog friendly treats and S didn’t like them cold, so he shared them all with Fancy. She quickly learned that his highchair  meant delicious dropped things from up above.

The Husband and I ate very well too. There was beef stew waiting fir us when we arrived. We had homemade butternut squash ravioli and beef and parm ravioli for lunch.

The squash were cooked in butter and sage and the beef had a homemade golden marinara sauce over it. Mmmmm…. K gave me  ravioli maker to play with, so I might be making some pasta on Friday.

We had the traditional dinner of corned beef and cabbage, with roasted veggies and carrots. Traditional soda bread too. It was all delicious!

We made Irish Whiskey Salted Caramel ice cream for dessert. One of the coolest things about K and A is that they have chickens and ducks! We got to use extremely fresh eggs for the ice cream. Guess which egg yolk is a duck egg yolk…

The ice cream was a little soft and a lot boozy! It was delicious though. Had it been harder, we probably would have made ice cream sandwiches with the giant homemade cookies that were made for the Husband. 🙂

I think we used a Pioneer Woman recipe for the Caramel sauce.

We had a great time and it was fun to meet the baby. He definitely helped wear Fancy out. She slept for most of yesterday.

Now she’s out basking in the sun. If we would let, her, she would probably stay there all day. 🙂 Hope your day is as sunny as her day!

Fancy and Sewing
Crafty · Life Posts · Sewing

Fancy and Sewing

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Fancy has decided to monitor my sewing and bedtime in a more active capacity lately. She decided the quilt in the quilting hoop was actually a dog tent and a wonderful place to nap.

She doesn’t try to bite it or anything, so I thought it was funny, but then she decided napping on my lap wasn’t good enough and proceeded to climb up my torso until she was tucked in under my chin. That made it very hard to keep quilting, so I just had to stop and cuddle the dog. This quilt is a secret, so I can’t show much of it yet. Oddly, it matched my leggings perfectly. 🙂

Last night, I was quilting again and she decided that 11:30 pm was too late and I should be sleeping, so she did this. It’s a little blurry, because she was moving, but she kept pawing at me until I put down the quilt and then she took over my lap and wouldn’t move.

She will also hang out by my sewing machine, especially when the Husband was out of town. I thought the machine might be scary for her, but even my Grandma’s machine doesn’t seem to faze her. This was her from last week.

Luckily, she didn’t try to guard the pedal.

I got the fabrics for all the quilt tops I need to finish last Friday and since we were dogless, I was able to get the two bigger ones pinned. Here is the second one.

I have started putting the Rainbow Rail Fence quilt together. It’s on the machine, so no pictures yet.

Fancy is currently snuggled up next to me on the couch with her paws draped over my feet, so I can’t get up. 🙂 She’s snoring as usual.

I’ve been working hard on these couple of quilts and haven’t really sewn anything else. I did get grey satiny fabric to go with my grey and purple lace. I think I might make that into a dress for the wedding. I have enough for a fancy slim fitting dress.

In other news, I’m excited to say that I was included in a roundup post about sewing and mental health on the Sewcialists blog. I have been reading the blog for a little while now and when they put out a call for stories of how sewing has helped your mental health, I knew I had to write my story. Check it out if you are interested! There are some inspiring stories out there. I’m planning on writing a longer post about this issue as well.  https://sewcialists.wordpress.com/2018/03/12/who-we-are-sewing-with-and-for-mental-health/

Now, I’ve got to get some quilting done before work. It’s my late night at work, so I won’t have a lot of time tonight. Have a great day!

(Almost) Wordless Wednesday- Derpy Dog Edition
Wordless Wednesdays

(Almost) Wordless Wednesday- Derpy Dog Edition

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Just in case you were under the illusion that Fancy is a perfect, photogenic angel all the time, I present “The Derpy Dog Gallery.”

These three pictures are from the Husband. The next ones are mine.

And of course, my favorite derpy picture:

The Husband says I shouldn’t laugh at this picture as much as I do…Apparently my wake up face bears a striking resemblance to it. 🙂

I hope these pictures made you laugh! I know they always brighten my day!

Simple Sundays

Simple Sunday

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“Dogs are not our whole life, but they make our lives whole.” – Roger Caras

“I have found that when you are deeply troubled, there are things you get from the silent devoted companionship of a dog that you can get from no other source.” – Doris Day

Recipe Roundup
Recipe Roundup

Recipe Roundup

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I really have to remember to take pictures of all my recipes, not just the new ones. This week, we had spaghetti and lasagna and I only got the spaghetti photographed. I ate separately from the Husband most nights, so that’s probably why.

This spaghetti was made on the stove and it cooked for about 6 hours. There was a little too much acid in it and I ran out of tomatoes. I used a can of tomato paste and one can of sauce with two cans of diced tomatoes.

We had lasagna on Monday. The Husband baked it and I ate some when I got home late. No pictures, because I kept forgetting. It had fresh mozzarella, Boursin cheese, and Parm in it.

We also had mac and cheese later in the week. I made it in the morning and the Husband baked it when he got home. It doesn’t photograph well, especially as leftovers, so no picture. No fancy cheeses for this one, except I added a tiny bit of cream cheese for extra creamy texture. We were out of milk, so the roux was chicken broth based instead. I find it’s not as creamy that way, hence the cream cheese. It wasn’t the best thing ever, but it was decent.

We also had caramelized onion bacon pizza. I had a scary moment where I thought bacon might have to come out of my diet, but it turned out to be the dairy instead. I haven’t had any problems since, so I think bacon is still in! We fell on it like starving wolves, so no pictures. I used the thin crust pizza recipe from a Food Network magazine, I think October 2015?

So now for a new recipe, this time with pictures!

Sheet Pan Teriyaki Chicken from The Recipe Critic.

https://therecipecritic.com/2016/09/sheet-pan-teriyaki-chicken-with-vegetables/

I think I ate sautéed spinach with it. I have a picture of the spinach and I remember eating it, but it seems like a very long time ago…

The chicken was good, the veggies were an absolute salt bomb. Blech. Next time, they will not be seasoned, just have the glaze. I’m going to make this up as a freezer meal and it will be a good one to keep around. The spinach was good, just olive oil, garlic, s + p.

Tonight we tried out a recipe from Peking Table Top Cooking by Linda Lew, Anges Lee, and Elizabeth Brotherton. We used the Chimney Soup recipe from the Firepot chapter.

This is the end noodle soup with the extra bits. It was hard to take a picture of the hotpot and the bits, we were eating them too fast! The Husband said it almost reached the level of the duck and requested the 3 ingredient marinade on all the meats. 🙂 Seriously, this magic marinade was 1/4 cup soy sauce, 1 T sherry, and 1 T of cornstarch. The recipe called for Chinese rice wine or ginger juice and I had neither, so subbed sherry. It’s in a lot of the other marinade. I was happy that he liked it so much though.

I did spice up the broth with soy sauce, sesame oil, garlic powder, and ginger.

Mom would have frowned at us though. We pretty much ate standing at the stove, until we had the noodle soup. We couldn’t figure out managing the fondue pot and extension cord on the table and managing Fancy at the same time. She was extra interested, as she got some little pieces of steak that wouldn’t work for the dinner when the Husband cut the steak. He did an excellent job, we had very little waste and perfect strips of meat. We’re trying to figure out if he could do this with pork too. I’m sure he could.

Next week I have all late nights except for Monday, due to some emergency appointments. I really need to start keeping to my hours, or just accept the fact that I probably won’t be home before 8 most nights. That’s a terrible thought though, so I need to figure out something else.

This week includes probably another Instant Pot dinner, possibly pot roast, ice cream, and fancy muffins. It should be fun, assuming I can work it all in.

Possibly also biscuits for Fancy. She’s been super-duper snuggly today and I think misses us. She’s not eating when we aren’t both here and it’s gotten worse. She won’t drink water either. We’re trying to train her to specific meal times. Currently, we have to hide tiny pieces of treats in her bowl in the mornings to get her to eat even a few mouthfuls. Then she eats too fast in the evenings and gets very bad, stinky, gas. Like, clear the room bad. Here she is all mad that I told on her…

Hopefully she will learn that she can eat and she’s safe, even if our schedules change. Wish us luck!

Party Post and Recipe Catch Up
Party Posts · Recipe Roundup

Party Post and Recipe Catch Up

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I realized I never shared the party post! And I have a lot of recipe catching up to do! I’ll start with the Epiphany party, because that’s much more fun. 🙂

I made way too much food as usual, and people kept getting th cold or flu that was running around, so it was a smaller party this year. The Husband’s Grandma and some of the other family came though, so that was fun. Fancy got to see her favorite uncle who buys her fun toys. 🙂

Fancy did very well at the Epiphany party. We kept her on leash and in her party harness, so she seemed to be a bit calmer. We had several friends who were comfortable holding the leash for us too, so we could actually talk to people. She had one incident of guarding/biting a box, but she did give it up when the Husband got out a beef chew for her. She was very sleepy that night and the next day.

New recipes included two gluten free/dairy free cookies, one of which was Keto friendly. We also had pigs in blankets with homemade crescent dough, because I couldn’t help myself.

I mean, I could have used the crescent roll dough in a tube, but that doesn’t taste nearly as good.

The smaller ones are gluten free almond flour chocolate chip cookies from off of the Trader Joe’s almond flour bag. The butter was switched out for margarine.

The other ones are Keto friendly snickerdoodles from I Breathe, I’m Hungry. https://www.ibreatheimhungry.com/low-carb-snickerdoodles-keto-gluten-free/

They were both pretty good. They ended up being soft, due to the almond flour. I’m not the biggest fan of artificial sugar, so I borrowed some from my friend Kayla.

She was lovely enough to come help the Husband and I food prep for the party and it worked out well to have help. Something hilarious happened though that kind of made the kitchen look like the Mayhem commercials happened…

This would be what happens when you hit the mixer switch to the highest setting by accident and have just put about a pound of powdered sugar in the mixer… After the initial shock, Kayla laughed too and I’m pretty sure she was the one to remind me to take a picture for the blog. 🙂 I had removed a few things from the counter  before taking the picture, I think, the spatula and a measuring cup. It was a mess. We got it all sorted though.

I made peppermint bark from the December Food Network Peppermint Insert, but completely forgot to serve it! We had plenty of other sweets. 

I had frozen the other honey sugar cookie dough, so those were made into sweater bears. The Husband likes bears in sweaters, ever since I bought a tin with a bear in a sweater holding a tree a few years ago.

We also had regular chocolate chip cookies, Berliner Kranzer, peanut butter balls, and the peppermint sugar cookies.

Other savory options were crab dip, a cheese and sausage tray, chicken salad, and the traditional rulle.

Also, a veggie tray and pickle tray. The Husband brought home some fancy popcorn and sugar cookies, so we had those too. It was lovely. We have been happily munching on the leftovers.

So that’s the party part of the post. On to the regular recipes!

I think I mentioned we got an Instant Pot and maybe the fact that I was a little terrified of using it…

It wasn’t as scary after I let the steam out the first time. I made a tomato, hamburger, and pasta soup.

https://www.skinnytaste.com/beef-tomato-and-acini-di-pepe-soup/

It needed more seasoning and I already added more than what the recipe called for. It was good enough to add to the recipe bank though.

I also tried two recipes from the Gordon Ramsey’s In The Heat Of The Kitchen cookbook. Homemade pasta and Tagliatelle with Mushrooms, with the homemade pasta. Technically this is fettuccini, but it worked.

We had the mushroom dish with steaks on New Year’s Day.

The pasta was delicious. I thought it was one of the better batches that I’ve made. It was silky and smooth. The dough was drier than previous dough and I think it made it less prone to sticking together.

Fancy was very determined to share our dinner.

I have made two recipes from the 2018 January/February Food Network Magazine already.

It has 12 muffin recipes! I used the Lemon Zucchini muffin one, but switched out the lemon to orange. I had the latter, but not the former.

Mmmm… they were delicious! I will happily make them again.

We had the Chili Shrimp from the stir-fry insert tonight and it was also good.

The last couple weeks have been a blur, so I’m sure there are ones I’m missing. I’ll post them when I remember them.

Have a wonderful weekend! My back is acting up again, so I may not be able to do much, but can maybe get some meal planning done. There are more Instant Pot recipes to be explored!

Wordless Wednesdays

Yearly Review- Wordless Wednesday style

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For this part of the review, here is my favorite picture from each month of this year. I started this in February last year. Do you see your favorites? 🙂

February 2017

March 2017

April 2017

May 2017

June 2017

July 2017

August 2017

September 2017

October 2017

November 2017

December 2017

It’s Beginning to Look a Lot Like Christmas!
Crafty · Life Posts

It’s Beginning to Look a Lot Like Christmas!

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I slowed for a minute on cookie baking, but would prefer to think of it a strategic retreat to regroup. 🙂 I have to decide on what to bring to the Husband’s Grandma’s house for Christmas. Peppermint bark may make an appearance.

I have been sewing, but it’s been Super Secret Christmas sewing, so can’t be shown until after next week.

In the meantime, here is some of our Christmas decor to make it a little more festive!

Christmas trains! This wouldn’t fit with our village on the mantle. Next year, we’re going to set up a table for it.

Another train! Also, the ornament from the in-laws for Fancy’s first Christmas. They couldn’t find a queen one, so it says “King of the House.” It totally fits. How could we be expected to refuse this face?

Here are our Firefly ornaments. I thought it was appropriate for them to fly. The black one has a “firefly” license plate on it.

We like to think of our decorating style as electic. 🙂

Icicle lights in the kitchen window. We found these at a summer rummage sale and I forgot about them until I was sorting presents. They look so pretty when the lights hit them.

We didn’t get a bigger artificial tree this year because Fancy has started guarding everything in sight. This is up on the table where she can’t get to it and it seems to be good.

I did some organizing yesterday. My sewing area is crazy again. It’s not completely put away yet, but this bin and some other piles are at least sorted and ready to be put away.

Here are the piles of neatly folded and sorted.

The fat quarter piles look so pretty!

I also got a present for myself in the mail today! It’s “Rainbow Quilts For Scrap Lovers” by Judy Gautier. I know, I know… But I’ll use at least four of these quilts!

This one is partially appliqué, but the background is pieced, so I might be able to get it done.

Reverse appliqué on this one. But it looks easy enough.

So pretty! And it could use up a lot of weird scraps.

I saved the best for last….

I love owls! I will definitely be making this one. Sometime… after I get the other thousand projects done…

For now though, I have a dog sleeping on my foot and should probably go to bed too. Have a peaceful night!