What's next up to stitch

I am slowly making progress on picking up on stitching again.  I have finished three quilt blocks since my eye surgery and today I fused down a third to work on.   I'm only going to post the picture of the new one since the others you have seen more than once since they were UFOs.

This is another block from the Simple Yet Elegant BOM.   I like to take a picture of the block after  find the DMC floss I'll use so that if the floss gets misplaced  I know I was planning on using.

I put up some of my Fleur blocks to get an idea (inspiration to continue with it).  There are a couple of those blocks which aren't sewn down yet but they will be soon(ish).  :)

Another thing I was working on was cross stitch.  I picked up the cross stitch stocking to work on and found the red that I was going to be using.  Thank you Susan for sending it to me.  :)

I've also done some cooking (the crockpot chicken and rice) but the second picture (Philly Cheesesteak Sloppy Joes) is one for in the future.  Doesn't it look yummy?

That's about it for this posting.  I will finish with some Kitten/cat picture.  Can't get enough of them, right?   Until my next post, enjoy your day!

 

Happy Birthday to Me!

 How did I get to be 66 already?  There isn't enough time to do all that I want to do.  Of course that doesn't take into account that I really don't know what I want to do since I've retired.  Obviously the main thing is to live.  Sounds simple right?  Perhaps that is the key.  Simplify things and enjoy life.

I have been blessed with friends who remember me.  I've gotten some really pretty birthday cards and even got a package from my friend Susan.  She had put stickers in my birthday card and can't wait to use them.  I took a couple of pictures so you can see how talented my friend Susan is.  I love my pin cushion and decided that it can hold SOME of my small scissors.

She also sent me a small table runner or a placemat.  I've put it on my computer table so my laptop can sit on it.  I think it is adorable and love it!

I also wanted to shout out to Nikki to say thank you for the cute stickers in my birthday card.  I do so love stickers!

I had my eye surgery yesterday on my right eye.  That means today I go back and let the doctor see how it is.  We will be going to Jonesboro instead of Memphis this time so Dan doesn't have to drive as far.  That's good because...he is cooking me dinner!  Isn't that sweet?  I've been hearing about his crock pot chicken recipes for over 10 years and he promised me he would make it after I moved down here.  Today is the day.  He has more than one but I think he is planning on the chicken and biscuit recipe.  We'll see.  

Getting eyesight back and not having to cook your meal sounds like a good birthday to me!  I hope you have a good day also.

Another hot day

Today is another hot day.  It is to be expected since it is, after all, July.  I've been told that July and August are the hottest months.  We are almost half way done with July so we'll make it.  Right now it is 91 degrees but the heat index puts it at 105.  Yeah, it's hot.  I will hate to see what my electric bill will be next month because of running the a/c and the fans. One thing at a time though, 

First up is typing on my laptop.  Yep my desktop crashed again.  Not sure why but I'm mad at it so it is sitting in the corner for now and I will be typing from my laptop.  The laptop is larger than my Notebook so that is good.  Obviously the screen isn't as large a what the desktop was but at least it is working.  I also feel proud of myself for getting the scanner/printer to work with it.  I'm still trying to upload/recover some files but I'll make it work.

Next are some pictures of the kittens.  They don't like the heat much either.  One day I didn't see them at all but the next day was a little cooler and before I knew it, I had five kittens and six adults showing up at breakfast.  My neighbor, Miss Mary, left to go on vacation for a couple of weeks and asked if I could use the cat food she had because she didn't want anybody to have a key to her house just to feed stray cats  She has 3 that come to her house and we think that some of them are the same ones that I have.  Not to pick on anybody but BC, or Daisy as she calls him, seems to be eating at both places.  LOL.  Of course I said that I would gladly take the food so I found myself with 13 pounds of dry cat food and six cans of canned food.  I won't deny that it was very helpful!

Did you see that Sunny has discovered how to climb the tree?  The tigers haven't climbed that high yet.  They are still trying to figure it out. 

Another thing that I found myself doing was cooking.  You'd think that it being so hot that I wouldn't want to cook.  I was almost to that point but then Dan gave me a bunch of pork that he needed to get out of HIS freezer and I had to cook some of it right away before it got too freezer burned.  It took me a bit but I finally had the pork thawed enough to separate the pieces into smaller packages and put it back in MY freezer.  I made note of which packages had to be used first.  That is why I made my creole pork chop recipe.  I really need to change the title to Italian pork chop recipe.  Creole is what Betty Crocker called it.  It is a recipe from the Betty Crocker Cooking for Kids Cookbook.  I'm not sure if that is the official title or not because I lost the cookbook YEARS ago.  It was my first cookbook that was totally mine.  This recipe was a favorite of the family's and my brother Tony would buy the ingredients and ask me to make it for him.  He would always ask to take left over sauce home so that he could put it over mashed potatoes the next day.  It uses pork chops (or any kind of pork), Italian dry salad dressing package, onion, stewed tomatoes, green bell pepper.  

As I was putting away some canned vegetables that Dan had also given me, I noticed that I had an abundance of Black Eyed Peas.  I know that I can use them in chili's and almost anything that I would use regular beans in but I wanted to try something else.  I found a salad recipe to try and it didn't turn out too bad.

It also allowed me to use up some corn that I had to take out of the freezer in order to make room for the pork.  LOL.  It didn't turn out bad at all.  I had leftovers so I mixed them in with some rice for a variation of fried rice.  Good way to mix up leftovers.

With the heat wave, it seems that my energy is also zapped.  I did manage to start working on the tulip block.

I am slowly working on hand appliqueing it using the buttonhole stitch.  I have almost all of the green parts done.  I only have one stem and five leaves to do and then I'll start on the tulips.  I have my thread all picked out so it won't take me long to start.  For the green stems and leaves, I usually thread six needles at a time.  I'm only using 1 thread of the DMC so it works out well.

Time for me to put eye drops in.  I have eye surgery on my right eye on Monday in Memphis.  Then Tuesday it is day one post op check up in Jonesboro.  I'll keep everybody up to date.  In the meantime, stay safe and try to keep cool.