What I've been up to and Thanksgiving Prep

 I know I've said this one or twice before but....where has the time gone to?

I've been sewing up some tablecloths and napkins for the holidays and here are my groupings.  

The red napkin with the raven embroidered on it is for my feast gear for my SCA events.  The raven stands for the Shire of Ravenshold.  I made two others but one is destined to  be given to somebody who is in our Shire and just was recognized by our local court and is destined to become a Knight.  It's a big thing in the SCA.  The other one went to Dan for his feast gear as part of his birthday present which is two days after Thanksgiving.  The other part of his present was a draft stopper.

He chose the longer one (made out of African fabric) and I gave it to him early also since we had some cold and windy days.

Speaking of Thanksgiving, I've started to gather up ingredients and group them out for tomorrow's holiday food.

I've also set my table and changed out some of the quilts that I hang up.  Before Dan leaves, he has promised to help me change out the quilts again for the Christmas and winter ones that I want to hang up.  I can do it but he worries about me being clumsy (he's learned that over the 25 years we've been friends) so he said he would do that tomorrow.  Between his long arms and my stepladder it will be a breeze.

Now I have to get back to seeing what I can make ahead of time and plot out my time.  My kittens/cats and I wish you all a Happy Thanksgiving.

Today's sojourn into Walmart

 October is finally here and soon the holidays and holiday meals will be upon us.

Today is also my monthly trip to the Food Bank and out to Walmart to get groceries.  Dan brought over some of his extra food when he found out the Food Bank in his area REALLY cut back on what was handed out.  It is good to have such a good friend.  This time, I didn't give him much from my pantry but I don't think he minded.  We go through what we get and exchange what we know we won't use.  That explains why I have 24 cans of mixed fruit since Dan can't have preaches (severe allergy),  He did give me some cans of tomatoes, cream soup, some hamburger and Stouffer's Chicken and Dumplings.  He also bought a turkey at Walmart which I have in my freezer.  We will eat that at Thanksgiving.  Now to figure out what else to have.  :)

The prices have gone up at Walmart and at the gas station.  Not a surprise but still I wish it hadn't happened,  The cat food that I normally get as out and the backup was not in the size I wanted.  The toilet tissue was also REALLY low.  Some things stayed the same like their brand of soda, bread, and Bar-S hot dogs.  No Imperial Margarine in the stick form but did have some in the soft form which was in tubs.  So what went up?

Eggs.  On the 1st, 18 count large eggs were $3.45 but today they were $5.02.  Oh well, so I don't get a 60 count (which was over $15) and settled for an 18 count container.

After getting home, Dan helped me put on a SCA tabard that I am making.  he took a picture but it hasn't shown up yet in my computer feed.  When it does I will share them.

Time to get off the computer and rest my eyes for a little bit.

Everybody have a safe and wonderful day.

Huggses,

I'm tired!

 Yesterday my body went on strike.  It was a bad allergy day and between 3 doses of Benadryl (not taken all at once), 1 dose of Zyrtec, 4 doses of Ibuprofen and 1 dose of headache medicine, I didn't do much,  By evening my aches were gone but since I spent so much time resting, I didn't sleep well.

Today I am doing better and only have taken my Zyrtec and one dose of Ibuprofen,  I am sure I will need more Ibuprofen later because I decided to go out and do some pruning. 

My hands are already telling me I did too much but oh well.  Now I need to call Dan and see if he can help me doing some more pruning.  I need his saw.  Of course that means he will do it for me but it won't take him long,  I'll make him some food or cookies or perhaps some fried tortilla chips to take back home.  :)

Before I stop working,  I  will get some more stitches in on my second Christmas ornament.  I am 3/4ths the way done so I will be picking out a new cross stitch ornament to work on.  I am putting my more detailed cross stitch projects on hold until after the holidays.

I found this meme and would like to share it with you.

So remember that no matter what we are going through, we are all strong women.  Of course this also pertains to strong men,  I know I have one or two who read my blog.

Have a wonderful day my friends!

Mid month report

 Wow  It is the middle of the month of September,  Another month where I don't know how it slipped by me.  What have I been doing?

Cooking:

I would like to say that everything that I made turned out right,  Unfortunately if I did that I would be lying. This month I think I have had more mishaps than successes!  Some of the good things I made were:

  Fried Tortilla Chips - Using premade tortillas and cut them into 8ths and then fry on the stove in approximately 1/2 - 1 inch of oil.  That turned out well enough that Dan, who is my guinea pig for food, decided that he would buy me another pack of tortillas so that I could make him more,  LOL!

Creamy Burrito Casserole - I just made this and it turned out good,  Dan will get his sample to try on Wednesday,  It is pretty basic with ground beef, onions, taco seasoning, refried beans, flour tortillas, cheese, etc.,   I did substitute or leave out a couple of things that either I didn't have or didn't like.

Crinkle Coffee Cookies - Dean REALLY liked these.  You don't use much instant coffee in it,  If I remember right it is only a couple of tablespoons that you mix in with a couple of tablespoons of boiling water,  Still they made a nice soft coffee and a good sized one at that.

Things that didn't work out...sigh.  Cheese sauce that was so thick I never used it.  I an barely even look at it so it will be tossed out when garbage day comes around,  There was another casserole that I made that seemed a bit too loose,  Dan took some home so I'll see what he thinks.  It really doesn't matter what he thinks because I know I'm not going to make it again.  LOL,  There were around three other recipes that didn't turn out but I forget which ones now,

Quilting:

I wanted to make a wall hanging of the Ravenshold (SCA group) device,  It has been fighting me from the very first cut,  It doesn't help that I don't have a pattern for it,  The banner cannot be taken apart so I have had a hard time getting measurements.  My house doesn't have a good place for me to lay out the banner and make a copy.  I finally have gotten the background put together after putting it aside for almost a month in frustration.  It is smaller than the banner is so now I have to adjust the applique that I will be doing on it,  It is on my design wall so I won't forget it but I am still mad at it so it is just "hanging around",

Sewing:

The other aggravating thing is my trying to make a  sideless surcoat,  I took apart a garb that mostly fit me but then discovered that I don't have enough fabric to make it,  I don't normally get a lot of large yardage since I mostly make wall hangings,  I figure that I will have to get approximately 4 yards of wide fabric to make it,  Once again I am frustrated at this since I will be going to an weekend event next month.  I have two "loaner garb"  outfits that I "can" wear but would have liked to have one that was with my fabric etc,  Oh well,  I will be going to more events so I will have time to look for more fabric,  This is were having my income get cut by more than 50% puts me at a disadvantage in retirement.  Still I will muddle through and eventually get what I want.  :)

Cross Stitch:

I worked a bit on the cross stitch owl,  I put it away for a bit (again) so that I can work on some cross stitch ornaments for Christmas.  They will be able to go in the cards so that I can mail them later,  Obviously I won't share the pictures until the recipients receive them.  I will do the cross stitch first and then closer to the mailing time I will finish them,  I have one ornament all cross stitched and have started on my second one,  

That should catch you up on what I have been working on,  Wish me luck getting them done!

Rainy Day Organization

 It's raining today so I decided to organize my floss.  I had separated the floss by numbers and so it wasn't too hard to refile (?) them back in. 

Of course that is only my stash.  I also have individual containers which hold the floss that I already have pulled for individual projects.  I've tried different methods but this one seems to work best for me.

That's about all that I have done today.  Well that and eating butterscotch cookies.  I have to hurry them up and eat them because they turned out yummy.  Butterscotch is one of my favorite flavors so I am having a hard time stopping eating them.  I finally froze about a dozen of them,  Perhaps with them being frozen and out of sight I won't be as tempted to eat them.  Then I pulled around 8 and bagged them to give to Dan the next time I see him.  

I hope everybody has a great day.

Adventures in Baking

 What a start to my day.  I decided to make a new cookie ( new to me anyway) and everything was going ok until....

I'm getting ahead of myself.  Let me backtrack a little bit.  I decided to make Butterscotch Cookies today.  It sounded easy and I had all of the ingredients or so I thought.  As I was going through the ingredient list:

sugar

brown sugar

butter

egg

vanilla

flour

baking soda

salt

cream of tartar

Oops.  Cream of tartar?  I didn't have that so I went to good ol Google and search for substitutes.  I found that if the recipe calls for BOTH cream of tartar and baking soda, you can substitute baking powder for the cream of tartar.  For every teaspoon of cream of tartar you substitute 1.5 teaspoons of baking soda.  That was an easy substitution so I preheated my oven to 325 F and started to put everything together.

It was a standard recipe where you cream your butter and sugar and then add the vanilla and egg and cream it again then add all your dry ingredients and mix.  I was on a roll.  You roll out teaspoons of dough (like with peanut butter cookies) and then roll them in sugar and put them 2" apart and bake.  

SIGH!  I thought the mix was a little "loose" but it wasn't until I took out the first tray that I realized my mistake.  Instead of 2 1/2 cups of flour, I only put in 1 1/2 cups.  OOPS!  Those cookies will be eaten by me.  they tasted good but just wasn't holding their shape.

So now what?  That is when I realized my mistake with the flour.  I wasn't sure how much to add in for the rest of the cookies so had to play it by ear.  I didn't do too bad and the rest of the cookies kept their shape.

Lesson learned  Double check your measurements and don't keep a conversation on the phone with a friend (Josephine) while measuring.  It sort of made me remember the old scene in the original One Day at a Time where Valerie Bertinelli's character was mixing up browning while chatting on the phone and she lost count how many times she had stirred the mix.  Back then if it said to stir it 200 times, you stirred it 200 times.  LOL.

I will make the recipe again and am totally happy to munch on the misshapened cookies that had less flour in them.  Actually I kind of wish they didn't taste so good.  My waistband would appreciate it I know.  LOL.

Time to munch on some cookies while the rest of them finish cooling off and I decide how I will store them (and not inside of my stomach),

Have a great day!

My Day

 I decided not to do any crafting today that would stress my eyes,  If I do something every other day than that will be plenty for quite a bit.  

So instead of starting my day with thinking what to do, I started out my day with getting mugged by kittens.

There are far worse ways to start the day!  :)

After that, I came inside and decided it was finally time to refile back some of my floss.  I usually put the floss after using it in a project in a large baggie and then when I get enough of a collection I will refile it back into the storage containers until I need them again.

I'll take a picture of my floss containers after these get added back in.  :)  Of course this doesn't include the projects where I have already set aside all the floss for those projects.

I'm not sure if I showed you this or not yet so I will post it just in case.  :)  A friend of mine send me some fabric that she had dyed.  These are five inch squares which is a good size to get.

Thanks Deb!  You did a great job.  Not sure yet what I will use them for but I will definitely use them.  

That's it for this trip.  Time to get off the computer and do another load of laundry.  Sigh,  LOL.

 

Have a great day/wonderful evening everybody!

Progress on cross stitch and doctor's report

 Today wasn't too bad of a day.  Still have to type on my notebook and will need to take in my laptop to the repair shop but at least I have y notebook.  Other good news was concerning my eye doctor's appointment.  I don't need to go back to him until another year goes by or my eyesight gets worse.  He gave me two prescriptions that I can use IF I want to.  One is for a single lens prescription and the other ones is for a bifocal.  I can use them or just continue using the readers that I get from Dollar Tree.  It was nice that he showed me what things would look like without any prescription and then what it would look like with the glasses.  I couldn't the difference with the long distance so he thought that the readers would work just fine for now.  I do need to start to decrease the doses of the steroid drops and just watch for changes in eye strain etc.

With that good news I decided to dig out the mini owl HAED cross stitch pattern and made some progress on it.  I managed to get 200 stitches done!  

Now it is time to stop using the eyes so much and relax a bit.  :)  

I hope everybody has a great day!

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.