The Proof

That I am on Day 4 of a kitchen table that is no longer covered in people's underwear, socks and t-shirts. This is a remarkable thing around here because it really doesn't take much to lure me back to my lazy, slacker ways. It's so easy to pile up laundry on the table and go about my business, but now, after four solid days of a cleaned off table, having laundry on it seems wrong. I do fold clothes here but they are put away immediately because leaving them there would be wrong. I never wanted to become that person, but where laundry is concerned, it feels pretty good. I'm not obsessed, I do my one load a day, I put the stuff away, and it's done. Not piled there waiting on me to do something with it. I hate that it feels so good and that maybe my mother was right. I really hate admitting that. You see my mother has a laundry obsession. Laundry must be placed in the washer just so, whites must go it alone. You have to use Tide and Downey. You must remove the clothes from the dryer and fold them or hang them up immediately(I am still not there, we are so very much that wrinkled family from the Lowe's or Home Depot commercial. I may have changed a few bad habits but I have not lost my mind, yet!) So I don't know if I have spent the last 25 years of doing my laundry my way to show my mother that it doesn't have to be that way. So what if all our white underwear and t-shirts are gray. Gray is a good neutral color. Take that mom! And Tide, that is not always in the budget, Arm & Hammer and Publix laundry detergent are just fine thank you very much--or even homemade with Washing soda, Borax and Fels Naptha. (Ok I've been buying Tide with Bleach Alternative lately but I do not do whites in a separate load, it's just wasteful--unless it's something red or something I absolutely know will bleed on the whites) oh and I do not wash whites in hot water, all my laundry is done in cold water. My mother would cringe at that.

My Pistoulet Chicken makes me happier than it should. Granny Smith apples, buy a bag, get a bag free at Winn Dixie, also have two bags of Red Delicious, same deal. I see apple pie in our future.

I'm currently coveting Amanda's new breadmachine. It looks awesome on Amazon.

Amazon.com: Cuisinart CBK-200 2-Pound Convection Automatic Bread Maker: Kitche

I did two batches of pizza dough in mine yesterday and I think the motor was about to give up, it was hot, hot, hot and that was just on the dough cycle. I like that the Cuisinart makes long regular loaves. Very cool.

I made these cookies this morning:

The Pioneer Woman Cooks - Spicy Molasses Cookies

Not bad but do not in any way overcook them. I did my first batch, decided to let them go another two minutes and that was a mistake. I also think I went a little too heavy on the cardamom and I tried to be careful to use the exact amount but it's a pretty strong spice and mine was from a freshly opened jar.

I've read a few reviews of this book and had hoped my library would have it but they don't:

http://www.amazon.com/Mad-Hungry-Feeding-Men-Boys/dp/1579653561/ref=wl_it_dp_o

The reviews I've read have all been positive. Although one person does point out that girls get hungry too, yes we do! And the text is a bit annoying about cooking for men and boys but that is the point of the book, but we girls we like us some food too! But reviews of the recipes I've read on various blogs have all been good.

I've also been wanting this cookbook for a while:

http://www.amazon.com/Rustic-Fruit-Desserts-Crumbles-Pandowdies/dp/1580089763/

And my library hasn't gotten it in either. Another book where the reviews have all been good.

Something about the holidays and a bit of a chill in the air that really gets me in a cooking mood.

Seeing Knitting Iris photos of recent meals really makes me long for wide open spaces, a large garden and cabin in the wilds of Montana. Although I don't think I could eat a heart sandwich. It looks good in the picture, but I'm not a vital organs consuming kind of girl. My friend Cassie used to force me to eat liver and onions once a month because it was good for me. Hard to believe we're still friends after that gastronomical torture.

Recently I rearranged the living room. I set up a new stitching area and once I get the Rubbermaid bucket out from under the table and replace it with a basket of some sort with a lid to keep the cats out of the yarn I'll take a picture of the whole corner but for now you get Sabrina:

She took my spot. She likes curling up on the unfinished Vintage Vertical Strip blanket that I folded up and use for a cushion.

She is annoyed that I interrupted her bath and she's not impressed. The Breeze as we call her runs the house. She terrorizes Pineapple and Naomi the two other cats and pretty much scares my Polly Prissypants too.

Here's the queen telling me to go away, leave her alone, let her cuddle up and lay in the afternoon sun.

I am currently listening to Stephen King's Under the Dome. I love it. I am up to hour twenty something of thirty five and I don't want to stop listening. I think that's what has aided my cleaning mojo.

The Spousal Unit says I will not be able to stay up until midnight to see New Moon tonight. It's going to be hard, I'm usually asleep by ten, I hope I can get a nap in today.

You Are Going to Want to Kiss Me Right on my Mouth

When you make these cookies:

They are Surprise Cookies from Martha Stewart's Cookies cookbook. The recipe is also online. It can be found here:

Surprise Cookies and more delicious recipes, smart cooking tips, and video dem

Don't the cookies look like they are bathed in celestial light?(works for me, much better than saying my photography sucks, doncha think?) But they do taste heavenly. Trust me on this.

Even Rachel Holmes wanted a piece of this action. My fabric is not touching the chocolate I promise, but come to think of it that might add to it's aged appearance.

Speaking of Rachel, here's a current pic. Yes it's washed out, I tried several different spots outside and this was the best. Click the pic to enlarge.

In other late-breaking news, I am on day three of absolutely no laundry on the kitchen table. People wander through the house towards the kitchen searching for shirts, underwear, socks, then they remember, "my clothes are in my room". Twilight Zone music then begins to play because they have obviously been transported to some bizarro land where clean clothes are exactly where they are supposed to be. It's difficult not to take the stuff from the dryer and toss it on the table and move on to the next load, but I'm slowing down, folding, hanging and putting things away. This is huge for me. All the laundry put away, freakin' awesome!

In Thanksgiving news, the turkey is purchased and in the freezer temporarily, got a 20 pounder. Started to go for something a bit larger but good grief we don't need that much turkey. I already see a couple of turkey pot pies in our future and I'm pretty sure this year I'm going to toss the carcass in a pot with some water and make turkey broth to freeze for the Yule bird. We do a ham on Christmas Eve and have a turkey on the big day.

I'm pretty stoked about the new more organized me. Never fear, Casa de Dog Hair is still alive and well but there is not one single piece of laundry on the kitchen table. I'm super serial.

By the Dawn's Early Light

I have rediscovered my love of 28ct lugana. I know, it's not fine linen, but it was my first foray into over 2 stitching, my first step out of the aida comfort zone. It was soft and silky and it was so luxurious compared to my good old Charles Craft 14ct and 18ct aida. I spent hours in my LNS, it was either Creative Critters or the name had changed to Crown Thistle Needlework, it was within walking distance of my house in North Little Rock and I'd put the kid in the stroller, we just had one kid at the time, and walk to the LNS. The shopowner promised me if I'd just give evenweave or linen a try I'd never go back to aida. I bought a piece of 28ct ivory lugana and Sheepish Designs(I am 99% sure that's the designer) Virtuous Heart Sampler(and I'm less than 20% sure that is the correct name of the sampler) and I don't have it handy because it needs to be reframed after one brother slamming another brother against the wall in a WWF moment(back when it was the WWF not the WWE) but they could have been impersonating a lion attacking a gazelle so that would fit with the WWF(World Wildlife Federation).

Yes, the DMC is wrapped around a wooden spool. How precious is that?

The spool was in a baggie with some others that my Mamaw gave me years ago for some project out of a Leisure Arts Spirit of Christmas book which apparently I never got around to actually making. I have maybe five or six and these were my great grandmother's wooden spools so I'm careful with them. But I've been stalking eBay and thrift stores hoping to score a mess of these old wooden spools for not so much money. I've developed a love for embroidery over the last couple of years, thank you Jenny Hart! And want to keep my embroidery floss separate from my cross stitch floss and I think these wooden spools are kind of funky cool for that purpose.(Dork alert! I get it)

But you ask, "If you want to keep your embroidery floss separate from your cross stitch floss why do you have floss you are obviously cross stitching with on a spool?" Well I thought it'd be different and I had the spool right there and the cardboard bobbins were in the shoebox in another room and the cross stitch only uses one color. So I thought I'd just be wild and crazy and spool it. "Spoolin' on a Wednesday afternoon". That should be a song.

The design is one that was run through Patternmaker(Thank you Pam for your technological help, ok for doing it for me because I am so incompetent) and makes me very happy. I have a companion piece already charted and it makes me even more happy! Happier than this even:

Sue Hillis Designs: Pirate's Creed - cross stitch pattern and even this:

Sue Hillis Cross-Stitch Designs Blog » Final version: “Women who behave…” (although I believe the real quote is "Well behaved women seldom make history" Laurel Thatcher Ulrich

With any luck I'll have a finished project to show tomorrow.

No, that's not coffee in my cup but Adagio's Earl Grey Bravo. I feel really contintental when I drink hot tea.

Is everyone in full speed ahead holiday mode? Yesterday I cleaned out my kitchen pantry. I had a lot, A LOT of expired canned goods. I discovered maybe two years ago that canned goods actually had expiration dates. I'm pretty sure growing up my mom would occaisonally open a ten year old can of Campbells soup and not think twice about it, or maybe Dinty Moore Beef Stew. I thought canned goods were supposed to last forever, you know you fill up your 1950s bomb shelter with Mother Campbells and you can survive any catastrophe.

I'm now working out what I need to buy for Thanksgiving dinner. I've learned over the years that keeping it simple is the best thing for my family. The husband will eat anything these days, even onions as long as he doesn't know they are in the food he's consuming. For years he told me he was allergic to onions, only to find out years later he's a big fat onion hating liar! The 14 year old won't eat anything but turkey and mashed potatoes and the two older sons will eat pretty much anything, the middle son prefers pumpkin pie only but now that he's 18 if he wants pumpkin pie for Thanksgiving dinner more power to him.

Tentative Thanksgiving menu:

Turkey

Dressing(really bad dressing because I do not have my Mamaw's dressing making gene, my dressing sucks, major big time suckage)

Green Bean casserole(I'm southern, it's got cream of mushroom soup and french fried onions on top, it's what we eat ok?)

Swiss Vegetable Medley (great casserole, probably my all time favorite)

I may or may not make a squash casserole, maybe to spruce up the leftovers on Friday night. I use this recipe only I add a can or two of diced green chiles. It's mighty tasty:

Yelllow Squash Casserole - 14522 - Recipezaar

Mashed potatoes

I want to make a sweet potato casserole but I'm the only one that eats it so like the squash casserole I might make this over the weekend to freshen up the leftovers.

Dessert:

Pumpkin Pie(recipe straight off the Libby's label)

Chocolate Chip Pie - 83750 - Recipezaar (very 1970s dessert)

I've been reading a few books and articles about survivial preparedness. I've sufficiently scared the ever lovin' pee out of myself and I think I don't want to read about that stuff so much any more. I think my goal is to keep a well stocked pantry, enough food for five for a couple of weeks and hope by then any national crisis will have worked itself out. Oh and a well stocked project pantry because the best thing to take the edge of the world as we know it ending are a few projects. I remember a time on RCTN when something bad happened and someone suggested why don't we stitch blocks for this or that and someone said, "Do you think cross stitch makes everything better, don't you think there's something better you could do for these people?" Well I didn't step into that, but trust me when I tell you when my world is crashing down around me, some needlework in hand at least makes me feel better so yeah, for me a project of some kind does make me feel better. A bit of control in the chaos around me. It's such a small, small thing but offers so much comfort.

Smiles!

Thank you to Anna and Edgar: Y'all made my day!


People who don't blog ask me all the time why I started a blog. I started this blog a few years ago as an excuse to write every day. To learn to put my words out there in the universe for better or worse. I never dreamed anyone would ever read it. I also found it a great place to keep track of my projects, my family, and just life in general. I had gotten pretty lazy about journaling so this gave me a place to just write it all down and not have to look for my Moleskine or composition book. I try hard not to plan my posts, I write like I talk, which might not always be a good thing!

I'm supposed to tag ten people but I do believe most people have already been tagged but I do want to say my friend Sharon always makes me smile.

Siobhan, who is blogless, the link to her Webshots album is in my sidebar, makes me smile too. If you haven't visited her album before, be prepared to drool. She just finished Mary Beale's Days of Advent. She is one of my stitching heroes. She doesn't just start a BAP, she finishes it and usually in the same year she started it. Wow!

Andrea always inspires me to stitch more. She has completed many projects I have in the workbasket.

Suz also rocks! Love the tales of the ferrets, the dogs, and her love of nature. She also has great taste in stitching projects.


Rain much?

We've been in the middle of a serious drought most of the summer. All the rain seemed to go to Texas or just miss us. On Thursday the rain moved in and from Thursday morning to Friday afternoon we got close to twenty inches of rain. The picture below is the main parking lot at the public beach. The beach is behind me. This is a little bike, float, skim board rental place. It's a long, long way from the water. This flooding is strictly from the rain.

Whoops loaded the same picture twice, I must try and fix that! The water in this picture reaches all the way to the road where you see that car near the water tower.

The powers that be built up the dunes behind the homes on the beach, that's great if there's a hurricane but now their carports are all flooded from the deluge. I'm not kidding. It's crazy. Fixing one problem and I don't know that those dunes will protect the homes anyway, but that created a whole new kind of problem.

My personal opinion is that no one should be allowed to build on the beach and if you do you do so at your own risk. There's a big argument now in the county next to us regarding beach home owners and beach goers. The home owners don't want locals to be able to use the beach behind their homes but at the same time they want us tax payers to pay for beach restoration for beaches that we can't use. Uh no way! I should state that the beach is public land up to the mean high tide line. The home owners only own, or lease rather, the land up to the high water line.

My dream used to be a home on the beach, now after a few years of bad hurricanes I'm perfectly happy to live a few miles from the beach. It's close enough thank you very much.

Okay, that is a car, water up to the doors. It's in the parking lot of the restaurant that backs up to the beach.

We've had one day of sunny weather since last Thursday. It's storming today and it's a good thing I have a crockpot of this going:

Olive Garden Pasta E Fagioli Soup in a Crock Pot (Copycat) Recipe Recipezaar

Tomorrow if weather permits, I'll take a new picture of 13th Colony Bay. I worked on it all day Sunday and it was easy to sit and stitch the afternoon away since Sorry Wrong Number was on. The only thing better would have been a Double Indemnity double feature.

Updates! Updates! Updates!

Here's the current state of Midsummer Night Designs Monkey Sampler:

It was starting to sprinkle when I took this picture so apologies for it being kind of dark. I'm enjoying this sampler a lot. I don't want to put it down. It's my take along project for the car and when I'm stuck waiting because there are areas of big blocks of color but there are also areas where I need to count like the flowers in the border, the border itself, so I'm also working on it around the house too. It seems to be the project screaming the loudest these days. I'd love to have it finished and hanging in my kitchen by the end of the summer. Ok, that was a joke, how about by the end of the year?

What you see below is a picture of my wave blocks surrounding one of the sunbursts in the
Just Beachy quilt. I'm getting close to sewing time. I have to work on my machine, a neighbor gave it to me when she moved but the tension is off. I've been eyeing a Brother machine at the store who shall not be named but I would prefer not to spend money on a sewing machine right now. Keep your fingers crossed I can adjust the tension on the free machine. Worse case scenario I sew the blocks together by hand which is not a bad thing in my humble opinion. I prefer handwork but I need the machine to go around the sunbursts and waves through the Heat and Bond. That would be a pain by hand.




Two Recipes

Since the kids have been out of school meal time is a nightmare. Now I'm stuck coming up with three meals a day as opposed to just dinner. Thanks to Ree I tried this recipe for dinner the other night, it was a hit. Chicken Spaghetti The recipe reminded me of one I made years and years ago from Country Kitchen the show hosted by Florence Henderson on the now defunct Nashville Network. I would have looked up that recipe in my recipe box but the cats knocked the recipe box off the hutch and the dog ate my recipe cards. I am so not making this up. Anyway, Ree's recipe was two thumbs all the way around the table except for the eleven year old who seems to only eat Ragu Chunky Italian Garden Combination spaghetti, chicken nuggets and a pepperoni pizza from Hungry Howies since he doesn't eat anything his opinion really doesn't count these days.

Another great recipe is for cookies. I found this at Farmgirl Fare: Wow. Who Knew? (And Cookies) These cookies are wonderful. They sounded like they might be close to Publix's Calypso Crunch Cookies, not exactly but just as tasty. My family does not appreciate the texture of the old fashioned oats in the cookies so next time I will use quick oats because the oats make the cookies almost health food, right, so I don't want to leave them out altogether. Personally I like the texture. I will also try using semisweet chocolate chips and peanut butter chips or white chocolate. These are very good cookies.

Thanks to everyone for the comments, they are always appreciated. The honkin' big quilter's square rocks! It's right up there with the laptop and iPod on my "greatest inventions ever" list.