November 29, 2007

more from the finisher

This little finish is from Twisted Threads. I finished it a couple of years ago, exactly as it was charted, but was not that happy with it and never could figure out how to finish it off. It was very labor intensive, all that solid over one stitching and all, so tossing it wasn't really an option, lol!

So I sent it to the finisher with the instructions to just "do whatever you want to with it".

And boy hidee, did she ever! (If you click on the photo, you can see a better close up view)



The silk ribbon she gathered around the edges (what's that called again?) was the perfect touch!

And just look at the back of it!



I really do love it now, more than I could have ever imagined :)

November 28, 2007

return of the queen bee

Back from the finisher....





And Llok what went into the oven awhile ago:



It's a recipe out of one of the Sweet Potato Queens books. When it gets cooled down it gets a bunch more fattening stuff piled on top of it :) If it's any good I'll post the finished dish and recipe so you can try it too!

November 27, 2007

redneck holidays

Sorry for the blog break, I was recovering from Thanksgiving! We really had a nice one, despite one particular relative driving me absolutely insane, the food was all good and my hubby and kids said it was the best Thanksgiving meal I'd ever cooked. Score!

So I thought I'd share my secret. I know it's a little late, but maybe you can keep it in mind for next year.
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Are you ready?
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Here it is:
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And just in case you can't figure out how to get it out of the can, it comes with instructions. Oh yes, it does!!




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Somehow I'm picturing you all with a face similar to this one:



LOL! Just kidding folks!

Hope you got a laugh out of that one ;)

It was actually something my DH requested that I make for him on his birthday. I had to work that night, so his official birthday dinner wasn't until the following Sunday (at The Cheesecake Factory...YUM), so when I was getting ready to slice and fry for his sandwiches, the back of the can just cracked me up! I've been opening cans of Spam since I was a kid and have to admit, it's a skill! But now they have the instructions right on the can, so anyone can do it!!....it's just too funny.

Spam. People either love it or hate it. We have it about two or three times a year, always fried and in sandwich form and it usually makes my husband sing part of the old Monty Python Spam skit which is good for a laugh or two!

So anyway....I brined a turkey, best thing e.v.e.r. OMG, I'll never make a turkey any other way. So tender and juicy! We used the Williams Sonoma brand of brine mix, it was wonderful!

We had all the regular stuff to go with it, cornbread dressing, mashed potatoes, gravy, green bean casserole, sweet potato casserole, cranberry sauce (always from the can and after 30 years of slicing it, my mother tells me I'm doing it wrong!), pies, and then these:



the only thing I got a picture of during preparations because my camera battery died.
They were from the November issue (I think) of Everyday Food, shown here:



Super easy but they were HUGE when I baked them the next day, I'm not sure that we really liked them that much....they smelled and tasted great but eh. Nothing to write home about. Of course, everything else was to die for, but alas, no pics.

Hope you all had a wonderful Thanksgiving as well and are gearing up for the holiday season now. I'm almost done with my shopping already! Yippee! Now I need to get my list ready for what all needs to be baked and what candies to make. Probably the same stuff as I always do, my peoples would probably kill me if I deviated any from the norm, lol! They wait all year, or at least that's what they say!

Stitching wise, working on a big sampler, will try to post of photo of that soon :)

November 15, 2007

all stashed up

The couch still stinks, as evidenced here:



Actually, I think Astro is pretty oblivious, but thought that face was funny anyway.

The Haverty's people didn't show. All day. Finally, at 4:45pm I got a call from the Service center that they needed to order a solution from the manufacturer to apply to the couch and they will call me when that comes in. Like they didn't know that ONE WEEK AGO when I first called them about the stink. I was not very pleased and told them I'd been waiting there ALL DAY, which got me a big sob story about how they'd tried to call me for FIFTEEN minutes but the line was busy so then they figured out they'd written down the wrong area code so once they figured it out they called me right away. Well just call me tickled pink, that accounted for 15 minutes of ALL DAY, whew! Needless to say, if this cupcake doesn't see some action PDQ, she's opening a can of "frosting" on their butts the likes of which have never been seen before.

So to calm my inner rage at the furniture people, I decided to take pictures of my recent stash. Nothing soothes the soul like S.E.X. And if it's not showing up in your mailbox or you can't drive to get it, just pull out what you have and fondle it. You'll feel better, trust me.

Here's some stuff I brought home from the quilt show:



Shepherd's Bush kit Pumpkin Hill and two punch needle patterns. Actually one is a pattern and one is a kit. I was feeling very "pumpkiny" when buying these.



A pattern for a yo-yo puppy and the Clover Yo-Yo maker in extra large to make him.




A new Mary Engelbreit book by Leisure Arts (and oh boy, I had fun in their booth, they had Debbie Mumm quilt books on sale for $5 each so I bought all four of them that were there, but forgot to get a picture) and a sampler I've been wanting for a while, Kind Fond Love by Brenda Keyes.



Some charm packs (which I'm addicted to) and the new Amy Butler book.



The quilt kit I'd mentioned earlier. They had one of these quilts done up at the Cabbage Rose booth and since I love this line of fabric I just had to get it.



The Wildflower chart I'm stitching for my daughter and the other two I've just wanted for awhile and waited for a month to get them from a certain online place I wont' mention the name of. And only the Dovo scissors in this picture came from the quilt show. DH bought me a new pair because the ones I had just like them he ruined a couple of years ago when he cut some fishing line with them. Oh yes, you read right. Fishing line.

With my DOVOS.

And he never told me he did it, mind you.
I just go to cut my thread one day and they wouldn't cut it.
Would. not. cut. one. thread.
I'm all **WHAT THE HELL HAPPENED TO MY SCISSORS????????????!!!!!!!!!!!**
And he's all *I think I might have used them to cut my fishing line. Was that wrong?*

Can you just imagine the can of "frosting" that was opened on him that day?

It wasn't pretty my friends, wasn't pretty.

November 14, 2007

finally

A finish!



This is Curly Q Ewe by Little House Needleworks and I stitched it over one on 18 ct. Waterlily with Crescent Colors and DMC as listed.

A really fun stitch but it seemed to take me forever, probably due to work getting in the way.

Here it is under the frame that was purchased for it. It's from Crescent Colors as well and made for this design, it's the one pictured on the chart model.



Gosh, I can't believe Thanksgiving is only one week away. Time to get my menu ready and go shopping! Hopefully the weather will cool down some, I really don't like it when it's so hot outside and there's so much baking to be done...I end up hot and sweaty and not even in the mood to eat anything when it's finally all cooked.

Today I am sitting here waiting for the service tech from Haverty's to come over. Our new leather couch stinks! Not sure if it's just "new leather" smell, or if it's some chemical they used to treat it with or what, but I have to cover it with a blanket just to sit on it, otherwise it gives me a raging headache. Just what we had in mind when handing over all that dough, lol!

November 08, 2007

this was fun

On Friday of the quilt show, I met Mark Lipinski. He signed one of his magazines for me.



He uses the term "cupcake" a lot I think, so he really didn't know just how appropriate it was for me, hee!

Anyway, I embarrassed myself by telling him I only recently started reading his magazine and the only reason I picked his out of all of the others was because of the cute Pug on the cover, his Tulip. I am not enough of a seasoned quilter to actually know which quilting magazine is the best, so the Pug was the selling point. How lame is that?

But he was oh so gracious and funny and it was the highlight of my Friday in Houston. My friends started calling him my boyfriend and wouldn't leave the whole "quilt naked" thing alone, but that's ok!

Mark said to be sure and watch for the Jan/Feb issue for a Tulip surprise on the cover! I just went ahead and subscribed right then and there!

houston, we had a problem

Wow. Words really fail me when sitting here trying to think of how to write about my trip. To say it was exhausting is putting it mildly. I am just not cut out for that kind of thing. Luckily for the people who put on the show, there are thousands of ladies who are, I'm just not one of them.

This picture is just one end of one row at the show, there were 30 rows of vendors, not to mention all of the quilt exhibits.



The above picture was taken when sitting down, and I thanked Jesus profusely for the available chair (and thanks again).

We made it through about half of the rows on Friday and I got the chance to pay THREE DOLLARS for a coke and TWO DOLLARS for a bag of potato chips but was so happy to have something cold and also, something that tasted like BBQ, that I didn't complain. Oh heck no. Here's my wallet, just take it.

The hotel transportation (and I use that term very loosely, the actual transporting of their guests was questionable) promised they'd be there to pick us up when it was over the first night, but when we called they told us there was a private party she (the nice lady who drove the shuttle bus) had to take care of. Right in the middle of when their "guests" were needing to get back to the hotel. Bless her heart, on her last trip to the convention center before her private party, she crammed as many of us into the bus as it would hold, legally and otherwise. Have you ever seen grown women arguing about who's been in line the longest, shoving their way into a bus that is meant to hold 12 people MAX?? I stood back and said there's no way I'm going to push my way onto that bus, I just refuse to lower myself to that level.
Well, luckily my right butt cheek ended up getting a spot in the very back of the bus (and I should probably say van, because it wasn't really a bus) on top of a wheel of a dolly or something like that. I think it was a wheel but my butt went to sleep before we could figure it out.

Imagine a "fluffy" cupcake, careening around in the back of a van, in the CARGO area with three other happy quilters, two of which were more crippled that she is and one of which wasn't even on the right shuttle but didn't figure it out until half way there (she just jumped on the first available cargo space and didn't even ask!! That's self preservation at it's finest, I tell ya what!) all around downtown Houston. Oh it was a just dee-lightful!

(Oh and PS, I'll tell you later about the women who rode their brooms into our hotel at the same time as us and who were also on the shuttle the same times as us because that was fun stuff too).

Then, when we crawled out and off of the van, we hobble into the hotel and decide to just eat there because we're too tired to track down anything else (we find out later, there really wasn't much else...that was open anyway). Wait in line 20 minutes but realize we're LUCKY because others have been waiting for 45 minutes, to be seated but there's no menus because they're all at "the big table", meaning, the table of 8 that was seated prior to us. Yes, you guessed it, ALL of the menus were taken. So we wait for a menu and then realize, there is ONE server. At the hotel restaurant! And one bartender. And one "helper" (who did a fine job of setting tables, considering her limp). We found out later that they were OVERSTAFFED. I kid you not. It's a long story, how we found out, but that was straight out of the babe calling himself management. They didn't even KNOW there was the hugest convention of the year going on a few blocks down the road. Yes, overstaffed, so we were so blessed, thank you Jesus for these lukewarm cheese sticks. Yum!

All that was fine, I mean really. Life is good, right? I'm serious. We were so cheerful and happy and no, that is not sarcasm you hear. All of us have faced life or death issues so we knew how to put it all into perspective. We were laughing about it all and can appreciate how very lucky we were to be there experiencing it all. Hoo boy. We made it back to the room and talked about what we'd see and do the following day and then my roomies quickly fell asleep because they were exhausted.

They were really tired (and one a little under the weather) but sleeping well.
And by well, I mean sawing logs that would've made Paul Bunyan proud.

Uh Oh.

I forgot that a certain cupcake is a light sleeper and didn't even think to ask in advance if there would be snoring on this trip.

And yes, there would be, thank you J.. (oh never mind).

Picture me with a panic stricken look on my face and trying not to curse. You know if I was still smoking, picture chain smoking and heavy cursing.

So.....long story short, I call my hubby and say, what oh what shall I do, I got ONE HOUR sleep last night and he says, let's get our own room, I'll drive down! (and he was so lonely without me anyway, seriously...we're joined at the hip, he and I...all these years together).

And so I did. And then he did. And yes, he's good, very good, like that. Coming to my rescue and all.

So he drove down that afternoon, while I slept and we stayed in Saturday night and ate junk food because everything around the hotel was closed and we were both too tired to put forth any effort into finding something decent (and I swear, I've never eaten less on a trip in my life).

Then the next day we made it back to the show and had a grand ol' time for a few hours. Fun was had at the Silver Needle booth. DH found some music he liked and bought 6 cd's. I found this hooked foot stool I'm going to make:





I took several pictures of it because the "kit" was only the hardware for the stool and not any wool strips, so later on I'll get the fun of picking out my own colors and cutting the strips! Oh, I did purchase the canvas too so thankfully there won't be tracing involved.

And I did get a quilt kit too, while there but have been too busy with work and whatever else to get a picture of it, so that'll happen later. (Also have a signed quilting magazine to show you which is too funny but haven't scanned it either).

(What is it about when you take two nights off from work, all hell breaks loose and you end up paying for it for weeks? I'd already said before that every single time I take off, something happens and I end up being punished for it. Well, it happened again, my coworkers wife had a heart attack(!) and subsequent stent placement and she's fine now but I get to work many extra hours to make up for my two measly nights off).

And BONUS! I upset people (without even trying or knowing about it), during and after the trip! I loved that part. Nothing like trying to have fun and yet pissing people off instead, yippee!

But here was the best dang part of the whole trip:




Going home. Home to the Pugs, home to the new very expensive leather couch that stinks.

Heading north on I-45, the Sam Houston monument, which I've always loved, especially at night when it's lighted, (which it wasn't for this photo because we were hightailing it back home during the day).



Good-bye Houston, we hardly knew ya.

November 01, 2007

off to the show...

...the Quilt Show in Houston Texas! I'm headed there bright and early tomorrow (Fri) morning with my BFF and her (our) Mom (she's really not my biological mother but she calls me her "other" daughter, so I call her my "other mother", and we're just tight like that) for three full days of quilt related madness! Maybe (hopefully), some stitching...I'll be taking some WIP's with me.
As you can see, I have a few...

This is my Spooky Spots by Shepherd's Bush, started last year...tried to finish it up this year but it didn't happen. I can't get motivated on this one, which is weird because I like it.



And this one is BOAF's Halloween Fun. Didn't get it finished either because...well, just because...



Like I said, I have been all over the place, stitching wise, because what I'm able to work on is dictated to me by how much my hands hurt that day. I pick up one thing and can tell by a few stitches into it, that it's just not going to happen, so then I pick up something else, or nothing.

So. I also started on Curly Q Ewe, by Little House Needleworks, over one on 18 ct. Waterlily...



and Lo, A Rose, by Bright Needle, over 2 on 32 ct cream Belfast:



I'm sorta not liking the thread that most of the letters are stitched with, it's WDW London Fog. It has parts of it that are pretty dark, which isn't my favorite. But I pulled the DMC equivalency and didn't care for it, or any close to it, so just decided to stick with the London Fog for now.

OK, in gastronomical news, we recently had Salmon Patties!! Woo hoo, how exciting is that?! LOL. It's about as basic as it gets, but we hadn't had any all summer, somehow I forgot about them which is strange since it's like a tradition to have them in the summertime, always with mac & cheese...



and I halved Ree's recipe for cinnamon rolls, and it still made FOUR PANS full.



They were pretty good, although I didn't use enough cinnamon. If you make these, be sure to use a LOT of cinnamon (even more than you think is enough). Also, I used much less butter than she did, in the filling. It worked out fine.



And here are some Deep Fried Oreos, which we had at the fair in October:



I'd heard so many good things about them. But all I can say is "eh"...nothing to write home about...



As we stood there waiting while the lady fried them, it seemed to take forever and all I could think of was how much grease they must be absorbing as they fried.
And y'all know I loves me some fried foods, but geesh....greasy Oreos just ain't my thing.

So now I must pack and get together all of my projects and tech stuff (camera, laptop, cords for everything). Wonder if I can pack the Pug to go with?
Maybe there will be time to post from Houston if there's anything exciting to share :)