Thursday, July 31, 2008

Zucchini Bread Recipe


Okay, I have a winner! I love this recipe--Zucchini Bread VI. I made some adjustments--left out the cinnamon (I simply forgot it!)LOL I think I like it better. I used 1/2 cup vegetable oil and filled the remaining amount called for in the recipe with bottled lemon juice and checked it at 50 minutes and it was done. 'Cause I know my oven ; ) . Oh, and I put a glaze on made with powdered sugar and bottled lemon juice. Yum! My picture doesn't look like the one on All Recipes--they must chop their pecans very fine.
Blessings,

Tuesday, July 29, 2008

BOM

I really would like to join Judy L with her BOM but I can't justify starting another project now until I finish what I have started. Sorry, Judy. It is lovely and I really would like to learn how to set on point and do a ribbon border. I will follow along and watch all the gals as they are sewing.


Oldest DS came this weekend and saw the Time Travel flimsy and likes it but wants it big enough to fit his bed. His bed is queen size. If that's the case, it's not finished like I hoped it was. And I will need to figure out how to make it bigger. : ( Sigh! It is 69" X 92". He has a deeeep pillow top mattress. Can I talk him out of it? I may try. I can always promise to make him another quilt. After I finish the Dresden Plate for his sister and his little brother asked me this weekend if I had made them a wedding quilt. I'm behind before I get started. : ( And DD has asked me to make a baby quilt for her pastor and wife who are expecting in August. Sigh! Patsy, the Turning Twenty quilts are looking better and better. I think my kids don't realize how much time and work goes into these quilts. Oh, well. It does give me an excuse for shopping for fabric! LOL Oh, my gosh! There's also the Mystery Quilt the guild is doing! I gotta go sew!

Blessings,

Monday, July 28, 2008

Another "Mason" weekend



Yes, it was another "Mason" weekend. We enjoyed him so much. I keep saying that he is a sweet baby--but he really is--and I have babysat lots of babies over the years. I got to rock him to sleep! He is crawling very fast these days. He was much better about the cabinets. He knows what the word "No" means. And you know what I am tired!

But he wasn't the only reason I'm tired. Thursday I pulled grass from the rocks in our rock patio. I refuse to use weed killers. We lost a darling Brittany Spaniel years ago to cancer and I read that weed killers are believed to contribute to cancer in animals. I could sure tell the next day that my muscles in my "rear end" had been used to squat and bend. I couldn't stand for our boys to see our patio all "grown up" since they always did such a good job keeping the yard when they lived at home with us.

This weekend we celebrated my youngest son's 25th birthday. I am amazed at him. He is so mature. He was recently promoted to assistant project manager at his engineering firm and he told his dad that he may be made project manager soon. So for his birthday celebration DH grilled steaks; I made a jello salad, homemade rolls, fried squash and a red velvet birthday cake from scratch. "Patting myself on the back". This is the second time this season that I have fried squash. We usually eat them steamed.

Friday, I went to Wal-Mart early. I needed print cartridges for the printer and of course lots of other "stuff". I found this neat stripe fabric to back one of the 4PSP baby quilts I made. I just love the way it turned out.



This quilt or the other one I made will go to Houston to a brand new little girl named Brooklyn.
DIL thinks the mommy might like the one with the polka dots better. This one is my favorite. But it's because I LOVE the shade of pink in the sashing. Click on the photo and look at the itty bitty 4 patches that make the corner stones. Aren't they so fun?
I wanted to post some more pics from the quilt retreat at The Quilt House. Patsy, I learned how to do the linky thing from Split Decisionz. Yippee! The bed to the right is where I slept.

Dixie is cooking lunch for us. Her Mexican dish was wonderful! I gotta get her recipe. Jan is cutting at the cutting table.
Kathleen posing with her Boondoggle quilt she completely sewed at the retreat. Great job! Jan's 4PSP she cut and sewed a big part of it at retreat. Another great job. Click on the photo to see the beautiful fabric. Dixie's quilt (sorry, I forgot the name of the pattern) on the design wall. Before we left she had put all the blocks together and some of the borders. This last Wednesday Jan and Dixie brought their completed quilt tops. I will have photos next post. We had a very productive retreat.
Blessings,

Thursday, July 17, 2008

Hello World!

Last week and the three days of retreat went by like a blur! What fun I have had! God is so good! My DH is so good to me.

First off -- I didn't get a lot of pictures of Aimee. We were too busy having fun! Here she is doing a craft for NaNaw.

She made me a 3D paper sculpture of my Max. He is sitting down and do you see his tail in the second picture. She is going to be six next month. I am amazed at her imagination.

And she helped me sort my scraps. She is also very good at sorting.
Her mommy is a dream at organizing. I believe she inherited those traits.


My DH brought these stacked plastic bins from work. He found them in a storage area and they were going to throw them away. And now any thing smaller than a fat quarter lives here except for squares that are already cut down and the strings already sorted for projects. I even got all my bigger pieces folded and stacked. Yippeee!


I also made her a purse from this pattern while she sewed yo-yo's using the Clover yo-yo maker. And you DGMs out there know--it's "NaNaw, my thread is tangled!" or "Nanaw, I don't know what I did, but can you help me?" So the purse took much longer than I wanted it to. But it turned out cute. Sorry, I forgot to take a picture. Bad blogger, I know. I got caught up in the moment. Did I say moment? It was hours. It really is a simple pattern but the whole fitting the side/bottom piece to the front and back thingy took ME a while. And I do plan on making her an outfit to go along with the purse. I got her measurements.

We went swimming at the public pool. There were NO pictures. I (ahem) have gained weight since the last time I wore my swimsuit. So I wore shorts so folks couldn't see where I oosed out of my suit. We had a lot of fun.

Okay, now for the retreat! Oh, my gosh, we had so much fun! We can't wait to do it again. We stayed at The Quilt House in Azle, Texas. It was just what our small group of four needed. She can handle eight but it gave us good room and honestly eight would be a little crowded. It is very affordable! We would like to go back someday soon. But we also want to try out some others. She didn't have an area with a sofa and that would have been nice to relax. But we were very busy sewing, talking, and of course, EATING. Oh, my gosh, I am still so full.
The first picture is myself on the left and my fellow quilter, Jan, enjoying the swing. I finished the Time Travel quilt. Woohoo! And the purple 4 Patch Stacked Posies is on the design wall. I had never used a design wall. Oh, my gosh! Wonderful! There were three design walls. I got all the blocks sewn together for the purple 4PSP and then barely got started with the sashing before it was time to go. On Tuesday we shopped at a local quilt shop. AND Nancy, the owner of The Quilt House, runs an online quilt store from the converted garage in The Quilt House and she is a vendor (Quiltin' Gals) at a lot of the big quilt shows SO we got to shop her store anytime day or night we wanted. She specializes in 30's reproduction prints. She has more fabric than a lot of quilt shops, folks. There is very little walking room in her store.

This is a very long post and I will post some more pictures in another post. Bye for now.
Blessings,

Sunday, July 13, 2008

Retreat!

I'm going on my first quilt retreat! I leave in the morning and return Wednesday. I will post with pictures when I return.

Blessings,

Tuesday, July 08, 2008

It's an "Aimee" week

Yes, we have been invaded by our DGD Aimee. She arrived Saturday and I will take her home on Friday. So far we have made crafts (her favorite), shopped, made a trip to the library for books and videos, pulled more grass out of the garden and she fed it to the pigs, and today we are baking and hopefully we can get some sewing done and go swimming at the pool and I need to clean house?! Wheww! And before we know it the week will be over. She helps her PaPaw feed the animals every evening and she really enjoys that. We have a new litter of baby pigs born July 3. Then it's get ready for bed and read a story and off to dreamland. And then we do it all over again. The dishwasher is running; soon the washing machine will be humming and Aimee is still sleeping. She didn't get to bed until nearly ten. We are hostesses tomorrow for quilting so we are going to bake sugar cookies to go along with the fruit salad we are making and pimento cheese sandwiches. I like to bake my own bread, too. Want to join us?

And I have an abundance of zucchini! So I found some yummy chocolate zucchini bread recipes online to try and I am going to make zucchini jam today. Last year I made it and it was wonderful. It will be good to teach her about making different things. AND we just gotta find time to SEW! Okay, in reality--we're not going to get all that done today. But we are going to have fun doing what we can get done!

Sorry, no pictures today but I will take some and post next time of our adventures.

Blessings,