Food! Glorious Food!

The opening song from the broadway musical, Oliver!, seems like the perfect title for my post about Christmas and Birthday presents I received................ no farm machinery this year!

Up first........... Birthday gifts.  My birthday was the week before Christmas, so it all kind of blends (good cooking word there) together.

DD (darling daughter) shopped Amazon and found this wonderful recipe box.  (Apparently recipe boxes are very out of style since it is so easy to just google whatever recipe you want.)  I was so in need of a new recipe box.  The old one was crammed so full you couldn't pull the cards out.  This one even has a nice slot on the top to stick the recipe card in to hold it up so you can see it while you are cooking!  (I had to point that out to DD - she didn't even realize how cool it was!).  Then she wondered if the recipe card for banana bread would even fit in the slot since it has so much stuff spilled on it that it has gotten quite thick!  (Obviously I needed this cool slot thing before now.)

The divider tabs in my old box were also worn off, and you couldn't find anything in it.  We had several family discussions about where to place certain recipes...........should Crab Fettuccine go under seafood, entrees, or pasta?  

The Hubs got me a new red kitchen aid hand mixer.  There really wasn't anything wrong with the old GE mixer except that I had worn part of the blades of the beaters off (wonder what food that stuff ended up in?) and it was basically easier/cheaper to get a new mixer than to replace the beaters.  This new one is so quiet that I hardly notice it running!  I am also using some birthday cash to replace the blender (had to hold the lid together to use it.....it had been a wedding gift), so another red kitchen aid appliance is scheduled to arrive on Monday!  And my sis got me some dip mixes from Deal's Orchard in Jefferson.  For Christmas they brought us Deal's cider and popcorn!  Food, Glorious Food!

For Christmas Santa (aka The Hubs) brought me a new red kitchen aid stand mixer!  (Are you seeing the theme has changed from Green farm equipment to Red kitchen equipment?!)  I had wanted one of these for so long............ I spent Christmas Eve in the kitchen and got so frustrated with the old stand mixer (not that old, just never really worked correctly) that I unplugged it and carried it to the garage sale box in the basement.  When The Hubs was helping with the dishes, he commented that there was more goo on the outside of the mixer bowl than the inside...........I told him the bowl could join the mixer and all of its attachments in the basement.  

The best part was hearing the "shopping" story.  DD was shopping with him and she had already told me that he took FOREVER!  She said he was comparing prices in different places and constantly trying to figure out how to get the best deal (I told her he probably wasn't going to get to write this gift off on his taxes like he did the green farm equipment, so he really had to get the best deal!).

Then he had to share about his great deal.  He now knows all about Kohl's Cash!  By purchasing the mixer (and some really nice Cuddle Dud slippers - see it's not all about food) at the right time, he generated enough Kohl's Cash to get the pasta attachments FREE! 

I have to say that it does working amazingly well.  I mixed up 3 kinds of pasta dough in the time it used to take me to do 1.  And the pasta cutter is so fast..........no more turning the crank a million times.  And it takes up less space than my old pasta cutter and attachments..........yes, the garage sale box is overflowing!  We also mixed up pizza dough last night for supper.

I tried tomato basil fettuccine...........

Saffron spaghetti and rosemary herb fettuccine............

I put all the pasta in the freezer as we are still consuming Christmas leftovers.  That was a trick since we brought home half a beef from my parents.  And we had just butchered 2 pigs at Thanksgiving.

I have never seen my freezer so full.

This is the freezer above the frig in the basement that hardly ever gets used.  We also got special Pampered Chef forks for doing pulled pork, a mat for the oven to collect spills, soup mugs with sealing lids, and a starter herb garden (from one sister-in-law) so I can grow my own herbs for cooking and the other sister-in-law gave us a beautiful hand made ceramic planter so I have something to transplant the herbs to.  

I even received a couple of Bath and Body candles (which the hubs says are to light when I burn something in the kitchen and want to cover up the smell).  One is Spiced Apple Toddy and the other is a Caramel blend................see, it's all food related!

And lest my quilty friends be disappointed that there has been no mention of any type of sewing in this post, I can tell you that the new red stand mixer weighs more than even Lizzy the 201, my heaviest sewing machine!  Probably should have left the reindeer extra carrots for that delivery!!

Christi

December is Flying By!

This might be the prettiest pecan pie I have ever made!  The hubs' favorite pie is pecan.  The day before Thanksgiving, I was making this pie for our turkey dinner the next day and when I went to turn the oven on, it said "feature not available".  Excuse me?  You're an oven.  Baking is not a FEATURE, it's pretty much your sole purpose!  I immediately callled the local appliance business (we know them, go to church together, I was Nick's piano teacher, he was in DD's class at school)..........and I remembered that we had lost power for just a couple of minutes the evening before, so I went down to the breaker box and flipped the breaker a couple of times and it finally came on (the clock had always been working, so I hadn't realized there was a problem until I went to start baking a pie).  I hastily called Nick back (he was already out the door, but I caught him!).  

Of course the Hubs showed up even though he was really busy that morning (obviously that pecan pie was important), and we had to flip the breaker a couple of more times to get it to start heating.  Here are my awesome kitchen helpers - making sure it's going to work!  They say a watched pot never boils!  The pie did get baked, the rolls made, the turkey cooked, and it was a wonderful meal.

I made 2 more zipper pouches for the nephews' girlfriends.  Don't you just love the plaid!

DD did all the Christmas decorating while she was home on break.  She even ordered me cork lights for this hand painted bottle I got as a gift last year.

I had the wonderful opportunity to proofread a paper for her.  I've done a couple of more since and still have one to do.

One of my piano students left this note on my computer.  He was hoping that I (meaning DD) had this movie.  She does, so he will probably come watch it with her over Christmas break.  He's 9.  

I went down to Rolla to spend the night with DD and attend Jingle & Mingle at her church.  It was really good and a very fun evening.

Not much sewing has been happening.  I am trying to do the Tiny Tree blocks from Temecula Quilt Company's blog.  The blocks measure 2.75".  Here are the first 4.

I was able to get the next 4 done last night!

We seem to be very busy and not much is getting accomplished.  At least my gifts are purchased and wrapped.  No holiday cooking/baking has been done.  Maybe we will just diet for Christmas this year!

Merry Christmas!

Christi

November Wrap Up!

I know there is still a week of November left, but I thought I should take this chance to do one more November post and catch up on November happenings.

We went to Rolla to see DD and attend her orchestra concert.  She was the principal second violin and had a solo in Legends of the Fall.........a beautiful piece of music even if the movie wasn't that great.  She was blessed to have several people attend the event and then she gave them a tour around the campus.

Grandma and Grandpa Bentley, Elliott and Andrea Bentley, and cousins Pam and Susie Nielson were all there.  It was a beautiful afternoon.

The really big news is that not only will she be graduating in May, but she has a job!  Accenture Technology made her an offer and she accepted.  She will start sometime after graduation and will be located in St. Louis (not too far from home!).  

In the sewing room, I managed to declutter a little and discovered that there were many empty project boxes (don't worry, I'll fix that soon!).  There was also a box of pieces and parts (widows and orphans) or some might say leftovers.  I used the leftovers to make some placemats - yes, each one is different - that can be used to practice quilting on later.  

This one is made from parts from the On Ringo Lake quilt I did a couple of years ago.

These pinwheels were purchased at a quilt guild garage sale and didn't make it into the baby quilt I use the rest of the pinwheel blocks in.

And this pig placemat is made with the pig I colored in the class I took about coloring on your quilts.  It was fun to learn a new technique.  I'm not sure how much I would use this in a quilt, but the instructor had some creative ideas about coloring your labels for the quilt backs.  Since I am really bad about labeling my quilts, I may have to try some colored labels.

And on the sports front, football season for the nephews came to an end on Nov. 8th.  They had a great run, and made it to the final 8 before being defeated.  It was really neat to be able to hook the laptop up to the television and watch it through Youtube on TV!  

Cici really enjoys sports on TV and when it's Carter and Jackson playing, it's even better!

Thanks to the extended season, my Friday Night Lights quilt was totally completed that day...........binding was finished!  

I'm very happy with how this one came out.  Cici feels her purrpose in life is to photo bomb quilt pictures!

Last night I made some zipper bags for the nephews' girlfriends.  These 2 were totally finished, and I would have finished 2 more, but Tucker, my Singer 301 was giving me some trouble.  I finally switched to another machine and call the hubs in to work on Tucker.  

I probably won't post again until December.  We are having Thanksgiving at our house with my parents and neighbors.  Then, we are butchering on Black Friday and Saturday.  There won't be much photo taking going on............my hands will be too messy to touch the phone for pix and really, who wants to see pix of that anyway!  

Happy Thanksgiving!
Christi

From Start to Finish in Just ONE Day!

I was so excited to make this Christmas throw in just ONE day this past Saturday!  

How could this possibly have happened?  Did I eat Wheaties for breakfast?  Actually, I went to a "Hunter's Breakfast" (it was the first day of hunting season) at a little K-8 school that was sort of on the way to our regular monthly Saturday sewing day at Smith Chapel.  They had biscuits and gravy, cinnamon rolls, sausage, and bacon.  I think it was all the extra bacon that did it.  

It started with a pre-printed panel that I purchased at the Kansas City quilt show in June.  My neighbor Karen was trying to help me remember when I bought it and she said, "You remember, it was an impulse buy because we were really tired and we liked standing in that booth because they had squishy mats on the floor and our feet hurt, and we stood there long enough that you purchased it."  Oh yeah, that was it.  Now why didn't I just buy the pattern there too???  Did they not have it?  Or was I just too tired to notice there was a cute Pattern?  That was probably it.  I found the pattern later in the summer at Cuts and Bolts in Chillicothe.  So why did it take so long to start it?  Probably because the panel got stuffed in the closet and the pattern in a drawer and I had to do some major cleaning out and straightening to find them.............the panel was discovered buried under a mound of batting scraps that were recently sewn together to make a "Frankenbatt" and then a search for the pattern ensued which lead to some organizing of patterns into binders etc., so this really was a WIN!  

The panel was purrsonally inspected by the chief inspector and deemed a good project to work on. 

 The fabric inventory was purrused by the chief inspector and her trusty assistant for just the right fabrics (yes, it's all from the stash), and then the cutting began.  Most of the pieces were cut prior to Saturday's sewing day (allowing for some mistakes in both the pattern and by the person cutting which had to be recut on Saturday) and the tree and house blocks were all pieced at the sewing day.

Normally when I get home from a sewing day, all of my stuff sits on the steps waiting to be carried up and put away another day.  Somehow, (probably due to the bacon for breakfast), everything was carried up to the sewing room, put away, and I just kept on sewing.  Before supper, the top was complete except for the last border.  After watching a movie with the hubs (we watched Yesterday, good movie!) and working on a binding for one of the pastor's t-shirt quilts, I went back up to the sewing room finished the last border, and pieced a backing, made the binding, and even got out that previously created Frankenbatt and trimmed it for the batting.  

It was getting late, so it was good that I had some supurrvision for trimming the batting.  Now, it just needs to be quilted.  That may be awhile, so it's all hanging together nice and neat in the closet.  

It was a good weekend because on Sunday, I finally got around to cleaning the bathroom (which hadn't been done in over 2 weeks!  Yuck!).  That's probably why bathroom cleaner has been added to the shopping list.

Christi

Quilt Show Catch Up

So this is a long post.  I wanted to get my pictures from the quilt show posted, but haven't gotten around to it until now.  At least it's still in the same month (barely) that the quilt show happened.  Here are a couple of my favorites............

Becky's Pumpkin Patrol

Mary's Owl Always Love You

And  couple of mine...........

The Stars and Stripes Sampler that will be donated to the Tiny Houses for Veterans project in January and

my bunny quilt was finished just in the nick of time...........I named it Thumper's Flowers as there are flowers quilted all over it.  Sorry the lighting is bad.........it was hanging by a window.

And the Viewer's Choice Winners.......

2nd place large was Gina's Homespun Rail Fence.  It was huge and made from 1.5" strips!

1st place large was Carrie's Shades of Sherbert.

First place medium was Bobby Jo's Route 66 quilt called Bear's Dream...........all that hand work!

Second place medium was Carrie's Farm Fresh Quilt.

First place small was my Stack of Jacks........those crazy eyes and goofy grins, except for the one on top............I think he's worried about falling off the stack.

And second place small was my Soft Kitty challenge piece.  I was really happy this one got so many votes.  It was definitely a challenge for me.

And catching up on some other sewing.............

All 3 of Pastor Sandy's t-shirt quilts are off to be quilted.............I had lots of help getting them ready.........

I think she was trying to fold here.

And smooth here.

 And just hold things in place here.........

And my Bjorn Bear blocks got sewn together.

I worked on some placemats with some more help from Cici.

I purchased some special fabric to make her a bed.

I think the fabric meets with her approval.  I need to get the bed made before she wears out the fabric!

And that about catches everything up from the sewing room!
Christi