Can you believe that we're standing here at January 18th, half way through the first month of 2019? That first month always seems to zip right by, doesn't it? Or is that just me? Have you set any resolutions or goals for the new year? If so, how are they doing?
Mine seem to be on the back burner at the moment, but I'd like to change that, and I guess that's the reason why I'm writing today.
A new year is such a cool idea, isn't it? Technically, there's not much difference between December 31st and January 1st. The weather is probably the same, your house is the same, you probably are going to have pretty similar routines. But mentally, it's a fresh start, a chance to put a book end on one part of your life and start a brand new part.
When I look back to the year that's behind us, I see all the missed opportunities to do more in my life. I wonder, am I working hard enough? I probably could be taking my business to another level if I tried harder, worked longer, stopped being so lazy. So I set a bunch of goals at the beginning of this month with that in mind, goals to design more, blog more, and to become over all more successful.
And that's about the time when I started having anxiety attacks. Early in the morning, my heart would start racing and my stomach would churn, thinking about all of the goals I had laid out for myself and my ever expanding to-do list. I'm grateful that I'm a homemaker and stay home anyway, because it was debilitating. I spent three or four days sitting on the floor of my living room, trying to chill out, doing nothing on my to-do lists whatsoever.
Then of course I got sick, and I spent several days huddled on the couch and in bed. My body is much wiser than I am. It knows when I need a real rest, and makes me take it whether I want to or not.
I'm feeling better now thank goodness, and with my better health comes all this ambition to jump back onto the wagon and start working on all of those goals and long to-do lists again. Except, I can feel it. In the pit of my stomach, I can feel the inner resistance. I know that if I jump back in like I did before and try to give myself a nonstop 16 hour work day, I'm going to end up with anxiety attacks again and become completely useless. Is it worth it?
I have so many aspects of my life pulling me in all different directions, and being a perfectionist at heart, I want to put all of myself into each thing. I want to be a full time designer, I want to be the best homemaker, I want to have a big veggie garden, I want to take care of my mom full time, I want to be the best wife, I want to have a real social life and good friends, I want to be there for my niece and nephews, I want to be ultra frugal and DIY everything to save money, I want to have a sparklingly clean home. I want to sew, I want to travel, I want to buy a home in the country and have chickens, I want to volunteer, I want to exercise more, I want to read more.
But I'm just one person, and not even a very efficient or energetic one. I can never do all of the things I want to do as perfectly as I'd like to do them. Some things I'll never get to do. I have to admit these things to myself because holding onto the false notion that I can do everything if I just try harder is clearly hurting me.
So how do you find balance in this world? I guess it's a matter of setting priorities, but I think it's more complicated than that. If I only do what seems like is most important, I end up feeling hollow inside because I almost always leave out the activities that make me full of joy. I could spend my day homemaking and caring for my mom and my garden and my husband, but at the end of the day I feel like I've lost myself. I need to include those things that make me happy, like sewing or designing.
On the other hand, as much as I'd like to spend all day sewing or designing, if I don't include my daily routines of cleaning and cooking and taking care of my loved ones, I end up feeling disconnected from my life. Balance is so important. I just wish I knew how to reach it.
Now you all know where I am mentally and why I haven't been posting much on this blog lately. The truth is, I don't know what to do with myself now. I guess I'll keep muddling through life the best I can. One thing I read a while back does give me hope and makes me feel better; goals don't matter nearly as much as making progress every single day. So I guess that's my motto for 2019.
What does that mean for this blog? I don't know, honestly. I like blogging, and I enjoy designing small free patterns for the world. I just need some time to figure out my life and hopefully I'll get back into it soon. Thanks for sticking around while I work my way through!
Showing posts with label What's Up Wednesday. Show all posts
Showing posts with label What's Up Wednesday. Show all posts
Friday, January 18, 2019
Wednesday, January 2, 2019
What's Up Wednesday
Happy New Year! Happy very first Wednesday of 2019! Oh, a brand new year, what a precious gift that is. A new beginning, a whole year of possibilities. It's like Monday morning, only a whole lot better!
I hope you all had a wonderful Christmas and New Year's Eve celebrations. If you're anything like me, though, I bet you're really glad that it's all behind us and we can get back to our normal lives. Or is that just me? I love the celebrations and getting together with family and such, but it's so exhausting. After six family get together, stuffing myself silly more times than I can count, and eleven days of my husband being off from work (he took a few vacation days), I'm ready for a rest! I almost didn't write this blog post because all I really want to do now is sew!
But here I am! Since I have holiday hangover, how about I just show pictures this week? I promise to be more alive next Wednesday :)
Decorating all the cookies we made this year (I made a few Dala horse sugar cookies for my Swedish MIL).
Sunshine is helping me wrap presents.
My nephew Gabe giving his best Christmas face.
My fur-brother Gary (my mom's cat).
My adorable hubby with my equally adorable nephew Maliki.
My mom's Christmas tree.
My nephew Benji, actively throwing toys out of the playpen.
My nephew Joey and his mom (plus Benji in the back).
Maliki and his grandpa.
Maliki playing with the present we gave him.
Hubby and my FIL chilling on the couch on Christmas day.
The lovely jello mold I made for Christmas dinner.
My MIL's Christmas tree.
The most amazing new (to me) retro cook book.
Our traditional New Year's Eve nachos and a movie!
My fancy New Year's jello mold! Yes, yes, I do love a good jello mold.
And Sunshine chilling in bed with me.
Happy 2019 everyone! I hope this year brings you blessings overflowing!
I hope you all had a wonderful Christmas and New Year's Eve celebrations. If you're anything like me, though, I bet you're really glad that it's all behind us and we can get back to our normal lives. Or is that just me? I love the celebrations and getting together with family and such, but it's so exhausting. After six family get together, stuffing myself silly more times than I can count, and eleven days of my husband being off from work (he took a few vacation days), I'm ready for a rest! I almost didn't write this blog post because all I really want to do now is sew!
But here I am! Since I have holiday hangover, how about I just show pictures this week? I promise to be more alive next Wednesday :)
Decorating all the cookies we made this year (I made a few Dala horse sugar cookies for my Swedish MIL).
Sunshine is helping me wrap presents.
My nephew Gabe giving his best Christmas face.
My fur-brother Gary (my mom's cat).
My adorable hubby with my equally adorable nephew Maliki.
My mom's Christmas tree.
My nephew Benji, actively throwing toys out of the playpen.
My nephew Joey and his mom (plus Benji in the back).
Maliki and his grandpa.
Maliki playing with the present we gave him.
Hubby and my FIL chilling on the couch on Christmas day.
The lovely jello mold I made for Christmas dinner.
My MIL's Christmas tree.
The most amazing new (to me) retro cook book.
Our traditional New Year's Eve nachos and a movie!
My fancy New Year's jello mold! Yes, yes, I do love a good jello mold.
Happy 2019 everyone! I hope this year brings you blessings overflowing!
Wednesday, December 19, 2018
What's Up Wednesday
Happy Wednesday, everyone! I know I said I wouldn't be blogging for a while, but I had a cup of tea that made me feel kind of peppy, and I'm between loads of laundry, so here I am! Sometimes I just need a creative outlet.
It's the 19th of December which means we have just 6 days left before Christmas. Are you excited? Are you ready? Are you pulling out your hair yet? Over the years, I've crafted a plan of slowly building up to Christmas by making gifts and writing lists and generally planning far in advance, so that by the time mid-December gets here, I'm all set for the big day. I highly recommend this path for everyone who finds themselves frantic this time of year. It's much less stressful, but requires more planning of course. Which I understand for some people is half the effort!
Chad and I started baking around Thanksgiving, one or two recipes a weekend. We managed to get four kinds of quick bread made to give away as presents (gingerbread, orange nut bread, chocolate tea bread, and banana bread), plus three kinds of cookies so far (pepparkakor, spritz, and cinnamon bun cookies). We have one more baking weekend to go! We're doing my grandma's sugar cookies, and we're making a pumpkin roll too. Have you ever had pumpkin roll? It's a bit of work, but oh goodness, so good! For me, it's very nostalgic. The older ladies in my family would make up several pumpkin rolls and give them away for Christmas. They're a spicy pumpkin sponge cake smeared with what is essentially cream cheese frosting, and then rolled up into log form and chilled until firm. Then you slice it and eat a small piece of heaven.
We decided to cut back on Christmas gifts this year for several reasons. I'm not really sure which of these reasons are first or most important, honestly. One reason is because this year we started seriously saving money, for our future country home. We set aside $600 for Christmas every year, which is actually less than the American average (which is $800), but I felt like we could spend less than that. Which brings us to our second reason, which is that spending so much money on Christmas gifts ends up feeling hollow to me. I don't want Christmas to be about commercialism and consumerism. I don't want to try to prove my love of someone by buying them stuff. I want Christmas to be about family, tradition, and spiritual celebrations. We're trying to cut down on our daily consumption of commercial goods, so it only makes sense to do that at Christmas.
By talking to my family about my ideas and by carefully planning homemade gifts, we were able to cut our Christmas spending down to around $250 for 13 people. STILL.... even though we spent very little and got very few gifts this year, THIS is what our Christmas tree looks like:
(I realize that was a long story for one picture, but I didn't want you to think that we spent a ton of money when we didn't!)
The bulk of the presents under the tree are canned goods; I made tons of jelly and pickles to gift this year, plus I canned a half a bushel of apples in the form of apple sauce for my dad. Yay canning!
For comparison, here's what the tree looked like last year. Yes, I do take this picture every year.
The blue packages are homemade bread, which hasn't showed up under the tree yet this year, but it will be there!
So I have some other things going on other than Christmas this week. Between loads of laundry, I'm working on my hexie quilt. This is taking so long to complete! But it's getting there, slowly but surely.
I'm working on it in sections so that it feels like less work. Eventially, it's going to be this size:
That's the backing for it behind it. I'm going to turn it into a cover for one of my sewing machines. Next time I make a hexie quilt, I'm going to do half hexies and sew them on the machine :P This is tedious work!
I'm starting to get that itch that I get this time of year... no, not eczema (which actually I do have right now, but never mind that). I mean I'm starting to get the desire to start organizing! That lovely urge to sort my life into neat little boxes. I'm probably feeling that way because my crafting spaces look like this at the moment.
Yikes. My studio (the top picture) is especially bad right now. I've probably done 10 projects without fully putting all of the supplies away! Once Christmas is over, I'm going to dive into that mess.
Chad and I went to a cool indoor flea market last weekend, on a futile search for a cassette player. Do you know how hard those are to come by these days? I thought flea markets and thrift shops would be overflowing with them, but nope, not a one. Well, there was one massive one from the 80s, but I want something a tad smaller than an economy car.
I may not have found what I was looking for, but that doesn't mean I didn't find something worth getting. I love looking at cool junk from yesteryear, and that place has so much of it. I usually start feeling cross eyed before I get through the whole store. My favorite things to hunt down are copper jello molds (I have quite the collection), and mid-century recipe books. I only found one ugly looking rooster copper mold, which I left behind, but I came out with these:
So charmingly cheesy! Especially the milk book.
I think my favorite is the Spry book, though. Mmmm-mmm, partially hydrogenated cotton seed oil...
I don't use vegetable shortening at all, but I love how quirky this book is anyway. I also got four new additions to my collection of Pillsbury bake-off books. It's an odd collection, and I already have probably hundreds of books, but at least it's a small and easy to store collection! (And unlike my sewing machine collection, I don't get any worried looks from Chad when I pick up a new cook book.)
On the request of a fan, I have been working on an addition to my seasonal jar patterns. She asked if I would make any more seasons like my Fall Jar pattern:
It's a very popular pattern in my shop, so I decided that yes, I would continue making the rest of the seasons. I have the winter jars all stitched, and now I'm just working on the pattern. Here's a sneak peak!
She also asked if I would make the alphabet available, which I probably will do as well. Keep your eyes peeled for these patterns to show up in the future!
And on closing, I want to wish you all a Merry Christmas and Happy New Year. And so does my mom's cat, Maui.
It's the 19th of December which means we have just 6 days left before Christmas. Are you excited? Are you ready? Are you pulling out your hair yet? Over the years, I've crafted a plan of slowly building up to Christmas by making gifts and writing lists and generally planning far in advance, so that by the time mid-December gets here, I'm all set for the big day. I highly recommend this path for everyone who finds themselves frantic this time of year. It's much less stressful, but requires more planning of course. Which I understand for some people is half the effort!
Chad and I started baking around Thanksgiving, one or two recipes a weekend. We managed to get four kinds of quick bread made to give away as presents (gingerbread, orange nut bread, chocolate tea bread, and banana bread), plus three kinds of cookies so far (pepparkakor, spritz, and cinnamon bun cookies). We have one more baking weekend to go! We're doing my grandma's sugar cookies, and we're making a pumpkin roll too. Have you ever had pumpkin roll? It's a bit of work, but oh goodness, so good! For me, it's very nostalgic. The older ladies in my family would make up several pumpkin rolls and give them away for Christmas. They're a spicy pumpkin sponge cake smeared with what is essentially cream cheese frosting, and then rolled up into log form and chilled until firm. Then you slice it and eat a small piece of heaven.
We decided to cut back on Christmas gifts this year for several reasons. I'm not really sure which of these reasons are first or most important, honestly. One reason is because this year we started seriously saving money, for our future country home. We set aside $600 for Christmas every year, which is actually less than the American average (which is $800), but I felt like we could spend less than that. Which brings us to our second reason, which is that spending so much money on Christmas gifts ends up feeling hollow to me. I don't want Christmas to be about commercialism and consumerism. I don't want to try to prove my love of someone by buying them stuff. I want Christmas to be about family, tradition, and spiritual celebrations. We're trying to cut down on our daily consumption of commercial goods, so it only makes sense to do that at Christmas.
By talking to my family about my ideas and by carefully planning homemade gifts, we were able to cut our Christmas spending down to around $250 for 13 people. STILL.... even though we spent very little and got very few gifts this year, THIS is what our Christmas tree looks like:
(I realize that was a long story for one picture, but I didn't want you to think that we spent a ton of money when we didn't!)
The bulk of the presents under the tree are canned goods; I made tons of jelly and pickles to gift this year, plus I canned a half a bushel of apples in the form of apple sauce for my dad. Yay canning!
For comparison, here's what the tree looked like last year. Yes, I do take this picture every year.
The blue packages are homemade bread, which hasn't showed up under the tree yet this year, but it will be there!
So I have some other things going on other than Christmas this week. Between loads of laundry, I'm working on my hexie quilt. This is taking so long to complete! But it's getting there, slowly but surely.
I'm working on it in sections so that it feels like less work. Eventially, it's going to be this size:
That's the backing for it behind it. I'm going to turn it into a cover for one of my sewing machines. Next time I make a hexie quilt, I'm going to do half hexies and sew them on the machine :P This is tedious work!
I'm starting to get that itch that I get this time of year... no, not eczema (which actually I do have right now, but never mind that). I mean I'm starting to get the desire to start organizing! That lovely urge to sort my life into neat little boxes. I'm probably feeling that way because my crafting spaces look like this at the moment.
Yikes. My studio (the top picture) is especially bad right now. I've probably done 10 projects without fully putting all of the supplies away! Once Christmas is over, I'm going to dive into that mess.
Chad and I went to a cool indoor flea market last weekend, on a futile search for a cassette player. Do you know how hard those are to come by these days? I thought flea markets and thrift shops would be overflowing with them, but nope, not a one. Well, there was one massive one from the 80s, but I want something a tad smaller than an economy car.
I may not have found what I was looking for, but that doesn't mean I didn't find something worth getting. I love looking at cool junk from yesteryear, and that place has so much of it. I usually start feeling cross eyed before I get through the whole store. My favorite things to hunt down are copper jello molds (I have quite the collection), and mid-century recipe books. I only found one ugly looking rooster copper mold, which I left behind, but I came out with these:
So charmingly cheesy! Especially the milk book.
I think my favorite is the Spry book, though. Mmmm-mmm, partially hydrogenated cotton seed oil...
I don't use vegetable shortening at all, but I love how quirky this book is anyway. I also got four new additions to my collection of Pillsbury bake-off books. It's an odd collection, and I already have probably hundreds of books, but at least it's a small and easy to store collection! (And unlike my sewing machine collection, I don't get any worried looks from Chad when I pick up a new cook book.)
On the request of a fan, I have been working on an addition to my seasonal jar patterns. She asked if I would make any more seasons like my Fall Jar pattern:
She also asked if I would make the alphabet available, which I probably will do as well. Keep your eyes peeled for these patterns to show up in the future!
And on closing, I want to wish you all a Merry Christmas and Happy New Year. And so does my mom's cat, Maui.
Wednesday, November 28, 2018
What's Up Wednesday
Happy Wednesday, everyone! We're officially into Christmas territory now that Thanksgiving is happily behind us. How exciting! So how did all of you Americans enjoy your Thanksgiving? Mine was really nice for a change. My hubby and I decided to try to make the very best of our holiday despite my crazy family, and we had a wonderful time. On Friday, we went over to his mom and dad's house for our not-Thanksgiving dinner, which is basically just a frozen lasagna and some leftover rolls. It was also nice!
So what have I been up to this past week? Well, mostly getting ready for and recovering from Thanksgiving. I don't host any get-togethers at my house anymore. I used to and I kind of wish I could again, but my dad is in a wheelchair and he wouldn't be able to make it up my stairs into the house and certainly couldn't get up the stairs to the bathroom. Instead, my family has dinner at my mom's house on Thursday, and we have dinner with Chad's family on Friday.
That said, I do some cooking for Thanksgiving dinner. This year, I made the rolls, the Turkey, and the gravy. The bird came out really nice this year!
I wet brined it and it was amazingly moist and flavorful. We're still enjoying the leftovers! I also learned how to properly truss a turkey this year, too, yay!
I have a couple of crafty projects in the works at the moment, too, though I haven't been able to work on them as much as I'd like to. I have a PC project in the works that I forgot to take a picture of, and I also have a cute Christmas table runner being put together.
We also got our Christmas tree up this weekend! We don't like to decorate it right away though. We want to kind of draw out the joy of Christmas, so we do a little bit of decorating and celebrating at a time.
The theme for the runner is perfect for the mood of the day. When I woke up, I saw this out the window:
It's a little hard to see in the picture, but what that is, is about a foot of snow on the roof outside my window. When I saw that I knew I had to get up because we'd have to shovel the snow. This is what the front looked like (after shoveling the porch):
We've being hammered with snow today. It was literally up to my knees at my mom's house and it's still coming down. Thankfully Chad can work from home (he's a programmer). That's really handy on days like today because we shovel not one, not two, but three houses (ours, our elderly neighbors', and my mom's), and it takes us 1-2 hours to get it all done. Phew! I'm grateful I have him to help me. I'm also grateful that we bought a couple of snowblowers a couple years back. It used to be a lot harder and take a lot longer when we did it all by hand.
Anyway, we're snuggled up inside today. We'll probably have to go shovel again after lunch because the snow is coming down heavily. I'm going to continue working on my PC project, work on the laundry, and do some baking. What else can I do on day like this, right?
Remember to check back on Friday when I'll be posting the third installment of the Snowman stitch-along! Stay warm!
So what have I been up to this past week? Well, mostly getting ready for and recovering from Thanksgiving. I don't host any get-togethers at my house anymore. I used to and I kind of wish I could again, but my dad is in a wheelchair and he wouldn't be able to make it up my stairs into the house and certainly couldn't get up the stairs to the bathroom. Instead, my family has dinner at my mom's house on Thursday, and we have dinner with Chad's family on Friday.
That said, I do some cooking for Thanksgiving dinner. This year, I made the rolls, the Turkey, and the gravy. The bird came out really nice this year!
I wet brined it and it was amazingly moist and flavorful. We're still enjoying the leftovers! I also learned how to properly truss a turkey this year, too, yay!
I have a couple of crafty projects in the works at the moment, too, though I haven't been able to work on them as much as I'd like to. I have a PC project in the works that I forgot to take a picture of, and I also have a cute Christmas table runner being put together.
We also got our Christmas tree up this weekend! We don't like to decorate it right away though. We want to kind of draw out the joy of Christmas, so we do a little bit of decorating and celebrating at a time.
The theme for the runner is perfect for the mood of the day. When I woke up, I saw this out the window:
It's a little hard to see in the picture, but what that is, is about a foot of snow on the roof outside my window. When I saw that I knew I had to get up because we'd have to shovel the snow. This is what the front looked like (after shoveling the porch):
We've being hammered with snow today. It was literally up to my knees at my mom's house and it's still coming down. Thankfully Chad can work from home (he's a programmer). That's really handy on days like today because we shovel not one, not two, but three houses (ours, our elderly neighbors', and my mom's), and it takes us 1-2 hours to get it all done. Phew! I'm grateful I have him to help me. I'm also grateful that we bought a couple of snowblowers a couple years back. It used to be a lot harder and take a lot longer when we did it all by hand.
Had to get the drying rack up because shoveling creates a bunch of wet clothing!
Remember to check back on Friday when I'll be posting the third installment of the Snowman stitch-along! Stay warm!
Wednesday, November 14, 2018
What's Up Wednesday
Happy Wednesday, everyone! Are you all having a good week? Wednesdays are always a little irritating for me because it's my laundry day. I just don't like doing laundry! I know intellectually that I should be grateful that I a) have nice clothes that need washed and that b) I have a nice washing machine and dryer to make doing laundry easier, but I still get grumpy about the interruption to my day. Oh well, I guess I have to make the best of it!
So I may as well take this time between loads to tell you about my week and what I've been up to. I feel like I haven't been doing that much, but I'm sure there's more doing on than I remember! The little details of life tend to fall through the cracks in my brain. Better check the pictures on my phone.
Oh yeah! My hubby and I decided to do a COOKIE BAKE OFF this past weekend. He said he wanted to add gingersnaps to our list of Christmas cookies, and I told him that we already had a recipe for old fashioned pepparkakors in the rotation. So we decided to get a recipe for American gingersnaps and compare it to (what I found out that weekend is actually) Swedish gingersnaps. My hubby is 1/4 Swedish, his grandpa came off the boat as a young man and spoke Swedish, so I'm more emotionally partial to the pepparkakors, but we had to know for sure which tasted better.
As it turns out, the pepparkakors were so much better! I'm sorry I don't have a better picture of them (they're on the left in the photo above). I usually pipe some white frosting on top to highlight the cookie design. They're very spicy and just the right amount of sweet. The American gingersnaps ended up being far too sweet. When I get around to icing them, I'll take a better picture and post the recipe!
We also bottled our strawberry wine this weekend. It's hard to capture the lovely pink color in a picture. Oh My Goodness. Have you ever had strawberry wine? Because it's the most heavenly liquid on this earth. We left it dry because it's just so heady with fruity goodness, adding sugar seemed like a crime. It needs to mellow another month or so, but it's so amazing. Wine making is a long term hobby, but it's worth it! (Plus it's super frugal. A bottle of wine costs us less than $1 to make.)
I've been very slowly working on a hexie quilt, too. It will eventually be a sewing machine cover for one of my millions of sewing machines (actually, I sold one so now I'm down to six! Hubby is happy about that). It's slow going, though. This is my first time doing English paper piecing, and although I like it a lot, goodness it takes a lot of time! I'm so tempted to rev up one of my zigzag machines and just zigzag them together. But, I'll be patient. I have just 8 more flowers to go, then I need to put them together with white pieces. Ugh. How on earth do people do entire bed sized quilts? I clearly need more time and/or patience.
I have once again been digging into my Taste of Home magazines. There's something about cooler weather that makes the cook in me squeal with joy. I actually got so excited this year that I went onto Ebay and bought a few lots of magazines so that I could fill out my collection. Yep. Now I have every since issue published between 1993 and 2000. I have about half of them from 2001-2006, and maybe someday I'll fill that in too. That's all I want though. In 2007, they sold their souls to an evil corporation that took all the heart and warmth out of the magazine. I wish someone would come out with a magazine like TOH was back in the 90s and early 2000s. If anyone knows of one, let me know!
And of course, I've been working on this guy! That's a sneak peek for you! (He's sitting on my Wacom tablet, in case you're curious.) Remember that I'll be posting the first installment of instructions this Friday!
Well, that's my week. How has your week looked? I'd love to hear about anything interesting you've been up to!
So I may as well take this time between loads to tell you about my week and what I've been up to. I feel like I haven't been doing that much, but I'm sure there's more doing on than I remember! The little details of life tend to fall through the cracks in my brain. Better check the pictures on my phone.
Oh yeah! My hubby and I decided to do a COOKIE BAKE OFF this past weekend. He said he wanted to add gingersnaps to our list of Christmas cookies, and I told him that we already had a recipe for old fashioned pepparkakors in the rotation. So we decided to get a recipe for American gingersnaps and compare it to (what I found out that weekend is actually) Swedish gingersnaps. My hubby is 1/4 Swedish, his grandpa came off the boat as a young man and spoke Swedish, so I'm more emotionally partial to the pepparkakors, but we had to know for sure which tasted better.
As it turns out, the pepparkakors were so much better! I'm sorry I don't have a better picture of them (they're on the left in the photo above). I usually pipe some white frosting on top to highlight the cookie design. They're very spicy and just the right amount of sweet. The American gingersnaps ended up being far too sweet. When I get around to icing them, I'll take a better picture and post the recipe!
We also bottled our strawberry wine this weekend. It's hard to capture the lovely pink color in a picture. Oh My Goodness. Have you ever had strawberry wine? Because it's the most heavenly liquid on this earth. We left it dry because it's just so heady with fruity goodness, adding sugar seemed like a crime. It needs to mellow another month or so, but it's so amazing. Wine making is a long term hobby, but it's worth it! (Plus it's super frugal. A bottle of wine costs us less than $1 to make.)
I've been very slowly working on a hexie quilt, too. It will eventually be a sewing machine cover for one of my millions of sewing machines (actually, I sold one so now I'm down to six! Hubby is happy about that). It's slow going, though. This is my first time doing English paper piecing, and although I like it a lot, goodness it takes a lot of time! I'm so tempted to rev up one of my zigzag machines and just zigzag them together. But, I'll be patient. I have just 8 more flowers to go, then I need to put them together with white pieces. Ugh. How on earth do people do entire bed sized quilts? I clearly need more time and/or patience.
I have once again been digging into my Taste of Home magazines. There's something about cooler weather that makes the cook in me squeal with joy. I actually got so excited this year that I went onto Ebay and bought a few lots of magazines so that I could fill out my collection. Yep. Now I have every since issue published between 1993 and 2000. I have about half of them from 2001-2006, and maybe someday I'll fill that in too. That's all I want though. In 2007, they sold their souls to an evil corporation that took all the heart and warmth out of the magazine. I wish someone would come out with a magazine like TOH was back in the 90s and early 2000s. If anyone knows of one, let me know!
And of course, I've been working on this guy! That's a sneak peek for you! (He's sitting on my Wacom tablet, in case you're curious.) Remember that I'll be posting the first installment of instructions this Friday!
Well, that's my week. How has your week looked? I'd love to hear about anything interesting you've been up to!
Wednesday, November 7, 2018
What's up Wednesday: Catching up with life
Happy November! Can you believe it's November already? I really can't. And not only that, it's like a week into November even. I need to buy a turkey this weekend! Holy smokes! Where on earth is the time going? I guess that's life though, always moving faster than it looks. That's why you need to enjoy every day while you have it, because once it's gone it's gone.
Well, now that my life has calmed down some and I'm beginning to settle into the slower pace of indoor life, I thought maybe I should post a life update so you all don't start worrying that I died. I almost did! I managed so survive though and now I can tell you the tale.
First, I'll start with garden news. It was a truly abundant garden year. I don't know if the surplus production was because of a new fertilizer I used, or the amazing weather, or more likely a mixture of both, but I got so much produce from my garden this summer that I was freezing and canning something almost every single day. Let me put it this way: I canned well over 300 jars of produce and filled my 7 cf chest freezer (plus my refrigerator freezer) all the way to the very top. I also have a five gallon bucket of rutabagas hanging out in my attic where it's nice and cold.
The amazing part about my huge haul of garden veggies is that I didn't even get to pick all of them. Gallons of tomatoes fell and rotted on the ground, probably close to a gallon of raspberries rotted, and who knows how many ground cherries. I missed all of that because September was the month from hell for me this year. Usually September is my very favorite month, but this year will go down as one of the worst.
One of my two kitty babies, Spices, got sick in late August/early September. She had trouble eating and was clearly in a lot of pain. We had to cancel all of our plans to be out because she needed to eat very soft food in small frequent doses (because my other kitty Sunshine is a pig and would have eaten it if we just left her a plate of food out). We got her into the vet and the doctor gave her an antibiotic and told us to bring her back in a week to see if she had improved. Well, she didn't improve. He had told us that if she improved, it was likely a rotten tooth and that they would fix her up. But if she didn't improve, she probably had cancer. It was so hard to watch her that week eat less and less, and she was clearly in a lot of pain. So on the following Monday, we called the vet and got her an early appointment because we knew. She wasn't going to make it. We did the kindest thing we could do for her and had her put to sleep. She was around 14 years old and she was well loved.
Well, I was a total wreck after we lost her. She was my hubby's cat through and through. She loved him to death, would follow him around everywhere, sleep with him every night. But when he wasn't around, she'd hang out with me and we were buddies. I miss her.
Have you ever heard that when you're stressed or really sad, your immune system shuts down? Well I found out how true that is. A week after losing my kitty, I got salmonella poisoning. Now I used to think that Salmonella wasn't that bad, just a stomach bug that made you sick for a couple of days. It turns out that it can be pretty bad. I was just kind of sick for the first couple of days, but then on the third day, I felt like I was going to die. I hurt so badly that I didn't want to do anything but lay in bed. I didn't even get up to brush my teeth at the end of the day. I couldn't eat anything. Actually, at that point, I was thinking that death might actually be better than what I was going through.
It took me nearly an entire month to get back to some kind of normal, and I'm still having some tummy issues today. The culprit turned out to be... raw milk. I'm a big proponent of everyone's right to drink raw milk if they want to. Many states in America make it very hard to get raw milk. It's actually legal in NY state where I live, but nearly impossible to find. However, we're right on the border of PA which is much more relaxed about it, so we would go down and get a half gallon once a week. However, like with all wild and unprocessed foods, there's a risk, and unfortunately I was in a very weak state at the exact time when there was an outbreak of salmonella at the farm. Will I drink raw milk again? Maybe. Have you ever gotten drunk and gotten hung over the next day? I haven't, but my dear (stupid) husband has, and he tells me that when you're that sick, you never want to touch anything you associate with the sickness again. He wouldn't drink apple juice for years afterwards, which is what he drank between throwing up, he hasn't touched the brand of beer that he was drinking the night before ever again, and he said he didn't even want to wear the t-shirt he wore that day. That's kind of how I feel about raw milk right now. Also raw eggs and raw chicken and spinach and... well I guess salmonella is in everything these days. Did you hear it was in cake mixes recently? Yikes.
I did get well enough to enjoy a lovely stay-cation I took with Chad in early October. We were hoing to be able to enjoy the fall leaves, but it's been an odd year. The leaves didn't really change color until late last week and they're already off of the trees today. Anyway, we enjoyed our stay-cation. We got to see lots of amazing local attractions and got to do a lot of hiking and drives through the country.
After our stay-cation, we spent a frantic two weeks getting all of the fall to-do list items done, like bringing in the outdoor furniture, winterizing the lawn mower and getting the snowblower ready, and putting the garden to bed. I've been just mellowing out since then, trying to get myself back into some kind of normal. I finally feel like I have the time and energy to finally get back to work on my designs! I'm very excited about that. It's easy to forget how much joy creative pursuits can bring you because they're the very easiest to cut out when life gets too busy. Well, it's definitely craft season now! It's actually predicted to snow several inches next week! I guess I won't be outside digging in the garden anytime soon.
Well, I guess I technically was digging in it yesterday, planting next year's garlic.
I guess we're all caught up now. I'm trying to spend a little more time on my designs everyday, and I actually got a new design put up onto my Etsy shop! I'll post about it tomorrow, I'm sure you'll love it as much as I do. With the extra free time, I'll probably start posting free Friday patterns again. As usual, I'm open no requests for ideas!
Have a wonderful Wednesday, everyone!
Well, now that my life has calmed down some and I'm beginning to settle into the slower pace of indoor life, I thought maybe I should post a life update so you all don't start worrying that I died. I almost did! I managed so survive though and now I can tell you the tale.
First, I'll start with garden news. It was a truly abundant garden year. I don't know if the surplus production was because of a new fertilizer I used, or the amazing weather, or more likely a mixture of both, but I got so much produce from my garden this summer that I was freezing and canning something almost every single day. Let me put it this way: I canned well over 300 jars of produce and filled my 7 cf chest freezer (plus my refrigerator freezer) all the way to the very top. I also have a five gallon bucket of rutabagas hanging out in my attic where it's nice and cold.
The amazing part about my huge haul of garden veggies is that I didn't even get to pick all of them. Gallons of tomatoes fell and rotted on the ground, probably close to a gallon of raspberries rotted, and who knows how many ground cherries. I missed all of that because September was the month from hell for me this year. Usually September is my very favorite month, but this year will go down as one of the worst.
One of my two kitty babies, Spices, got sick in late August/early September. She had trouble eating and was clearly in a lot of pain. We had to cancel all of our plans to be out because she needed to eat very soft food in small frequent doses (because my other kitty Sunshine is a pig and would have eaten it if we just left her a plate of food out). We got her into the vet and the doctor gave her an antibiotic and told us to bring her back in a week to see if she had improved. Well, she didn't improve. He had told us that if she improved, it was likely a rotten tooth and that they would fix her up. But if she didn't improve, she probably had cancer. It was so hard to watch her that week eat less and less, and she was clearly in a lot of pain. So on the following Monday, we called the vet and got her an early appointment because we knew. She wasn't going to make it. We did the kindest thing we could do for her and had her put to sleep. She was around 14 years old and she was well loved.
Well, I was a total wreck after we lost her. She was my hubby's cat through and through. She loved him to death, would follow him around everywhere, sleep with him every night. But when he wasn't around, she'd hang out with me and we were buddies. I miss her.
Have you ever heard that when you're stressed or really sad, your immune system shuts down? Well I found out how true that is. A week after losing my kitty, I got salmonella poisoning. Now I used to think that Salmonella wasn't that bad, just a stomach bug that made you sick for a couple of days. It turns out that it can be pretty bad. I was just kind of sick for the first couple of days, but then on the third day, I felt like I was going to die. I hurt so badly that I didn't want to do anything but lay in bed. I didn't even get up to brush my teeth at the end of the day. I couldn't eat anything. Actually, at that point, I was thinking that death might actually be better than what I was going through.
It took me nearly an entire month to get back to some kind of normal, and I'm still having some tummy issues today. The culprit turned out to be... raw milk. I'm a big proponent of everyone's right to drink raw milk if they want to. Many states in America make it very hard to get raw milk. It's actually legal in NY state where I live, but nearly impossible to find. However, we're right on the border of PA which is much more relaxed about it, so we would go down and get a half gallon once a week. However, like with all wild and unprocessed foods, there's a risk, and unfortunately I was in a very weak state at the exact time when there was an outbreak of salmonella at the farm. Will I drink raw milk again? Maybe. Have you ever gotten drunk and gotten hung over the next day? I haven't, but my dear (stupid) husband has, and he tells me that when you're that sick, you never want to touch anything you associate with the sickness again. He wouldn't drink apple juice for years afterwards, which is what he drank between throwing up, he hasn't touched the brand of beer that he was drinking the night before ever again, and he said he didn't even want to wear the t-shirt he wore that day. That's kind of how I feel about raw milk right now. Also raw eggs and raw chicken and spinach and... well I guess salmonella is in everything these days. Did you hear it was in cake mixes recently? Yikes.
I did get well enough to enjoy a lovely stay-cation I took with Chad in early October. We were hoing to be able to enjoy the fall leaves, but it's been an odd year. The leaves didn't really change color until late last week and they're already off of the trees today. Anyway, we enjoyed our stay-cation. We got to see lots of amazing local attractions and got to do a lot of hiking and drives through the country.
After our stay-cation, we spent a frantic two weeks getting all of the fall to-do list items done, like bringing in the outdoor furniture, winterizing the lawn mower and getting the snowblower ready, and putting the garden to bed. I've been just mellowing out since then, trying to get myself back into some kind of normal. I finally feel like I have the time and energy to finally get back to work on my designs! I'm very excited about that. It's easy to forget how much joy creative pursuits can bring you because they're the very easiest to cut out when life gets too busy. Well, it's definitely craft season now! It's actually predicted to snow several inches next week! I guess I won't be outside digging in the garden anytime soon.
Well, I guess I technically was digging in it yesterday, planting next year's garlic.
I guess we're all caught up now. I'm trying to spend a little more time on my designs everyday, and I actually got a new design put up onto my Etsy shop! I'll post about it tomorrow, I'm sure you'll love it as much as I do. With the extra free time, I'll probably start posting free Friday patterns again. As usual, I'm open no requests for ideas!
Have a wonderful Wednesday, everyone!
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