Finished by Friday

In a previous post I told you that shallowthoughtsfromiowa had suggested we post about everything we finished this week - small or large - and I thought, "what a great idea - if I tell people I'm gonna' write that then maybe I'll actually finish something!" So here are this week's finised accomplishments:

1. Mystery quilt top is complete! Yippee!!!! At our next guild meeting the committee will be showing us how to trim the edges and, I assume, what border to put on it. I'm not saying that I "unsewed" more on this top than any top I've ever made in my quilting life, but it was close. Who woulda' thought getting those last three rows on there would be so tricky! It might have helped if I hadn't tried to talk on the phone, check on my e-mails, do the laundry, and eat some lunch while sewing. And by the way, I wear glasses on a string thing around my neck (so I won't lose them) and I keep glasses on my sewing table, my cutting table, my telephone table, my bedside table, my desk table, oops. You get the picture - they're everywhere. I buy them at the Dollar Tree for a buck apiece so if they break it's no big thing. I only need glasses for reading - it's an aging thing" according to my doctor. I coulda' slapped him. Anyway it happens that sometimes I have a pair hanging on my bosom (love that word!) and a pair perched on my head and a pair on my face. Well, you get the picture. If you do that too I advise you not to eat Peco de Gaya for lunch because it drips - either on the glasses or the bosom. I was gonna' say it's a hassle to have to clean it off your glasses but that's easier than cleaning it off your bosom, especially if God blessed you indeed like He did me.

2. GingerPatches posted this week about a purse she made from a pattern in the newest "American Patchwork and Quilting Magazine" (remember the two magazines I told you I got this week - well this was one of them!) She bragged about how easy it was to make. The pattern uses two tea towels and store-bought wooden handles to make a simple little summer purse. Well Ginger was right - it really did take less than an hour and that included starching and ironing the tea towels. Here's my version! I don't like wooden handles so I used a third towel to make straps and added the little flower pin to the front. The pin was made by my friend Jo. If I make another I would want the straps to be a little longer and, I'm thinking of using a nice heavy fabric instead of the tea towels. I'd also like the purse to be a little larger so..... I know, I never do anything exactly by the pattern, but what's the fun in that!

3. The holly block for Winter Wonderland is done and ironed. But not trimmed, 'cause I won't do that until all the other blocks are finished. I put these pictures on in order left, center, right because this is such a long block but I feel sure the blogger elf will separtate them by the time this post is actually out there in cyberspace so try to picture it as one looooong block.

Now there are a few other things I did this week but they don't have anything to do with quilting. I made 15 bean soup and chicken salad and Peco de Gaya. All that from a gal who hates to cook! I finalized plans to keep four, yes four, of my grandchildren next week and to take them camping for a couple of days. I think I might have been temporarily insane when I agreed to camping with four children, and if I wasn't I will be by the time we get home. And I confirmed the due date for grandchild #8 (January 8) so I can clear my calendar after he/she is born. My daughter-in-law is a teacher and when she goes back to school I'll be babysitting until school is out for summer. Oh, and I got a haircut. :) Whew! It was a busy week....

Front Porch Party

Rhondi at Rose Colored Glasses is hosting a Front Porch party and you're invited! When you live on the lake whichever side of your house faces the lake is considered to be the front. So my deck is my front porch and I'm sharing some photos of my favorite parts. If you were swimming in the lake (don't you wish you were!) this would be the left side of my deck. The gazebo you see in the background is surrounded by azaleas and covered on one side by Carolina Jasmine. You should see it in the spring!




Except for 3 or 4 hours in the middle of the day my deck is shaded by the big old oak and sweet gum trees. In the late afternoons my husband and I like to sit here with a glass of iced tea or cold lemonade or the occasional glass of wine to talk over the day's events. Early in the morning the absolute best place ever to drink my chai latte and read the paper is at this little table. The two small trees beside the swing in the background are dogwoods. And yes, that's bamboo I have in pots beside the table. It screens our deck from the neighbors and creates a small shade of it's own.



Isn't this rosemary incredible? I have several herbs - rosemary, lavender, thyme, pineapple sage in the beds beside the deck and the scents are heavenly!


My favorite place to read a book is here in this lounge chair. I can see the lake, the boats meandering back and forth, and my lilies blooming under the tree, I can smell the herbs, and peace reigns.

I hope you enjoyed the party. I've got lemonade in the fridge and a good book I'll loan you if you want to spend a quiet afternoon with me.

Since this is Thankful Thursday I'll just add that today I'm thankful for blogging friends, quilting friends, church friends, old high school friends, neighborhood friends, and especially for daughter/daughter-in-law friends. I'm blessed with so many wonderful women in my life and each one is a treasure.

Pay It Forward and Other Stuff

Julie at Through the Barn Door, a new blogging acquaintence, is participating in a blogging exchange - Pay It Forward. I've decided to join with her and others in this project which is based on the Movie "Pay It Forward." This exchange focuses on acts or deeds of kindness being done without expecting something in return, just passing it on, with hope that the recipients of the acts of kindness perform their own acts of kindness. So here's how it works. I will make and send a handmade gift to the first 3 people who leave a comment to this post on my blog requesting to join this Pay It Forward exchange. I don't know right now what the gift will be, and it probably won't be this month but it will be some time this summer, I promise. :) If you are one of the three, what YOU have to do in return is to pay it forward by making the same promise on your blog. So, anybody want to join in?

And in answer to questions/polls on former posts:
BQ#1 - it is an oak leaf hydrangea according to the e-mails and posts I got
BQ#2 - no one seems to be having this problem except me
BQ#3 - everyone seems to be having this problem, just like me
and Tile won hands down over the blue formica! Thanks friends for the helping hand with that issue. I'll let you know if I convince my husband. :)

Burning Questions

BQ number 1 is about olive oil. I love olive oil and use it a lot. I found this new brand at WalMart yesterday and it's pretty good (see picture on left). I keep it on my counter near the stove in one of these thingies (picture on the right). You know the thingie I'm talking about - vinegar in one, oil in one? Can't remember the name of the thingie but my memory is awful since I drink way too many diet sodas with aspartame. You know aspartame causes short term memory loss don't you? Where was I? Oh yea, last year I bought a huuuuuge bottle of olive oil at Sam's but didn't use nearly as much as I thought I would so by the time I got to the bottom half of the bottle it was old and tasted bad. And smelled bad. I kept it in the pantry which obviously was a mistake. I tried putting it in the fridge but it ended up looking like this:


My BQ is: how do you store olive oil so it keeps it's taste and smell but doesn't end up looking like the solid fat I know it is. Cause when I see it like this I keep picturing this stuff on my hips.

BQ number 2. This is my magic bush! Isn't it just beautiful? It grows underneath my kitchen window in dirt so hard you cannot get a shovel in it. It lies midway between the air conditioner on it's right and the garbage can on it's left. I'd show you the garbage can but I already took it to the curb for morning pickup. I don't water it. I don't fertilize it. I don't trim it. I also don't know it's name - we've never been introduced. BQ number two - Do you know this plant? If so, would you please make the introductions between us since it lives at my house!


BQ number 3 - and this one is driving me nuts. How come when you type your post all pretty and neat in the box it doesn't end up on your blog the way you put it in? For instance, in this post I originally posted the first two questions but then when I looked at the actual post "BQ nu" ended up between the two pictures when in my draft there were 3 or 4 sentences there? Is there some blogger spy lurking in there somewhere to sabotage my posts for some unknown reason? And if there is, why doesn't he like me? I'm nice, I take daily showers, I got a haircut today and I'm not shaggy anymore, and I'm kind to animals and old people. What's his problem?

The Best Laid Plans

Let me just preface this post by saying my husband is out of town. Now, I don't know what you do when your husband is gone for several days but I have a routine I rarely change when he's going to be out for the week. The first day I run all my errands and buy whatever groceries I need to make it through the week without cooking. I do the laundry, pick up the house and balance my checkbook. (That's so I'll be reminded that shopping is not a good thing just because he's gone.) The rest of the week I stay home and sew, or I visit friends and sew, or I go to a movie and eat all the popcorn by myself, or I sit in the swing by the lake and read quilting magazines, or I read a book from start to finish without stopping. But I don't cook and I don't clean and I don't do laundry again until he gets home.

Today I fully intended to follow my normal plan. And it started out really good. The Bug Man came at 8:00 to do our annual termite inspection (my husband made that early morning appointment knowing he wouldn't be here, can you believe it?) so I got up early, showered and dressed. And really, the day does go better when I do that instead of hanging out in my pajamas till noon. It's hot here - in the low 90s every day with little to no chance of rain so I sure didn't want to be cooking every day and have my stove on heating up the kitchen. With that in mind I planned meals that required no cooking. My Daddy used to make a dish he called Peco de Gaya that I just love so those were the first ingredients on my grocery list. My husband is one of those redneck southerners who thinks you must have meat at every meal so I always take advantage of his absence by eating several meals of vegetables.

These are the Peco de Gaya ingredients:

2 avocados

1 tomato

2 or 3 stalks celery

2 or 3 green onions

jalapeno peppers

1 lemon

olive oil

tortillas (whatever kind you like)

Chop the veggies (hold the tomato over the bowl while cutting so all the juice runs into the bowl. Add the juice from the lemon and a little olive oil (of course I don't know how much! I don't really know how many veggies either cause it's a matter of taste and see), salt and pepper and stir gently till mixed. I added a little fresh cilantro today 'cause I they had some really nice herbs today at the market. Let this marinate in the fridge for a couple of hours. Put a spoon full in the middle of a warm tortilla, roll up and eat. Yum!!

The first glitch in my plans, besides having to be up and dressed at 8:00, was the avocados. Those babies were $1.38 apiece! Have you ever? They were nice, just the right stage of ripeness and a good medium size, but good heavens - $1.38 apiece! That quick trip to the grocery store to get just a couple of things ended up costing $134. 49 - and I had coupons! I could quote several other prices that were rediculous but you're buying the same stuff I am so you know.

I had decided to make chicken salad, too, so I bought a rottisserie chicken. I figured if it was already cooked I wouldn't be heating up my kitchen - good thinking, right? Wrong on two counts. First, when I got home and opened up that chicken it was cooked all right, cooked to death. I was not happy. But I was stuck be cause you can't very well take a cooked chicken back and because it's a good 20 minute drive to the grocery one way and the price of gasoline meant it wasn't worth it. Second problem: I'm one of those lucky folks who have an extra refrigerator in the garage. Trust me on this, I'd give up my dishwasher, my good black dress or my first born child (sorry, Tammy) before I'd give up that fridge. I went out to put the extra gallon of milk in it only to realize there was a large piece of ham there that I had forgotten about and which absolutely had to be cooked right now. So much for not heating up the kitchen. I put it on to boil and spent the next 3 or 4 hours making 15 bean soup.

By the time that was done (and ready to go in the second fridge!) I had 3 loads of clothes to fold and my checkbook still wasn't balanced. Not only that but I had sewn not one stitch. :( But things started looking up when I checked the mail - not one but two new quilt magazines! I fixed a chai latte and took my magazines out to the swing by the lake to relax (see picture below) and listen to the birds. It seems that they have started building a new house one block over. Sound carries on the lake. Tomorrow has to be better....right?

A Mystery Revealed

Rose Colored Glasses is hosting a Front Porch Party on June 5th! Come on over and join us - take a picture of your front porch, or a front porch you love, and share with others who love front porches, too. This is not my front porch, or hers either, but on Friday I'll post a picture of mine.



As promised in a previous post here is a picture of part of the Mystery Quilt that I now have up on my design wall. Since I have way too many other things on my design wall (I know, Connie!) I can't get the whole thing up at once so what you're seeing is nearly half of it.

Isn't it gonna' be gorgeous! I never would have dreamed hearts. Now that I look at it I think that next to the last row I have on there needs a light strip between the last heart and the dark outside block. I haven't started sewing the rows together yet so I'll get that in there before I do.

If you haven't weighed in on the tile vote, please go to the previous post and cast your vote - tile or blue formica?

And last note before I go, shallowthoughtsfromiowa has declared a Finished by Friday challenge. Let's all post every Friday what we've finished that week. It could be big (like a quilt), it could be small (like a quilt block), it could be miniscule (like a pitcher of sweet tea)! But I for one might possibly be spurred on to finish a few things. :)