The Long Weekend

Today I thought I better try out my new Magic Bullet. Especially seeing as the only thing I have made with it since I got it was crushed ice. LOL

The first recipe I tried out was Hummus


Hummus Ingredients



Finished Hummus

The Magic Bullet is not all it's cracked up to be. Why am I so shocked...lol.
I had to keep adding chicken stock to thin out the mixture so the bullet would chop up the chickpeas. I think a small food processor would have done the job much better.

2nd recipe

Salsa


Salsa Ingredients


Finished Salsa

Again the magic bullet failed to impress. It turned out more like soup than Salsa.

I will have to try out some drinks next on my magic bullet. I am thinking they will turn out better. Iced Coffee and Margarita will be the next things I try.

VACATION TIME
I am now officially on one weeks vacation and I'm thinking about going North to visit my aunt in Haileybury. Most of you are probably wondering where the heck that is. It is in Northern Ontario, Canada. My mom is from there and my aunt lives there now. It is a pretty little town. I haven't been up to visit since last summer. Click the link to get a little history on Haileybury

After visiting with my aunt I want to swing down to Espanola. Another pretty little northern Ontario town that I lived in when I was little. I haven't been back in 30 years and have always wanted too. So this year I will. It will be interesting to see it from the eyes of an adult and to see if my memories of the little town hold up.

I'll let you know how my vacation turned out when I return. You never know, I might find a new little quilting store on my travels.

Weekend Update

The Magic Bullet

Oh, I can't tell you how many times I have watched this infomercial and dreamed of owning this wonderful device. It chops, it blends, it mixes, it purees,....well....it is just plain magic.

I am now the proud owner of a Magic Bullet...lookout culinary world...soon I will be posting entries as wonderful as Smitten Kitchen.

Ok, so those of you who know me....know that this is a truly lofty ambition. I'm doing well when I make toast. But lets face it...this device is MAGIC...so who knows...lol.



The fabric stash grows.



And grows.....




Not all of these are metre cuts. Most of the fabric you see are cut scraps that the quilting store was selling in $8.00 grab bags. I would say most fabric would be the size of a fat quarter or smaller. This works for me, as I like to make scrappy quilts...so I don't really need a metre of fabric. Little bits and pieces work just fine for me.



I hope to get back to some quilting next weekend....

Hope everyone had a great weekend .

My Garden

I don't have any quilting updates today. Damn work. Keeps getting in the way of my quilting. :-)

So I thought I would show you some pictures of my backyard and garden. I had wanted to take some new pictures today but the weather decided today was not a good day for picture taking. We have been having terrible weather in Oshawa this summer. I am pretty sure it has rained everyday. I think I am somewhat responsible because this is the first time in 20 years I have taken all my holidays during the summer months. I jinxed the province of Ontario...lol.

So these pictures are from last summer. The garden has greatly improved since then. I did all the planting last summer, there were no plants in the gardens when I moved in. The plants were not very big...this year, however, it's like a jungle.

My gazebo. I love my gazebo...it is so calming to sit under there with a good book listening to the birds.

The view from my gate.

The back corner.

close up of the back corner. You can see some hosta's and a forsytha bush.

I will have to make sure I take some more current pictures of my garden so you can see how well my plants did this year. I guess they did well, they are growing in the "new" rainforest. (ha ha ha)

I hope everyone had a great Monday. Only 4 more days to go until the weekend!!! Not that I am counting down, or anything.

Round Robin

Yesterday I met up with 32point5 and T at my favourite quilt store in Oshawa. We met for two reasons, one because The Ultimate Sewing Centre was having an open house and two, we had to trade our round robin squares. Here is a picture the quilt square I have now. The last border was done by T and it truly beautiful.









Close up of the border T did.













Close up of the perfectly done corner.

OHHHHHHHHHH, the pressure is on. I went through my fabric stash today and unbelievably I don't have anything that will work for the border I have to do.

Oh NO!! I am going to have to go and buy some fabric...lol. As I am sure you have guessed this is not a disaster for me. Any reason to go buy fabric will do. I haven't decided what kind of border to put on. The border I am doing is only supose to be 2 inches (2 1/4) so I am not really sure how fancy I can get with that. I think I might have to just do a plain strip. If anyone has any ideas please please feel free to share them with me.

There is more to life than quilting

HUH??? There is???

I thought I would write a post about something other than quilting. Recently I have decided to try and lose some weight. I have tried all the fad diets and exercise machines and really, who is kidding who, the only thing you lose with those fad diets and infomercial gadgets is your money.


So this time I am taking a radical approach. Now I know, this may not be for everyone...but stay with me for just a bit longer.




No more of this!!!













And lots more of this!! (this is my lunch for tomorrow)











and daily some of this....about 1/2 hour 6 days a week.



















Simple? Yes! Easy? We will see. I am pretty motivated so hopefully I will be able to stick to it. Also one more thing that I am going to do...or not do...is I am not going to weigh myself? Now, I can hear people yelling at their computers ...WHAT?? But yes, it is true, I know what I weigh, and I am not happy, I don't need to keep reminding myself...that will only make me discouraged. So part of my radical approach is going to be that I base my success on how I feel, and how my clothes fit. If my clothes start to get loose, then I am doing a good job. If they are not getting loose then I need to raise the intensity of my exercise routine. I'm going to keep a chart and mark down everytime I exercise. My chart will have the date, the amount of time exercising, how far I walked, and at what speed. I may alter my chart as I go along, but for now I think that is good enough to start with. I am also going to stick the chart on the wall for easy access. (this is my basement so it is all good...lol)

Wish me luck!!

Next Project

I have been working on this quilt for a couple of months and I am now in the home stretch. This quilt is for a friend of mine at work. I needed some practice and I knew my friend would love receiving a quilt as a gift. This is just the quilt top.

This is the fabric I am going to put on the back and I have the binding all ready to go. The binding is all cut, sewn together and ironed in half.

The book that I got the pattern out of is called Quick & Easy Machine Quilts that I bought one time when I was at the Creativ Festival. Now let me be totally honest. The quilt I made is loosely based on the pattern in the book. I have never been very good at following a pattern. (way to much pressure and commitment :-0 ) The idea is the same though. I used 5 inch squares in a random pattern, so it looks more like a scrap quilt. The pattern calls for pretty little buttons to be put in the centre of some of the squares. I'm still undecided on that.


This weekend, I went out and did some shopping for quilt supplies (like I don't already have enough dodads) I went to my favourite quilt store The Ultimate Sewing Store in Oshawa, and indulged myself in a couple quilting treats.



I bought myself some Ricky Tims Stable Stuff Poly. I have not tried it yet, but ever since I watched Ricky Tims DVD called Grand Finale I have wanted to try it. It is a "multi-purpose, polyester-based stabilizer called Stable Stuff® Poly. You can tear it away - or not! You can leave it on the underside of your work" (So I don't get in trouble I have cut and pasted Ricky Tims exact words from his website above). He also uses Wash-A-Way thread for his basting and his quilting. Now I know, you are thinking well if it washes away why would you quilt with it??? But what Ricky does is he uses it as a tracing. He then uses regular quilting thread over the Wash-A-Way thread. You have to watch the DVD to get the full affect. My explanation is not doing the technique any justice at all.

So my big plan is to use the Ricky Tims Stable Stuff Poly on some of the squares in the quilt. Most of the quilt I plan on just quilting up and down the rows of squares but on a few of the squares I am going to do some "fancy" quilting inside the square and I'll use the Poly on those squares. He also uses the Poly to help act as Trapunto. (makes the quilting design kind of puffy). I'll take lots of pictures so you can see what I mean. Well, I'll take pictures if it turns out...ha ha ha.

Finally finished the round robin quilt square

Border done on Amy's Quilt Square

Closer picture of the border

Close-up of Border

Phew, finally done the border for Amy's quilt square. It was suppose to be a 5 inch border ( 5 1/4 inches) but it is 5 1/2 inches. I figure that is close enough. I put on a plain border with mitered corners in a cream colour and then I put on the arrows border, I then finished up with another plain border in cream. I think it looks really nice. I mitred the corners on all three of the rows that I did. For some strange reason I find that doing a mitered corner is easier than doing a regular corner.

Non-Quilting News

My father and I re-arranged my basement today and have set it up as an exercise area. I now have my treadmill facing out into the centre of the room (instead of facing the wall...lol. How inspiring was that?? LOL) And we moved my TV into that room from the sewing room. I never really watched TV while I was sewing and I figured this might motivate me to actually get up off the couch and doing some walking.

Where the magic happens.

This picture was taken right after I had set up my sewing room. It never looked this neat and tidy again. On the second shelf down you can see my fabric stash. The stash has grown considerably since this picture was taken.

My Sewing Room

I spent today working on a quilt square for a Round Robin that I am in participating in.
My Aunt is a quilter and she thought it would be fun for a bunch of us to do a round robin. I was a little nervous at first as I am such newbie...I was afraid of messing up other people's quilts. But I decided to go for it because it would be such a good way for me to learn. Now my problem was I didn't know how to do fancy borders. So I bought a quilting book all about quilt borders.

This book has since become my border bible.

The border I chose is called Arrows.

These are some pictures of my progress on the border.

The picture on the left shows the 2 inch strips I had cut. The picture on the right shows the strips after being cut on a 45 degree angle, the top of the picture shows two 45 degree strips sewn together to form an arrow. I will hopefully finish the border tomorrow and I will post the pictures.

Today I also picked a bumper crop of tomatoes from my garden. Here is a picture of the big haul.

Hmmm.....I wonder if I can make some salsa out of them...lol.

My First Post

My First Quilt

I thought my first blog post should have a picture of my first quilt. I made this quilt last September for my mom for her birthday. It is a log cabin design made with Moda fabric. I must admit though, it is a cheaters quilt. I used a product called "Quilt by Numbers" Foundation Piecing. The foundation piece stays in the quilt. The fabric is placed on the backside of the foundation and you sew on the front of the foundation. It is a wonderful product. I bought them at the Creativ Festival held twice a year in Toronto. Oh if only I knew how to make a link without an actual website showing... ha ha ha.

Thank you to 32point5 for the helpful hint. I've now fixed the link.