Category: Uncategorized

We are already 20 days out from Christmas.  I have most of my Christmas gifts finished already, but for some reason I’m still feeling disorganized at the moment.  Could be because we haven’t gotten a Christmas tree yet and the house is still partially decorated for Halloween.  All the Christmas presents are sitting on my dresser in the bedroom, waiting to be wrapped.

This week is going to be fairly busy.  Tonight, after tutoring, we’re going to focus on cleaning the house.  Tomorrow we’re going to see a movie at the Belcourt.  Wednesday is dinner with some friends.  Friday is a Seu Jorge concert at Marathon.  Thursday is looking like it’ll be the day for Christmas tree acquiring and decorating, then.  This weekend we need to do some shopping around for finishing touches to some presents, and I also do still need to make one or two presents.

Will need to devote the weekend after next to baking.  We’re going to Chattanooga for an early Lamb Christmas on the 23rd, and then to my parents’ for Christmas on the 25th — so I won’t have as much time as usual for baking.  May end up skipping the rugelach this year and just doing a couple of batches of babka, and some linzertorte perhaps.  Would be a shame to not make any linzertore for Christmas, after all.

So anyway.  One reason I’m glad that I’ve gotten such an early start on Christmas presents is that it ought to leave plenty of time for enjoying the Christmas tree without being surrounded by scraps of fabric and leather and a sewing machine.  If we put up the tree on the 8th, that will leave two weeks to enjoy it.  I almost want to blow off cleaning the house tonight in favor of getting a tree, but that’s  probably not a good idea.

 

It’s that time of year again!  I’ve sort of let November get away from me (somehow today is the half-way point) and I have about a week to prep for Thanksgiving.  I have already ordered a turkey from Porter Road Butcher, but until this morning had not actually put together a menu.  I’m probably going to consult some cookbooks when I get home, but here’s the tentative plan —

Make an Alice Waters-inspired turkey brine, and then cook the turkey with herbs and white wine.

Make Alice Waters’ cornbread stuffing.

Make gravy and a vegetarian gravy for Katie.  The regular gravy recipe I want to try is Ina Garten’s and calls for cognac and heavy cream.

Make a bourbon (or possibly cognac or brandy) vanilla cranberry sauce.

Make caramelized shallots.

Make sweet potato casserole, and mashed potatoes.

Make honey butter rolls.

And make Grandma’s Magic Chocolate Pie, of course.

Katie said she could bring some green vegetables, and maybe another pie.  And wine and cheese.

I’m sad that Stephen won’t be there this year, and not just because he won’t be there to help with paying for groceries (ha, ha)!  At least I’ll be able to sit around playing video games that weekend and eating Thanksgiving leftovers without feeling guilty, though!  (If you’re reading this, I will definitely miss you.  I’m just trying to make myself feel better about not being in London.)

So far my Thanksgiving schedule is thus.

Saturday/Sunday

Go grocery shopping

Clean out the fridge before grocery shopping

Get Thanksgiving stuff out of garage (e.g. roaster etc)

Make pie crust(s)

Monday/Tuesday

Make cornbread for stuffing

Chop veggies for brine, stock

Make cranberry sauce

Clean house, prep linens, centerpiece, etc

Wednesday

Take Stephen to the airport

Pick up turkey

Brine turkey

Prep stuffing

Prep sweet potato casserole

Prep mashed potatoes

Make pie

Make whipped cream

Thursday

Make stock

Make turkey

Make rolls

Caramelize shallots

Make gravy

Make mashed potatoes

Bake stuffing

Bake sweet potato casserole

Set table, etc etc etc….

 

I think that just about covers it!  I guess I’m done planning, then?  Already wrote out my grocery shopping list too.  I need to work on dragging out my planning sessions a little longer….

Anyway.  Too many picture in the previous entry — computer was being slow.

Here is what I’ve been up to.  In no particular order.

I’ve been working on the DLC in Fallout New Vegas lately.  Also bought Dishonored on Saturday but after a few hours, swapped it out for FNV.  Because, next to Skyrim, that’s gotta be the best game I’ve played.  I would have been playing Skyrim but I think somehow the DLCs I have saved on my hard drive have been corrupted — because each time I try to start it, the xbox freezes on the “Loading Downloadable Content” screen and won’t do anything without being reset.  Pretty sad, but.

I hadn’t actually been playing that much before this last weekend, though — I’ve been working on Christmas presents which I want to tell you all about but can’t.  So…I’ll just say that I want to keep them all.  They’re turning out so well!

I’ve also been doing some adult literacy tutoring, which is proving to be a very rewarding activity.  Makes me feel like I’m not a total schmuck, and I can do it as often or infrequently as I want.  I’ve just been doing one hour/week so far, but can see myself expanding that potentially.  We’ll see.  I feel like I’m at my capacity for enjoyable busy-ness, though, and that if I add something else I’ll have to maybe get rid of something too.  I was so happy to be able to mainly just hang around the house all weekend — after having people over on Friday.  It was delightful!  The house was fairly clean, so I was able to game mostly guilt-free.  🙂

OK, anyway.  Expect another update in 2-4 months.

Just realized that I haven’t blogged since July.  Oops!

We had a Hallowe’en get-together on Friday, and I had a ton of fun decorating and fixing spooky hors d’oeaurves for it.  Made pretzel spider legs and Stephen made marinara sauce to go with them.  Also made stuffed jalapeno mummies, and a cheese ball shaped like a pumpkin.  Oh, and I made jello shots with apple cider, apple schnapps, and fireball.  Was delicious!

So I played Silent Hill 2 for the first time about a month or two ago.  It’s a horror/survival video game from like 1998 or something. – so graphics weren’t great, but it was SO creepy.  I thoroughly enjoyed it, and thought that some elements would work perfectly as Halloween decor.  Unfortunately, no one who came over on Friday had ever played Silent Hill, but!  They are all at least aware of its existence now, anyway.

This is the in-game screen shot of this picture of Pyramid Head —

And here is my rendition.

Also, the infamous “There was a hole here” message —

and here it is outside of the bathroom.

Also made “floating candles” to go outside – which ended up looking cool enough to keep up indefinitely.

I realize that this is a short work week.  Tomorrow is Friday, not Thursday.

However.

I’m tired.  And the news is making me more tired.  And I want to go hide at home and sew a quilt.

That’s all; I’m working on my first cup of coffee so am hoping that things look up from here!

Well, folks.  Here I am, blogging because I’m pretty bored and I’m daydreaming about starting this new quilt.

Have I blogged about this quilt yet?  Hmm….appears that I mentioned it but did not include a picture.

OK, so, I found a free pattern that makes this quilt –

Sorry it’s fuzzy.  Don’t really feel like fixing that right now.  You get the general idea.  This pattern is for a fairly small quilt though – it’s almost twin-sized.  I need it to be queen-sized, so I’m multiplying everything by 1.7.  This will make it approximately 86″ x 109″.  So far I have two fabrics that I’m going to use; the top one will be used everywhere you see a bright yellow in the original quilt, and the bottom one will probably be used instead of the strips of grey.

I think they’re both so pretty!!  I’m going to have to add extra rocks (9 rocks x 1.7 equals 15.3 rocks, but to make everything even and pretty I’m going to settle on an even 20 rocks).

It’s going to be great, and I really would like to be working on it right now.  I still need to get most of the fabric, though; I’ll need a few more shades of blue, green, and grey before I can really get started.  Going to try to get to Joann’s on Friday or Saturday and then start cutting and piecing this weekend.  I could start cutting some tonight actually…I need to go through my fabric stash but it’s possible that I might have enough blues.  Hm.

I’m leaning towards splurging on a nice linen (or at least a linen blend) fabric for the backing.  If this is going to be used (the goal is to be able to use it in the bedroom during the warmer months), I want to love it.  And linen always helps.

Sadly though, I still have a few more hours before I can go home for the day.  Oddly, it’s been fairly slow at work today… I’m perfectly fine with that except that it’s making me really really wish that I could be at home sewing!

Luckily (or unluckily), Stephen has a good amount of upcoming work which means he’ll be pretty busy for the foreseeable future, which will definitely afford me with plenty of sewing time.

I have to stop talking about this.  It’s making me want to take the rest of the afternoon off so that I can go to the fabric store right now.

 

Yesterday I was feeling bored and uninspired, and it dawned on me that a new project would be a good thing to get me out of this little crafting rut I’ve been in.  I haven’t been completely uncreative lately; I did get some new coloring books and am having a good time coloring (anyone besides me always think of Sex and the City when they talk about coloring??).  But I’ve been feeling a tad guilty about being so lazy with Leatherings.  It’s been, oh, six months since i had anything listed on Etsy.  For a successful shop, that’s a long time.

But I still am sorta burned out on leather.  I mean, I’ll make stuff, but I’m not excited about it.

So I remembered that I’ve been talking about making a new quilt for a year or so and that i still have not started one.  I found a pattern (it’s a fairly plain background, with these appliqued stones on the front) and decided on a color theme.  I’m going to make the background blue/teal, and the stones will be mostly grey.  It sort of reminds me of Cummins Falls, or any place with rocks jutting out of the water.  Good quilt for Tennessee.  I’m feeling very positive about it.  I ordered some fabric yesterday, and will need more but think I’ll just go to Joann’s for the smaller pieces of blues and greys that i’m going to need.

But in the meantime.  I remembered that I still haven’t finished that crocheted motif throw that I started…oh, like three years ago.  Maybe four years.  I can’t even remember.  I had gotten so far as to sew about half of the motifs together (four years ago), and then I stopped.  I didn’t run out of yarn or anything — just motivation.

So yesterday, while Stephen worked on making a coozie for his Chemex coffee pot, I worked on sewing the rest of the motifs together.  I got about half-way finished (had to force the motivation because it seriously still was not there) and I plan on getting the rest done tonight.  Not sure if I’m going to block the whole thing again after I sew it all together and weave in the ends; I mean, I should, but I don’t have anything big enough to block it on.  Except the bed.  But blocking a large blanket on a bed gives me the creeps.  Makes me feel sorta damp and moldy.

I need to get a job in a fabric or yarn store.  Or get a job being a creative coach.  Or SOMETHING.  I get so excited about projects; I bet I could be good at passing along that excitement and getting people stirred up about making things.  Maybe I should be an art teacher.  Except, that’s probably a bad idea.  I sorta doubt I would enjoy that.  But who knows?  Hmmmmm.  I need more crafting buddies, too.  Maybe I should rent studio space somewhere.  If I had extra money.  Haha.  But how do I get more involved in the art community around here, or do I actually want to do that?  I’m not sure.

 

 

 

I am SO CLOSE to being finished with this costume.  I’ve decided to just wear something sleeveless underneath the brown dress part (I’m sure there’s a more precise term for this), instead of doing a chemise or anything.  I cut out the leather for the waist cincher yesterday but realized that I don’t have enough eyelets to finish it — so I’ll need to get more of those before I can put lace in it and wear it like an actual garment.  But the pictures give you a pretty good idea of where it’s all headed.

I made the skirt out of two sheets from Southern Thrift, and the brown dress part is just a modified brown dress, also from Southern Thrift.  I just took it in some (it was huge), cut it straight down the middle and hemmed the sides, and added the eyelets.  I’m going to use a leather lace for this – instead of the twine in the pictures, btw.  The twine is too rough, and leather will go better with the outfit.

I’m not sure if I’ll actually end up wearing the cloak, because it’s sure to be hot, but IT LOOKS SO GOOD.

Anyway.  Will post a final update soon.

A few days ago, I realized that the ren faire is coming up (in May).  I also realized that I really wanted to wear a new costume this year.  If you recall, last year I made a green cloak to wear, and had a white maxi dress underneath.  Well THIS year, I’m planning a little more.

After perusing Pinterest, and googling things like “renaissance faire costumes,” “plus size corset,” and “how to make a belly dance skirt,” I think I have decided what I’m going to do.

Basically I took what I liked out of these designs below, and drew up the sketch below that.

I’m super hopeful about it!!  The plan is to get fabric from thrift stores, and make a really poofy skirt.  I’m not AS sure about the top jumper part but if I can find a long dress at a thrift store, I should be able to modify it — add the drawstring portion, hem the sleeves, etc.  I may end up just buying the shirt because I bet that would be easier than making one, and possibly less expensive.

But, anyway. Will update with progress.

omfg.

we’re going to start doing the almost-exclusively-vegetarian thing soon and I went to Aldi to get some bread, cheese, veggies — stuff for sandwiches this week.  I got back to work and made the sandwich, including about half of a jalapeno pepper.  I figured it’d be spicy but not too bad.

and now the inside of my mouth hurts and the outside of my mouth hurts and my left eye hurts, presumably where I somehow briefly touched it after cutting the pepper.

the only reason I’m still alive is probably that I pulled off half of the jalapenos on the sandwich after my nose started running.

still waiting on the endorphins to kick in.