Another Three Things

Sorry I haven't blogged in a while but we've been busy.  Here's three things that I've been busy with.

1. I've been trying to get my exercise in first thing in the morning.  I found I was spending too much time on the computer first thing but when I tried having breakfast then waiting until mid-morning to exercise, it didn't happen.  Right now I'm into a new dvd, Leslie Sansone's 5 really big miles from the walk slim program.  It's with a totally new group of walkers, new music and new moves.  Each mile is different in the length of time spent, use of the resistance band and use of boosters or jogging instead of walking.  I try and do 2 miles which is a good workout for me.
2. I've been sewing up a storm since the beginning of the year.  I finished the one quilt (no picture yet) and am almost done with the pillow sham for it.  I hope I remember this ruffle I'm putting on this thing so I never do that again  -  what a job!  Then I had my first real class last week for my bom.  It took 2 hours for most of us to complete the one block.  Now I have to finish 11 more.  It's not that it's hard or time consuming (I have it down to 1 hr.) but very monotonous.  I've been doing at least 2 a day to keep me on track.  That's not the only homework I have though.  We got a list of material to cut out that's the length of my arm (the list, that is).  I still wasn't sure about my next color so I bought more and now I feel better about it.  I still don't know what block 2 will look like though.  One more thing I need to do before the next class is make a new bag to store all my stuff in.  They have a class on this one but not until later in the year and it's $30 to attend.  I'm sure I can whip one up myself???
3. The last thing I've been doing to making cookie dough and freezing it for the wedding cookies.  I have a long list of ones I'd like to try and some need to be sampled first.  I thought it might be better to freeze the dough instead of some of the cookies  -  I think they keep better. 

Well, that's what I've been up to along with making trips to Mechanicsburg, Mentor and Cleveland.  Thank goodness the weather has been holding up for me.

Good Things

Taken from Martha herself, "That's a good thing!".  I have 3 good things I'd like to share with you today having to do with food that I either ate or saw on tv.

1. The other day I was in the Akron area with my daughter and we stopped at the West End Bakery for lunch.  Their specialty was Curried Chicken Salad on a pita bread and ooh was it good.  I don't use curry all that much but now I have to rethink that.  It seemed the recipe would be similar to a basic chicken salad but with the addition of curry.  By the way, their cupcakes are delicious, too.
2. My hubby and I went out to dinner the other night at the Edinboro Hotel to sample their steak night.  We've eaten there before but I guess I've never had the baked potato and boy was I in for a surprise.  This potato was a salt crusted baked potato, and as I found out through an internet search, widely used in steak houses.  It's a very simple idea that I'm definitely going to try.  All you do is prick your potato all over, coat it with olive oil, roll it in either sea salt or kosher salt to partially cover it, and then bake on foil-lined pan until done.  I think the salt adds to the flavor, improves the skin texture and makes the potato fluffier.  Anyway it was very good, in fact, probably the best baked potato I've ever had.
3. This idea is right out of the Martha Stewart Show  -  how to separate a head of garlic and peel the cloves.  You won't believe this!  She used 2 metal bowls of different sizes, put the whole head of garlic in the bigger one and press the smaller bowl down into it very firmly.  That separates the head into all the cloves.  Then you flip the smaller bowl over so it rests on top of the bigger one (kind of like a lid) and shake like crazy.  When you open it all the cloves are peeled!  I was amazed, as was she when she showed it.

 Well, those are the three good things that I'm excited about.  Try them out.

Class Time

OK, I'm back and ready to start writing some more blogs.  I still have to take a picture of my first quilt of the year and show all of you, then I will talk about what I've learned from it.  I had one class in Jan. for my mystery quilt of the month paper pieced quilt (in the future it will be BOM class).  I was pleasantly surprised to see a couple teachers that I knew in my class.  The first class was practice for the paper piecing and included a heart square.  I have yet to finish it but I will before the next class.  I was a little too busy with other things since then but I now have a ton of homework to do.  We were assigned the first group of colors to buy and cut in the required size pieces for our first block.  I thought I already had this one but after getting the list of amounts for each color, I realized I needed to do more shopping.  So on the way back from Mechanicsburg I stopped at my favorite LQS' in Belleville.  Boy did I find the material and they are so nice and helpful there.  So I think I'm all set as far as fabric  -  now to the cutting.  I'm assuming that each month I will have a fair amount of homework to do so my idea that I would spend just 2 hrs. of class time was a little silly on my part.  I do have some other projects to work on such as my idea for a memory quilt.  Just like I knitted an afghan using leftovers from previous projects, I'd like to make stars with scraps of material from the quilts or project I make.  Looking back at all of these is really fun for me  -  can't wait to start!

More to Learn

Yes, there's a lot more for me to learn about quilting or maybe there always will be if I'm doing different things all the time.  I started this new quilt the first of the month and all went very well, or so I thought, the first week.  In fact, I was starting to get a little cocky and thinking I'd be done with this in a couple weeks.  Then the reality set in as I laid everything out to look at.  Evidently I was not as precise as I should have been in fussy cutting all my florals.  Once I set them on corner, some were not facing the top of the quilt like I had intended.  I also sewed some together too soon so a bunch had to be taken apart.  I also thought I had plenty of squares but once I started moving some around I realized that some wouldn't work on the edges.  Really, it was just a slight setback but it's a lot of small pieces to put together and I feel I'm losing some motivation.  I'm giving myself a goal each day to complete a certain part so I can think and reflect on each step.  I realize this is not an easy first project by any stretch of the imagination and in that sense I think I'm still doing pretty well.  I have my first class this week and I'm sure I'll learn something there that maybe I can bring home with me.  Then I'll be wondering what my next project will be.

Business Tactics

There are a few things that are really bothering me lately about the business world.  One of them happens to be the change in our utilities (electricity to be exact) and choosing a different provider.  We have been getting the mailings for quite awhile, look at them and toss them, signaling we have made our choose.  Despite that we still get the phone calls explaining the deal to us.  Recently I received a call from a man who, after I said we didn't want to change, proceeded to raise his voice as he explained it and eventually asked me in a very derogatory tone why I didn't like to save money.  I retaliated and said I didn't like his tone and hung up on him.  I could tell by his voice that he thought I was some old senile lady with a hearing problem.  Yesterday, we also got a letter from a third party company wanting us to sign up for a membership to have outside electrical line work done for free.  This did not come directly from Penelec but had their name on it as they had their approval.  I call it deceptive advertising and also targeted to the elderly.  We're also fighting a battle with Verizon because of a charge that showed up on a bill a couple months ago for tech support that we didn't buy.  The first month my hubby called, got it straightened out and I paid the bill less that charge.  The second month the charge was still there so he called and I did the same.  Now this month the charge is gone but they showed an outstanding balance from the last bill.  Are these companies this desperate that they will try and bill you or talk us into something to make a buck  -  I suppose so.  In all fairness I need to talk about two things that happened just this year that restored my faith in the American people.  Over Christmas we gave both the mail lady and the paper carrier some money and candy for Christmas.  I recently received a thank you card from the mail lady that was stamped and sent US Postal.  What a gal!  Talk about honesty  -  she could have very easily slipped it in with the rest of the mail and no one would have said anything.  Another thing that just happened was about our lawn care service.  We discontinued it a couple years ago because of the water line going in but now we decided to get it again and sent in the prepay amount.  They call yesterday and said they were sending it back because supposedly we prepaid in 2009 for the 2010 season when we stopped so there was a credit.  He wasn't even going to worry about the difference in the amount and the fact that we were now getting 6 treatments instead of the usual 4.  I suppose in reality they got interest on that and it all works out but I can't even find my record of it and can't remember to boot.  Also, what a guy!  I hope this reflects how I do recognize exemplary behavior but don't cross me.

New Quilt Project

I'm ready to start a new quilt.  I'm excited but still a little apprehensive.  I realized this week that I never really follow a pattern strictly.  I always manage to tweak it a little depending on the size, material or pattern.  I'm a great one for combining a couple different patterns, be it quilts, afghans, hats, pillowcases, purses or scarves.  That's what becomes frustrating for me when I have nothing concrete to follow.  I suppose I'll never change so I may as well revel in the fact that projects are truly mine.  Anyway, I talked before about this quilt, I'll call Garden Twist, and where I got my floral squares.  Soon after I retired I went shopping with a friend and bought 2 shades of green for the strips that intertwine (that was over a year ago).  Since then I've made a bunch of fall table runners and some of that green fit in perfectly.  I originally guessed as to how much to buy so now I'm faced with not enough, I think.  I went to JoAnn's with a long list of fabrics to buy for it and believe it or not, found the 2 shades of green so I could buy more of that.  I also lucked out with the outside border, which I wanted something in pink and green.  I found some on clearance that was exactly what I wanted.  Now the hard part  -  2 fillers in different pink geometric prints.  I needed something that wouldn't fight with those big florals but would still look nice.  I ended up buying a small pink check and a pink with white polka dots.  I'm still not sure about the pinks  -  time will tell on that subject.  So today my project is to determine what width I want my green strips, cut all my strips and sew the green squares to each corner of the florals.  Remember I'm making this up as I go even though I have two patterns I'm looking at but neither is exactly what I want.  Sometimes I think I'm the only one going through these kind of decisions but when I was at JoAnn's I realized we're all the same.  There was a mother-daughter team in there trying to decide what colors of pink and green to put in the little girl's room.  At least I had only myself to argue with!  Another lady and I kept passing each other, smiling and without saying a word, acknowledging our indecision.  Wish me luck.

Equipment Issues

Just read my dil's post and saw her beautiful pizza that she made.  Dawn, it looks great and I'm sure tasted the same!  So what is my problem with my pizzas?  I think I have equipment issues out the wazoo, not to discredit my dil on her superb achievement.  First it was my sewing machine and now my stove that I'm realizing might be the problem.  The other day I decided to finish up some bread flour I had in the freezer and make a loaf of french bread.  I used to make this all the time in the breadmaker on Saturdays when the girls and I had soup day.  It was delicious.  I've been  in a real slump lately with the recipes for dough that I've been trying.  There's a lot of them out there that are really soft and that just isn't working for me.  So anyway, I made up the same recipe I used to but in the mixer and the dough was great.  Then I put it in the oven to bake and, nothing, it didn't even brown.  The inside texture was doughy and it was awful.  Like I said I've been having trouble with my pizzas and even talked to my dil about my crust not even browning on the stone.  She mentioned how she uses her stone but doesn't even preheat it and from the looks of it comes out picture-perfect.  I was really disgusted with my dough, especially after bragging about it to my hubby.  I decided, long overdue I know, to put an oven thermometer in to check the temp.  It was low and kind of unpredictable so I adjusted it according to the book so I would be 35 degrees higher.  Last night I made a batch of biscuits and checked the temp first.  It was still off so I turned the oven 25 degrees higher that it was supposed to go.  The biscuits cooked in the lowest amount of time  - browned and all.  I have to say though I'm still leery of baking another loaf of bread or pizza for fear of it not turning out.  But I think I really do need one of those stones like my dil!