Monday, December 28, 2009

The year of the Wii Fit and a finish to share and Christmas.....

Hi all first I have a finish to share. I could not share earlier because it was a Christmas gift and you never know who may check out the blog you know.



It turned out a little smaller than I thought it was going to be. I used a high loft batting and triple layered it, tied it and then binded it. It passed inspection don't you think?



Christmas was great around here, lots of nice gifts for every one and a great day. Here is a pic of Dan and Susan with one of the gifts she got him. The new connect 4. They used to play the original over and over when she was little so we thought this would be a fun gift.



On Christmas Eve Susan put her car in a ditch taking her friend home. It was more of a ravine and she ended facing the opposite way she was going. Scared her to death and while waiting for me to get there she text one of her friends what happened so he and another friend of hers decided they would go try to pull her out. I said no and sent them home and on their way home they slid off the road and hit a tree and totaled the suv they were in. No one was hurt thankfully but this tells you how the roads were that day. I almost put myself in a ditch going to where Susan was. If I had known how the roads were I would not have let her drive that day. Here are some pics of the car and Dan and the neighbor Jim getting it out. The truck is Dan's new one (new to us) and they were both a little disappointed that it was so easy to get the car out LOL they were up for a challenge.







The weekend before Christmas Susan had her winter semi formal and also her Christmas band and chior concert. She had a very nice long solo during the band concert.





Here's a picture of me and Susan Christmas night and me and Dan. She was playing with her new camera.





Okay, now about the year of the Wii Fit. So we bought a Wii Fit for Christmas and me and Dan have decided to use it. I've been using it so far but starting on January 1st we will see if I can use it every day. We do have a few short vacations planned so I will come up with some thing for those times but for now I am going to try to use it every day and I will blog it and my progress so if you have one I encourage you to follow along. Also, if you learn any thing from me let it be this, if you do the running on the Wii Fit...... wear a bra! Ouch!!

Bye!

Wednesday, December 2, 2009

Hey Mom.....& Christmas stuff

Want to rescue another kitten??? This little thing showed up over the weekend.





Cute thing isn't it? It finally let me pet it today. I got an up close look and still can't tell if it's a boy or girl. It's trying really hard to make friends with our other cats and trying to play with them. I'm pretty sure some one dropped it off. It had zero dirt on it's white fur, was well fed and came when I gave the kitty kitty call but was too scared to come up to us.

Last night Susan volunteered to be part of a pep band to play at the lighting of the towns Christmas tree. There were a decent amount of kids that volunteered from the band.







We finally got the outside Christmas decorations done. Susan strung the lights on her pine tree. It's really getting huge. She planted it when she was in third grade I think. They gave it to them in school for earth day. Hers was the only one in her class to survive.











Nothing quilty or crafty has been completed lately and no renovations have been completed yet either. Dan was off for a few days for the holiday and we got a lot of our shopping done and our decorating is done and now it's back to business. And this picture I will share because it was funny. Dan was playing tennis on the Wii and the dogs were very confused and didn't understand what was going on. Molly might be a little difficult to see in this pic.



Bye!

Wednesday, November 18, 2009

A quilty finish, renovations and band

Hi!
A quilty finish to report for the first time in about 3 years. Ever since I first injured my shoulder sled riding. "Come on Jamie, come sled riding with us, you know you want to" Yeah, see what happens, no quality sewing and lots of pain for 3 years, then on vacation, snap, and then surgery.

This quilt I am proud to say is a charity quilt for a charity call Quilt for Kids. They sent me a kit where every thing was cut and it included the backing and I put it together, adding my batting and quilted and finished it. It was so easy and fun. The fabric was vibrant and fun to work with. Now, my child is 16 so I have no idea if this fabric has any thing to do with a cartoon but it sure is adorable.



You can kind of see all the stuff being stored under my cutting table that is supposed to be stored in my laundry room, but any ways......

This is a close up of the quilting and fabrics.



Cute stuff right! Now I'm going to share a picture of Susan from the last game we were at. For some reason the other team did not bring their band so our band did their routine and then added Thriller, It was the best show yet. They sounded awesome. Thriller was great and the crowd love, love, loved it!





Here is an update on our renovations. They are coming along a little slower than we thought but sickness just keeps making the rounds at our house but we finally have the new floor layed in the master bathroom and Dan will start drywalling now and then a short wall will need to be built for the tub surround. So we are getting there and here are a couple of pictures of the floor after it was put in and also the window that we closed up. We did some writing on it for future generations LOL. Oh, and you'll see my golden checking things out.







And I will end this blog with a fun picture of Susan and her friend at Halloween.



Bye!

Wednesday, October 28, 2009

A finish!

First I will say I have kind of misplaced the blog that had the turkey soup recipe so until I can find it so I can give credit to who created it it I won't post that recipe, but, since Thanksgiving is coming soon I will be creating my own recipe for use with turkey leftovers so I will post that when it happens.

Now I finally have a finish to report. Not a sewing one but one that has been plaguing me since my arm injury. I have not been able to work on it since before April so I'm very happy to have it done and am very happy with how it turned out. Here's a few pics......







This is a double wall basket, basically 2 baskets in one. First I made the inside basket and then made the outside basket using the inside basket as a kind of mold. The only thing connecting these baskets together is the rim row.

Now I am going to share a small update on the house renovations. I showed you before the laundry area when it was tore apart. It's is far from done but the dry wall is up in the new doggie room and of course a floor and the laundry closet is almost done, floor replaced and dry wall up and the washer and dryer is temporarily in there so I can do laundry until we have the floor laid. Here are some photos...



The upper picture is the dogs room. You can see the framing where the new door will go and the new back door. To the left the room bumps out where the washer and dryer used to be. We are pushing the original door back to remove the new laundry closet, furnace and pantry out of the dogs room. It will be a room that is all theirs and they love their room and really miss it so hopefully we can have them back in it soon.

This next picture is me standing in the new door way of the dogs room showing the laundry closet and there will be bi fold doors on it and the other side of the room will have bi fold doors over the furnace and pantry. The door you see in the photo is the old laundry room door and will be removed and that will be open to the kitchen.



The next pictures is what my master bath room look like right now. It's a little difficult to stand back far enough to get a good picture but you will get he general idea...





The photo with the window is where the garden tub used to be and is where the new whirlpool/shower tub will be and that window will be gone.

The other photo is the other side of the bathroom and the walls you see there are new. The stand up shower used to be there and we used the area to build the new laundry closet.

We still have our goal of having every thing done including my sewing room and all the flooring replaced by Thanksgiving and I think we can do that. Unfortunately Dan had to take a day to change the radiator in his Jimmy an then he took another day to change the oil in all the cars and then yesterday he was feeling pretty bad but he will be hitting it hard again soon. Right now he said all the big work that throws dust and wood particles all over the house is done so I have been working on detailed cleaning to get every thing cleaned up. It's slow going but coming along nicely. That is what I dislike about remodeling, the dust gets into every thing every where.

We have spent all of our Saturdays in October going to marching band competitions. They were good and placed well in most of them. Here are a few photos of some of the formations while they were marching.







Well, I guess that is it for now.

Bye!

Thursday, October 15, 2009

Gluten free apple crisp

Okay, this was so good I had to share. I usually do not like apple crisp at all but make it for my husband but this stuff was delicious! I loved it! I had quite a few apples that needed used up so I searched out a recipe on the internet that looked good to me and adapted it to be gluten free. Here is the recipe....

It makes a 9x13 pan size.

INGREDIENTS
10 cups all-purpose apples, peeled, cored and sliced
1/2 cup white sugar
1 tablespoon all-purpose flour
1 teaspoon ground cinnamon
1 cup quick-cooking oats
1 cup all-purpose flour
1 cup packed brown sugar
1/4 teaspoon baking powder
1/4 teaspoon baking soda
1/2 cup butter, melted

Obviously I used a gluten free flour for all flour the recipe calls for. I used Bob's Red Mill Gluten Free flour and did not add xantham gum and it did not need it.
I also did not melt the butter. I just cut it into pieces and used my hands to mix every thing together until I had a nice crumb topping and I do not use butter, I use a dairy free margarine since I am severly limiting my dairy. Also, I used certified gluten free oats as well, Bobs Red Mill brand. I also did not measure the apples. I just peeled and cut and tossed into the pan until I thought I had enough and when I had the apples and cinnamon and sugar mixture all mixed together I sprinkled a little apple cider on top of that just for fun.



In to the oven it goes......




DIRECTIONS
Preheat oven to 350 degrees F (175 degree C).
Place the sliced apples in a 9x13 inch pan. Mix the white sugar, 1 tablespoon flour and ground cinnamon together, and sprinkle over apples. Pour water evenly over all.
Combine the oats, 1 cup flour, brown sugar, baking powder, baking soda and melted butter together. Crumble evenly over the apple mixture.
Bake at 350 degrees F (175 degrees C) for about 45 minutes

It was delicious and I served vanilla ice cream on top of Dans and a vanilla soy ice cream on top of mine.



YUM!!

It was great. Next time I will share the turkey soup recipe, it was so good, especially with the homemade noodles!

Also, on a side not, can I just say it is snowing outside right now! It's only October 15th, wonder what this means for our winter.

Bye!

Tuesday, October 6, 2009

Not as planned......

Okay, so dinner didn't go as planned the other night. Can you believe it took until after 8pm to make that darned turkey!? I can't say I've ever had that happen before. So I picked everything off the bone and as I type this I'm kicking myself for throwing the carcass away and not tossing it into the crock pot for turkey broth! Anyways since we ate leftovers instead I took the turkey last night and heated it up, made the mashed potatoes and veggies and gravy and we had it for dinner. One problem... me and Dan are now sick... again! We had the H1N1(pretty sure that is what it was)go through our house a couple of weeks ago and I never quite kicked it off completely and now here we are sick...again. I'm not sure what this is but am hoping it goes away pretty fast, at least a whole lot faster than the last time. I'm missing basket class again this week and I am only 1 round of curls away from finally being done with the double wall basket that has plagued me since before my shoulder injury and surgery.

So I left you with why I do not have kitchen counters, here's why......






Major water leaks! It all started with our slider back door......



It turns out it has been leaking for years. We really regret those french doors so Dan had to take out the doors, rip up the floor, replace insulation and remove a rather large colony of carpenter ants. The new slider looks great and we have had some serious rain storms and zero leaks. Then, a few weeks after, the toilet in our bathroom decided to overflow for 4 hours or so and that went from the master bath through our master bedroom, what a mess! So tiles popping up in there and we decided to rip out the bathroom and redo it and replace the carpet. But before we could even start that we discovered a major water leak in the laundry room, yes, when it rains it certainly pours! So the pictures with the fridge above are pictures of that work when it started. The pantry has been removed which is why I have no counter space because my pantry is on the counters. The door way is getting pushed back to place the pantry in the kitchen area and the laundry room is becoming the dogs room and we are breaking into our master bath and creating a new laundry area and that door will be accessible from the kitchen as well. Done so far is the new side door in the dogs new room, the dry wall is up and flooring is all replaced. It is now time to break into the master bathroom to create the laundry area. Hopefully I will not have to go to the laundry mat this week!! After this demo and drywall mudding is done then the whole house will be repainted and refloored. We're practically building a new house here people and poor Dan is exhausted with all the work at his job and then all the work at home. Hopefully we will be completely done before Thanksgiving. Fingers crossed!

So when we found the kitchen, laundry room leak we were 1, yes, 1 day from leaving for South Carolina. It was a nice vacation though. We stayed in a cabin on the ocean on Hunting Island. Would I do it again......uuhhhh, maybe, maybe not. I'm not big in doing the same thing all the time. I like to do some thing different so I can experience new things. Next summer we are hoping for Washing D.C. Here are some pics from the South Carolina trip......






This was one of the coolest things about the island......






The deer were so tame! These are some of my favorite pictures. And don't get me started with all the jelly fish. There was some kind of jelly fish convention going on or some thing. We all got stung and mine flared back up even after we got home, so did Dans. Also, it turns out I'm allergic to shell fish. Broke out in blisters all along my gums after trying crab. Now I'm told to never eat fish again.

One more thing before I end this post and consider myself caught up enough. Guess who turned 16 and is now driving??



Well darn. I know I have a picture of her and her car but I can not find it right now. Oh well.

Today I am going to try my hand at gluten free noodles for some soup using the leftover turkey. I found the recipe on a great looking blog which I will share after I try it and post how it went tomorrow. I'll even share pics if I can remember. I've been dying to try some pasta but have not had the guts. This recipe made it look so simple I just can not help myself and with us being sick this just sounds like some thing we could use. I think I will make it for lunch and we can heat it for dinner too.

Bye!