Take two

Ok let's try this again. I had this almost completely typed out last night and accidentally deleted it all. So this might be short because I don't remember what all I was going to say. Or It might be long because I tend to ramble. Who knows!

Knitting

On the needles/HOs
Collonade Shawl is around halfway done. I frogged it and started it over using a different second color for the lace pattern. I like it a lot more now. I will show you a picture farther down the post since I'm on my phone and it will only put the pictures at the end.

I still haven't started my socks like I had planned. Been spending time on my super secret projects and my shawl. I can't wait until the baby shower next month to see my bestie's reaction to everything I've made for her baby!

FOs
I have finished another of my super secret projects. I think it turned out well. I will show it after the baby shower in May. Of you can see it in my projects on ravelry or catch a pic if it on plurk. I am anonymous76 on ravelry or ahume08 on plurk. If you are my gifts' recipient to be, please don't go peeking! I'm trusting you in this!

Stash enhancements
I guess you can call these stash enhancements anyway. I got some doodads yesterday at Joann's for some projects I am or will be working on. I got some buttons and eyes and a toggle. I am so excited about these. I haven't ever done anything that required buttons or eyes or any embellishments at all. Pictures at the bottom as usual.

Also I got RAKed! Twice! I forgot to mention the first one last week. I don't have a picture and everything is put up now but I got lots of yarn and knitting magazines along with some books for the kids! I got two skeins of Batik cotton yarn, 100 grams each. Color 1332 lot 2361. It's a darkish pink color. I got six skeins of Rowan wool cotton, 50 grams each. Lot 11C6 and I guess the color is SH959. I'm not used to these labels! It is a very pretty purplish color. Also I got around five skeins of Rowan summer tweed, 70% silk 30% cotton, 50 grams each. It is a purplish red with brown and red flecks I guess. I am bad at describing colors.

My second rack I have a picture of. It was a lovely project bag, some stitch markers, and a stitch holder. The bag is white with green and is so pretty. I hope I can keep it looking white, but as much as I will use it, it will probably turn dingy quite quickly.

I love RAKs and I love getting stuff in the mail. Sometimes I even like surprises. I definitely love this kind of surprise! I have heard from a couple more people that are RAKing me and I can't wait to get the packages. One will come through South Africa air mail and will take a couple of weeks. Oh the wait will feel even longer! The other is a book that I saw that wanted a new home. I am eager to get my grubby little hands on it and to read it. I will remember to take pictures of anything that comes in. I will also probably review the book so I can tell you how awesome it is.

Garden

Nothing happened this week with my garden except that a lot of my seedlings died. All of my sunflowers, zinnias, and marigolds are gone. My okra and watermelon died as well. My peppers and tomatoes are holding on for now. I hope the tomatoes keep going. They were a mix of special seeds that I hadn't had before. A bunch of different types i had never tried before or even heard of. Everything else I had started I can replace as I still have plenty of seeds.

I really need to get my garden dug up. Maybe borrow a tiller from someone. I have hopes that direct sowing will work better for me. I don't know if I have been under or over watering or not keeping them warm enough or not enough sun..... All I know is that most of the ones that started out strong have died and made me sad.

Cooking

So I tried a couple of new recipes this week with good results. First one was a cheesy spinach lasagna. I looked up several recipes over a few days and finally ended up making up a recipe using a little of this one and a little of that one. I wanted to make one with spinach and without cottage cheese. I ended up browning some ground beef with garlic, bell pepper, and onion, adding that to some spaghetti sauce, and then mixing together some ricotta cheese, egg, shredded mozzarella and cut leaf spinach. Then I layered the two mixes with the lasagna noodles. I topped it with a Colby cheddar blend because that is what I had and I wanted it cheesier than most of the recipes I had read called for. It turned out good. We ate it for days and it was less than 500 calories per serving!

The next recipe I made up was based on one I had tried a month or so ago and nobody really liked. I decided to take away an ingredient, add a couple more, and make it all in one pot. I'm not sure what to call it. It is chicken and noodles in a Neufchâtel spinach sauce. I started out by slow cooking about two pounds of boneless skinless chicken breast in water with salt and a couple of chicken bullion cubes. Once the chicken was tender enough to shred it with a fork, I added a chopped yellow onion and three diced garlic cloves. I let is simmer for a bit and then added a can of cream of chicken soup and about a half a bag of egg noodles. When the noodles were almost done I added about a half cup frozen chopped leaf spinach and about 12 ounces of Neufchâtel cheese. I let it cook until the noodles were done and then took it off the heat to let the sauce thicken. It was a hit. I am keeping this recipe for sure!

The original recipe didn't have noodles or spinach and you cooked the chicken in the crockpot with some Italian dressing them added the sauce which was sautéed onion and garlic mixed with the soup and cheese. It wasn't bad. It just wasn't right for my family.


So that is about it today. I will review another knitting book next week. I think I have rambled on long enough today! I am adding pictures of the food as well as the others I mentioned earlier. I hope you all enjoy my posts.

Until next time my loyal tanglers...

Happy Crafting!

Easter candy...yum!

Does anyone else buy candy they know the kids don't like much just so they can have part of it? No? I'm the only one? Ha!

Knitting

On the needles
I started one project this week. It is a Stephen West design called the Colonnade Shawl. I will add a pic of my progress at the bottom of this post. You can also see it in my ravelry projects. I am about halfway finished. I'm not sure I am loving my choice of colors, but oh well! It is the first thing I've made just for myself. It is also the first pattern I've made with a lace section. Wish me luck!

Almost finished!

First off I will tell you about my knitting.

On my needles:

I am a handful of rows away from finishing the baby blanket I have been working on for the last three weeks. It will (embarrassingly enough) be my first finish of the year. I got out of the crafty habit for a while, but now I have no idea why! I am so excited. This blanket and the quilt my aunt helped me make will have pictures taken and ready to be posted as soon as the baby shower in may is over. I wish I could show them off now, but they are still super secret gifts.

UFOs:

I still haven't finished the skirt that I started knitting for my daughter last year. I put it up and haven't worked on it in months. I plan to start on it and finish it in the next month or so. I would like her to be able to wear it when the weather starts to cool down again this year. If I wait too much longer it won't fit, so somebody needs to yell at me occasionally to work on it!

Also the sassy stripe socks I started last year didn't get completed. I took them out of the purse I had them in and my bamboo circular needle I had them on was broken and most of the stitches of one of the socks had fallen off. You might not remember, but this was my first attempt at socks. I went with two at a time, toe up on one circular needle. I ended up making the heel too soon so they didn't fit me. I am going to frog them and start over. I didn't like how the pattern I had chosen was turning out anyway, so they weren't a big loss. I am sad about the needle though. I really need to get a project bag or two!

Future craftiness:

I plan on knitting some vanilla socks with my sassy stripe yarn, hopefully in my size! I also had promised to make some slippers for a friend late last year but never got them cast on after I finished my Christmas knitting. In addition to those two projects and Serenity's spiral skirt, I want to learn to crochet. I started learning last week and hope to take time to learn at least enough to make some hats and baby booties. I also have a few more super secret gifts to make for my best friend and hope to get them done before the baby shower.

Now for gardening and cooking!

Garden:

I still have most of my seedlings alive! Some are looking a little sickly, but I have transplanted some to bigger pots until I can get them out to the garden.

I haven't gotten the garden ready yet. By all zone maps for my area it is still too early to put them out. I need to find someone with a tiller soon, though, so I can get everything tilled up and figure out where I want to plant everything. Last year the squash and tomatoes took over the garden until I could barely walk through without squishing something. I need to plan it out differently this year.

Also I have to figure out where I want a strawberry bed. I bought ten strawberry plants and want to make them a nice bed that Joey won't mow over. I went today to my aunts farm and collected some rabbit and chicken droppings to mix in the horrible clay dirt we have and also some pieces of wood to place around the perimeter of the bed to protect it from Joey. I got a good amount of straw for the bed and still need to go back and get more for the garden after it is tilled. The straw plus the landscaping fabric I used in the garden last year made the weeding a breeze.

Cooking:

As for cooking, I haven't tried a lot of new recipes. I found a nice chocolate oatmeal cake recipe and a butterless oatmeal cookie recipe on allrecipes.com that turned out well. I made them to share with my friend who is with child and deserves some sweets occasionally.

Tonight I didn't feel like making a big meal since it was still close to eighty outside at dinner time, so I threw together some ingredients I had on hand and made a one pot meal. I started with some wheat spaghetti noodles. After they were cooked to almost how I like them, i drained them and I added some frozen bell pepper and onions, frozen chopped spinach leaves, a jar of spaghetti sauce with mushrooms, and some baked chicken I had in the freezer. Cooked it until everything was hot. I had thawed out the frozen ingredients mostly so it didn't take long. It turned out great!

If you are wondering about the frozen chicken, I had cooked six pounds of chicken at the beginning of last month. I always stock up on boneless skinless chicken breast every month because we love it so much. I decided that it would be nice to have some on hand already cooked so on days I didn't want to mess with a time consuming meal I could just throw that in with some pasta or rice and add a few frozen or canned ingredients and be done. I finally got a cast iron stovetop grill a couple of months ago and love how the chicken tastes when grilled on it, so I grilled up three pounds and also baked three pounds for variety. I cooled it, cubed it, separated it into one pound servings, bagged it and threw it in the freezer and have been loving it!

I can't wait until the garden starts producing some fresh veggies for me!
Then I will be able to have fresh ingredients instead of frozen or (ick) canned.

I think I have rambled on long enough for tonight. I don't have anything ready for review right now. I have a few crafting books I want to read and review soon, as well as some magazines and podcasts. If anyone has anything specific they want to hear about, feel free to let me know either on here or on ravelry. I am anonymous76 on ravelry for those that don't know already. Also you can email me at ahume08@gmail.com. I love hearing from my loyal tanglers!

Until next time.... Happy crafting!

I am back finally

Yes it has been around five months or so since my last post. I do apologize for that. I have no computer or laptop that works right anymore. I do have an iPhone now though! So I am going to try it this way. Please ignore any typos or capitalization errors that you come across. I have horrible fumbley fat fingers and always seem to hit the wrong letters.

OK so I am going to try to be more organized with my blog from now on. I am going to separate it into sections. Knitting, cross stitching, any other crafty thing, reviews, gardening, cooking, and family life will probably be the normal segments. I will try to keep the same order so anyone can easily find the section they want to read.

I won't talk a lot today about much of anything. I just wanted to let everyone know that I am back. I plan to update weekly. I will try to blog every Sunday night but some nights will be later than others. I am working on a few projects right now but most of them are super secret surprises for my oh so pregnant best friend so I can't really talk about them as she tends to follow my blog when I remember to post. I am knitting a baby blanket and can only show the color to you because that is all she knows about it. I am also going to learn how to use a sewing machine tomorrow so I can make a cute quilt kit that I have had for a year or so and never learned to make. There are a couple of other things I am making for her, but she has no clue what they could be so I will have to wait until after her baby shower in May to share them with everyone. I think I might put everything in my que and post pics on ravelry as she is not on ravelry, but that will have to wait until tomorrow.

As for my gardening and cooking.... I am still trying out new recipes often and tweaking some to suit myself and my family. I will try to share recipes I find and pictures of what we like. My gardening bug has bitten so I have started a few seeds indoors and am looking forward to getting my garden tilled and prepared for the transplants. Also Bobby has agreed to help me build a cold frame, which I have been wanting since I took up gardening last year. I would love some raised beds and a greenhouse but that will have to wait until we are living somewhere more permanent. We don't plan to continue renting this tiny, falling apart house for very many more years!

Oh! I have a new addiction! Podcasts! Need I say more? I just started listening last week and have came across some good ones. The The Fat Squirrel Speaks is a great video podcast, as is studentknits. I also really enjoy Mommy Needs Yarn, Laugh Love Knit, and knitpurlgurl. Please recommend any that you like. The iTunes search pretty much sucks and I am mostly finding them by hearing about them from other podcasts. As for audio podcasts there are so many good ones I have run across! Just to name a few favorites so far: Knit 1 Geek 2 is awesome, knit.spin.cake is great, knitting rose podcast, the pagan knitter, tvknittingpodcast, with pointed sticks, Yknit, commuter knitter, craftlit, high fiber diet, and The Knit Wits are all great. I think The Knit Wits podcast stopped, but I just started from the first episode so have a lot to listen to before I get to the last one. Again, if you have recommendations let me know. I can't get enough of them while I sit and knit. I also am so totally addicted to one called We're Alive. It is a zombie survival story which is beautifully voice acted and mesmerizing. I find myself knitting furiously while sitting on the edge of my seat waiting to hear what is going to happen. The sound of the creepy zombie calling the others to attack raises the hair on my arms! I am also really into a few more various audio podcasts like Talkin Walkin, Rooster Teeth Podcast, Ronna and Beverly, and The Horror. I like humor, horror, and crafty stuff. Wish I could find one that mixes all three.

The other new thing I am into as of yesterday is plurk.com. I joined so I could follow The Fat Squirrel and studentknits on it, but am already liking it a lot. I am ahume08 on there if you are on there as well.

I am going to end this for now. I need to learn how to add pictures and captions with this app. I will try to upload many pictures that I have taken over the last six months. I have some good ones of food and family. I also want to start reviewing some knitting books and magazines and maybe websites. Also I might talk about shows, movies, and it books that I am into. Who knows where this will go!

For now I leave you with a Happy Crafting and a Thank You for sticking with me!

Getting back into the groove

I have been knitting on my socks and now I remember why I put them away for a little while. I enjoy knitting, I really do, but it gets boring! It seems to be the same thing over and over. I love learning new things, but once I learn them they aren't new anymore. So then they start to get boring. That is why I put away the sweater I was working on, because the row after row of stockinette stitch got very tedious. Then I started on my first pair of socks and had to have a challenge along with the learning to make a new thing, and decided to make them two at a time, toe up, on one circular needle. Then it got boring. Then I decided to make a cute swirl skirt for my daughter. Fun, fun, not so fun, boring, repetitive, tedious. Then it was springtime and I wanted to try for a garden and I put away my knitting stuff and my cross stitch stuff (oh, did I forget to mention the eight cross stitch projects I started and then forgot about?) to try my hand at gardening. You are starting to get the picture, right?

Well, I have been working on the skirt again now that the socks are starting to get boring to work on more than a row or two at a time. I have dug out my cross stitch WIPs and have them ready to work on. My garden is starting to produce less, so I have more time to work on my crafty things. I am still out in my garden a few times a week. My tomatoes are getting bigger and I still have hope for a few red ones before frost hits. I started some more herbs to try to grow indoors, since all the ones outside died before they really got to grow (the poor dears). I haven't been experimenting as much in the kitchen lately. I could only do so many new squash recipes before Bobby finally got burned out on that veggie. He was the only one to like squash until I began to grow it and find all kinds of recipes using it. Now I, and the kiddos, enjoy it as well.  Below are some pics of our kitchen adventures this summer!

Serenity making porcupine balls

Salmon and Garlic Roasted Squash Spears

Salmon and squash again

Chicken, squash, zucchini, roasted red peppers, and tomatoes over bowtie pasta

Tilapia Montreal with garlic roasted squash spears and mashed squash

Check out my mutant cucumbers in the bottom of the pic

My cucumbers never did do well. They all turned out to be pear shaped and we called them cucumber grenades half the time. They tasted fine, just looked funny. You can't tell how big my squash usually were by these pics, but they were usually really good sized and so tender. Loved them. Have some in the freezer for this winter. The okra never really produced enough for us to use. I ended up giving it to my grandma. In the pic above, the okra was almost as long as a banana. i forgot to pick that one for a few days! The beans produced OK after the bugs stopped killing them. I only got about a cupful from each plant. I left the Anasazi beans on the vines to dry. I have quite a few out there right now. They took a lot longer than the garden beans or the kidney beans to start producing. But wow, they really took off.

Anyway... back to my crafting. I finally have my HAED pattern kitted up and ready to go. There were around 89 colors to gather, so it took me a long, long time. Thanks again to everyone who sent me floss! It was such a huge help to me. I am going to wait until January to start on it. I am doing a challenge with some other people that I am in groups with. We are together in a group on facebook called CrossStitchCrazy2012. We are doing a challenge that I have seen some others do this year, which is start fifteen projects on the first fifteen days of the year, and then work on the all year long and try to get them all finished. I am looking forward to it. Not only do I get to work on my HAED chart, but also a few of the kits the kids got me for Christmas. YAY

The many beautiful colors for my HAED chart, the QS Emerald Dragon

The HAED design I am going to work on soon called the Emerald Dragon

OK I am going to end this for now. I hope to have more to show you/tell you soon. I haven't been taking many pics lately, but will try to get some good ones soon. Wish I had a good, digital camera instead of my crappy phone camera!

Well, until we meet again, my craftiest of crafters.........Happy Crafting!

Squash bugs, pickles, and boredom

There still hasn't been anything new to report on my crafting. I am just too lazy to start up again, I guess. I am mostly sitting around on facebook or reading all day. I am doing pretty good on my reading challenge. I have read 93 books so far this year. I think that count includes a few short stories I found online by my fave authors. I am still experimenting with new recipes. I have been cooking different kinds of fish. Who would have guessed I would end up enjoying fish! It still isn't my favorite food, but at least I no longer hate it.

My garden is still doing all right. Most of my cucumber vines have died. As soon as they started growing some cucumbers, the vines dried right up. So did the cucumbers. None made it to more than a few inches long. I brought one in before it yellowed and Bobby picked it up and said "hey, I didn't know you could grow pickles!" Then he laughed his rear off. It really did look like a pickle. I really need to get some pictures transferred to my computer so that I may share them on here!

The biggest problem I have had with my garden are the squash bugs. I know that most people would just pick them off the plants and kill them, but I cannot bring myself to touch them. I have made a soap spray and I go out and spray the plants every time I see some, and I scrape off the egg clusters when I find them. I had to cut off and pull up half of the only zucchini plant that was producing because of these bugs. I am wondering if I had some of those vine borer bugs in there too. The plant was half dead and kind of gross looking. It is doing a lot better now. I thought it would die after I cut so much off of it, but it is looking pretty healthy.

I think that is probably about it. Not much else to talk about. My kids are doing pretty good in school. Serenity is in second grade and reading on a fifth grade level. She has already surpassed the reading goal they have set for the end of the year. They test on words per minute by having the kids read a short excerpt from a story for a minute. The goal at the beginning of second grade is fifty some odd wpm and for the end of second grade is eighty some odd wpm. Serenity is already reading at 128 wpm. Yay Serenity! Of course her retelling score isn't up to goal yet. She is retelling the story at around 33 percent and the goal for the year is 50. I think she needs to slow down on the reading and concentrate more on the story itself. I am still proud of her. She read her little tushie off all summer at the library and started getting into the juvenile sections to pick books instead of the little kids section.

Joey has started to navigate away from manga and YA books a little and has been reading a lot of Stephen King books. He, too, is doing pretty good in school. So far he has a C in French, a B in Biology, a C in English, a D in Algebra, an A in interactive media, and I think a B in intro to 2 dimensional art. If he had actually did all of his homework and turned it in, his grades would be a little higher in a couple of classes. I told him that with it only being the first few weeks of school, he really can't be slacking off on that stuff. I was angry at first, but when I looked at the grades he has received so far, I realized it is the zeros he has received on an assignment here and there that has made his grade so low. If he works harder, then he will have all A's and B's in his classes. So instead of being mad at him, I am just going to ride him a little harder about actually doing his homework and showing me proof that he did it.

All in all, my kids are doing good in school so far. I am going to push Serenity a little more on math and science to try to get her more equal in her education. I would like to see her get the opportunity to skip grades like I had when I was around her age, but that is not going to be my goal. I just feel like she is unbalanced and I want her to be able to do math as easily as she can pick up a book and read it. I have a program on the computer to help Joey with his French and I guess I should find one to help him with his Algebra as well. I feel that he is able to do better, and I want him to have the tools with which to succeed at his classes.

OK. I think I have rambled on enough. I will end it with a thought.......

(I didn't say I was going to share the thought with you though!)

As always, Happy Crafting!

Long overdue update!

Well, I haven't been doing anything, so I haven't had anything to tell! I quit my job at the Dollar Store and have been sitting on my butt doing nothing. Haven't knit anything in months, nor cross stitched anything. I am about ready to get back into it though. I have been working on my garden. Only been harvesting summer squash so far, but have cucumbers and zucchini growing and almost ready to harvest. I have about six tomato plants that still haven't done anything. They are getting big though and I still have hope that they will produce before the first frost kills them off. All my herbs died, so I am starting over and am going to keep them all in the house. Started some sweet basil, dark opal basil (or some name like that anyway), some cilantro, a couple parsley, and some more chives. I will baby these and hope they don't die out on me again.

I even have some corn growing in my back yard! I had a bird feeder out there for awhile before I got rid of my income, and I guess the cracked corn that the birds kept throwing out decided to grow. It is funny to see the seven or eight stalks growing out there. I am going to see if it ripens and I will harvest it for the squirrels.

I have been experimenting on a lot of different recipes. I have a long list of recipes that I still want to try. I wish I had been taking pictures to share with anyone that still might read this blog. Some of the dishes turned out quite lovely. Tonight I made some garlic roasted summer squash and some mediterranean salmon. Everyone liked it, even Serenity and the neighbor girl! LOL.

Well I will end this for now. I am hoping that with the kids back in school I will get back into crafting and blogging. I miss everyone I used to chat with. I haven't even kept up with my yahoo or ravelry groups. It is way past time for me to go back and say hi to everyone.

Until next time my flawlessly faithful tanglers....... Happy Crafting!
(or Gardening or reading, or whatever hobby you got going on)

just another sleepy want-to-do-nothing day

Well, I haven't been keeping up with my blog like I did at first. I haven't been doing a lot of anything lately :) Here is an update for whoever wants to know what I have been doing lately.

I did manage to find a job at the Dollar General Store. I start Tuesday! It is only part time for now. The assistant manager is leaving and if I do a good job as a cashier, then the manager plans on moving me on up to the assistant manager position. I hope that means more money LOL. It is so weird. I haven't worked a steady job in years. I am so used to being a stay at home mom and doing nothing but what I want to do when I want to do it. It is going to be hard to get back into being an employee! I am looking forward to it though. I miss interacting with people other than my kids and my man!

Hmm... other than that there is not a whole lot to share really. I mostly have been reading a lot. I have managed to do a little knitting. I have a couple of pictures of the skirt I am knitting for Serenity. It doesn't look like much yet. I messed up on it a little and didn't catch on for a while, so I am just going to go with it. It just makes one stripe bigger than the others and one a lot smaller. I don't think it is going to bug Serenity at all, so I am leaving it as is. Here are the pics:

Other than that, I haven't been working on any of my crafty things. My socks and sweater are sitting around, watching me sullenly, wondering why I lost interest in them. My multiple cross stitch WIPs are trying to act like their feelings aren't hurt as I ignore them daily. I am a horrible crafty momma lately! I know they will be there when I am ready to get back to them, though, and am not in a hurry to get them finished. I am just in a different obsession right now :) My gardening.

We borrowed a hoe, a rake, and a tiller from my aunt and uncle a couple of days ago. Also a bunch of straw to lay over my garden. We worked for about three hours and got all the grass dug up an moved off of the spot I picked for my garden. Bobby did most of the hoeing and I mostly raked up the big clumps of grass and roots and made a nice worm hill. Any worms and night crawlers we dug up went into the worm hill. The hill is up against the fence that is around my garden patch, so a few of them will likely find their way back into my garden. Bobby managed to till up about half of my garden before the storm rolled in. He covered it with a tarp for now, hoping that any roots left from the grass will die. I have a couple bags of manure/hummus mix that I want to work into the garden before I mulch it with the straw. Most of my seedlings are about ready to be transplanted out there now, but the rains don't want to stop long enough for us to finish getting the garden ready. My uncle came today and picked up his tiller, so we will have to do the rest by hand, I guess.

I have barely been able to move these last couple of days LOL. I am not used to all of this physical activity. I started out with the hoe and really worked my muscles with that. Then, by the time I was done with the raking, my arms where so weak and quivery that I could barely use them. I woke up yesterday morning with my back and legs hurting so badly that I could barely get out of bed. It was actually kind of funny. I need to work on getting into better shape, before my garden kills me :)

I can't wait for the next few dry days so I can finish up out there. I am an impatient gardener. I want everything to magically grow overnight and start bearing. I am ready for some fresh tomatoes and carrots. I am eager to have some fresh, homegrown zucchini to use for baking. Also, this year is the first time I have ever tried herb gardening. I can't wait to have some fresh herbs to use for all the recipes I want to try. If I could wave a wand and have everything ready, I would! But, I have to try to be patient and let everything grow. Let's hope I don't manage to kill off all of my plants before they can produce! I do not have a green thumb at all! So far, so good on the seedlings though. I was surprised by how many seeds actually germinated. Some of the seeds I had were from a couple of years ago. I am keeping all my seeds in the freezer to try to keep them longer. That way I won't have to go buy more next year. Also, I am going to try to harvest my own seeds from whichever plants produce the best this year. I am so excited to actually have a garden! :) I haven't had one in years.



So I will end on that rambling note. I hope to have some great pics of my garden after I get it all planted, as well as some more of the spiral skirt I am making. Here is a link, if anyone wants to see how it should look when I am done, or if anyone is interested in purchasing the pattern:  knit-spiral-skirt

So that is it for now. Until next time my tangled tanglers... Happy Crafting! (and gardening for you that like to garden!)

How I wish for sun and a good planting day

Well, I haven't been keeping up with my blog lately. I haven't been doing a whole lot of anything these last few rainy weeks. I have read several books, came across a couple of new authors and got reacquainted with a few I had read before, and started a new series. I have been slowly knitting on a baby cocoon. I have not been doing any stitching. Me and my cycles LOL. I have been cooking a lot of new dishes. I think I will post a few pics of my cooking. :)

I am finally learning how to make omelets! Here is one with bell peppers and onions, cheese, black olives, and mushrooms. Bobby likes his like this :)

My first attempt at making chicken enchiladas. We all loved them. I ended up with enough filling for 24 enchiladas. We ate on them for three days and were sad when we ate the last one!

This tasted better than it looked :) It is chicken leg quarters baked with potatoes, carrots, and mushrooms covered in a cream of mushroom soup mixed with chicken broth. Even the kids liked it!

Bobby and I loved it. Joey liked it. Serenity doesn't seem to like anything like this. It is Chicken, tomatoes, spinach, garlic, and orzo. Tasty and colorful!

My first lasagna. It looks weird on the one end because Bobby wanted some black olives and mushrooms on his and not as much cheese. It ended up feeding us for two days, plus I have half of it stored in the freezer for a lazy day :) Once again, everyone but Serenity liked it.

Other than the new recipes, I have mostly been cooking my normal foods. BBQ pork steaks, garlic and herb mashed potatoes, and mac and cheese went over really good last week. I made some of what I was raised calling Italian Spaghetti or Goulash night before last. Still eating left overs :) Of course, Serenity doesn't like it. It is just some pasta with ground beef, onion, garlic, italian seasoning mix, and tomatoes. I used canned whole tomatoes with sea salt and cut them into chunks. Good ole comfort food.I didn't cook anything special for Easter. The kids spent the night away from home so Bobby and I just ate leftover red beans and rice with sausage that I had decided to try to make the night before. It turned out okay. I prefer the stuff out of the box. I just need to get the seasonings right, I guess.  Tonight it is just beans n burger for supper. Couple cans of pork n beans cooked with hamburger and onions. Of course I salt and pepper everything I cook :) Usually add garlic powder to at least half of everything I cook as well. I have been trying to experiment with different seasonings, but we usually come back to the same stuff I always use LOL

Enough about food before I have to go cook something! Kids are doing good. I can't believe they both have glasses now. Joey got his a couple of weeks after Serenity got hers. She needs hers for school and for near activities and Joey needs his for school and for far activities. How are my kids always opposites in everything? It boggles the mind!

Joey had to go have an ingrown toe nail cut out last week. That was fun to watch. I had seen it done on Dr. Oz, but not in person before. Today is a check up to make sure it is healing ok. The podiatrist put some kind of chemical on it to keep that part of the nail from growing back. Let's hope this works so he doesn't have to go through it all over again! Want pics of that too? LOL Joey took a couple, but I think I will spare you all from that image!

I have been waiting for this rain to stop and for the ground to dry out enough to till it. I am going to try to have a garden this year. I started some seeds about two and/or three weeks ago. I also bought a tomato plant and had one given to me as well. I have already had to transfer the tomato plants to much bigger containers. A few of my bean bush seedlings are getting too big for their containers that I had to move them into. I hope I can get everything into the ground before they give up on me! I also have some chives starting to grow, some baby carrots, a few bell pepper plants and a couple of banana pepper seedlings that have poked their heads up. About five watermelon seedlings are looking all happy in their container so far. I can't wait to see if this stuff actually grows for me this year! I wanted to do the tomatoes upside down and had some buckets ready for them, but I think they are getting to big to easily transplant them into the upside down buckets. They might be too big to go through the holes now. I don't know yet.

My tomato plants have taken over my kitchen table :)

Some of my seedlings

another view of my seedlings :) See my happy watermelon seedlings in the green container!

I got an awesome box of yarn from a lady this week. It was a Pay if Forward. Basically like a RAK (random act of kindness). How a pay it forward works, for you that don't already know, is someone sends something to someone that needs it or could use it, or just really wants it, then in return that receiver, when they are able to, will do the same for someone else someday. Hopefully I will be in the position to sooner rather than later. I have been looking for a job recently, as Bobby is out of work right now. I might stay in the workforce once he has a job again. It would be nice to have some extra money occasionally. Also, if I don't work, then we will never save any money towards getting married and eventually moving out of this crooked leaky house with the irritating drain problems :)

Lots of little bits and pieces along with the full skeins. I love it!

Some of it was sent for a specific pattern I have for a skirt for Serenity. She loves purple!

 I have written a children's story that Bobby is urging me to send out to see if I can get published. He also suggested making it into an ebook and selling it online. I am not sure where to go with it. His brother would like to illustrate it. If I go that route, I may do the ebook thing. If not, then I guess I need to have it looked at, edited, proofread, and all that and get it sent off to a lot of places that will say either no, or give me no response at all. Yep! I am a pessimist LOL Any suggestions on what I should do, and how are greatly appreciated :)

Until next time, my happily tangled tanglers...... Happy crafting!

If I only had a brain!

So this is just a quick note to anyone interested. I am an idiot! LOL I get an email message every time someone comments on my blog. I always reply to that message thanking the person, answering questions, or just rambling as I tend to do. Today, I noticed that the address that my response went to is that persons name at no reply something or other. That means no one has gotten the messages I sent them! Right? Dang that was a lot of wasted typing, plus everyone must think I am so rude, not even bothering to thank them. Well here is a super mega THANK YOU to everyone that reads my blog, follows my blog, or comments on my blog. I apologize for being so... well .... me! I do appreciate everyone's comments.

Thanks again and Happy Crafting!

Not much going on!

Haven't been keeping up to date on my blog lately. Haven't been doing much though. I go through cycles. Sometimes I am all about knitting, sometimes cross stitching, but I have always been and will always be a reading freak! That is what I have been doing since my last blog update. Reading. I have read seven or eight books since my last update. I usually read a book a day when I am in my reading cycle. I tend to reread a series I have or find a new one when I know I am in the reading constantly for a week or two phase. This time I chose the Rachel Morgan series. It is by Kim Harrison for anyone that doesn't know. I love this series and can reread it and love it as much or more every time I do.

I have managed a little knitting even though I am mostly sitting around with my nose in a book. I tried my hand at knitting a shawl. I chose a really simple pattern and ran with it. It doesn't look like the pattern I chose, since I tend to change things as I knit stuff for fun. Here is a picture of what my family is calling my Fairy Net Shawl. It is a white cotton yarn paired with a sparkley purple, gold, and white yarn. The pictures do not do it justice. Serenity likes it so much that I think I will let her keep it.

I am also working on another baby hammock. I wanted to try it in brighter colors. I will upload a pic of it when I am finished with it. I am only doing a few rows a day, whenever I get an urge to knit.

I did start another cross stitch kit for my daily stitching. It was scheduled to be my Tuesday wip, but I haven't been working on them since last Wednesday. I haven't stitched for a week. Wow, I am being lazy LOL. Just in that reading phase of my cycle. I have a pic of my latest start and a pic of my Cat progress.

I am almost done with the cross stitches on the cat. Just on small area left and then it is on to the satin stitches. Isn't it so cute. It is the only indoor cat I am allowed to have. Bobby doesn't like indoor animals. The things we put up with for love. :)

I have a lot of new cross stitching and other crafty books that I have been getting off of listia and eBay. Here is a picture of some of them. I am really getting a collection going!

I think I got all of these off of listia. The complete guide to sewing book in the upper left was a gift from a lady that really wants me to be able to learn sewing and quilting. She knows I want to, but don't have anyone I know that can teach me. I had won a thinner book from her and she threw this one in for free, even though it tripled the shipping. Isn't she a sweetheart!

I made a huge meatloaf for dinner Sunday using a new recipe I ran across and we ate on it for days! It turned out really good. I took some to Mother (my grandmother that raised me) and still we had a lot left over. So I looked up recipes for leftover meatloaf and ran across a recipe using it in Shepard's Pie. Now I had tried to make a Shepard's Pie before without great success. But I thought I would try it this way. So last night I made the leftover meatloaf Shepard's Pie. It turned out better than my first attempt from last year. I thought it looked really good so I took a picture to share it :)

The problem with it was this. It tasted like what it was. Leftover meatloaf with mixed vegetables and mashed potatoes. I loved how the mashed potatoes get all crispy crusty from the baking though. I think the main issue was that the meatloaf recipe I used made a really strong flavored meatloaf, so that flavor kind of took over the flavor in the pie. I could barely taste the other ingredients. Don't get me wrong, I liked it just fine. So did the rest of the family. But I think that if I ever make another Shepard's Pie, I will just used ground beef or whatever, instead of leftover meatloaf. It is a good way to use up leftover meat though. I also saw recipes using leftover meatloaf in spaghetti sauces and in various pasta dishes. Now I know a few ways to use up leftover meatloaf once we get burned out on meatloaf sandwiches!

So that catches everyone up on my crafting and my life in general. Just haven't been doing much. Bobby's car is still broke down, so he is using mine to go to work and back, so I am stuck at home all day, every day. I spend all that time reading, instead of crafting. I am not sure why. I did get to go to the flea market in Princeton this weekend and buy some yarn that I really love. I have no idea what it is. It looks and feels a lot the Bernat boucle stuff I already had. It is a pretty blue and pink mix. I am using some of it in the baby hammock I am making. So, yep, that is it on the update. I feel kind of bad for not sticking to my stitching rotation, but it is a hobby, so I am not going to beat myself up over it. I know I will get back into it soon. I just needed to read for awhile.

Until next time, my faithful tanglers..... Happy Crafting!