Miss Me?

You may have wondered where I was yesterday.  You may have thought I didn't post because I needed to get to bed early enough to get up early to walk--remember I said that might happen?  Then again, you may not have even noticed I wasn't here.  But whatever you may have thought, if you did, I hope you didn't worry.

As if pepper spraying myself last week and then having a bird poop on my head wasn't bad enough, I was ambushed by the stomach flu.  My stomach ached for a bit on Monday afternoon, but I didn't think much of it--I just figured it would pass (yes, there's an intentional pun there).  That night, though (only hours after the bird attack), it hit me.  And what really added insult to injury was that I missed most of Castle!  ARGH!

So Monday I was up late studying the floor tiles in the bathroom and alternating between shivering to death and pulling off all my clothes, and then on Tuesday, I called in sick and huddled in bed, shivering until I fell back asleep.  I slept until afternoon and then I read for a bit.  By Tuesday night, I felt better but I just didn't really have much to write about, nor could I muster up enough enthusiasm and energy to do much of anything anyway.

Needless to say, I missed walking for the last few days too.

So what have I been doing?  Well, you'd think that with being home from work a day, I would have done a little sewing, but for most of the day, I just didn't feel up to it.  And if I hadn't been preparing a project for Saturday, when I'm hosting the monthly gathering of my stitchery group, I would probably have just stayed in bed and read.  But we've been planning a group project and I agreed to design it.  Want a sneak peek?

It's a gingerbread man.  You'll have to wait to see the rest--I don't want to give it away just yet, but I hope it's going to be cute.  I never can tell with a project until it's done.  Every now and then, my designs are a disaster, but most can be tweeked until they turn out okay.  If this works, I'll post the pattern.  If it doesn't, you may never see this guy in one piece again.

Anyway, I kind of modeled him on these guys.  You can see the similarities, right?

Or maybe I was thinking about this.

Do you think my gingerbread guy would look better with a tie?

Well, it's time for me to get to bed now--I'm probably a little more tired than normal since I'm recovering from this bug.  And now that I had to find these photos to show you my design process, I'm feeling a little flushed too.  Probably the fever again.  "See" you tomorrow.

And The Universe Answered . . .

Sometimes things happen in life that make writing an entertaining blog post quite easy.  Like the other day when I pepper sprayed myself.  The day after that occurred, one of my readers, Donna, said, "I so look forward to reading your blog - so many days, like today, doing so puts a smile on my face."

On other days, it's hard to come up with anything that might interest the people who read this blog because it's a struggle to write something when there's not much going on in my world.  Quilting is a slow hobby and not even I can come up with something new to show and talk about every day.

Just last night, I was thinking about how hard it is to write sometimes and wondering if I could just pepper spray myself every time I have nothing to write about.  I really do like making my readers smile from time to time.

After work tonight, I had to stop at the grocery store to pick up quite a few things that can't be purchased at the farmers' market, like paper goods, cleaning supplies, and beverages.  As I was loading the bags of groceries into my trunk, I felt something hit the top of my head.  I looked up and saw

I hope SOMEONE out there is smiling considering the sacrifices I make to entertain all of you.

Some Quilt Stuff

Another weekend's over and I didn't get everything done I planned to do, but I did do some unplanned things that I enjoyed--it's always a balance, isn't it?  Cooking and food shopping really side tracked me but I enjoyed it and now I have a lot of food prepared ahead.  On Saturday night, with nothing on TV I felt like watching, I thought it would be fun to go to a movie, so Hubby and I went to see Perfect Pitch--and enjoyed it a lot.  It's got some really funny stuff in it, although I think it plays better to a younger audience than Hubby and me.  Still, the music was enjoyable and I felt it was a really fun movie.

I planned to decorate my Halloween tree and take some photos of the decorations, but I didn't really do that.  Maybe tomorrow night.  I DID take a photo of one of my favorite Halloween quilts, though--it's hanging on the wall in my bedroom.  I've shown it on my blog before, but I think it's worth showing again.

I used to belong to a Thimbleberries Yahoo group and now and then we'd have a challenge to make and send in a block.  The person whose block was voted the best (all blocks were posted online anonymously) won all the blocks.  I was super disappointed when I didn't win with my block--it's the one with the bat and pumpkin on the second row from the top, second block in from the right--because I thought our group had done a particularly good job on these blocks.  My friend Eileen won with the block that's to the left of mine--and I had to admit her block was really great, so she deserved to win.

Eileen is a fabulous hand quilter.  One Christmas, Eileen gifted me with the finished, hand quilted Halloween quilt--she knew how much I loved all those blocks, which were made even better by her quilting.  Since that time, I've greatly cherished the quilt.

One thing I DID get done over the weekend was to finish the overdue Comfort & Joy section.  Here it is, all put together:

You can see that it was quite involved with three areas of applique.  I think we only have two sections left--and I'm sure the next one will be due in a couple weeks, so I'll try to get going on it before too long.  But having finished this section, I took the opportunity to clean up the Sweat Shop, sort everything out, and get all the odds and ends put away.  It's funny how quickly things can accumulate!

I planned to design and make a wool gingerbread man arrangement--it's something my stitchery friends and I will work on next weekend--and not getting around to it was my biggest disappointment for the weekend.  Instead, I was sidetracked by sorting out all of my wool, something that happened when I went to find the wool I'd need to make the gingerbread men.  I didn't get all the wool sorted--far from it!--but I made some progress, so I can't beat myself up too much about the gingerbread men.  I'll just have to stay more focused this week to get it done.

I hope your weekend was what you wanted it to be.

You Say Tomato . . .

Because tomato season is drawing close to an end here in California, I thought I'd buy more tomatoes at the farmers' market on Saturday and make and freeze spaghetti sauce for the winter months.  I hoped to find some overripe tomatoes at a good price, but I got even luckier than that.  I stopped at a booth where three or four women were picking through a pile of medium sized tomatoes.  I grabbed a bag, thinking I'd join in because the price was pretty good, but before I started filling my bag, I noticed the seller separating out the less-than-perfect tomatoes and putting them into a bag.  I asked him if he'd like to sell those tomatoes at a discounted price, because they were just what I was looking for; he didn't speak English but a younger man who I thought might be his son interpreted.  They told me I could have the bag of tomatoes for free because they'd just throw them away.  Gosh, you can't beat that price, can you?

This was my bag of free tomatoes.  I found another booth that had overripe tomatoes at a cheap price and bought those too.  All in all, I think I spent under $3 on tomatoes and ended up with a decent pot of sauce.  Want the recipe?

First I roasted the tomatoes.  To do that, I preheat the oven to 500 degrees while I cut the tomatoes into large chunk.

The tomatoes go onto a jelly roll pan (I had two full pans) with three or four cloves of chopped garlic, about 1/4 cup of chopped basil, about a tablespoon of dried oregano, sea salt and pepper--these measurements are for each pan of tomatoes.  I then drizzle olive oil over everything fairly liberally--probably about 1/8 cup--and stir it all together.  Then into the oven it goes.

How long do the tomatoes roast?  Good question!  I meant to time it so I could tell you, but I forgot.  When I started to really smell the roasting tomatoes about 10 or 15 minutes into it, I opened the oven and stirred everything around and put the pans back for maybe another 10 to 15 minutes.  The tomatoes will be slightly browned on top and some of the juice will have started to thicken; the tomatoes will be pretty soft.  That's about the time to take them out.  See?

Next, I cut up a white onion and sauteed it in a frying pan with a little more olive oil.  Once the onion was cooked, I added it to the two pans of roasted tomatoes and put everything into a large pot.

To the mixture, I added about a half cup of wine--I prefer red wine, but I had an open bottle of white, so I used that.  I also added the equivalent of a small can of tomato paste--I like to buy these tubes of tomato paste at Trader Joe's to keep in the refrigerator, so that's what I used--probably about half the tube or so.  I also added a little sugar--probably about two tablespoons.  The sugar cuts the acid in the tomatoes and the wine; I don't add enough to make the sauce sweet; just enough to balance the flavors and make it less acidic.  Then I added a little more salt and pepper to taste.

I love my imersion blender.  I blended the tomato and onion mixture in the pot until it was a bit smoother.  If you don't have an imersion blender, use a regular blender or food processor.  After the sauce was blended, I added two bay leaves.

When I don't add ground beef to my spaghetti sauce, I usually like to add beef bouillon and mushrooms--they take the place of the meat.  That's what I did this time.  I added the bag of sliced mushrooms (crimini, baby bella, or white are all fine) and a heaping tablespoon of bouillon.  A second bag of mushrooms would have been great too, but I didn't have another bag on hand, darn it.  But in any event, neither of these ingredients is vital to a good sauce--it just depends on your taste preference.

After everything was in the pot, I cooked the sauce covered on low for maybe about an hour to allow the flavors to blend and develop.

I ended up with enough pasta sauce for our dinner Saturday night and four containers for the freezer for later in the year--each container is enough for three or four main dish servings of pasta.  And the cost was pretty minimal since half of the tomatoes were free and the other half were pretty inexpensive.

If you still have fresh tomatoes where you live, you might want to try this recipe and stock up for the winter--nothing beats the taste of ripe, locally-grown, tomatoes in season.

Sweet!

Day by day, the Halloween decorations are coming together.  For the past couple years, I've filled jars with candy because, after all, isn't that one of the things Halloween's all about?

What are my criteria for the candy I fill the jars with?  Most importantly, it has to be candy that won't tempt me much.  Yep, the last thing I want is easy access to a ton of candy I can't resist eating, right?  Secondly, it has to look nice in the jars; after all, for my purpose, the candy display is simply a decoration anyway.  And finally, it has to be cheap.

Since I have around ten jars, cheap isn't all that easy sometimes, but I went to a dollar store today during my lunch hour and bought enough candy to fill all the jars--except for one that I already had filled with cajun corn nuts--for about $15.

Here's the full display--this is in my kitchen on a small chest of drawers that I use to store holiday dishes and things.  By the way, that quilt on the wall is the Happy Jacks quilt I designed--instructions can be found in my sidebar under Quilt Tutorials (Happy Jacks Tutorials).  [Remember my tutorials may span several blog posts, so scroll down to the bottom post first, and then work your way up from post to post.]

I hope you have a fun weekend ahead!

Fall Is Here!

How do I know?  There were three things today that tipped me off:

(1) The temperature dropped about 20 degrees, so our highs were in the high 70s/low 80s instead of 100 degrees;

(2) My office held our annual flu shot clinic (yep, I got one); and

(3) It's PUMPKIN time!  Since I spent much of the day yesterday decorating for fall, I was ready today to make my annual trek to the farm stand to get my pumpkins.  For those of you who know the Sacramento area, you might recognize the Davis Ranch at Sloughhouse.

Sloughhouse is famous for its sweet corn, and corn is still in season there.  It's always seemed to me that Sloughhouse corn arrives a little later than most, but then it's still available in October, so I can't complain.  And, besides pumpkins, I came home with a bag of ten nine ears of corn.  (I microwaved and ate one as soon as I got back to the office, so I suppose I can't honestly say I came home with ten ears, can I?)

One of the reasons I go to the Davis Ranch each year is the amazing variety of pumpkins they grow.

These photos don't even come close to showing all of the types of pumpkins they sell.  And I like to come home with a good variety of types, colors, and sizes.  I love those warty-looking pumpkins, don't you?

This was my cart--but I guess I took this photo early on, because by the time I left, it was much more full than this.  How many pumpkins did I buy?  No idea!  I bought several of the small round ones for friends in the office and then, when I got home tonight, I spent at least a half hour wandering around the house with pumpkins, looking for just the perfect spot.  And you know what?  I think I'd like to get a few more!  I know the grocery store is probably the easiest and cheapest place to get the standard variety, and Trader Joe's has a couple of the more unusual types of pumpkins like Fairytale and Cinderella, so I'll just pick up a couple more as I shop for groceries in the next week.  And I love to tuck those little guys here and there around the house, so I'll need to get more of those too.

If you asked Hubby, he'd probably tell you that one of the best things about decorating with pumpkins is that they'll be thrown out when the Christmas decorations are unpacked, so he doesn't have to find room to store them in the garage until next year.  (I suspect if you asked Hubby, he'd tell you he wishes I'd do the same with ALL the decorations!)

I have a few more decorations to finish up around the house, and then I'll take some photos to share.  Are you ready for fall yet?

I Think I Just Pepper Sprayed Myself . . .

I woke up at dawn today, but eventually I went back to sleep for a short while.  Before I did, though, I made the decision to call into work and let them know I was taking a mental health day.  Between Soccer Son's wedding the weekend before last and then my office's mystery event last weekend, I was behind on decorating for fall and on so many other things!  I knew I'd feel better and a bit more in control of my life if I took a day to try to get caught up on at least a couple things.

So I reset my alarm for 8 a.m., with the thought that I'd get up and walk then, before calling into work.  The funny thing was I was so anxious to walk--and I'm seriously not sure if that was "anxious" in a good way or "anxious" in a bad way--that I got up at 7:15 a.m. and turned off the alarm.  Soon I was out the door and on my way.

When I got back home again, I started on the fall decorating, and I barely took any breaks all day except to eat breakfast and lunch.  Because Hubby and I were invited out to Mrs. Soccer Son's parents' home for dinner and to watch the newlyweds open wedding gifts, I had to stop around 4:30 to clean up and dress.  I was surprised, though, that I kept going all day long--I felt like I had more energy than normal, so maybe the exercise I'm getting from walking is helping already.

Once I had cleaned up and dressed, I saw I still had at least a half hour before we had to leave, so I thought I'd make good use of my time by sorting through some things the Wild Child had left on the desk in what used to be her bedroom when she moved to Eureka.  Some things needed to be tossed out, some things needed to be redistributed to other rooms--like a handful of pens--and some things needed to be set aside to ask the Wild Child about later.  I picked up one odd looking thing--it was black and red plastic and it had a clip on it for attaching to a belt or something, but I had no idea what it was.  Should I toss it out, I wondered?  It looked kind of like a guy type of thing from the color and the belt clip, so I was going to ask Hubby, but then I saw a little spray hole, so I turned it away from me and sprayed--yep, something came out, so I put it back on the desk to figure out later.  Maybe I've give the Wild Child a call and ask.

Soon, though, I caught a whiff of something that reminded me of cutting jalapeno peppers in half and scooping out the seeds--in a second, it caught in my throat and made me start coughing.  It occured to me  then that it was probably pepper spray!  Darn!  I was out of that room pretty quickly . . . and so was our cat, Spike, who'd been sleeping peacefully on the bed up until then.

A little later, when I thought it was safe to go back into the room again, I retrieved the pepper spray canister and showed it to Hubby who said, "Well I could have told you it was pepper spray!  We used to sell it all the time at the auto parts store!" 

Really?  The auto parts store?!  I guess I should have just asked him, as I first thought.  I turned and tossed the canister into a basket we use near the front door to collect mail and miscellaneous things.  Maybe I'll take it with me when I walk, although with my luck, if I ever have to use it, the wind will probably be blowing in my direction.

I'm just glad the Wild Child didn't have a taser on her desk.  I'm not sure I know what those look like either.

The Next Little Bit . . .

Tonight I got the next little piece of this section of Comfort & Joy done.  Sorry the photo's a little blurry--I'm not sure why it came out that way.

Maybe in part because it's a close up of the section from the below photo although even that was blurry--

Here you can see where it fits into the quilt, there on the lower right.  The gingerbread basket I showed you last night is right above it; the only part missing now is the piece that will go to the right of the candle--I'm sure I'll show you that in the next couple days.

I'm very tempted to take a mental health day tomorrow and stay home and decorate for fall, but I also kind of feel like going to work.  I know, weird, right?  We'll see how I feel in the morning.  By the way, I walked again this morning and it about killed me.  I wasn't sore at all before I started out, but I got achy real fast and my legs and low back said, "Nuh uh, I'm not gonna do this again today!  Are you nuts?!"  Still, I toughed it out and finished my route, which is about 1.4 miles at this point--I'll add a little distance once my feet stop trying to kick me in the rear end all the way for making them walk.

I'm glad to hear several of you walk every morning too or are considering adding walking to your daily routine.  The fall is a beautiful time of the year to get outside, isn't it?

Yay Me!

Yes, I DID, in fact, walk this morning--a little less than a mile and a half.  I'm a slow walker:  It took me about a half hour or so to walk it.  Florence commented with the suggestion that walking during my lunch hour might be a good idea, and it sort of WOULD except it's still 100 degrees out here during the hottest part of the day, and even when it's cooler, I don't like getting hot and sweaty--even if it's only a little bit--during the lunch hour and then having to go back to work.  I remember back in the day, when I was still in school, and we'd have P.E. and then get dressed again without a shower and go onto the next class--I hated that too.  (Really, I don't like getting hot and sweaty even when I CAN shower afterward, but in over 55 years, I haven't figured out a way to get exercise and not get hot and sweaty, so I just need to make the best of it.  Or move to Alaska, maybe.)

And you know what?  It's kind of nice walking first thing in the morning when the air is fresh and crisp.  So for now, I'll try to get in a morning walk each day and see how it goes.  (I like walking in the evening too, but usually it's dark by that time, and people close to me don't like the idea of me walking in the dark.  Go figure.)

Tonight I have a few minutes to blog, so I thought I'd show you the progress on the Comfort & Joy quilt section that we were supposed to post last Saturday--and this isn't the whole thing.

It's about half of the section.  Anne (Cottons 'n Wool) warned us to start early too, because it's such a large section, but for me, there just wasn't enough time.  Story of my life, right?

So to recap:  I walked this morning and I finished half of the overdue Comfort & Joy section tonight.  Yay!  And I did some other boring stuff in between those two accomplishments too.  Now it's my curfew--After all, I need to get up early again tomorrow.

The Best Laid Plans

I had a plan for today.  I was going to get up, get dressed, and go to the farmer's market.  After I got home, I was going to do some fall decorating around the house.  It's a project I started around the time of the wedding, but I hadn't gotten very far.

The day started on track.  I got up when the alarm cat (Spike, the older cat) started licking us awake, something she's started doing mostly to Hubby lately after I leave for work in the morning.  I got dressed.  Then I brought the boxes of fall/Halloween decorations in from the garage.  I cleaned out the refrigerator.  And I went to the farmers' market.  After that, things began to fall apart.

At the market, I found overripe tomatoes at a discounted price.  Back when I was on vacation, I bought overripe tomatoes from a farmers' market and roasted them; eventually they made a killer spaghetti sauce.  Making more seemed like a really good idea.  So this afternoon, I roasted tomatoes and then I made spaghetti sauce.  Yum!

Also at the farmers' market, I found chickens.  Pasture raised chickens.  Word on the street is that there's a noticeable taste difference between grocery store chickens and "real" chickens and I'd been wanting to try some.  So I bought two, and that meant cutting them up into usable portions to freeze for Hubby and me.

What else?  Ah!  Chicken stock from the wings and backs.  I froze part of that and then I made chicken soup with the other part.

I'd planned to make cheese enchilladas for dinner; that also took awhile.

Can you see how I never quite got around to the fall decorating part of the day?

Now it's Sunday night and I'm no further along on my decorations than I was on Friday.  Darn!  And?  I'm feeling pretty achy today and my bowling fingers hurt.  ARGH!

Now let me tell you about the other plan I've been thinking about lately:  Getting up each morning and walking a mile or two starting on October 1st.  Yep, that's today--or it WILL be today by the time this publishes.  Walking each morning means getting up at least 45 minutes earlier than usual.  Where am I going to find an "extra" 45 minutes in the day so I can walk?  Ah, there's the rub!  So I've been thinking about this and maybe it means I'll need to cut back on blog posting a little--at least on those nights when I'm already up way too late before I even get around to writing a blog post, because I'm obviously going to have to be more reasonable about getting to sleep at a decent time so I can get up earlier.

So, don't worry about me if I don't post; I'm just trying to get some sleep.  But maybe it won't happen that way--or not very often.  Maybe I'll go out walking once or twice and decide I'd rather sit on my rear end and write a blog post each night.  After all, you can see how I am about planning things:  my plans don't always work out, and I'm not very good at getting up early either.  Any idea how I can take a nice, long walk while simultaneous decorating my home for fall and typing a blog post?  As I've said  before, there just aren't enough hours in the day!