Cat

Although she really isn't one any longer, I will probably always call Samoa a kitten (I called her predecessor "baby kitty" for 16 years).  Her first birthday is Monday.  I can't believe she's a full grown cat already.  I remember picking her up & stopping on the way home at Petco to get her a collar with a bell.  She was so tiny, we wanted to be able to find her, I guess.  That's not a problem, though.  She doesn't hide & is so terrible at stalking (she seems to think that simply crouching makes her invisible) so I took the collar off yesterday (it was getting a tad small anyway).  So, my girl is all grown up & doesn't need her bell anymore.  Here she is right after we brought her home & put the collar on.

I love the pink with skull-and-crossbones collar but I think Sammy is enjoying the unobstructed neck scratches even more.

Sunday

Just got back from taking the pups to the dog park, which we try to do at least once a weekend.  Fortunately, the pond has thawed & Kaycee was able to get her swim fix.  Unfortunately, that means we have a damp & dirty dog.  But, she's happy & both dogs are now asleep on their beds.  Sleepy pups are so cute!  Here's me with Bella & Kaycee at the park.

And after...

I woke Bella up taking the picture.  She was snoring seconds before this.  She's a cutie but man, can she snore!

Back to it

I finally started work on my next quilt project.  It is actually two quilts, one for each of my cousin's two super sweet kids.  Sarah likes horses & her favorite color is blue.  Finding fabric for hers was a cinch, and I even steered clear of stereotypically "girly" flowery prints. Feminine, maybe, but only one could really be called floral.

I'm really in love with these patterns & excited to see how it all comes together.  I just hope Sarah likes them as much as I do.  

Isaac likes Star Wars, the Clone Wars cartoon series.  Yeah... nothing at the fabric stores.  So, I found a twin sheet set & am going to cut that up.  Isaac's favorite color is also blue so I want to find different fabrics (so its not all matchy with his sister's), in the blue family, that have a touch more masculine theme.  This, I've found, is not that easy.  

I don't want just solid colors but I also don't want cutesy theme fabric with tractors or cowboys or robots (those are easy to find, incidentally) just cool, basic theme-free patterns.  This is my quest and I shall succeed (hopefully without too much plaid)!

Brilliant!

For some reason, I wanted beanie-weenie today, yet I had none of the ingredients.  This prompted me to wonder if there's a restaurant where I can get beanie-weenie.  Then, I thought I could open a restaurant with all kinds of comfort food and stuff you had when you were a kid & crave sometimes.  But my restaurant wouldn't be all hoity-toity & try to make a fancy version of beanie weenie. I wouldn't be putting weird ingredients in it and making you feel uncool because you've never heard of the South American tribe who's women have grown the beans for 12 generations in soil rich with diamonds that blah blah blah.  Nope.  We'd just open a can of beans, cut up the dogs & heat it up.  And it would be delicious.

Yeah, so, I made breaded flounder & steamed veggies for dinner.  Tasty... but I still want beanie weenie.

And here's some non sequitur cuteness:

Sick

I've been off the grid for a few days now because I've been sick.  Not totally sure on a diagnosis, I just know I've slept a lot and felt like shit while conscious.  So I've missed 2 days of work, which I really didn't want to do, and still don't feel 100% again. 

Now I'm trying to get to sleep and I'm suddenly feeling super anxious and jittery.  Xanax hasn't kicked in yet, hoping it helps.  Why am I anxious? Wish I knew.

So... a few bad days for Candy, fingers crossed for brighter days very soon.

St. Patty's

I am not even one little bit Irish.  I love Irish food, I enjoy an Irish accent (although Scottish is my fave) and I would like to someday visit Ireland but I can't claim any Irish heritage.  I am German, Polish & Norwegian but, unfortunately, there don't seem to be any holidays in the US to celebrate any of those by wearing a pre-specified color.  Ah well, I wore green anyway.

Clean freak

My hubby is in St. Louis until Sunday morning & I've been using the solitude as an opportunity to clean the house like crazy.  I cleaned the kitchen first & am quite proud of how clean it has stayed.  The red curtain you see in the pic hides our laundry area which is also pretty darn clean now.

I'd like you to take note of my tea kettle.  I cannot express how much I love it.  I'm odd, I know.

On a completely unrelated subject, I have had good luck with store brand foods.  I am in love with Safeway Select pasta sauces, for example.  Tonight, I tried Target's Archer Farms risotto.  I'm no risotto expert, but it was mighty tasty.  

I paired it with some grilled flounder fillets & felt a little fancy while I ate it. 

Hairy fishies

One time when I was little, we went to Pantera's pizza and my dad ordered a double anchovy pizza.  The kid behind the counter said "do you know what those are?" and my dad said "yes, and I want a lot of them".  My brothers & I wanted to try it and my dad let us, assuming we'd hate it.  Instead, we ate all his pizza.

 Today, my dad would have been 65 years old.  I ordered an anchovy pizza in his honor.  I wish I could have shared it with him. 

More baking!

If you aren't from Missouri, you may not have heard of gooey butter cake.  This is a good thing for your waistline but a bad thing for your taste buds.  The yumminess and sinfulness of this stuff is seriously undescribable.  The legend is that some baker made a mistake while trying to make something else & ended up with this:

I made this one to give away & will hopefully be able to control myself and have one small peice at the most.  I can't give you the recipe because it is a family recipe & is used by my cousins at Park Avenue Coffee in St. Louis.  I'm really proud of them!  They competed on Food Feuds on Food Network and won plus they just opened their second location. 

Go to their website & order one.  Now.  I mean it.

Baking

I never buy bananas at the grocery store except to let them get brown so I can make banana bread.  I bake a couple loaves every couple months so you'd think I'd have the recipe memorized by now but I don't.  The recipe is easy to find in my Better Homes & Gardens cookbook (a book I think everyone should own).  I just flip to the pages that are crinkly from so much use & various ingredients getting dripped on them.

So now I have 2 perfect loaves of banana bread.  My favorite part of making it is how much my husband likes it.  

I just love giving people presents that they like, even if it is something as easy as banana bread.

Well done

The tip of the middle finger on my right hand hurts from pushing a needle (yes, thimbles, I know)... but my first quilt is finally done!

There are lines of stitches that look like I was surely drunk while quilting.  The binding is a little wonky in places.  I need a lot of practice to get the corners right.  But, all in all, I'm proud of my first effort.  The perfectionist in me will always see the mistakes but I'm trying to concentrate on the parts I did really well. 

My favorite part was putting together the quilt top and I think I'm pretty good at that.  I'm really excited to start my next project... but I might wait until my finger stops hurting.

Incomplete

Well, I didn't get my quilt completely finished.  As if taking up quilting didn't already make me feel a little bit like an old lady, I had to stop because my back was starting to hurt.  At least I'm smart enough to know my limit & realize that I'd be in hella pain if I didn't stop.  But the quilt WILL be done tout suite.  Oh yes, it shall.  With or without Sammy's "help".

Last stitch

I'm still awake at 2 am and posting to share a proud moment.  About 10 minutes ago, I put the last hand quilting stitch in my very first quilt.  

The white plastic you see is the handy dandy quilting frame I have.  The blue line on the yellow gingham is from a wonderful marking pen (that washes out) that kept my lines straight.  I am so close to being done!

I have my binding (the edge part) all cut and sewn.  The next step is to trim the quilt, iron the binding & then sew on the binding.  The quilting on this one is almost all hand stitched.  For my next project, I'm going to try free motion quilting, which uses the sewing machine.  I've never done this before so I decided to make a pillow to practice on before moving on to a quilt.

I just sewed together scraps from my first quilt.  I'm dead set on at least getting the first quilt done tomorrow (today, Sunday, whatever).  It feels so good to complete a goal!

Big spender

I got myself a present today that cost a whole dollar.  It's a good and useful present, too.  I've been collecting remnants and different fabrics for quilting projects.  They've been sitting in various bags on my supply cart.  Now I have a plastic bin to put them!

At some point I'll probably organize by main color (I'm OCD like that, you should see my closet) but for now I have them grouped for 3 projects I have in the planning stages and then fabric I just thought was pretty & bought. 

I'm a little (pleasantly) surprised by the amount of creativity involved in quilting.  It isn't just squares of fabric that "match" like my grandma did. I have so many ideas, I'm excited to get started! 

Fun cube

I've been told that my cubicle at work is fun.  I like to think so and I hope that's a reflection on the cubicle dweller.  On my monitor riser, among other things, is a mini transformer my brother got me for Christmas.  Sometimes it's a jeep, today it is a robot.

Hump day

The stress I've been under was compounded by (or caused?) some tummy issues that kept me home from work yesterday.  Not at all fun but the scale says I lost 5 pounds.  Trying to look on the bright side!  Back to work craziness today but I like my job & love the people I work with so I'll put up with a little craziness every now and again.

I have nothing deep or cool to say at the moment.  So here's a kitty.