November OMG - completed!

My Snowman and Silent Night wall hanging was completed last night! This is machine pieced as a sew along with Jacquelynne Steves and then I hand quilted it. Excuse the cat hair - Peanut needed to test the softness for his nap yesterday. 36x36 inches.

Linking up with the November OMG.

 

Hand quilting done.... now to the binding.

With another 2 hour meeting this morning I was able to finish stitching the border on this wall hanging.

I just need to trim it up and make and attach a red binding. It is looking really good for meeting my November OMG goal. Here is a shot of the back where you can see the hand quilting a little bit better.
 

Emily is finishing my Mom's orange salad. She requested homemade chocolate cake for dessert tomorrow so we are on tap to make that next. 

Last night we did make a veggie lo mein recipe that the chef at school made the last block days before break. (both kids are in culinary this semester) It was mostly to demonstrate knife skills and different preps of food. Emily wrote down the recipe as he was cooking it and we tried it last night. A few went back for seconds and it was deemed 'add to rotation' by all of us! It took me about 50 minutes from start to finish making it in the wok. I did let the kids do a little of the cutting.

I added the recipe to my recipe tab at the bottom but here it is if you are looking for something different to try. I forgot to get zucchini and had to try 3 stores to find the bok choi. You really could adjust and modify the veggies as you see fit.

Chef's Lo Mein recipe: (He used this to demonstrate knife skills)

I medium onion - chopped.

2 carrots - cut on the diagonal in slices.

2 green peppers - julienned

2 zucchini - julienned and diced (1/2 and half)

8 -12 ounces of baby bella mushrooms - sliced

1/4 of a cabbage - (chopped like grass)

2-3 leaves of bok choi - dice the white part and chiffionade the green part

1 clove of garlic, minced

fresh ginger - diced (I did a little over a tablespoon)

2 eggs

1 pound spaghetti

Kosher salt

Canola oil

soy sauce

honey

saracha

sesame oil

Prep all veggies first (chef put them all on a baking sheet). I used our wok - on 375 for temp. Medium high heat if using a skillet.

Once heated - add some oil to the pan. Add a pinch of salt with each veggie addition! Add each of the veggies in this order one at a time - Onion, carrot, pepper, zucchini, mushrooms, cabbage, bok choi, then the garlic and ginger until fragrent. Add 2 eggs and toss everything around. Add the cooked spaghetti and separate it. Add soy sauce just until the pasta starts to turn a light brown. Add a little honey (a couple of tablespoons) and mix it. Add a little Saracha (the kids added a few tablespoons before I stopped them from adding more!), toss, then turn off heat and add a little sesame oil.

My birthday present arrived last week....

I got the companion sets to go with my 8 inch cube for the Accuquilt. I almost got a small hst die as well but took it out of the cart. When I snapped the photo of the dies - turns out there is a 1 inch finished hst in this set! I have a feeling I'll run a lot of my smaller scraps through with that die next year. 

I don't think I did any stitching at all yesterday. It was all about shopping after I finished working - Walmart and then Publix after dinner for the things I forgot (or someone did not put on the list). Still I managed to forget the soft Kleenex for my Rudolph nosed girl. Hubby is out this morning for a blood draw so he has been texted a list. I was thinking Monday late afternoon would be 'calmer' than Sunday afternoon.... nope! 

We did have the boy's catch for dinner last night. Greg cooked that up while I  made Rissotto for the girl since she refused to try it. I think it was redfish that they caught. She had a very small portion - which means she really is sick. Normally it is 2 big bowls full! The fish was not fishy at all - very light and was pretty good. There was a little left over and the boys will probably have fish taco's for lunch today.

I'd better get ready to log into work. I have a 2 hour whole company meeting and I plan to hand quilt my snowman quilt during it!

 

Slow Stitching progress on Snowmen....

This is the progress shot this morning - 3 of the 4 blocks are hand quilted! 

 I finished off this 3rd block last night. I decided to continue the X in the corners since I did that in all the other blocks... and had no clue what else to do there!

Block 2

The first block that I started on last weekend.

This is the one I will start working on shortly. First - I think I will make a batch of scones for breakfast. Everyone is sleeping in the house but I still wake up a bit after 7AM every day! I am wanting cranberry orange... but have no orange so I think I'll make my yogurt scones and do some with blueberries on top and some with dried cranberries. The recipe I use is in my recipe tab - I got it while up in Vermont from a bakery that used to be in Cabot. They are really yummy... and I happen to have plain yogurt in the fridge today!

I have been working away at my brown hexagons this month. I prepped a slew of them last weekend and will need to prep the last bunch later today. I have 2 in sets of 4 and 4 in sets of 2! These are a nice quick project once they are all prepped and ready to pick up by my recliner or in the car line or at horses with Emily. I have been making one per day this year (only a little behind this month!) in the color of the month going along with the Rainbow Scrap Challenge. I decided November was brown for me and will hit black and grey next month.

After stitching the 'binding' down and doing a quilting stitch about 1/4 to 1/2 in from each edge, I am whip stitching them together. Linking up with the Slow Sunday Stitchers.

The boys had an early morning yesterday and did a fishing charter out of Crystal River. They were to go out in the gulf but with the cool front going through and high winds, the guy called Friday night and asked if they wanted to reschedule or just stay in the rivers and catch and release. They opted to go and do the rivers. 5 hours on the boat and they had a great time! They were catching fish like crazy and did manage to catch a few to take home. The captain filleted them and put them on ice in the little cooler they took. They are in the fridge now - but might get frozen today for a meal later this week. Not sure what they caught - Greg has the few photo's on his phone but I think they were red grouper?  They saw lots of wildlife - pelicans and tons of birds and even a manatee or two! 

I spent the late afternoon working on the pantry! Emily came in from chicken duty and is very particular on how things should be so she ended up taking over but I was not allowed to leave the kitchen and was organizing things into groups as she took them out and then handed them back over as she decided where to put things. Someone might have dumped Hershey's cocoa powder in there so there was a bit of a mess to clean up - I got the sweeping and mopping duty.  Aidan looked in there last night and said there is nothing in there! Sigh - their 'snacks' for lunches were gone for the week.... so Em might have made a batch of brownies last night for their nighttime snack! Now I know what I have and what I need (heaven forbid there is only ONE can of corn in there.... but 6 chick peas!) Did I mention my girl loves corn? Someone figured baking would happen this month so Sam's size flour, sugar and powdered sugar are at the bottom and out of sight are the big bins where I keep the 'open' ones. I'm guessing about a week before it is all messed up!  

The kids are off school this week as we celebrate Thanksgiving here in the US. I took my 15 pound turkey out of the freezer and put him in the fridge on a platter Friday night. I hope he is not still frozen Thursday morning! Have a great stitching week everyone.

I'm going to try this Cinnamon Apple Cider Bread today too - I have cider in the fridge that is not going down so this might be a good place to use it! 

Full stop and more Hexagons in brown...

I did a little sewing to expand the rows on Full Stop. I think I 'might' grab the purple and red row and combine them into one - that's a lot of blank space in those rows!  I have the pink row at the bottom but moved it up a little.... now that I am thinking of changing the red/purple row... we will see how they look after that change. I hope I get a little time to play with that tonight. The kids will be officially on Thanksgiving break at 3:45 Friday and don't go back to school until the 29th. I hear Christmas decorating will be happening in and outside of the house! 

I have prepped oodles of brown hexagons and a few are into the light brown or beige category. I was surprised with the variety I had on hand. These are the first 8 sewn into their groups of four to add to the pile of over 300 of them. I should get a couple more of these sets completed at horses tomorrow with Emily. The boys are going out on a charter in the gulf to fish in the morning. We will see if they come home with anything!

I was asked how I was connecting them. I am just putting 2 right sides together and stitching them together. It looks a little messy on the back... but how often does anyone really look closely at the back? 

Excuse the cat hair - they need to 'test' the softness of everything in the house. 

Linking up Friday with the RSC

 

November OMG progress

I finished quilting the first block and moved onto the second one. Amazing that you can make progress if you put the phone down and stitch instead! I'm hoping to make more progress over the next week with less car time bringing the kids to and from school. They are off all next week for Thanksgiving holiday. 

 

Slow Stitching Sunday

Cooler temps in Florida this morning has me smiling at this snowman! He has not gotten much attention this week but if I can put my phone games down and pick up the needle and thread I should get progress on this guy this week.

Some of the brown hexagons I have been working on this week waiting to get their quilting stitches in them. 

 One down and 6 to go for this batch.

Linking up with the other Slow stitchers over at Kathy's Quilts.