30
Jun, 2008

a canoe morning

this morning, after several weather-cancelled attempts to go canoeing, we were finally able to get out on the water. i was rather late arriving to meet my canoeing friends because i couldn’t find my driver’s license and one of my credit cards (panic!), but i finally gave up and just drove to meet them and we set the boat out on a very swollen river (have you heard about the somewhat damp weather we’ve been having?)

there is something so calming about canoeing. even when the wheels inside my head are screeching, “where’s your driver’s license? did you accidentally drop it in the street?” the soft splish and pull of the oars is soothing, the views are beautiful,

and the active wildlife is a welcome distraction.

(if you look really closely in this one, you can even see a dragonfly flying just above the last duck. happy accident!)

standing on one foot is somehow more relaxing for ducks?

i don’t know how i did this exactly. the only thing in focus is the duck’s wing–which, in reality, is flapping madly.

but each time i go on a canoe ride with this friend, no matter the season, there’s something interesting in nature to see. whether that is lotus flowers in bloom, mating fish roiling the surface of the water, or sandpipers. today’s fascination for me was a whole bunch of swallows’ nests built on the underside of a bridge. some of the nests had little baby swallows and the adults were zipping around finding food for them. so cute! so graceful when they fly.

(sorry this one’s blurry, but can you see one bird perched on the edge of a nest and another bird (right side of the photo) in flight?)

on the not-so-natural side, i enjoyed this little piece of graffiti:

when i got home, i made myself some lunch, still fretting about the loss of my cards, and then decided that for dessert i wanted some grapes. i ate some fresh and decided to freeze the rest. i love frozen grapes in the summer! like mini, natural popsicles. without the stick. so not so much popsicles i gues but oh well, you get the idea. they’re delicious! then, that gave me the idea to make another childhood summer favorite comfort food–peanut butter balls! or at least, that’s what we always called them. the cookbook we got the recipe from calls them “honey milk balls” which never made any sense to me, and so i can never remember how to find the recipe (how do you find a recipe in the index when you don’t know the name? and it’s not with the “cookies” section, it’s under “snacks.”) so i called my mother to see if she knew. she thought they were called “honey peanut butter balls” so that at least got me close enough in the index to find them. so i was recounting my card-loss woes to her and while i was telling her my sad story, i thought of one last place to check. guess what? bingo! there they were. yay! but i still wanted to eat peanut butter balls (they’re even better frozen).

here are two of the p.b. balls i made today, sitting on top of a cute recipe card i made a few years back for a library program. the recipe i used called for p.b. (i used natural and it worked okay), honey, powdered milk and oatmeal. the recipe i made for the library program was a little less chunky, and i think i might like it better, so here’s that recipe (minus the instructions for how to make them look like honeybees–clue: use sliced almonds for wings):

pooh’s peanut buttery honeybees

1/2 c. peanut butter

1 tablespoon honey

1/3 c. powdered milk

3 tablespoons sesame seeds

2 tablespoons wheat germ

mix it all up, form it into balls and freeze if desired.

tonight i made this mexican rice recipe and homemade tortillas. the rice smelled heavenly, but i think next time i’ll use a little less tomato paste. other than that, it was much closer to “restaurant” mexican rice than other recipes i’ve tried. the tortillas turned out fantastic. i took the recipe’s author’s advice and substituted one cup of whole wheat flour for one cup of the white flour and they had so much more flavor! and they weren’t as “whole-wheaty” as the ones in the grocery store always end up being. i made a whole batch, so we had some leftovers. i’m trying an experiment and freezing some and leaving the rest in the fridge and we’ll see how these do the second day. beanz–you’d asked me how i get those yummy “brown spots” and tonight i figured it out. high heat and negligence. the first 2 or 3 didn’t get the spots because the pan still wasn’t hot enough yet (too impatient to wait) but finally, the pan was hot and i walked away and did something else for a few minutes and when i came back to flip it… ta-da! delicious tortilla freckles.

my other tortilla experiment this evening was honey on a tortilla for dessert. when i was a kid, similarly to the homesick texan, my family liked to eat at pancho’s. they had the best sopapillas. little puffy dough pillows, filled with air and not coated with that ridiculous powdered sugar that every other restaurant since them seems to feel obligated to use. you’d bite off a tiny corner and pour honey inside the pillow and then eat it, the soft dough soaking up the honey and dripping it out of the bottom corner, making your hands all sticky and sweet. (excuse me while i drool….) anyway, tonight’s honey-on-a-tortilla was very similar to the sopapillas from my childhood, only they weren’t puffy. but the taste was similar and i highly recommend it. yuuuuuuum.

we ended the day by going to see the newest pixar movie. what a great way to end a very nice day off.

p.s. i am soooooooo close to finishing the secret quilt. just the binding and then the mailing and then i can show it to you!

Posted in sporty stuff, summer, yum | 5 Comments
29
Jun, 2008

my myopia

i am very near-sighted. this morning, when i woke up, i was looking out my window (before i put my glasses on) and noticing how pretty the sunlight spots danced in the leaves of the tree outside my window and i wanted to try to take a picture to show you what they looked like. this was about the closest i could come. a video would be better, but i think my video-capable camera would insist on the picture being in focus. i’m especially fond of the circular blobs of light in the bottom right hand side of the photo above. people sometimes ask me if i’d ever get the surgery that fixes your eyes and i just don’t think i will. i actually enjoy the ability to instantly put the world into “sharp un-focus.” i find it especially helpful when planning quilts (“does this fabric go with this one?”) but sometimes i just enjoy the ability to look at the world through unfocused eyes and consciously think about what i’m actually seeing (i.e. circles of light and green instead of leaves on a tree). i imagine it’s similar to how some people who are hard of hearing find relief in being able to “turn off their ears” whenever they want to. what about you? do you have similar “weaknesses” that you find yourself not minding, or actually enjoying?

Posted in photography | 1 Comment
23
Jun, 2008

pioneer weekend

i had lots of little happy moments this past weekend, but i was enjoying them too much to stop to blog. one happy thing was that i finished a big step in my surprise quilt (woo hoo!) and the rest should go much more quickly. maybe i’ll get to show it to you before the end of summer! let’s check my camera and see if i caught any other happy moments:

oh yeah! my fabric for my second quilt square in the common threads exchange showed up. what fun fabric! i’ve got a good idea brewing for this one…

this was a great sandwich. avocado, turkey, havarti, spinach, sliced cucumbers and a little black pepper all on a slice of homemade bread. i had forgotten how much i liked cucumbers on sandwiches–yummy crunch! loved the side of fresh peas too. hooray for early summer!

another delicious sandwich. i cooked a chicken this weekend. every 2 months or so, i throw a chicken in the crockpot (sometimes i bake it in the oven, sometimes i just cook it on the stove, whatever’s convenient) and when it’s cooked and cooled, i pick the meat off the bones, portion it into snack-size baggies, then freeze it for easy use in soups and casseroles. this particular chicken was from ruegsegger’s and …. wow. i’m pretty sure mr. happy stuff got sick of hearing about how great this chicken was. i got sooooooo much meat from that one bird! there was meat between the ribs! even the back ribs! when i got done bagging it (i think there were 10 bags. normally, i get 6-8), there was a little left that i didn’t really want to squeeze into another bag and it wasn’t enough for its own bag so… i decided to make some awesome chicken salad. oh man. chopped the chicken up even more fine, added some celery, grapes, chopped pecans, chives and a generous dollop of mayo and…. oh, yum. and more peas and some early beets i picked up at the farmer’s market this week and quick-pickled (so easy. and sooooo much better than the grocery store variety of pickled beets). as you can see, i couldn’t even wait until i’d photographed it to start in on this sandwich.

*for more of my favorite summertime sandwich recipes, see this post from the archives*

what else is on the camera?

strawberry shortcake! i went strawberry picking twice this past weekend and i couldn’t resist this recipe, so… despite the lack of whipped cream, it was delicious. and also made a good breakfast with milk poured over it. and might (just might) be the reason i gained two pounds this week. luckily, i biked to work today!

so in addition to picking and processing 15 pounds of strawberries (we’re trying them simply chopped and sugared this year instead of going the jam or whole-berry route. i think it will work better for us.) and pickling beets and cooking and picking an enormous chicken and then cooking all of the bones and scraps into some beautiful chicken broth (and then freezing everything except the beets), i also got some quilting done and boy do i feel like a wholesome pioneer.

mr. happy stuff snapped this super cute picture of a happy kitty. doesn’t she just make you want to smile?

p.s. one more food note– tonight i made sesame noodles from this super easy recipe. we didn’t have
red peppers, so i just used the veggies we had on hand–broccoli, green onions, garlic scapes, carrots and a generous handful of spinach. i also used natural peanut butter and i was worried that it wouldn’t work, but it worked beautifully. either i was really hungry, or this recipe was really very good. i’ve had good luck with most of the recipes from this magazine and i love their cookbook. i think this particular recipe might be a keeper. we’ll see how the leftovers taste!

Posted in crafty stuff, yum | 1 Comment
20
Jun, 2008

running free

yesterday morning, i left the house for a quick 2-mile run and about half a block into it, realized i’d forgotten my sacroiliac belt that i’d been wearing as part of my physical therapy to recover from my whatever-the-heck-happened-to-me.  (overuse injury?  bad shoes?  not sure.)  anyway, last fall i’d been experiencing these sharp, twingy pains in my hips when running, so i’d stopped running and eventually ended up in a pt office doing strengthening exercises to try to solve the issue.  in addition to the exercises, they also gave me this belt that i can cinch around my hips that helps to sort of keep me aligned and prevents most of the twingy pain, so i can continue to run.

like i said, i forgot the belt yesterday.  but i decided to run through it and just stop if it started to hurt.  here’s the happy part:  it didn’t hurt for the whole two miles.  huzzah!

Posted in Uncategorized | 2 Comments
16
Jun, 2008

biking to work

today was the last work day for a looooong time that i had no programs and no meetings scheduled.  in additon, after a week of biblical-style rain, the weather was beautiful, so i decided to take advantage of these factors and bike to work.  as an extra bonus, mr. happy stuff and i both left the house at the same time for work, both on our bikes and both going (at least for the first mile or so) in the same direction, so we got to bike together through the arboretum.  what a great way to start the work week!

i enjoyed the whole commute so much that…. i might consider doing it again.  as often as possible.  at least a few times a week?  now if only i could find shower facilities….

Posted in sporty stuff, stuff that makes me smile, summer | 3 Comments
15
Jun, 2008

random bits of a relaxing sunday-ahhhhh……

after working saturday, it’s always nice when the second day of the weekend is blissfully free of plans.  we woke up late, had a scrumptious pancake breakfast (my favorite way to start a sunday), made a loaf of bread, then had time to do some crafting.  i printed the cards for mona jean and then made envelopes from a maine cottage catalog.  aren’t they cute?

i bought some fabric from maine cottage awhile back and they sent me one of their catalogs.  while i will likely never be able to afford any of their furniture, there were super cute little illustrations throughout the catalog that just begged to be made into envelopes.  actually, i wouldn’t have been able to afford the fabric either except that it was on a fantastic sale (down from $50 a yard to $15!) and it was pretty much exactly the fabric i’d been looking for for a project.  hopefully, i’ll be able to finish that project soonishly and show you what i mean.

anyway, in case you haven’t ever made your own envelopes, here’s a very nice tutorial that will give you even better results than i got.  (mine were done the slapdash way, but seem to have turned out all right.)

i also got to do some more sewing on the quilting project that will take forever and is still a secret.  oooooh! i wish i could show you!  but i’m getting closer to being done.  slowly, but surely.

then, we biked to church and on the way home, mr. happy stuff spotted a turtle by the side of the road and we turned around to look at it more closely.  it wasn’t a particularly noteworthy turtle, but i just like the fact that he noticed it, called my attention to it, then we turned our bikes around to observe it closely enough to notice that it had both yellow and red stripes on its legs and shell.

we ended the day on another yummy note with my favorite bean and chicken burritos.  these take a little more time than the canned-refried-beans + shredded cheese + tortilla variety that mr. happy stuff eats when a quick meal is called for, but they’re soooooo tasty.  since we had all of the ingredients on hand and cooked, they came together relatively quickly.  here’s the (slapdash version of the) recipe as i made it this evening:

yummy bean and chicken burritos

cooked and shredded chicken + chili powder + salt + pepper

black beans (rancho gordo variety) + green onion + lime + cumin + salt (this particular combination always makes my nose swoon with pleasure)

cooked rice + cilantro

shredded cheese (i used medium cheddar and something called “apple jack” that seems to have nothing to do with apples, but is a quite tasty jack-style cheese nonetheless)

flour tortillas

on top of a square of foil, place one tortilla and top with rice, beans, meat and cheese, fold the tortilla around the filling and wrap it tightly in the foil.  repeat until you run out of ingredients.  bake foil packets at 350 degrees for 15 minutes, or until hot.  these are so simple, but so yummy.  and they re-heat beautifully if you have a toaster oven.  (microwave would work okay too, except for the whole foil thing.)  sadly, i have no photos of these, but i think you can imagine the yum.

anyway, it was a very nice, car-free, spend-free day.  i needed that.

Posted in crafty stuff | 2 Comments
11
Jun, 2008

new wallpapers

i’ve added a few new desktop wallpapers! check them out at the link at the top of the page or click here.

Posted in photography | 1 Comment
11
Jun, 2008

slapdash seamstress vol. 1–car litter bag tutorial

way back in february, i saw this idea posted on craftzine and it got me thinking. i like my car’s litter bag for its basic functionality, but i’m not so crazy about the boring black or the way it attaches to the back of the seat (some very complicated cords that i’ve never really figured out). so i decided to make a new one. it took about an hour, but it probably would have been faster if i hadn’t been trying to photograph every single step. because bella dia says i should, here is a photo of the finished product right at the beginning (so you know what we’re making).

isn’t it cute? the fabric was from my stash. in fact, all of the supplies were from my stash. and here is a picture of everything that you’ll need:

1. a piece of fabric, not too heavy, not too light. measurements are somewhat flexible (more about that later)

2. a plastic lid from a yogurt or cottage cheese type container

3. velcro

4. elastic (boring plain kind and some fancy stuff) (fancy stuff is optional)

5. a button

here’s what you do:

step 1: determine the size of fabric you will need. i’d recommend about 18-24″ long (depending on how long you want your trash bag to be), but the width will be determined by the circumference of your plastic lid. you can find that size one of two ways

measuring the lid and adding an inch or so for seam allowance or…

you can do it the slapdash way and just wrap the fabric around the lid and sort of eyeball it. cut the fabric to the correct width and length (more or less).

step 2: hem the bottom edge.

one of my favorite slapdash tricks is to use an iron instead of pins. iron the bottom edge of the fabric up about an inch or so, then fold the raw edge under and iron that too so that it looks something like this:

then sew it down to create a tidy hem:

step 3: create a channel for elastic at the top:

iron the top edge similar to the way you just did the bottom edge, then tuck elastic into the channel:

leave the elastic long for now (we’ll cut it down to size later) and sew the channel, being sure not to sew over the elastic:

step 4: line up the two long sides (the only remaining raw edges) and sew the long seam, creating a long fabric tube:

don’t sew over the elastic (just stop before you get there).

step 5: cut a ring from the plastic lid:

make sure that the opening is big enough for your hand to comfortably fit through.

step 6: position the plastic ring in the bag:

to make sure it’s in the right spot, pinch two edges together. they should just about meet in the middle:

step 7: sew the plastic ring into the bag:

tuck the ring under the presser foot and sew right along the edge. try to maintain a constant distance between your seam and the elastic edge of the bag. i found it easiest to control this seam with my left hand tucked through the bag like this:

step 8: cinch the elastic:

pull the long end of the elastic to cinch the top of the bag. again, make sure it’s not too tight for your hand to comfortably fit through. also, make sure you don’t let go of one end of the elastic like i did. oops. when you get the elastic the way you want it, sew back and forth over it several times to lock it in place:

and now you can trim the elastic down to size:

step 9: add velcro closure to bottom. (this will allow for easy trash removal from your finished bag)

fold the bottom edge up

then fold it up again:

then, mark (with pins–this is one of the few uses i have for pins) where these two edges meet, like this:

this is where your velcro will be sewn.

you could get all fancy-schmancy and measure your velcro, or you could do it the slapdash way and just lay the velcro on the bag and cut it to the right length. cut two pieces.

stick your place-marking pins into the velcro so you don’t forget where it goes. be sure to only pin through one layer of fabric (not both). and sew it on:

tip: the piece that’s farther up the bag is easier to sew if the bag is inside out. (pictured above)

it should look like this:

step 10: make the strap. hmmmm…..you should maybe do this earlier in the process somewhere, but i’m not exactly sure when that would be….

cut a small strip of fabric (let’s say 4″x 10″? but the length sort of depends on your car and the size of the headrest posts). iron one edge over and hem it:

then fold it, lengthwise into quarters with the raw edges tucked inside and iron it flat, then sew it closed:

sew the non-hemmed end (raw edge tucked under) onto the back of the bag:

oooh! look at that. i used a pin for its intended purpose! be sure you’re sewing this on the back side of the bag or you’ll have to pick the stitches out and sew it again like i did.

then, tuck a loop of the fancy elastic into the hemmed end of the strap:

and sew it tightly:

step 11: sew on the button

you’re done! here’s the original boring black bag:

and here’s the new, pretty bag:

any questions?

Posted in crafty stuff, tutorials | 3 Comments
08
Jun, 2008

and the winner is….

the winner of the blogiversary giveaway is…. mona jean! congratulations! i’ll contact you later about your prize preferences. thanks to everyone for your lovely comments. i enjoyed reading about your happy things and learning about your favorite parts of “happy stuff.” thanks again to everyone for reading my blog over the years. i’m looking forward to blogging for many more!

Posted in Uncategorized | 1 Comment
06
Jun, 2008

don’t forget!

just a reminder that the deadline for entering your name in the blogiversary giveaway is tonight (june 6) at midnight.  as a reminder, you will not be obligated to accept any prize you do not want, i’d just love to hear from you.  so far, there are only 9 comments, so your chances of winning are good!

Posted in Uncategorized | 2 Comments