Savoring Sunday

After a delightfully late morning on Sunday, I was happy to find a text message from Sue.  In a few short minutes, it was planned, I was through the shower, and we were off for a road trip!!

Unfortunately for all of us, our 3rd posse member was gone!  Hmpf!  However, her driveway was the perfect spot for a meet-up and parking lot.  😀

We landed here at the end of the road.

I wandered the fabric & patterns aisles.

Sue played with one of these:

It was a beautiful day for mid-February so we walked to the downtown to a nicely recommended spot for a yummy lunch!  Back at the shop, we loaded up with all we needed for the day.

It was just a great day together with lots of visiting, quilt chat, and a few purchases.  😀

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Prep for GAPS

I’ve known about the GAPS diet for several years and with several promptings and some learning, I am about to try it for myself.  I have several reasons but a big one is that while I’ve had great improvement from the HG eating plan I’m on along with my fibromyalgia treatment (which now I really don’t have FM symptoms anymore!!  🙂  ), I feel that after 6 years of this eating plan, I should be much better in regards to my blood sugar issues and not so sensitive.

I’ve done a lot of reading and gotten good help from a few friends that have either tried it or are on it now.

GAPS diet website

Help for getting started and for recipes  I’m also getting her daily emails & using her 30-day ebook.  Quite helpful!

Last week I worked on getting some food ready for me.    I made:

• 6 quarts of chicken stock
• 6 quarts of beef stock
• 10 or so bags (indv servings) of chicken
• 13 bags of roast beef
• homemade sour cream (verdict is still out)
• homemade sauerkraut (still sitting)

I think that because I’ve been carb-free and sugar-free already that I’ll move quickly through the first few phases.  And my hope in the long-run is that I’ll be healthier/better for doing this and will be able to eat more at the end of GAPS than I can now on my HG eating plan.

Here’s to a cup of broth… CHEERS!

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Saturday Smorgsboard

Today had all sorts of things thrown into it:

• The usual… some laundry
• I put the binding on the president’s quilt — all 368″!  Time for the binder to have a project
• A phone visit with a friend and plans for sewing day  🙂 🙂 🙂
• I offered leftovers for lunch  🙂
• I kept babysitting my homemade sour cream – sure hope it turns out.  I’m giving it more than 24 hrs in the cooler as it doesn’t seem to keep very warm even tho I give it hot water about every 6 – 8 hrs.  ?? Advice?
• Finished, strained, and jarred for the freezer… the beef stock = 6 not-full quarts
• Made face wash — after 10 months off  🙂
• And finally cracked into the TQS Block of the Month for 2012!!  WooHoo!!  It felt good.  I cut the lengthwise binding strips after starching that yardage.  This will be the 3rd quilt with lengthwise bindings cut at the start of the project.  I’m liking this!!  Then I started cutting for month 1 and put the pages in the binder.  Since I only had about 30 minutes there is more play planned there for Sunday.

• Topped off with a great sermon at church tonight, Culvers, and shoe shopping for JP at Shopko.

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Gifts

… and then she skipped a day with postings…..

Besides a warm hug, fantastic homemade lunch, engaging conversation, and time with a friend, last week’s visit also included gifts!!

Christine made Phil some sugar cookie bars that looked EXACTLY like the recipe photo.  (ohmyword, she has a whole basket of sprinkles!  She didn’t even know how much I LOVELOVELOVE sprinkles.  In my previous life, ahem!)

Both JP & Phil were pleased with the offering and they quickly disappeared.  🙂

She made me this totally cute and fun journal!!  We both work at journalling but she works it much better than I do….

Isn’t this just perfect?

And in my car is a CD that I keep enjoying, Conversations by Sara Groves.  🙂

There are some people in the world that are just good at things like this.  She is one.

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A Visit

Last week, I finally got my visit with my friend, Christine.  It was a beautiful sunny day as I headed out.  Hello, road!  Nice to see you!!  🙂  Much better than the week before when we were blanketed with fog.

It was SO nice, I actually made it there faster than Google thought… so gave my hostess a big surprise!  😀

We had a great time catching up, I got a tour of her new house, she cooked :), and we talked quilts and quilting and fabrics!

I had taken along a quilt I’m putting together as Christine was one in our exchange group.  She got out her quilt…

And then we laughed at how we made one block in memory of our mutual friend… nearly the same fabrics!!

Don’t hold your breath over seeing mine finished yet this month… it needs more borders and is pinned to the wall right now while other things of life take priority!

Thank you, dear friend, for a WONDERFUL day!!  I hope we can get together again soon.  It is so much fun with you.

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Heavy Fog

Thursday we had such heavy/dense fog that I couldn’t see the trees along our creek, less than 1/4 of a mile away.  So I had to cancel my plans to visit a friend 2 1/2 hrs away.  Sad.   We’ve rescheduled so I get to anticipate another trip soon.  🙂

Friday was still foggy but maybe we could see twice as far as on Thursday.  During the night, the fog had frozen on the trees!  It was pretty (would have been even better with sunshine!) but it did some damage as well.

Our first pine tree in the row lost a large branch.

And when it came down, all the frozen frost fell in piles.

Pretty but very cold!  :shiver:

Thankfully there wasn’t much wind so the covered electrical lines stayed put and we kept our power.

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T-Shirt Quilt

Oopss… sorta forgot to show you the finished product. 🙂   Here are the first 2 posts on getting the tshirt quilt started.

The Beginning

Starting Piecing

Here is the final result!  I finished quilting it the weekend K was home for THE birthday party so she got to see it then.  I love striped binding cut on the bias.   🙂

(I am SOOO very anxious to get my photo shoot set-up completed….  )

Border quilting above.

The backing is turquoise flannel.  The borders had a floral design and then I used that idea to do an all-over design on the main body of the quilt.

I pieced a section of the back with some of the filler fabrics from the front and included the label in that section.

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