Necessary Chocolate

Baaaaa. And cluck.

That's me, bleating. When I see a good idea on a blog, and directly copy it, I do feel a bit of a sheep.

But these easter basket egg cartons on design mom were too good to pass up. Especially when the oldest two Arizona kids are serving church missions. They're focusing on the true meaning of Easter, so I thought I'd send some pagan ritual spring stuff their way. Easy-to-mail Easter baskets? That I can paint and feel like I'm in elementary school again? That will give me an excuse to buy more candy than I need? Oh yeah.

I was lucky. My local Fresh Market carries eggs in really nice egg cartons. Only the tops needed to be painted; the lids could be lined in fun paper.

They were so much fun to make, that I decided that my grandmother needs one, too. Shh. Don't tell her.

I unwrapped her candy and nestled it in candy cups so that she could help herself whenever she wants it. I love that it's color coordinated, and I'm quite proud that I did not try to color coordinate the boys' cartons!

Decorating eggs is next. More bleating to come.

 

Cookies!!!!

My litany the past two months has been, "I wish that someone would show up on my doorstep with cookies." Yep, that's how pathetic I've been. But look!

My cousin Alyson sent me cookies!!!! And her daughter made me a duct tape rose. Just because they thought I needed them. They're carrot cookies, and apparently my grandmother's recipe, and in a cookbook that I compiled for the family. How did I miss that recipe? 

My parents will be quite relieved not to hear my whining on the subject any more. And now that my oven is FIXED - it only took a month - I can start showing up on doorsteps with cookies.

Immersing myself in mindless sewing

The perle cotton came! We had a snow day this morning! Now to get the binding on the quilt and ignore all other responsibilities.

If only. Class has gone too well the last few weeks to mess with it...

Oops. I lied.

Not quite ALL of the Christmas decorations are down...

While waiting for the perle cotton

I'm ANXIOUSLY waiting for the red perle cotton to arrive to continue quilting. Looking at the order form, it looks like the pure red skein that I though that I ordered is really "Red Copper." A couple of other shades of red are coming, too, so we'll see.

In the meantime, speaking of red.

I've had the onesie cookie cutter FOREVER, just waiting for the right event. Back in January, when there was a baby shower at my house, and my oven still worked (it's been down for a month now) I knew it was time to break out that cutter. 

Full disclosure: the cookies are red and white because my Christmas Decorations weren't down yet. So I begged the organizers to keep the decorations to red and white (as opposed to pastels) so that I wouldn't look completely pathetic. ("They're not Christmassy - they're wintery!") I'm happy to report that the decorations are now down. All of them. As of last week.

 

 

Nice, mindless therapy

It's been a rough two months - trying to iron out some issues with a project at work, while wanting to hide under the covers and never come out. Not the hard stuff that most of you deal with. Just my not-so-hard stuff that feels very hard in my admittedly pampered world.

But there was a wonderful, if exhausting, week in Utah with family and a few friends. Some really great days at seminary. Kind notes from those who were aware of my plight. Thank you!!!!

And then, there was a snow morning last Friday. A real, honest-to-goodness snow morning. Class was cancelled, I went in late to work, and I figured out how to free motion quilt using my 1960s-70s Elna SU.

It took a darning foot, a silicone mat, and lots of BBC mysteries. It also took unwrapping yards of thread that had managed to wrap their way around my bobbin casing. Not sure how that happened, but it explained all of the machine tension issues I'd had.

Sometimes, I just want mindless sewing. A project that requires almost no decision making, so that I can immerse myself in making but not in thinking. Now I'm waiting for some red perle cotton to arrive to finish up the quilting. And then I can put the binding on, sit in front of the TV, and sew the binding down. That sounds pretty heavenly to me right now.

And that's the long version of why the reading prizes aren't done yet. Thanks for your patience!!!