Friday, July 05, 2013

Past my bedtime Friday night

Crossing things off the list - the list I didn't make until early this morning, that is is full page and a half long. Ugh.

Fun things first. Since Wednesday, I've finished all the quilting on a little I Spy quilt. All that is left is to trim the batting and backing and attach the binding (which I made before I even began to piece the top; while the idea of choosing the binding fabric once you can see the entire quilt is appealing, I hate being so close to finished and having to pull out and cut fabric again). I'll take pictures to post this weekend.

More fabric fun - I've pulled a bunch of fabric from the stash for pillow covers. Since there is an established color scheme for the living room, I'm finally getting around to  adding some toss pillows. But being me, I can't go the simple route of sewing two squares together and calling it a day. Again, I'll take pictures when I'm done.

I'm not sure there was a pressing need to clean out and organize the spices, but I did it anyway. I keep a small, two tier lazy susan in the cabinet for the spice bottles, plus an area next to it for the stuff that doesn't fit (either due to bottle height or simple lack of space) on it. On the shelf above is a small container with the extras - the duplicates that were bought because I didn't think I had any. Thankfully, that container is very small.

That naturally led to cleaning out all the condiments on the refrigerator door. It didn't take very long, but did make me realize once again that I'm very "out of sight, out of mind".

The big hunk o' beef took it's time in the oven today. The final result? Eh, it's a good thing it took almost no effort to cook. While it came out exactly medium rare, it is still rather tough. After dinner I froze three medium containers of slices, one large container of slices and a rather large chunk (my poor hands were tired of slicing). It may be a bit tough to simply defrost and use for sandwiches, which was the original intent, but I can see chopping up that big chunk to make shepherd's pie. All in all, not something I'd bother with again.

What's summer without watermelon? I had a seedless "personal" size melon to cut up today. Given my distaste for sticky fingers, I have a very precise, least-contact-possible with the sticky fruit way of cutting it up.  Hard to think that back when I worked for the catering company, it wasn't unusual for me to carve two or three watermelon baskets for the weekend's events. Maybe that's when I developed the stickiness aversion.

Off to the quilt shop tomorrow, as it is bonus bag/19% off day. They do them once a month, and I've set myself a monthly budget for quilt-related supplies. There is a whole different world of things you need with an embroidery machine - different thread than what you use for regular sewing or quilting, stabilizers (and there are at least 15 - 20 different kinds), special needles...it's taking a while to build up the stocks at home. Fortunately, there don't seem to be any "embroidery police" (unlike in quilting, where the "quilt police" like to criticize anything they don't deem to be "done right") and I've had some fun experimenting with different (read: less expensive) ways of doing things.

The rest of the list consists of necessary, but not necessarily fun stuff. The idea is to knock out as much of that as I can after I get home tomorrow, and save Sunday afternoon and Monday to play. Sew, read a book, make blueberry cornmeal pancakes for the freezer.

We'll see if that plan comes to fruition.


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