UNCLE!!!

I give up- stop with the snow already! More for mid-week??!!!Notice how quiet Al Gore’s been these days?? I’m going to have to start working on Saturdays to make up for all the snow days…GGGRRR!

A giveaway alert:

Jan at Belafonte Notes is having a 2nd Blogoversary giveaway- and the prize is extraordinary! Check it out and enter- you have until February 2nd.

Yesterday I had to replace the baking element in my oven. Now it seems to run 50 degrees hotter than indicated. To replace the temperature sensor will cost close to $100 for the part, from what I could google. Between that & the $35 I paid for the element, that’s 1/4 of the cost of a new range. Ranges don’t seem to be sale items these days, so I’ll just have to see how difficult this temperature thing will be to get used to, and keep my eye out for sales. The one I have is at least 15 years old. More GGGRRR!!!

The boy sprained his ankle badly at work on his way to clocking out Friday night. His right (driving) foot. His supervisor agreed to put him on light duty, but we still don’t know how he’s going to get there- he & Em are on different shifts. Well, I suppose he may have a day off in the middle of the week for a snow day…

Off to check my baking chicken….

Silent Saturday…

 

Jeez Louize!

It’s been a week since i last posted??

You know you’re  a bad blogger when you don’t even go look at your OWN blog! What can I say- this winter has sucked all ambition out of me! I wake in the middle of the night thinking “Is the furnace working? Are any pipes leaking??” Then when i don’t hear any drips, and the furnace kicks on, I eventually fall asleep thinking, “It’s so cold the furnace is running constantly! And oil is close to $3.50 a gallon, it’ll cost me over $600 to fill the tank again….” and around and around my mind spins.

I’m trying to find my stitching mojo, i think it’s buried outside in a snow bank… I finally picked up December’s Snowflake again:

and this as well:

January’s Santa:

The Quaker Halloween squirrel is finished:

 

but I still have a ways to go:

I’ve got a loaf of Honey Oatmeal Bread spinning in the machine, and I have a handful of soup recipes printed out from Tasty Kitchen. I’d be good to go except I can’t find those 2 boneless chicken breasts I put in the freezer a couple of weeks ago.

 

“Don’t look at me! I’m not fat, I’m fluffy!”

Give away Alert!

I just came across a new blog, I Meant To Do That! on Peggy Lee’s Kentucky Sampler blog. It seems another Peggy is having a floss give-away! She has some wonderful photos of her stitching, as well as her Mom’s stitching. Please head over to check it out.

I’ve been in a stitch-y, blog-y rut lately. I just can’t seem to get in gear to pick up a needle or write a post. Maybe I don’t feel compelled to write because I haven’t been stitching?

It’s my turn for snacks at S & B tomorrow night. I made this:

It’s Almond Poppy Seed Bread from My Best Bites. It’s supposed to be baked in 2 loaf pans, but I only have one, so I baked it in my tube pan. I made it this way in a test run a couple of weeks ago, and it was very good- like a pound cake. I thought it was even tastier after a couple of days, so I made it last night.

American Idol starts again tonight. I haven’t been a regular viewer in the past few years; I was finding the cattle call rounds too painful to watch. They know certain people have no talent whatsoever, why be so mean as to put them on national television for public humiliation? The last season that held my attention was the David Cook year, and even then, I was late to the party- I only watched the contest portion. (Did I mention my huge crush on David Cook?) Anyway, the Steven Tyler/Jennifer Lopez thing sounds intriguing. I read an opinion yesterday that Steven is being a combo of Simon and Paula: honest but kind, which makes me want to watch. I best get supper cooked and the dishes washed!

*sigh*

Shoulda had a haircut Tom.

Take THIS NY Jets!

VB, Lilly spoof coach Rex Ryan's foot fetish: MyFoxBOSTON.com

Oh My!

Posts in 2 consecutive days! We had stitching night tonight- lots of fun with Joanne, Jeanne, Linda & Deb. Joanne, our hostess, made Pioneer Woman’s Bacon Wrapped Parmesan cracker-thingys (I think that’s what she called them!)Yummy!

I finally took photos of Quaker Halloween:

Here’s a close-up of Mr. Squirrel:

The chart shows him holding an acorn bouquet, and I think there’s another acorn to the right of his tail, which is not quite finished. I believe that the motif I’ve started to the lower right of Mr. Squirrel is the bottom right corner of the design.

UGG! They just teased the weather forecast: single digit temperatures. My icicle lights will be up until July!

SnOwCD

That would be OCD when it comes to shoveling snow. I can’t seem to go out and just do my own car; I have to do the whole driveway in my own precise methodical way. And regret it for the following 3 days.

Then come in & have a big bowl of oatmeal. Not instant or quick-cooking, but the old fashioned kind- YUM!

with milk & maple syrup! This is Silver Palate brand oatmeal- very tasty, a little more coarse than Quaker Oats.

In preparation for our snowstorm, i baked a cranberry bread (thanks for the idea Jeanne!) AND a batch of brownies last night. I think it’s PMS.

The 2 guacamoles helped out this afternoon for round two(they also came out to clean out the rest of their own cars in the am), and although I picked up the shovel “just to make a path to the cars”, I handed my weapon over to Em when they came out, and picked up the windshield brush/scraper to clean off the cars.

Chickie is exhausted from all the shoveling and is now sacked out on the couch.

Take Your Pick…

Digging out….

I’m alive!

I have been stitching a little, too:

my alternate December ornament:

This is Rosewood Manor’s “Victorian Lace Snowflake” from the 2007 JCS ornament issue with DMC……..crap! where did my thread go???? on some kind of antique white even weave. And here’s my January ornament:

Heart in Hand’s “Wee Santa 2010” on a 28 ct. Dirty Linen with suggested threads. This is one of my presents from Em & DB.

I also resumed my Quaker Halloween, but alas and alack, no picture today (I don’t feel like it!)

It hasn’t been very conducive blogging-wise lately. I’ve been fretting about the mess my house is in, but I took care of a lot of it by finally getting sick of my Xmas stuff being up and finally putting it all away Saturday. The mess made me not have a good place for photos. Plus Chickie keeps wanting to go out a soon as I start something, be it cooking, cleaning, typing, napping; you name it, I start to do it, and she needs to go out. She’s had a few accidents in the peeing department. So when I get an inkling that she needs to go, we GO! (Not that she’s good at giving hints either- I think she’s reading Stewie’s blogs over at the Spinster’s.)  Other  than that, she’s well on the mend, although the vet neglected to sign the spay certificate, which means I have to stop there one day after work so I can get my reduced-fee dog license. Here she is bring guilty:

Here’s a picture of Aslan:

He loves to hang out under the lamp. He hasn’t figured out that the fluorescents don’t emit heat like the incandescent. I’ve been giving him a spoonful or so of Chicken’s canned dog food (a new post-surgical development) twice a day to try to put some weight on him. He loves it!

I made a big pot of chili Saturday, and had it cooking in the oven while I packed things away. It came out very yummy!

My local town rebels and I have been keeping tabs on our town government still, just to keep them honest. It seems like they routinely have pertinent issues on their various agenda that require our vigilance.

More snow for Wednesday. My boss has already said the words “snow day”! YAY! Of course. it’s all dependant on those wicked awesome meteorologists. So accurate, dont’cha know.

You can always count on Dave Barry!

Dave Barry’s 2010 Year in Review - Dave Barry - MiamiHerald.com

Error report…

So I saw the latest JCS magazine, Jan/Feb 2011, on someone else’s blog recently, was it Glenna’s?

I had to buy it because of this Praiseworthy Stitches design:

If you are also contemplating doing this design , please be aware of an error. On page 19 under the list of required materials, they ask for a “16” x 14” piece of 32-ct Winter Sky linen from Lakeside Linens”. On page 21 is the stitch count and design size info, and the Design Size is indicated at: 8-1/2” x 19”. OOOPS! in a big way if you’ve already bought or cut the 14” wide fabric and started stitching! Honestly, it took me 3 or 4 flips thru the pages looking for the stitch count info because I was trying to determine the fabric required for a different count, and when I did the math for the 32 ct. (my OCD finally came in handy because I did ALL the calculations for 28 ct up thru 40 ct. and wrote them in the margin) I finally saw the inconsistency. Why this info isn’t on the same page as the Materials & Floss key is beyond me. Though if I thought about the layout of the ornament issues for more than the 2 minutes it takes to cause a huge headache, I’d see that JCS is being ENTIRELY consistent in their magazine design layout.

So ALWAYS DO THE MATH!!!