Baking, reading, and Olympics

Today is a cold, dreary day.  We have had snow flakes spitting off and on all day.  It is the type of day where you really don’t go outside unless you are really and truly an outdoors person or if you need to run and errand – like go exercise (which I did).   Now though it is time to just sit back and enjoy the inside and hope tomorrow will be warmer.  I will tune in to the Olympics sometime today or this evening to see how it is going, I haven’t watched it today yet.

Yesterday we ran to Little Rock to meet up with daughter and her hubby to go to the Arts Center – the exhibit was nice but much smaller than I thought it would be and no gold and glitter among these Egyptian pieces.  All pieces were more of the ceramic and bead jewelry type of items and a couple of mummies.  Everything was great to look at although my husband and I both thought that the cards all of the information was written on could have been larger – is age creeping in here I hope not!

When we got done with the exhibit we left the kids (kids to me – not to them they are in their late mid-30′s) and headed over to Sam’s Wholesale and  Barnes and Nobles for a quick look before we left for home – wouldn’t believe the weather – snow flying everywhere – and it had been in the 50′s the day before – it was melting as fast as it was hitting the ground so no worries about travel.

At Barnes and Noble I always look through the quilt magazines to see what is new.  Now and then they will have an overseas magazine and I always look through them to see what is going on in the quilting world away from the states.  I found a great one from New Zealand — and the best – it had a quilt border in it that I love and I think I will use that one for the Little Brown Bird quilt instead of the one that comes with it as it is one of the main parts of the quilt that I thought was just a bit too fussy for my taste. (saying that I should actually mention although I love the quilt I find a lot of it a bit too fussy for my taste and I intend to change it a lot – when I get done it most likely won’t even look that much the same as the original as I am planning on substituting some blocks for others that I have found and making some of my own design also).    The magazine I found is simply “New Zealand Quilter”.

this issue has such a simple quilt on the front of it I was surprised - most magazines tend to put something a bit flashier on the cover. I'm glad I opened it up to look at it and found the border inside.

The is the border I liked. It is from an award winning quilt by Margaret Matthews (2007) called "Roses for Me" and in the magazine it was the final of a 10 part series. I'm so glad I happened to pick this issue up, it has the pattern pull out included.

So that is news on the quilting part of my day (yes I have been busy with my applique border and I have 1 1/2 borders left to do).  Today was a baking day also.

Blueberry, Banana, Walnut Muffins

1 cup of quick oats
1/3 cup oil (I use canola)
1 cup sugar
2 eggs
1 teaspoon vanilla
1 1/2 cups flour
1 teaspoon baking soda
1/2 teaspoon baking powder
1/2 teaspoon salt
1 small carton of vanilla yogurt (6 oz)
1/2 cup milk
1 mashed banana
1/2 cup chopped walnuts
2 tablespoons ground flax seed
1 cup blueberries

Mix all ingredients together except the blueberries.  Stir them in after all is mixed.  Bake for about 25 minutes at 350 degrees.  Makes about 21 small muffins (this depends on the size of your containers).

some of the muffins - as you can see I use a variety of containers, the ones in the back are the aluminum foil toss away and the red ones are microwave/oven proof silicon rubbery things I found these awhile back and wanted to give them a try and they work great. You kind of just pop the muffins out. I had six more baking when I took this picture and they are in a muffin tin. I have very large blueberries frozen from my little brother's berry farm as you can see in the photo - a couple berries and you have enough in each muffin! I have only about a cup of frozen berries left from the crop in June.

my afternoon snack - my very nutritious blueberry muffin and a cappuccino - of course I went and spoiled the nutritious part by having some chocolate afterward can't be perfect LOL after all I was hungry I had gotten in an hour of exercise after lunch!