I can not believe at times what litter people throw out in the countryside!! About once a month I walk along our property line that borders the highway to pick up trash out of our ditch. Sometimes is worse than others – today was one of the worst I had seen in sometime. The area I am talking about is less than a tenth of a mile long and I just about filled up a 13 gallon trash bag. I wish I had taken a photo of my collection!! I picked up a ripped pair of shorts! 3 socks, a hat, beer bottles, plastic coke bottles, a empty beer case cardboard box, empty trash bags – plastic.
Shorts and socks though! I do believe that I have never picked those up before. Beer bottles yes – every week there are beer bottles in our ditch – why – we live in a dry county (no alcohol is sold) people drive to the next county over to get alcohol and can not wait to drink before they get home and are drinking and throwing out their empties along the way. We live in what is referred to as the Bible Belt and dry counties in the south are common — although a lot of people do drink — they vote in dry and say it is bad for the youth, drunk driving ect and let the next county get all the tax dollars from the sales – doesn’t make sense to me but there you go I am a transplanted Yankee 
and we all know Yankees do not have dry counties!! None that I have heard of that is.
We have gotten the yard work done this evening and got the grass cut while it is cool outside – the heat wave finally broke and it was nice today and tonight will be in the upper 60′s (make that lower 60′s I just checked) I believe and the next night too!! It feels so good. One more day to go – tomorrow all the food stuff and bathroom stuff needs to be put in the camper. I turned the refrigerator on this morning in the camper to get it good and cold before I start packing the food in it.
I did not work on any Jane triangles today although this evening I will cut one out and prep it and maybe start work on it tomorrow. I won’t be busy all day!
by Karen on June 29, 2010
in quilts
I was quite busy today with errands but while I was watching the morning news and then the evening news (why do I watch the news it is always the same stuff – habit I guess) I managed to finish another Dear Jane triangle.
- 4th triangle on the top row starting from the left side
We have been making head way on getting ready for out trip. You know one of the hardest things for me is clothing!! It isn’t that I am stylish or anything like that LOL – I am a t-shirt/jeans type of person. It is the range of seasons that we will be traveling in. Here in Arkansas and for the first week we will be gone going up through Nebraska we will have summer weather – Nebraska will be cooler nights then here. But when we get to Wyoming – it is time to layer. Mornings will be cool and so will evenings. Some day times might only be in the 50′s although more likely in the 70′s and maybe the 80′s at least for a couple hours at least. Nights can drop though to the 40′s or below that. So I need a variety of things but I can’t pack a lot – laundry must be done about every 5 -7 days or it over takes us. I try to a take a little of each and then just wear the same stuff over and over again – gets a little tiring but not enough room to pack a lot!!
I generally start to pack and then run out of room and have to go back through the stacks and say ok – I can do without two of these pair of jeans – or I can leave some of these shirts at home you get the picture – It will take me 2 days to get clothes figured out and then I will still realize after we left that I could have left more of it at home LOL I have to keep reminding myself that I tend to do laundry often so I really do not need a lot – when on the road – there just isn’t room to store a lot of dirty clothes and also it is a small camper and do not want to stink the place up!!
I will get it figured out – it is just going to take me awhile
Such a busy day. I did get one more triangle finished this morning so will post that first – this is the 3rd of the 52 needed – I think I said I needed 48 the other day – wrong – 13 on each side, 4 sides makes 52. Long way to go. I have been quilting on the Christmas quilt too every evening and short spells in the day and although it is half finished there is a lot of quilting to do still.
3rd triangle
I love homemade granola for breakfast cereal. I know that I am not eating a ton of sugar first thing in the morning by eating my kind and not the store kind which quite often does have a lot of sugar in it. Sometimes I put dried fruit in it but most times I do not put dried fruit in it but add frozen berries to it instead along with the milk. I found this recipe quite a few years ago and I have cut the recipe in half.
Home Made Granola
5 cups of quick oats (recipe calls for quick oats but quite often I use whatever I have on hand which is usually not the quick oats most times steel cut and it turns out the same) (EDITED: I didn’t mean steel cut oats – I meant Old Fashioned - sorry)
1/3 cup oil – I use canola
1/3 cup honey
1/4 cup brown sugar
1/4 cup ground flax seed (optional – high in omega 3)
1 cup chopped walnuts
1/2 cup chopped almonds
if you add fruit like raisins or other dried fruit add what you want the recipe calls for about 1 to 2 cups (add the dried fruit after the baking process or they will get too tough)
optional: I have added 1/3 cup of coconut and that is good too
Put all in your mixer and mix for about 3 to 5 minutes until all is well coated with the oil and honey. Put in a high sided baking pan. Bake at 350 for 12 minutes – stir mixture about and bake for another 12 to 15 minutes until it s lightly browned. Let it cool completely and put in a large ziplock bag or a tightly covered container. With the nuts and fruit the mixture makes about 6 or 7 cups. Serving size is up to you – I use about a 1/2 cup with milk and fruit. (it is filling)
I love this stuff and eat it more for breakfast than any other breakfast food and rarely buy the sugary cereal from the store. I do miss this when we travel. I make a bag of it before we leave but I don't bother to make several bags as it will kind of go stale after awhile. When this runs out I will be looking for it in the health food isle as it is better (I think) than the cereal isle foods - less sugar) - but not as good as homemade.
It looks like our weather might finally be turning a little and we will be having cooler nights for the rest of the week. This will come in very handy for us while packing the camper and cleaning up the yard and the house before we go. The entire yard needs to be cut and that is best in the morning to do. I am having to water plants this evening. It has been so hot and I have not been paying attention to the plants. I noticed today that the bed the furthest from the house is drooping badly so I have put the water on it this evening and will let it go for several hours. Hopefully that will perk it up some. Maybe the hottest spell this summer has already happened? and from now on it won’t be so bad and we will get rain too? one can hope!
Do you all make check lists when you are going to travel? I find that my list’s grow every day – I think I have 4 of them now! LOL I can’t possibly forget anything can I? you bet! I’m sure something will be left behind. Today we drove to our daughter Melanie’s house in North Little Rock to drop off the 2 houseplants and the 2 outside porch ferns and for a last visit for two months. She will give them tender loving care until we are home again. She was going to bring them home with her last weekend but then didn’t think about until she got here that there would be no room for plants with the big dog in the car! We knew it would be too hot this afternoon to do anything anyhow so told her it was no problem to drive in this afternoon on her day off and take care of it. We had wanted to stop at Camping World anyhow to see if there was anything they had we wanted to pick up for the trip. Found a nice sturdy step for outside the camper. Occasionally depending on the unevenness of the ground the bottom step coming up into the camper can be a little high. This extra little step will come in really handy.
I have been crossing things off of my list’s and then remember more things to add to them. If I don’t write them down I will forget for sure.
I will be so glad to get out of this hot weather and move on to places that have at least cooler mornings and evenings. It will be so nice to look out the big window in the back of the motorhome and possible see wildlife or the snow capped mountains when I open my eyes in the morning (after I put my glasses on that is! – every thing very far away is blurry until then) We stopped at Barnes and Nobles also and found a book on traveling through Wyoming. Even though we have been through the state numerous times we have not spent as much time there as we will be this time and it will be a good read for finding out of the way places that we might not have thought of or seen before. We already know of some places that we want to see again that we have seen in the past. We do intend to see a lot of the Oregon Trail sites. We have visited some of the places when the girls were young but have not been back to many of them in years.
We intend to visit Fort Laramie and Independence Rock to name two places. Many more and I will fill you all in on as many places as I can while we travel. I hope we will have internet access much easier than in the past with this new smart phone that we have. I guess we will soon find out how well it works – if not then we will be visiting libraries and coffee shops as well
I have another Dear Jane triangle cut out and ready to start piecing if I get around to it tomorrow.
I have all of my quilting things packed for the road – the only project that I am working on this week is hand quilting the Christmas quilt. I really do not have anything else handy to work on. I just did not feel like quilting this afternoon and felt more like piecing. I thought what the heck why not get started on the triangles, after all I know I will not want to quilt all week. First I cut out the 56 needed plain triangles from the butter cream batik fabric and got done with that. It was so hot outside and I didn’t feel like being out there so I thought why not start piecing the triangles. I got done with two of them! (48 needed)
here are two - I believe this is the left side from the bottom of the border row. I have them just sitting on my table with the plain triangles next to them so you can see how it will look. The red batik will be the red scallops.
The triangle are 8 inches tall at the center point by 5 inches wide (with seam allowance) at the bottom and about a half inch wide at the top of them.
I would have worked on my Star Crazy quilt but I am caught up on that. Instructions for July doesn’t come out until the 1st of the month. We had planned to leave on the 1st but now have decided on the 2nd due to needing reservations as it will be so close to 4th of July. Would rather have the reservations and know we will not have to look hard for a place to camp the first night. We picked out a place in Missouri for the first night and then we have 2 nights in Southeastern Nebraska for over the weekend.
I have not decided what to do next on the Little Brown Bird quilt of which I really need to stop referring to it as that because I have decided to use only 4 blocks from that quilt and design something totally different – so right now I guess it will be “the quilt with no name” (sounds like a Clint Eastwood western movie!). I will let you all know when I decide what to do with it.
I am doing well with getting all my quilts towards the finished point for what I started with this year. At the end of the year I will have to look through all and go through my list and see what I finished/started. I do not think I will finish the Dear Jane quilt this year but you can never tell maybe I will. It just depends on all of these other things and if I loose interest once again, but by taking the 2 months travel time off from it maybe that will renew interest in it this fall.
I made this pie for Father’s Day and I was going to take a photo of it to go along with the recipe and I didn’t – but sure enough if you search on google you can find anything. I had found this recipe in a magazine about 3 years ago and have made it several times – I need to make it more often – very easy!! Anyone can make it and it will turn out. I found a photo of it on google. (CJ this is the recipe I told you about that you wanted)
White Chocolate No Bake Cheesecake Pie
1 cup vanilla or white chocolate chips
2 packages 8 oz each cream cheese – softened and cut in cubes
1 carton – 8oz. whipped topping like Cool Whip
1 graham cracker crust – or Chocolate Oreo Crust
1/3 cup English Toffee Chips – or Butter Brickle chips
In saucepan melt the chips, stir until smooth. Remove from heat and stir in the cream cheese until very smooth. Fold in the whipped topping and stir until all mixed. Pour into the crust – refrigerate and before serving sprinkle the chips over the top. Serves 6-8
(If you want to make it less calories and fat use the 1/3 less fat cream cheese and low fat Cool Whip – I did and tasted the same as regular)
the no bake pie - yummy - photo from a baking web site.
by Karen on June 25, 2010
in quilts
I mentioned the other day I thought it was better to take along too many projects to work on in case I actually ran out of things to do I know silly me – but I hate to run out of sewing for in the evening. I finished cutting all the fabric needed for the blocks in the Bow Tie Medallion quilt and have it all stacked up in one of my scrap boxes with the thread and it will be handy for if I get to it.
All the blocks needed to finish the queen size - this fabric does not count the fabric for the border which I am leaving at home. Doesn't look like enough but I do have some of the blocks finished and I'm leaving those at home.
this is the amount of fabric that I had left over - couldn't believe I still had so much of this free fabric left over. I might have enough to sew strips together to do a binding with it or to use in the border some way. All of these fabrics are about the same width as the blue with the white dots.
Here is the photo of the fabric that I won that is making this quilt. I believe it was something like 15 fat quarters and 20 or 30 5 x 44 inch strips -- a lot but I didn't realize it would make a queen size quilt with a background fabric added.
My friend Julie who started her Dear Jane quilt 2 years ago when I started my second DJ has finished all the blocks and they are sewed together now. She is moving on to the corners and then the triangles. I ran over to her house today to take a photo before I went to get my hair cut – here is her quilt:
Julie tried hand piecing but decided it wasn't a good fit for her so she went on to machine piecing after the first 4 rows I believe. We finished our tops (blocks only) within 30 minutes of each other oddly enough - she called me a couple weeks ago to tell me she had just sewed the 12th row to the 13th row as I was taking my last stitching on the same thing - weird coincidence.
My other friend Regina is still working on her blocks – she is working on I don’t know how many projects at the same time and is hand piecing her blocks. She is nearing the end of row 5.
No I’m not switching from being a hand quilter to a machine quilter – but I had a fun experience today of trying out a AQS Millennium Long Arm (I hope I have that name right). EDITED: it is a APQS Millennium Long Arm 8:27PM CJ from “From My Studio – Created by CJ” lives about 15 miles from me and invited me over to play We have been following each others blogs for sometime now and finally met about a month ago and get along well.
This is the APQS Millennium - CJ loaded a"sandwich" to practice on. I had never tried one out and it was fun seeing how it works. It is always nice to know how other quilters do things - especially when it is totally different than your own. I was almost afraid to touch it at first! I didn't want to break anything LOL
I believe she called these sheets of yellow - "pattern boards" -but I could be wrong on that - correct me if I am wrong CJ. You lay them out on the backside of the set up and follow with the laser dot. I know I am not explaining all this right I bet! LOL (EDITED: the yellow pattern boards you follow with a stylus not the laser) 8:27PM
This is a "pantograph" a drawing - you follow the lines with the laser dot - believe me this is not as easy it is sounds. I gave it a whirl and my design was way off! I can see it takes a lot of practice to get it right.
I came away from this with a new understanding of machine quilting. Hand quilting and machine quilting are very different indeed – both take time and patience and both create beautiful quilts.
CJ is starting up her long arm machine business for the public and if you click on the link at the top of this post it will take you to her blog – on her side bar you will find the link to her brochure that list her prices. I saw her quilting up close and personal and I recommend her to others who want their quilts machine quilted. She does a really good job – I have seen some other machine quilting locally that I would not recommend and would never ever refer people to use. She does a really professional job and uses really nice thread, batting (quilters dream mainly) and nice fabric for the backings or you can supply your own I believe.
This heat just makes me so tired. We spent the day in Springfield Missouri today. We had a recall on a small electronic part for our motorhome that we needed to get taken care of before we left on our trip and that was where we needed to take it to get it fixed. It is about a 3 hour drive from us so we spent the day. The courtesy van took us to the Bass Pro Shop and we ate lunch there and wandered around a bit and timed it just right for calling for our ride back to the shop – when the van dropped us off at the time we were told the camper was ready it was! How nice was that.
I have had several e mails from some of you ladies wanting to know what kind of camper we have and how small is it that I don’t bring a sewing machine and more stuff along with us. We have a 2008 Navion IQ from Winnebago. The floor plan we have is no longer being made for some reason – I don’t know why we thought it looked much more comfortable than the one they are staying with now.
Here is a link to the floor plan we have is the 24CL plan. Yes the other floor plan has a rear slide with a bed. The bed though is not a regular bed either though as if folds to a couch in the daytime. The bench seats in the front were not comfortable and very narrow for sitting and do not recline. The wardrobe was smaller than the one in ours and it had very few over head cabinets. All in all we are very satisfied with ours for the amount of time that we travel. Now if you lived in it for half a year or so it would be way too small.
We do spend a lot of time outside and mainly use it 1- for sleeping (we made the bed more comfortable by using memory foam – I cut it in 3 pieces to fit the bed, roll them up like sleeping bags when not in use and strap them tight – store under the table when traveling – the leg of the table keeps them under it. If we do not have the bed made up until night then we store the memory foam behind the drivers seat and passenger seat as there is a bit of room there to store things when not driving. 2- the bathroom! yes the bathroom is small but we extended the size of the shower by taking out the shower door and installing a curved shower rod instead also if the campground has clean showers we use theirs instead as they are usually roomier – we use shower shoes because the floors don’t always look the greatest but if the water is faster and more room to move – why not! and 3-for cooking.
The price in the link above is well over what we paid – end of the year models were going out and next years were coming in. There is a video on that link above also that shows what the inside of it looks like and also a virtual tour. In the tour you see all of the overhead cabinets that are above the dinette (which is a small queen, by that I mean it is in between queen and double) also more cabinet space above the third chair. The tv swivels out when it is used, when it isn’t it goes right up against the wall.
Have fun looking at it. Now you see why I say I don’t bring a sewing machine and I am careful about what we pack
by Karen on June 21, 2010
in quilts
It has been hot for about 3 weeks and now the heat from the valley has gotten up here on the ridge too. We had been – last week in the high 80′s while the valley was in the 90′s now today we hit 95 and it was like that all weekend too – and it is supposed to continue through the rest of the month! I hate it when it gets this hot.
I am still preparing for our trip and keeping busy. After thinking things over I thought I could use a little more quilting items to take on our 8 week trip. I know I have a crib quilt to quilt and 3 applique blocks should keep me busy – but one never knows so I thought instead of machine piecing the medallion blocks this week I will keep cutting and stacking the pieces up and put them in a ziplock bag or two and stick them somewhere also – doesn’t take up much room right – toss in the thread that is needed and I am set. Half the time depending on the size of the blocks with hand piecing you don’t even need pins. When I originally tried hand piecing those blocks at first I had a problem with stretch but now that I know the problem I can be more careful so it won’t happen. Now I will probably come home with the quilt only half quilted and 2 blocks appliqued and only some of the quilt blocks pieced – but I won’t be bored in the down time at the campground!
The organized stack of quilting bags - zipper bag with crib quilt/thread and the hoop on top of it. The other bag has 3 applique blocks, the pencil tin has all of the thread needed for those blocks, I have 3 instruction DVD's to watch on applique (and maybe learn something new?) I will stick a large cosmetic bag in that zipper bag with all the necessary hand tools - needles, thimble, pencil, chalk, scissors ect.
I will look for one more zipper bag to put the hand piecing blocks in and if I can’t find one they will go in one or two large zip locks. I will possibly take one of my project boxes instead but it isn’t flexible like bags are and I can fit the bags into smaller spaces if necessary.
some of the blocks cut
the pattern for it
As you can tell I am getting excited of getting back on the road. We tend to get a little antsy if we stay home all the time. We have been taking vacations as long as I can remember – and most of those vacations were camping – way back when it was always tent camping and then it went to a little camper, then motels for awhile but we didn’t like that as much and now comfortable with the motorhome – not as comfortable as your house of course but then you might just as well stay at home if you want that! I have been getting my check lists ready and checking things off – we will be really busy this last week so I might not be on here as much but will still try to blog every other day or so – then it will be as often as I can after that when we hit the road.
