Wonderful Cajun Meal

My husband and I had our anniversary over the weekend. We decided to go Henry's Louisiana Grill for dinner. Several people have been raving about this place and told us we had to check it out. It was really good food and we are both kicking ourselves for waiting so long to get there.

Nothing we had was healthy and we totally overshot our Points (Weight Watchers) for the day (or week in my case) but it was really worth it. We started off with their Seafood Fondeaux. My husband thought it was "disturbingly good". It was cheesy and the seafood was nice and fresh tasting. Yum!

Then my husband had Louisiana Ooh La La. This was fried oysters, shrimp and crawfish in a tasso cream sauce over french bread. Yes, I do feel my arteries hardening just thinking about it. The fried seafood would have been good on its own but the sauce was wonderful. It comes in a full order and half order. The full order was ginormous (Why is it that my spell checker is complaining about crawfish but ginormous is A-OK?). My husband ate about 1/4 of it and brought the rest home.

I had the Louisiana Crab Meat Au Gratin. It was pretty good. Not as good as the Ooh La La but good. I actually liked the sauteed squash that came with it best of everything on the plate.

Yes I did save a little room for dessert. I have to confess that I am a major chocolate lover. I get this craving for gooey warm chocolate and vanilla ice cream. I have tried everything to satisfy this craving..Hot fudge sundaes, brownies a la mode, chocolate pudding cakes. Nothing matches the taste in my head. All this time I have been craving the Death by Chocolate Cobbler and never knew it! It was a cup full of warm, chocolaty goodness, with chocolate sauce oozing over the sides and topped with ice cream and whipped cream. Mmmmmm...what? oh sorry I'm back now...

Anyway we had a really good night. We wandered (or maybe waddled) through some of the cute shops in historic Acworth. After we got home we relaxed on the deck enjoying the warm weather.

Amaryllis Blooming

My Amaryllis plant is blooming. This is the second stalk of flowers that it has put out in the last month. I thought I'd cut it back to late and it would not bloom, but here it is....

Tic Tac Toe Quilt

I finished the Tic Tac Toe quilt. Sorry the picture is not very good. I have got to figure out a better way to take pictures of quilts. The center four blocks came out of the March 2006 Quilter's Newsletter. The border was taken from a quilt I found in Quick Quilts, except I decided to do random size colored blocks.

The quilt is for a baby shower at work on Wednesday. I hope they like it. It isn't a very traditional looking baby quilt. I was using fabric from my stash so I could get started quickly. I looked for primary colors but I just did not have them. So I used brights.

I always get asked how long it takes to make a quilt and usually I have no idea. This time because I did it in a week and a half I have a pretty good idea.

• 8 hours to piece the top
  
• 6 hours to machine quilt
• 10 minutes of swearing once I found out that I had large tucks in the backing on two corners
  
• 1.5 hours to rip out the quilting on those corners
  
• 30 minutes to quilt those portions again.
  
• 6 hours to do the binding
  

My husband liked it enough that he said I should keep it and give them something else. I think that means I'll be making a king size Tic Tac Toe quilt soon. I definitely need to add to my stash for that one.

Finally quilting again...

I've been doing all kinds of other stuff rather than quilting for the last few weeks. I have a friend at work who is having a baby. We are having a baby shower for him and a his wife in a week and a half. I decided I wanted to make a quick baby quilt as a gift. Unfortunately two weeks have passed since I decided to do this. This weekend was the first time I felt like I had some spare time.

I went through a bunch of magazines to find a fairly quick quilt that looked cute. Last night I narrowed it down to four possibilities. One was a rail fence pattern, another was pinwheels and the last was a square on point made using four patches and half square triangles. I pulled out some brights from my stash (they are having a little boy) so I could make my final choice and start this morning.

Then I ran into my latest issue of Quilter's Newsletter and found the Tic Tac Toe pattern. For some reason I was sold on doing that quilt. It has 18 inch blocks and is larger than I really want. So I decided to do a 2 X 2 layout with a cool border from the split rail fence pattern. That will end up with a 42" square. I think that is a pretty good baby quilt size and one that I can hopefully finish quilting in a week and a half.

New Blog Look

Well, I did change the look of my blog. It didn't take a whole lot of work either. I found this cute template from Blogger Templates.
Anyway hopefully this will inspire me to blog more.

Beth Mitchell Photography

I have been helping a friend with her web site. Its been fun and a good way to practice html and javascript. I have spent almost every night this week working on it though. I'm not doing anything amazingly cool or anything, but I think it looks pretty good.

It gives me ideas for ways to change the look of this blog. So stay tuned you may see some changes coming in the near future.

I haven't been doing much quilting lately because I've been either working on Beth's site, working on stuff for my quilt guild, going to agility class with the dog, or working. Hopefully I'll get some time this weekend to quilt.

What is up with Amazon?

Our quilt guild is doing a quilt from Judy Martin's Knockout Blocks and Sampler Quilts for our Block of the Month quilt this year. I bought the book from a quilt shop a couple years ago for $21. It is listed on Amazon through different sellers for $57, $65 and even $131.05!!! I have no idea why it would be so much on Amazon. I found it online at a quilt shop for $20 and I may contact them. We are also contacting some local quilt shops to find out if they can get the book and what their price would be.

If anyone happens to know of a place we can find multiple copies of the book for a reasonable price ($20 or $21 is doable...$57, $65 and $131.05 are not) please let me know.

Human Calendar and Daylight Savings Time

This post is just to let you know how messed up my mind is.
You see the cool calendar at the right of the blog? If you click on it you go to the Human Calendar. It is a calendar made of pictures of people. One person for each day of the month. Every person in the calendar looks at the person holding the current date.

I spent 2 hours awake figuring out the algorithm they might have used to figure out which direction each person should be looking on any given day.

Of course since my brain does not have any real form of persistent memory (printer, memory card, hard drive) I lost the algorithm as soon as I actually got to sleep. Actually I dosed off a couple times and had to start over too.

Because writing code in my head for something that has already been done and I have no intention of tying to do myself is the best use of my time at 2 AM on a Sunday morning when I am already going to lose an hour of sleep due to daylight savings time.

**My apologies to any English teacher I've ever had for that last run on sentence, not to mention my punctuation and grammar.

Great Run Thru

We went to run-thrus at the Georgia Dog Gym. It was a really good day. The weather was in the 70's and sunny. We kept ASCII crated under shade when he wasn't running. ASCII isn't thrilled with heat...that black fur soaks up the sun. There were two courses mapped out. One was an easier "victory lap" kind of course. We did that first and ASCII did great until the last two jumps. It wasn't his fault of course. I was out of breath and couldn't say "Over!". That little pause while I tried to get one breath was all it took for ASCII to decide I didn't know where we were going and decide to go his own way. I should have at least pointed or something.

The second time I tried the long course. It had a few tricky turns. I had ASCII out for a little while before the run and was worried that since it was warm, my big black dog wouldn't want to run. So I tried to pump him up before the run. I ran out to the start line with him and played with him as we went.

It worked! I'm not always good at keeping him pumped up. I get wrapped up in the course and forget to make it fun for him. When I don't do that he'll shut down and go sniff clover or decide to make a bee line for the teeter. This time he was happy when we got out there. He was happier about doing agility than he'd been in months. He did everything I told him to do perfectly. I was so happy about his performance that I forgot where I was going and cut out the whole middle of the course. That was OK though. We still ended the day on a high note.

Agility Run Thru

Tomorrow I'm taking ASCII to the Georgia Dog Gym for agility run thrus. ASCII really wants to go. You can see it in his eyes. Take me to agility pleeaaase!

Underground Railroad Block of the Month

I have finished two more blocks from my quilt guild's block of the month. I have 3 more left. Forgive the bad pictures. I've got to get better at this stuff.

Block Swap Part 2

A few days ago I received my blocks from my Facebook block swap. They are beautiful. I haven't decided what I'm going to do with the blocks yet but I have some ideas.

I need to get to work on my next block swap blocks. This time its going to be a 4 patch. The rules are that they are tone on tone, blue, yellow or green with white. I picked out some blues to use. I'm hoping that the blocks I get back in the swap will work with the blocks I got from the first round.

Back home

I am back home from my trip to Denver. Actually I have been back for a week but it took me awhile to catch up after coming back home.

I did go to two quilt ships in Arvada. Both were very nice. I planned on taking pictures of the shops but of course while I remembered to take my camera I did not realized that my husband left the memory card in the card reader when he last used it. So no pictures of the shops. I will show you some of the wonderful fabric I brought back.

The first shop we stopped at was Shared Threads. We were greeted by a very friendly Yorkie. My mom has 3 yorkies and a lhasa mix at home, so she felt right at home with the shop yorkie. The couple that owned the shop was friendly. They had lots of great fabric and books and had a great classroom plus 2 long arm quilting machines.

I was mainly looking for fabric for my Pansy quilt. So I was mostly looking for greens and yellows. I found some great stuff at Shared Threads.



After that we went to The Quilted Moose Quilt Shop in Olde Town Arvada. Olde Town Arvada is fun. It has a bunch of cool shops in the original center of Arvada. The shop was nice with great fabric and lots of great quilts on the walls. I found some nice fabric there also.


After that we wandered around the other shops on Olde Town Arvada. Paws N Play was still there. Its a pet boutique that my husband and I used to go to. We wandered through a spice shop, and a kintting shop. It was interesting to see how much that area has been restored and changed since I moved away.

Trip to Denver

I am back home in Arvada, CO visiting my mother. Why didn't I quilt when I lived here? I found all kinds of quilt shops on line. We are going to so see some tomorrow. I'll let you know what I find. I only moved to Georgia four years ago and its been 2 years since I've been home but its amazing how much stuff has changed. We drove by my high school and its about 4 times as big as it was when I attended. Where there used to be a field there are whole subdivisions and malls. Its strange to see so much new stuff but you turn a corner and still see a little fast food place that is 20 years old but still is in business.

Block Swap Blocks

Finished blocks for the block swap...almost. I have 5 blocks. 3 look good and the points are pretty close to matching. Two blocks didn't turn out so well though. Those are next to the sewing machine waiting for me to reverse sew and put back together.

Schnapps decided to help me take pictures. He was really interested in the wrist chord on the camera but wasn't so impressed with the flash as you can see from the irritated look on his face. Or maybe he just doesn't like the block.

Block Swap

I am participating in a block swap on a Facebook Quilt Guild group. I will make 5 6" nine patch variant blocks in blue and yellow. I'll post pictures of the blocks as I finish them. I have to get them done and delivered by Feb. 22 so I'll have to hurry. I'm so excited! I've never done a block exchange before.

Finished my stars quilt

I finally finished the binding on my stars baby quilt (its the one you see on the header of my blog). I started the quilt about 2 years ago as a gift for a good friend when I found out she was having a baby. The pattern is from Judy Martin's Knockout Blocks and Sampler Quilts. I had just finished the top when I found out my friend lost the baby. I felt so bad for her. After that I lost motivation to work on the quilt anymore.

I put the quilt away for over a year. Last summer I was starting to practice machine quilting and decided it was time to work on the quilt again. I kind of got carried away and its sort of over-stippled. So its a little stiffer than it probably should be which really isn't good for a baby quilt. I also realized it was over quilted part way through so I backed off a bit, which means its not evenly quilted all over. That's what happens when you are learning, right?

Even with all this quilt has going against it, I think it is the best looking quilt I've done so far. I really like the colors and the pattern. It might be good as a wall hanging.

Update: I changed my blog and the quilt is no longer on my header so here is a picture of the quilt.

Breakfast Pizza

One more really good recipe I've tried recently was Cooking Light's Breakfast Pizza. I didn't think to take any pictures of it, but it was really good and easy to make. It uses canned crescent rolls as the crust. I cheated and used regular sausage instead of turkey sausage, but I think it would have been just as good. I highly recommend it.

Pansy Quilt

I have been making Grandma's Pansy blocks from Bloomin' Beauties by Billie Lauder. I started them at a quilt guild work night earlier this summer. I made 21 blocks and started trying to figure out what I wanted the quilt to look like.

I had a picture in my head with the blocks on point and I wanted them to look like they were meandering through the quilt. I couldn't quite figure out how it would work. I started out laying all the blocks out on the floor (someday I'll have a design wall) and moving them around, but I couldn't get a good idea of how it would look.

I started working with Electric Quilt to play with some layouts. I found a pansy block that looks kind of similar to my blocks and played around for a long time. I'm still not sure I'm totally happy with the layout but right now I think the quilt is going to look something like this. I probably will do a several different greens since I already have a few different greens in the pansy blocks.


The best part about putting it into EQ is that now I can print out the rotary cutting instructions for the broken dishes blocks, and I know approximately how much more fabric I need. I'm pretty sure I don't have enough green in my stash, so I'm just going to have to go fabric shopping.

Steak, Spinich Mashed Potatoes, and Stuffed Tomatoes

Some good friends of ours came to visit the weekend after Christmas. I decided to try something new while they were here. I keep trying Rachel Ray recipes but haven't had a lot of success. They tend not to have much flavor. But I thought I'd try another one.

My friend Natalie was my assistant...which meant she did all the hard work and I figured out what we had to do next. Natalie was also nice enough to take pictures of the meal. I never think of taking pictures until after the meal is half gone and it doesn't look good anymore.

The first recipe we tried was Bacon, Spinach, and Cream Potatoes. The recipe was pretty easy. We pealed the potatoes and started them boiling, then sauteed the onion and bacon. Once the potatoes were done cooking Natalie mashed the potatoes with the onions, bacon, spinach, cream salt and pepper. Then we tried them. There was no flavor at all. Nat and I decided it needed cheese. So we shredded some sharp white cheddar and mixed it in. That helped a lot.

The final consensus on this dish was that the proportion of spinach to potatoes was a little too high, but 3 out of 4 of us liked it anyway. My dear hubby said you really couldn't call it mashed potatoes. There are a couple of things I'd do differently in the future. I'd use a little less spinach, and we all thought it would be good if the potatoes were scooped into a casserole dish and baked with a little more cheese on top (of course it would take more than 30 minutes then).

While the men-folk were out grilling the steaks we made Broiled Tomatoes with Cheese and Herbs adapted from another Rachel Ray recipe.

I threw bread, parsley, basil and Romano cheese in the food processor and chopped them up. I added a little olive oil and pulsed it a little more. I then stuffed the mixture into tomatoes that I cleaned out. I then broiled the tomatoes for a few minutes. I left out the olives because my husband is not always an olive fan. They are growing on him though.

I liked the tomatoes. I think I'd add a little more cheese and hopefully find flat leaf parsley instead of curly parsley. I'd also add about twice as much basil. The olives would have helped a lot also. Overall the final presentation of the tomatoes with the steaks looked nice.

The meal did take more than 30 minutes, however that worked out to be good because the grill took forever to heat up.