Material Girl

I finally found time to clean out my sewing room last weekend. Over the holidays it had become a bit of a dumping station for all homeless items in the house. It is so nice to have it pretty well organized and cleaned up a bit. How about a little tour?

This is my cutting station. We bought this table years ago from JC Penny's it is a pub table that is the perfect height for cutting fabric.

It holds all of my rulers and cutting tools. Underneath is used as storage for fabric and yarns.

My Pfaf sewing machine is set into a cabinet that holds a few notions. I also have a little ironing board attached for quick ironing. I have a big ironing table that hangs on the back of the sewing room door for big ironing jobs. You will notice that I have a little movie going on my nook tablet. I also have a TV in the room. I like to watch TV or movies or listen to podcasts while I sew.

In this old pool basket I keep a stack of ready to be sewn quilt kits. The basket came from Camp Dodge swimming pool.

As you can see by these pictures, I am blessed with a fairly large stash of fabric. Yes, I am a material girl.

This is a stack of wall hanging and decorative quilts that I put out seasonally. The large quilts are throughout my house and used in every room. One of these days I will do a blog post of all of my quilts for a trunk show.

I keep my fat quarters in hanging baskets in my closet. It is actually a much smaller stash than it used to be, I've been making a lot of fat quarter quilts to whittle down this collection.

Sweet College girl got a new full size bed over Christmas break so I now have her old twin size bed in my sewing room. I like the way my collection of pin cushions look at the headboard. These are all pin cushions that have been given to me or made by me.

THe bed has drawers under it, what a perfect place to keep part of my yarn stash!

Here is yet another basket, it holds mostly tops that are done and ready to be quilted.

This concludes the sewing room tour. I love having my own room to sew in!

What's for dinner mom?

Here are a few pictures from weeknight meals. We are trying to eat low fat and healthy meals .


I have been experimenting with salmon and make it about one time a week. In this picture I am marinating it with fresh squeezed clementines, soy sauce, olive oil and balsamic vinegar, topped off with sesame seeds. I drain it, reserving some to brush on midway through baking and then, roast this in the oven at 375 until it flakes easily.




One evening Dear Hubby started the manicotti noodles before I got home. When I walked in the door the noodles were ready for stuffing. I stuffed with low fat ricotta cheese, 4 oz mozzarella mixed with Parmesan and about 2 TBL of dried parsley. In a baking dish, pour about 1/2 cup of marinara sauce, I use Paul Newman's own organic. Then put the stuffed manicotti on top, pour the rest of the jar on and top with mozzarella cheese. One of these manicottis is about 7 weight watcher plus points.

I dug out my grill pan and made chicken breasts one evening. I brushed with a glaze of balsamic vinegar, honey and soy sauce. Served this with roasted new potatoes and green beans.

I've been on a real roasted vegetable kick.

I had not tried roasted green beans until recently. I quartered new potatoes and mixed with trimmed green beans, minced garlic clove and diced onion. Drizzle with about 2 Tablespoons of olive oil and season with salt and pepper. Sometimes I drizzle with balsamic vinegar too. Roast in oven preheated to about 425 for about 40 minutes. I use this same method with brussel sprouts, sweet potatoes, broccoli, butternut squash and really just about any vegetable I have on had. It caramelizes and crisps up to make a very good vegetable. Dear hubby did not like brussel sprouts until he tried it this way!

I hear you knockin' but you can't come in

Winter has finally arrived, a good excuse for sitting inside knitting, quilting or spinning!

'Tis the season of the smelly wet dog.....

Baby Owl quilts

Baby owl quilts are done! I finished these two over the weekend. I think they are just adorable! I backed them with polka-dotted flannel that is so snuggly and soft. They were a "hoot" to make!

1 goal completed!

One of my 2012 goals was to put all of our old VHS movies on to DVD.

I sent all of our movies to a company that took care of this for us. I love knowing that all of our movies are now preserved. They turned out really great. I organized them by vacations, holidays and birthdays. In addition, I dumped everything to DVD's so I have a good back up. Time sure has flown, it is amazing how fast our children have grown.

On and off my needles

I am a little behind on crafting, I had a big weekend planned to get baby quilts finished and off in the mail. Instead, I was doing what I do best - Mother. Sweet college girl came home from college very ill, dehydrated and very weak from the flu. She was so dehydrated that she had to have IV fluids. She was home with us from Friday night through Sunday afternoon. Pushing fluids, fluffing pillows and making sure meds were taken on time was my whole weekend. By Sunday afternoon her color was back and she was laughing out loud.

Due to this unexpected mothering that landed in my schedule I just have a couple things to show you all. Here is the watchcap hat that I made for dear hubby. I think it turned out a bit large but maybe I can wash it and dry it to shrink a little.

On my needles is a new scarf. It is the Hitchhiker scarf and an addictive knit. I am knitting it out of the knitpicks imaginative yarn in the colorway Gingerbread. It will have 42 points and gets wider with each row.

What's new?

After 12+ years we have new furniture in our family room. I am especially pleased to have a recliner with awesome lumbar support that fits my height perfectly. Dear Hubby got a new recliner too, even though he swore his old one was perfectly fine. Kodi even got a new bed! The dogs were sort of fighting over the one dog bed. Kodi's knees are really bad now and he can not jump on the couch since it is higher than the old couch. He seems pretty comfy in his new dog bed.

In addition we bought new table lamps, I really like them. We are still looking for new floor lamps but I just haven't found the perfect set yet.

Goals for 2012

Wow, it is already the middle of January 2012!

I have goals for 2012, not really resolutions but goals. They are in the categories of organization, crafting and self indulgent.

In the category of self indulgent I have set a goal to read more, specifically 1 book a month. That doesn't sound like much but I read a lot at work (contracts, proposals, e-mails) and I read a lot of knitting magazines, spinning books and general crafting goodness. Dear hubby bought me a Nook Tablet for Christmas, swoon, love it! I have already read 1 1/2 books. I will try to blog about book reviews in the future. Do you have a book suggestion? Please leave a comment with the book!

In the category of organization, I have set several goals. The first in this category is to get a grip on all of my knitting / cooking / spinning / weaving / knitting library. This includes book cases of books, stacks of magazines and digital patterns that are unorganized throughout my house. I plan to group them better on shelves and in folders on my computers and portable devices. I also plan to go through the many stacks of magazines and scan favorite patterns and recycle the rest. My goal is to scan 1 magazine a week. That sounds do-able, doesn't it?

Another goal in the area of organization is to convert all of our old VHS family movies to digital DVD.

Finally, my favorite category, crafting goals. I plan to make at least 2 Christmas quilts this year (One out of stash fabric), 1 full size quilt for sweet college girl's new bed (out of stash fabric) and knit 1 sweater. There will be more crafty goodness than just these goals but these are the big ones.

How about all of you, do you make resolutions? I will keep you posted on how I get along at meeting my goals.

crafing in slow motion

I am fortunate to have a plant shut down over the Christmas holiday. The unfortunate part is I always think that means I will have plenty of free time to get knitting, spinning, quilting, cooking and cleaning done. WRONG! It has felt like I am crafting in slow motion instead. I love Christmas, truly I do, but it sure does sucks the time out of a crafty girls schedule. Here are a few of the things I was able to work on over the last two months.

I am knitting another 1940's watch cap, this one for dear hubby. He liked dear son's so much that he actually mentioned he would like one. Be still my heart, this is the first time he has asked for a knitted item!

I found a little time to spin. It seems I am spinning about a worsted weight yarn when plying 2 strands. That is bigger than where I want to be but it is pretty consistent and there are a ton of patterns out there for worsted weight. My minds eye still sees a lace weight shawl from homespun, someday!

I have been on a personal deadline to complete 4 baby quilts by the end of January. Only 1 is done and delivered so far. I made time to complete one more quilt top today. I love the owl fabric. I plan to make two like this, one goes to the Pella area, the other goes to San Diego. I think the colors will keep baby interested.

Remember this homespun from a couple blogposts back? Here it is being wound into a nice knittable cake. The yarn swift was a birthday gift from hubby and kids. Dear son said it was a gift for all of them because now they do not have to hold my hard when I wind. I made a twisty-go hat pattern out of the yarn. I still have about 100 yards left, not sure what I can do with just 100 yards.

So now that I look back it seems I did make more progress than I thought on projects. Hopefully January will be a productive one. The winds are howling today so it is great crafting weather!

Holidays with the Davison's

We started off our holidays when sweet college girl came home middle of December. The weather in Iowa has been unseasonably warm and we took many opportunities to get out to enjoy long walks with the dogs.

One of my favorite walks (and the dogs) is to go over to the bike trail and walk through the woods.

Dear Hubby's birthday is December 21st. It was fun to celebrate his birthday with all four of us together. His favorite hat is his Stormy Kromer hat and I paid a young lady that is going to Culinary school to make a cake that resembled his hat for his birthday. It turned out great and it was delicious too!

We usually spend Christmas Eve in town and go to 10pm Mass (as we did this year). It was a beautiful Mass and helped remind us the true meaning of the Christmas season.










Christmas morning came early. To save time and to allow more time to linger Christmas morning, I prepared simple food to serve. I made cinnamon rolls from a frozen package and just dressed them up with colored sprinkles. I also threw together a hash brown and egg overnight casserole.

Christmas day we enjoyed celebrating with Dear Hubby's side in Maquoketa. It was a fun day and always a highlight to drive through Wyoming Iowa at the end of Christmas day and see the beautiful lights strung across the road. Another holiday season has come to a close and we are all counting our many blessings.