Happy birthday to me!

I decided to make my own cake this year with a recipe from Rachel Ray’s magazine – it’s a pumpkin spice cake with whipped cream frosting and crushed pralines. It’s yummy, if not a bit too sweet, but it used nearly all of my plentiful cooking and baking utensils to accomplish this masterpiece. Thank god for dishwashers!!!

I hope to spend this evening sewing and I also have Monday off as my “birthday day” (annual freebie day off work) and hope to do more sewing then…can’t wait!!

Lemme know if anyone wants a piece of cake – there’s plenty left after sharing with my coworkers…

4 down, 60 to go…

This is a project I really started several years ago. I’ve been sewing since I was 10 or so but when I started quilting I didn’t know all the quilting techniques, such as paper piecing, and just stitched the strips together. Also at that time, I had no concept of how many other quilts I would want to make regardless of just how many large quilts I can actually use. As the original log cabin blocks were nowhere near square, I squirreled them away in my “in-progress” drawers until today, when I finally had the guts to toss them. I’ve since learned paper piecing and have fully realized I love the opportunities of making minis. I re-started the blocks (originally 9”) as 3” blocks and will end up with a 24” square quilt. I can't wait to finally see my design come together!

Also, since I had originally cut enough strips for a large quilt. I may continue to make more blocks and see what other layouts I can come up with. I saw a windmill layout today that looked interesting...




And here’s dinner – Wasabi Crusted Salmon. The original recipe was for hors d'oeuvres on crusty bread with cucumber slices. The picture doesn’t do justice to the meal nor did the meal end up as pretty as on the TV show where I got the recipe. It makes no difference because this recipe is easy and a keeper. It’s essentially crushed wasabi peas pressed into salmon and then pan-fried. Don’t worry, cooking turns down the heat of wasabi peas. I placed the salmon on a bed of egg noodles and left over spinach and then it’s topped with more crushed peas and a sesame aioli. Yum!

blah week

Kind of a blah week - I had a bad head cold so the only thing I did was prepare for my CSO meeting on Wednesday and about an hours worth of stitiching binding. Why do I always read that everyone is able to do a complete quilt binding in a day? I must have tiny stitches...

On Friday I went to the optometrist. I'll tell you why in a minute but he did tell me my prescription has only changed a teeny bit in the past 2 years which is pretty much par for the course. He also told me to get my thyroid checked as my eyeballs have rolled or "bugged" a little since the last time I saw him. My mom has thyroid problems and I have never been able to loose weight so I always as my doc to check it. She always tells me the test results are fine. We'll see what the results are this time...

The reason I had gone to the eye doc was because I prefer to hand sew bindings, etc, without my glasses but that makes it hard to watch the TV on the other side of the room. I've tried wearing the glasses on the end of my nose but it made for ridiculous head movements to hold the sewing up and then look down for the TV. I've even tried sitting right in front of the TV so I could see just enough of what was happening since I tend to just listen to it half of the time anyway. I asked him if it would be appropriate to get bifocals with the bottom half of the lens without a prescription. The doc said the more economical solution would actually be to get a tiny rectangular lens that will sit high on my nose, allowing me to easilty look at the TV and below the lens. The optician can also adjust the nose pads to make it sit higher. This wasn't a cheap decision as the new glasses will be some $200 but I think it's worth it since I can hopefully get more work done. Did I mention that was the sale price - it would have been much less if i didn't need to pay for the poly-carbonate (read "thin") lenses. Oh well...

Meet the kids

I wasn't able to get these pictures into the last post so...
meet Tula and her son Pepper.

They adopted me after someone dumped them outside of a building I used to work in. Pepper was only about a month old at the time and I nicknamed him Bitzie cuz he was so little. Tula's favorite activities are eating and sleeping while Pepper likes to chase an LED light and hide.

As you can see from the photos...Tula likes to let it all hang out during bath time while Pepper is lounging with a friend on the couch.

Hello and welcome to my new blog!

Well, I have been kind of floundering around trying to decide how to start this blog. I was working on Christmas gifts when I first signed up and didn’t want to give anything away but now Christmas has come and gone and I still haven’t posted so lets start with a bit about me…

I grew up in Castile, NY, a tiny town in the middle of dairy and apple country, 1 hour south of Rochester. In the summer of 1994 I fled the cold and moved to Miami, Florida, where I currently work for a medical school and volunteer every Saturday at the Cape Florida Lighthouse. I’m the president of the Friends of Cape Florida and in my “spare” time I like to travel, read, cook, sew/quilt and bead, among other things. I love Miami, except for the occasional hurricane and traffic, but I still look forward to my white Christmas’ at home!



While you are unlikely to see many photos of myself (I like to take the pictures, not be in them), I couldn’t resist this photo with my nephew, Tyler, who will be 2 on February 4th.

And for the record, here is a photo at the lighthouse.










I am hoping this blog will encourage me to work a little more diligently on my quilty projects this year but you can probably also expect news of my cooking adventures, my family, my cats and whatever else seems to happen here in Miami! My goal for at least the beginning of 2007 is to work on UFOs and only buy black and white fabrics (my fav) or whatever I might need to finish current projects. Wish me luck!!!