Wednesday, September 30, 2015

...W.I.P. Wednesday...

...one strip of the little blue and white baby blanket for the Church is done...I've picked up the stitches along one side...ready to knit them together with the next strip as I knit...like I did for this baby blanket...except that I won't be matching vertical to horizontal stitches...but vertical to vertical so it should be easier...

...you wouldn't necessarily have to pick up the stitches first...but I find it easier to do it all at once instead of picking as I go...that way I'm sure not to miss any and everything will line up perfectly square...

~Have a lovely day!

Tuesday, September 29, 2015

...simple little basement curtains...

...we have these little windows in our basement...

...and I may have mentioned that we have a lot of red clay around here...and because of that...even though there is mulch around the house...the rain still splashes red mud onto these basement windows...they are impossible to keep clean...
...so I made some neat little curtains...just with some plaid material from my stash...one seam at the top for the rod to slip into...and a hem at the bottom...maybe 10 minutes each...

~Have a lovely day!

Monday, September 28, 2015

...Callie's Collar...

...we heard through the grapevine...that stray cats get trapped and picked up here...
...so we thought we'd better get a collar on our Callie...who is getting a whole lot more tame...she still won't come inside...and is not too fond of being picked up/held/cuddled...but I make sure she gets a good dose of that each day...I have yet to hear her purr...but she really enjoys being petted and rubbed...
...I just wrote her name on her collar with a sharpie...it's the lightest weight collar I could find...hoping that she'll tolerate it...
...and then I did a quick backstitch embroidery over the letters in black thread...this will also make sure that the collar stays at the right size for her neck as I embroidered through both thicknesses of the adjustable collar...
...when I call her...'kitty-kitty-kitty'...she comes and bounds on top of the garbage can in the carport...that's her place...and we keep her food and water there where she feels safe...
...see her pretty green eyes...we got the collar to match...
...look at the pleasure in her eyes as you get ready to pet her...
...she just loves being petted...
...and she twists...
...and turns every which way to rub up against you...
...ok...enough petting she says...time to eat...

...have you ever taken in a stray?...

~Have a lovely day!

Saturday, September 26, 2015

...leftover almond meal cream cheese...

...if you make your own almond milk...you're going to have some leftover almond meal...

...sometimes I add this like extra flour to cookies or other savory dishes...

...but recently I've been making vegan cream cheese with all my leftover almond meal...
...after making a quart of almond milk...I usually have about a half a cup of almond meal leftover...
...so I just dump it off the cloth into a bowl...usually the same bowl I just drained the milk into...
...then I add a little bit of lemon juice...cider vinegar...and salt...

...that's it...
...mix it up...
...and store it in a resealable container...
...y'all know how much I love everything bagels...and this is the perfect spread for them...
...I'd say the texture is a little bit more like goat cheese...
...but it's really delicious...
...I even served it on crackers with a little bit of chopped chives sprinkled on top...it was delicious that way too...

...and I love that nothing is wasted...

Leftover Almond Meal Cream Cheese

1/3 cup almond meal...That's about what's leftover from making almond milk...sometimes I save it up until I have a cup...I just keep it in the freezer...
Almond milk or water a few spoonfuls to get the consistency right...
1/4 tsp. Salt
1 tsp. apple cider vinegar
1 tsp. lemon juice.

Mix well...

~Have a lovely weekend!

Friday, September 25, 2015

...easy...make your own almond milk...

...I don't think I've ever posted about it here before...but about once a week I make a quart of almond milk...

...I love it...it's simple to make...has 4 ingredients...and is so creamy you can use it for creamer in your tea or coffee...
...I start with a pot of boiling water and a cup of almonds...straight from the freezer...I don't soak them or anything...

...I keep them in the freezer to keep them fresh...because we get them from the 'Nut Man' who comes around selling nuts from his truck every fall...so I try to get enough to last all year...
...once the water has boiled...I just dump the cup of nuts into the pot and take it off the heat and let it set for about 10 minutes or so...
...then I scoop the nuts into a bowl of cool water...
...and slip the skins off...don't go thinking that this is a time consuming step because it only takes a couple of minutes...and then your milk will be pure white...

...that being said...feel free to leave out that step and just blend the nuts with their skins on...your milk will be not quite white...but still delicious...in fact if you're not going to slip the skins off...you don't even have to put the almonds in the hot water...

...I'll show you tomorrow what I do with the pure white pulp that's left behind...
...then just put the nuts into the blender...
...add 4 cups of water...a pinch of salt and a teaspoon of sugar...or sweetener of your choice...sometimes I use dates...but again that will colour your milk a little bit...
...turn the blender on slowly...
...then blend on high speed for a couple of minutes...
...then pour through a few layers of cheese cloth...or a jelly strainer...or a nut bag...
...here I gather up the corners and twist and give it a good squeeze...
...but sometimes I'm lazy and just tie it to a cabinet knob and let it drip...
...either way...then I pour it into a clean jug...
...this recipe makes a quart of delicious almond milk...and that lasts me almost exactly a week...

Easy 4 Ingredient Almond Milk

Place one cup of nuts into a pot of boiling water and take it off the heat and let it set for about 10 minutes.
Scoop the nuts into a bowl of cool water.
(Optional) Slip the skins off simply by pinching the end of the nut...the nut will pop out leaving the skin between your fingers...it's really easy.
Place the nuts into the blender.
Add 4 cups of water.
1/8 tsp of salt.
1 tsp of sugar...or sweetener of your choice.
Turn the blender on slowly.
Blend on high speed for a couple of minutes.
Pour through a few layers of cheese cloth...or a jelly strainer...or a nut bag.
Twist and squeeze until you have all the milk and are left with a slightly moist pulp.

Yield 1 quart.

~Have a lovely day!

Thursday, September 24, 2015

...fall birthday...

...it's that time of year again...
...the Man has had another birthday...
...Scout chose the perfect card...but it has always bothered Scout that there are no cards (really none) that say 'Papa'...so he has always either made a card...or changed a purchased card from either Father or Dad...or when he was younger Daddy...to say Papa...because that's what he calls his Papa...

...I really should have photographed the process...This card is a tri-fold card and it said Dad in raised letters in the heart on the front...so the first thing he did was to sand off the upright portion of the small d...then he mixed up some peachy coloured paint to match the heart...and spounced that over the sanded part of the heart...and lightly around the rest of the heart too...just for a little blending...then all that was left was to take a sharpie and make the capital D in...to a large P...trace over the existing a...and change the remaining ball of the lower case d into another small p...and then add an a...

...it probably took me about as long to type all that as it did to actually do it...because you know me and my rather well stocked craft room...we had all of the supplies already...and we think the custom card turned out great...

...you could of course with a little paint change any part of the card to say whatever you wanted...the only additional step here was the sanding off of the raised lettering...
...but we celebrated in the usual way...a nice dinner...and then the Man's favorite caramel iced cake...
...which, of course I've blogged about before...
...I think we'll make short work of this cake...
...a little bit of present opening followed...the Man got a new and much needed laptop...they sure have gotten a lot smaller over the years...and I did take some photos of him with the new laptop...it's blue...I mean it's outside shell is blue...but he didn't want me to post any of the photos so I'm not going to...

...and the beautiful flowers are from some dear friends in West Virginia...so sweet and pretty...

~Have a lovely day!

Wednesday, September 23, 2015

...W.I.P. Wednesday...

...first of all...it's the first day of fall...or autumn if you prefer that word...this year...and last it was on the 23rd...but the previous 2 years it was on the 22nd...

...so there's a new fall banner...no easy feat without my photo editing pc...
...well...I know I've not mentioned it here...but we had a terrible lightening storm here and my desktop pc that I use for...well everything...but also for blogging...took a hit and won't power on...I ordered a new power supply and need to get it installed...but have little hope that it will fix the problem as the surge came in on the phone/cable line not the power line...so probably the motherboard is done for...arghhh...

...so I'm working from my laptop for now...arghhh...again...
...the prayer shawl group met at Church Monday evening...and since I've finished the Centered Cross Prayer Shawl...I thought I'd make a baby blanket next...and we joked that since we have a LOT more girls that boys at the moment...that I should make a boy baby blanket...I don't know if it's just to be ready for a boy...or somehow to tempt fate...ha!...

...so I picked my supplies out of the knitting closet...white and baby blue...
...some of this yarn has been in the cupboard for quite a while I think...but I love the wooden handmade needles...
...I did a quick sketch of a pattern...I'll use the same technique of knitting together the squares...basically I mean that I'll knit the blocks in vertical strips white-blue-white-blue and then join that to a strip of blue-white-blue-white...except I don't think that I'm not going to turn the blocks in opposite directions the way I did in the college afghans...so all of the stitches will be smooth and vertical...and I think I'll do duplicate stitch B.A.B.Y. block letters in blue on white squares...

...I could of course knit the entire blanket all at once and change colours for every square...but I think it will be easier to join by picking up the previous square...and a lot more portable...at least in the beginning...

~Have a lovely day!

Tuesday, September 22, 2015

...Tuesdays with Julia...

...Patented Parboiled Rice...

...as with the curtains yesterday...it certainly is high time that I got around to cooking with Julia again...

...I say cooking...but I actually thought that this 'recipe' was sort of funny...but Julia was certainly always one to try out the new convenience foods of the era...

...so hop over to The Vegan Version for all of the details...ha...not many details to this one...
...but then I used the rice to make the recipe on the package...subbing Earth Balance for the butter...
...served it with some chicken seitan...
...and it was really good...

...what convenience food have you tried recently...

~Have a lovely day!

Monday, September 21, 2015

...Box Pleated Curtains on a Rod Pocket...a Tutorial...

...we've been here a few months now...so it's high time I did something in the way of window treatments...

...all of the windows had sort of generic white blinds when we moved in...
...the first thing I did was to install the rod and secure it with masking tape as I'll be using that to measure the width...unlike with gathered curtain/valences...you have to be pretty precise with a tailored pleated look...
...so I let Scout choose his material from our recently moved stash...he chose this navy...which I thought would be a little dark...so I talked him into just doing a stripe of navy on a background of royal...both of these materials were gifted to me years ago by my Mom...so I'm happy to finally be using them up...then I cut the strips that will be the little navy accent stripes...
...and ironed under both sides to make a finished edge...
...then I made a notch of the center of the material (this is where the box pleat will be)...and went ahead and hemmed the bottom...
...then I pinned the stripe onto the curtain...
...and stitched it in place...
...then I got the rod and measured the center of it...and lined up my notch with the center of the rod...
...and then formed a box pleat that left the two side ends of the curtain right at the edge of rod...I hope that makes sense...
...then with the box pleat pinned at the raw top edge...
...I pressed the pleat well from the front...
...and again from the back...
...then from the back side...I stitched a little rectangle all the way around the top of the box pleat...this will be hidden completely when I fold that under for the rod pocket...
...so that's the next step...fold the raw top edge to the back to make a pocket for the rod to slide into...
...I actually made mine a double turn for a neat back side...but that's not really necessary...
...took a final measurement...I wanted them to be 15 inches... - ish...
...and finally...just make a nice crisp corner at the front end of the rod pocket for a finished tailored look...
...and then I hung that one up...
...and went and made another one...
...for a matched set...

...if you have any questions or anything isn't clear...just comment here or email from the contact link on the sidebar...

...it really does feel good to add some homey touches here and there...

...Have a lovely day!