Once, Twice, Three times a K9...

Carmen in dots, dashes and neon hot flashes...

Channeling my inner Warhol here.

Brain aerobics

Has the summer started to turn your brain to mush, maybe just a tad? Feel like you might benefit from a little mental flexing? If the crossword and sodoku books have gotten buried under a pile of People and TV Guide, here's a fast and fun game we used to play in high school. Points (that counted for nothing!) were awarded based on humor, content and originality.

Quick, make a list of 10 of your favorite words, or words you love to hear someone say. Doesn't matter noun, verb, adjective, just jot down the first ten that come to mind. Now, write a short short story using all ten words. Here's mine:

It was a splendid day for a horse race. The bread pudding was superb and parade of hats delightful. The thoroughbreds were all looking positively magestic. When my trifecta hit, I was elated! Crossing the finish line first was Spectacular Bid, placing second was Sublime Mime, and showing third was Radiance. The payout was enormous.

The shorter the story, the better. No need to be bothered with facts, just have fun with it. See how few sentences it takes you to squeeze all ten of your words in and still have some semblence of a story. If you are brave, post your short stories in my comments. Sniff-sniff.... is that dinner I smell burning or perhaps just my synapses firing in places they haven't fired for awhile?

Like a glass pearl necklace

If you happen to be up and out early enough for the dew to still be on the hydrangeas, maybe you'll discover a few glass pearl necklaces of your very own.

more ATCs

I haven't completely flipped my wig for ATCs, but given the opportunity I could see myself investing way too much time in these little numbers. I like making the envelopes (template here) as much as I like making and thinking about making the cards. Fun FUN FUN!!!

I am wondering something though...maybe some of you experienced ATC traders could tell me...how many hours of work go into an "average" (yet good enough to trade) ATC? I don't know if they should be "mini-masterpieces" or just something to do when you want a small, quick project to work on. There must be some traders out there with some advice... I'm really looking forward to my first swap with the ladies of my guild. I think it will be really interesting to see what everyone comes up with.

The Face of Liberty

Quick update before I'm off to the back-cracker. I finished Liberty's face Friday night. Wanted to work on the verse over the weekend, but it just didn't happen. Her face was a bit sterner in the pattern, so I decided to soften her a bit with a brow lift, a little rhinoplasty and some collogen injections to her lips (giggle). Seriously though, I did rearrange the alignment of her facial features just a tad, like 1/2 of a stitch higher here and 1/2 of a stitch to the right there. I think it looks pretty ok now - it did look off-center and stern, like scowl-y before. The girl's got some eyebrow's on her to rival Brooke Shields'!!!

Most all the rest of the work is in her arm, hand and torch which runs up the left side of the fabric. The verse shouldn't take very long, just 7 more fairly short lines. You are seeing the last line of verse above. With 9/11 only a month away, I think I'll have her finished but I'm not sure if I can get her framed by then. We shall see...

blueberry dessert

If you haven't seen or receive Kraft's food&family magazine, I highly recommend you check it out. I'm a bit of a recipe hound so over the past 15 years I've taken lots of different cooking/recipe mags like Gourmet, Cook's, Cooking Light, Taste of Home, etc. and enjoyed them all. I never expected when I signed up for the FREE food&family magazine years ago that a.) I would enjoy it (visually) as much as the high priced cooking mags and b.) I would make as many if not more of the recipes from it as I would any of the others. The food photography is excellent, the recipe quality is very good and each issue normally has several coupons for free stuff like salad dressing, chocolate chips, coffee or whatever. Yes there are lots of ads, but the vast majority of magazines you pay for these days are overflowing with ads, so that shouldn't worry anyone.


Yesterday I was filing away some paperwork that had gotten piled up in the kitchen and, like always, there were several recipe mags in the pile. Well, can one put a recipe mag away without first flipping through to see if anything jumps out? I don't think so. So, there I am, flipping away (when I should have just been filing) when a no-bake cheesecake-y looking dessert just jumped off the page. It was made with strawberries, but I had a frige full of perfectly plump and ripe blueberries, so I thought, "What the HECK! Let's give this a go". It took all of 15 minutes to make, from the time I abandoned my tidying up and began collecting the ingredients. And let me tell you WHAT......I've slaved over scratch blueberry cheesecake before and I don't think it was any better at all than this little 15 minute, no-bake cheesecake.

The website only has the recipes from the last three issues of the mag, so since I've got your mouth watering for blueberry cheesecake and the recipe was from the Summer 08 mag, here's how it goes:

(Recipe for 8x8 dish, double for 9x13)

6 graham crackers, crushed

3 T. butter or marg., melted

1/2 c. plus 1 T. sugar or Splenda

2 pkgs. cream cheese

1/4 c. blueberry preserves

1 c. fresh blueberries

1/2 tub Cool Whip

Mix crushed crackers, 1/8 c. sugar and butter in dish. Press to form crust. Refrigerate while making filling. Beat both bricks of cheese and 3/8 c. sugar in bowl until well blended. Add preserves, mix well. Sprinkle berries with 1 T. sugar in separate bowl or measuring cup. Mash a little with fork. Stir berries and Cool Whip into cheese mixture. Spoon over crust. Cover. Refrigerate for 3-4 hours before cutting.

DELISH!!! Recipe was written for strawberries so if that tempts your tastebuds more than blueberries, I'm sure it would be just as good!

Lady Liberty WIP update

It's been pretty intense with the crown and halo (the 7 "spikes" coming away from the crown). They don't call it "counted" cross stitch from nuthin'. Lots of almost straight areas has made for some slow sledding, but I'm moving on the hair parts tonight with high hopes. I'm hopeful that I'll have her face done by Monday. Wouldn't that be exciting?!?!

Already?

And today's dog walk brought this:

Day dreamin'

Ran across a disc of photos hubby took on one of his business trips to Italy. I could definitely conjure a few dreamy dreams with this one as the setting. Can you see the lemons on the potted trees in the far rear of the photo? (click on photo for better view) Can't you just smell them?

I'll have a dopio espresso and biscotti, per favore!

Here's hoping you have a dreamy week...

And a good time was had by all...

Stitch-in After-glow......ahhhhhh, nothing like it. As I write this I'm sitting in the blogging chair completely content with my day. Had all my stitching peeps over for a full day of Christmas stitching, eating and general fun. But, like a dunder head, I forgot to get any photographic evidence! So, you won't be able to see how laden down the table was with scones, spreads, dips, cakes, veggies, salads and the like. You won't see how well all the ladies filled my stitching room and den. You won't see several of us laughing our hineys off at Fred Claus, the movie. And you definitley won't see me and my BPSFF* Debbie getting caught in the rain while walking The Carm! Did I say rain, make that a "Frog Strangler" or "Gauley Washer". This was no ordinary summer sprinkler. No sir. This was an all-out downpour. Oh well, all we could do was laugh! I can't remember the last time I got caught in the rain, so I guess I was due.

Even wet, I had a terrific day and think my girls did too. Let's do it more often ladies!

maybe not the rain part. :-D

*BPSFF= best presidential stitching friend forever