Running Down

This is kind of what I feel like today.  Not much get up and go left in this old gal's tank.

We got home at a decent time last night and I even managed to get to bed before 11.  The book I am reading at bedtime got so good last night, my light stayed on until almost midnight.  I am reading "The Fault in Our Stars" by John Green.

My grand daughter gave it to me to read.  It is a young adult book and deals with children with cancer.  I know that sounds super depressing and yet the book is not a total downer.  Hopefully, I will finish it tonight.

Prayer Shawl group was this morning.  Today, we had 25 shawls donated to us from another parish.  This means we needed to sew our medals and tags on them, bag them up and get them ready to be blessed and sent out to recipients.  Needless to say, that is all we got done today before it was time to leave.

After Prayer Shawl, I drove over to our lawyers office and delivered the Easter basket to her.  She was thrilled with it.  Phew, I am glad of that.  

Oh, I managed to get something out of my house for good.  I took my hot water pot to the Prayer Shawl Group so the ladies could make tea.  I have a hot water tap on my water cooler and no longer needed the electric pot.

They were so happy to get it.  They had been borrowing one from another ministry.  

We have finished lunch, the dishwasher is running, hubby is doing research and I am getting ready to do a bit of knitting and listen to my audio book.  Dinner tonight will be left over meat and I will make some cooked veggies to go with it.  

How is your day going?  Are you running out of steam yet?

Until next time..............happy crafting!

Answers

Once again it is time to answer a few questions which have appeared in the comment section of my blog.  Not to mention, I promised updates on the food I made yesterday and tasted today.

First question was asked if when preparing my horseradish if it 'got to me'.  I had read on the internet to be careful when opening the blender lid and to stand back as the 'gasses' from the root can attack your olfactories.  I did not want to test whether this was true or not.  Once I had ground up the horseradish root I stood arms length away when I opened the lid and waited about half a minute before I got close enough to add the vinegar and salt.  Therefore, I did not suffer any ill effects when making my own horseradish.

The next item was kind of a question and kind of a observation.  I mentioned how my back starts to hurt when doing my walks.  Sam also said her's hurts then and also when she is doing housework.  Surprise!  Mine, too, hurts when doing housework or after standing for a length of time.  From what I have been told, this very well may be related to my RA.  It does settle down if I take a small break of about 10-15 minutes.  I just keep ignoring it and hoping it will get better with more exercise.

Now, on to my food tasting.  

This morning, I had my overnight oats.  Oh My!  They were so good.  I will use a little less milk next time as they were just a bit runnier than I cared for.  Yup, these will be made more and more. 

Next is the Banana Bread.  Goodness!  It was super moist and so very good.  Not overly sweet either.  I am glad I added the cinnamon to the batter.  It gave it just the perfect pop to the flavors.  Another keeper of a recipe.  In fact, I have 2 more bananas ready to be made into bread.

And lastly, the baptism blanket.

I was half way done with the last row of border when this happened.  Darn it!  I hopped into my car and headed to JoAnn's where I picked up another skein of yarn.  Just maybe, there might have been a few other skeins of yarn picked up since they were all, buy one get one for 50% off.  Oh, and I picked up the ribbon to thread through the holes on the edge of the blanket.  It should be 100% done for the YOP update on Sunday.

I have another shawl pattern picked out for a prayer shawl.  Lucky for me it will relieve my stash of another 800 yards of yarn. (Which is just about the same yardage I added to the stash today)

Tonight is Trivia night again.  My cousin is going with us tonight.  Hopefully it will help us win one of the top three spots this time.

Anything new with you?

Until next time...............happy crafting!

Kitchen Day Two

Oh my goodness.  Today saw me doing quite a bit in the kitchen again.  Actually, I enjoy baking and cooking.  Cleaning up my mess, not so much.  Don't worry, my kitchen gets cleaned each time I am finished cooking. (Usually)

Before I started my kitchen fun, I headed out to get my haircut.  It grew quite a bit in the last 4 weeks. My beautician said it must be from all the rain we have had.  (She was kidding......I think) There is something I am noticing each time I get it cut.  It is getting grayer and grayer.  My normal hair color is brunette with red undertones.  Not so much anymore.

I stopped dying my hair about 7 years ago.  It was just barely turning gray at that point.  My mom did not turn totally gray/white until she was about 75-80.  I have 10 more years, maybe.  I wish it would all turn and be over with it.  My mother in law always asks me where I go to get the highlights in my hair.  I keep telling her God does it free of charge.  

Once I returned home I decided to make some banana bread from a, new to me, recipe I saw on facebook.  Here is the recipe:

Healthy Banana Bread Recipe

Ingredients

2 cups whole wheat flour
1 teaspoon baking soda
1/4 teaspoon salt
1/2 cup sugar free applesauce
3/4 cup honey
2 eggs, beaten
3 mashed overripe bananas

Directions

Preheat oven to 350 degrees F (175 degrees C). Lightly grease a 9×5 inch loaf pan.
In a large bowl, combine flour, baking soda and salt. In a separate bowl, mix together applesauce and honey. Stir in eggs and mashed bananas until well blended. Stir banana mixture into flour mixture; stir just to moisten. Pour batter into prepared loaf pan.
Bake in preheated oven for 60 to 65 minutes, until a toothpick inserted into center of the loaf comes out clean. Let bread cool in pan for 10 minutes, then turn out onto a wire rack

I pulled it out of the oven about 15 minutes ago.  Here is what it looks like. (My house smells super yummy)

The only thing different I did was add some cinnamon to the batter.  We love cinnamon in our sweet breads.  We will probably have a slice of this tonight for dessert.  Tomorrow, I will let you know if it was yummy or not.

The other thing that happened in the kitchen was the making of overnight breakfast oats.  Sam talked about making them on her blog this past Sunday.  Here is the recipe I used for mine.

I like to up the game on mine a bit so here is what I also put into mine.

I have one with blueberries and one with blackberries.  Also, I use 2% milk instead of almond milk as 2% is not as thick as almond milk and with the chia seeds I wanted it a bit thinner.  Those chia seeds thicken things up pretty good.  The other thing I use is pure maple syrup (1Tblsp).  I find it not as sweet as honey.  Once again, tune in tomorrow to find out if it is a keeper of a recipe or not.  This is the first time I have used greek yogurt in my oats.  But what a great source of extra nutrients.

The kitchen is all cleaned up now.  It is time for me to put on my audio book and go and do some cardio.  After that, it will be time to work on the baby blanket again.  It is over half done now.  I am 99% certain I will need one more skein of the yarn.  Panic has not set in quite yet.  That is scheduled to happen once the last skein of yarn is being used on the blanket.

We have plenty of Carne Asada left over from last night so there will be no need to cook tonight.  That is nice since hubby teaches a class tonight.  That gives me a couple of hours of uninterrupted crafting time.  

What have you been up to today?

Until next time..............happy crafting!

KITCHEN DUTY DAY

Did you know diet soda has an expiration date?  This was a fact I was introduced to about 3 years ago.  Yup, it is true.  It will last longer if it is refrigerated.  Unfortunately, we do not have a huge beverage fridge.  Therefore, our soda sits in our backroom on a shelf and we will put some of it in the fridge as we drink others.  Last night, I grabbed a can of Diet Dr Pepper (caffeine free) and with the first sip I knew it was NASTY.  It immediately was dumped down the sink and I looked on the bottom of the can and saw it expired in December of 2018.  Now you know how often I drink soda LOL.  Anyway, I went through all our soda, both in the fridge and on the shelf.  There were three 12 packs dumped out.  Now, I know, if I pull a soda out of the fridge, it will be tasty.

There was a little walk taken this morning.  I did not get to go as far as I wanted.  My back started giving me fits.  Yup, I am sooooo out of shape.  I got about a half mile in is all.  It will get better as long as I do it this more than once a week.  Self, did you year that?  Time to get your body moving OFTEN!

Hubby went for his allergy injection this morning and then he went to the grocery store for me.  Normally, I love grocery shopping but, with all the winter visitors living here, grocery shopping is not enjoyable right now.  The population will thin out around Easter and I will one again enjoy my grocery trips.

When hubby got home we got busy in the kitchen.  The horseradish I ground up, a couple of weeks ago, needed to be ground finer and more vinegar added to it.  Mission accomplished and now I will be freezing some of it.  There is way too much for us to eat in the next few weeks.

After the horseradish we got busy and made jalapeno poppers.  They are so easy to make with the air fryer.  Hubby cuts and cleans out the jalapenos and then I stuff them with the cream cheese and wrap them in bacon.  It makes a wonderful lunch.

While the poppers were cooking, I mixed up a batch of marinade for our carne asada we are grilling tonight.  The meat is now in the marinade and in the fridge until time to grill it.

That means I now have down time until dinner time tonight.  So what am I doing?

Working on the baptism blanket.  The third skein of yarn has just been attached and I am not even half way through the chart yet.  This is concerning me at the moment.  The yardage in the pattern is how much I ordered.  My mind is doing the math and for some reason, this is not going to be enough.  It will be enough to make the blanket but it does not look like it will be enough to add the border.  UGH!  Fingers crossed I will be able to pick up another skein locally.

Do you find you are much more productive on Mondays?

Until next time....................happy crafting!

WEEK 33 OF MY 9TH YEAR

Hi again.  I am a bit later than normal to post my Sunday update.  I was rushing around this morning trying to finish up a project I started a few days ago.  Ready to see what all I accomplished this week?  Let's go!!!!

The Raspberry Fields shawl is completed.  Hooray!  I know you can not tell from the photo but each one of those squares is 12".  This shawl is darn near 7 feet long.  It is going to the Prayer Shawl group as I will never wear anything this large.  Also, I will never make another one of these.  I will say, it was a great stash buster.  I used up 500 grams of DK weight yarn on this shawl.

My other FO for this week is:

The Easter Bunny Basket made from a bleach bottle.  This was something new for me to do.  My attorney had asked me if I thought I could make one.  She gave me her daughter's basket and I found a pattern on Etsy that was super close to the original.

Making pom poms is not my favorite activity.  I will say, these pom poms are darn cute though.

There were a total of 4 pom poms.  The basket was all done as of last night.  This morning I put it all together.

I then ran to Walmart to pick up the eyes and the black foam for the nose.  I had the pink heart in some craft items my Grand Daughter has here.  For the whiskers I just separated some of the white yarn on either side of the nose.

Here they are together.  I think my attorney will be pleased.  BTW, she picked the color.  

After I finished crocheting all the pieces of the bunny I decided I needed to work on a little something until I could get the finishing items today.

Yup, another dishcloth.  I need 9 more in the white.  After this one is completed that will knock it down to 8.  

I am patiently waiting for Amazon to deliver a yarn order I placed last night.  My great nephew is being baptized in April and I wanted to make the baptismal blanket for him.  I would have needed to go to 4 JoAnn's to obtain enough of the wanted yarn to make the blanket.  Ordering it from Amazon saved me about a 50 mile round trip.

It is Caron Simply Soft Party in the color Snow.  It has that little shimmer thread running through it.  It will be perfect for the pattern I have chosen.

Simple Baptism Blanket by Beth Myers.  This will be my main focus this week once the yarn arrives.  I do have another shawl pattern printed out and will do that when I go to Prayer Shawl this week.

In other news, Hubby and I are planning on going to a movie yet today.  (Ford vs Ferrari) We will not go until the delivery has arrived.  Hopefully it gets delivered before 6 tonight or we will postpone the movie until tomorrow. There are too many porch pirates these days to trust our package to be here if we are gone for several hours.  

There is a roasted chicken in the fridge for our dinner tonight.  I was supposed to make a loaf of bread today but, time is not on my side so I bought a loaf of sourdough.  DANG!  Bread has gotten expensive.  I haven't bought a loaf of any kind of bread in quite a while.  Can you say sticker shock?

I did get a very nice gift for Valentine's day:

My hubby knows what I love...............yellow roses are my favorite!

It is now lunch time.  Guess I will make a sandwich with that $$$$ bread.

Until Next Time...........................Happy Crafting!!!!!