Thank You 1st Grade!

My friend Faye, once again called on me to assist with her class.  This time it was 1st Graders and practicing letters and spelling was the goal and they were going to write letters to a pen pal.  I get to be that pen pal. 

I have to admit that I love it when she does this writing exercise with her classes.  It is always amusing to see what is interesting to a six or seven year old.  I had a good chuckle over questions on if I wore makeup and if I like horror movies and what sort of toys I liked. In some ways it feels a lot like speed dating, where you bullet point the things that are important to you.  I have come to realize that pizza topping and ice cream flavors are very important.  (Also super amazed over the kid that says asparagus is his favorite food.)

I feel that any way to encourage a child to learn and ask questions is a wonderful thing to pursue.  I remember when I was in grade school that I had a pen pal out of state and it was a delight to write back and forth over our likes and dislikes.  The learning benefits of such a tasks  enriches the reader and the writer.  Thank you 1st Grade for your efforts! 

Longwood Garden Souvenir

I love to travel.  Museums, Botanical Gardens and cheesy roadside attractions are my bread and butter for a good vacation.  Recently I had the pleasure of visiting Longwood Gardens with myself husband, and while the gardens are magnificent and beautiful it lacked one thing.   I love souvenirs. I love the magnets that you can put on your fridge and the post cards that you can send to friends and family and even the occasional tee shirt that has logos on it. 

Longwood Gardens has beautiful vistas, lovely terrains, a friendly conservatory cat and is rich in history.  The gift shop has a wide variety of plants and gardening based items that can easily be purchased, but if you were looking for something a little more plebeian such as a magnet to grace your refrigerating unit, you will be flat out of luck.  Not everyone has garden space to bring home a lovely rose bush or would be interested dried mushrooms for soup.  Sometimes a person just wants a magnet and a couple of post cards. 

Never fear Longwood Gardens, I am here for you.  Here are a couple of magnet ideas based off of some recent pictures. Think about and get back to me if you are interested.

Green Fiend

My brother has once again tried to murder me with plant life. It is fortunate that I have  movies such as Invasion of the Body Snatchers, Little Shop of Horrors and Creep Show that have  wizened me up to his nefarious plan.

 
Of course it all innocently as a birthday gift. His plan was to lull me into a false sense of security with a Funky Veg Kit and then he would strike.  I am wise to his plan.  I am going to make friends with this potential green fiends and use them to turn the tides of this sibling war, much like the Ents in LOTR.

  
The Golden Zucchini is the first vegetable that I have started with in the Funky Veg Kit, and if I am lucky it will have some of the same properties as the Golden Apple in Minecraft and not try to kill me like the creepers usually do.  Overall I am enjoying the kit and am anxious to have my new plant friends under my control and then I will be able to turn the tides on my treacherous sibling. 

Peanut Chicken Rice

I just came back from a lovely trip visiting friends in Texas and I should be ashamed of all the food I ate.  There is so much good food out there, that I wanted to sample everything, since who knows when I will be in Texas again.  Once the rush of traveling wears off and I am ready to settle in and have some quality time with my husband and cats, I want some comfort food.  Traveling is great and I love trying new things, but there is nothing like home.  

 One of the favorite comfort foods in my home is Peanut Chicken Rice.  It is a filling dish that is easy to make, and is a cross between a fried rice and Thai chicken on stick with peanut dipping sauce. 

Ingredients 

2 tablespoon Olive Oil

1 teaspoon Chili Oil

1 teaspoon Sesame Oil

1-2lbs chicken breast cubed

3 cups cooked white rice

1/4 cup chopped onion

1/4 cup shredded carrots*

1/4 cup peas fresh or frozen*

1/4 cup frozen sweet corn*

 1 cup Chunky Peanut Butter

1/3 cup Soy Sauce

1  tablespoon Minced Garlic

2 teaspoons Chili paste

1/2 teaspoon Ginger Powder

1 tablespoon of Sriracha

1 teaspoon of Hoisin sauce 

1/2 Cup Water or Vegetable Broth

In a large sauté pan heat the oils and add the chicken, onions,garlic,ginger powder and chili paste until chicken is cooked and the onions are translucent.  Add the rest of the vegetables and soy sauce until veggies are cooked through.  Add the chunky you peanut butter, Sriracha, hoisin sauce and water/vegetable broth.  The peanut butter will melt as you stir everything together and will become a loose sauce.  If the sauce is thick, you will want to add a little more water or broth until it is smooth and loose .Add the rice and stir it together until it is all mixed well together.  Once the rice is coated in the peanut sauce, and the chicken and vegetables are mixed in, it is ready to serve.  

 *It may look like a bunch of ingredients, but most of the vegetables can be found frozen or you can use a frozen soup mix if you aren't opposed to green beans being in it.  Some people in my house do not like green beans, which is why I try not to use the frozen vegetable soup mix.

My Best Friend's Exorcism

My Best Friends Exorcism

If there was ever a bathtub book, My Best Friend's Exorcism by Grady Hendrix would be it. This is a book that was bought for my mother in law and then later borrowed by me, because it sounds really good.  One of my favorite modes of relaxation is to sit in a hot bath, with the music playing in the back ground, and read.   If the book is good enough, and the water is hot enough, you can sit there and feel all the tension slowly melt away in the salty scented swirling water.  I was a prune when I got to the halfway point of the book.

My Best Friend's Exorcism  is a cross between nostalgic sweetness and a train wreck that you can't look away from.  It is a young adult novel that takes you on a journey of unexpected proportions and you can feel yourself growing with the characters. It is oddly fascinating how well the 80's are portrayed and how spot on the feelings are with the time period and makes me wonder if my niece, Hannah would really get all the nuances of detail that made up being a child of the 80's if she were to read it.

It is one of those times that I would have to agree with the very brief description on the back of the book.  This is certainly a "a heartwarming story of friendship and demonic possession" and I would recommend it to anyone that enjoy reading Young Adult novels.

Nightmare Baby

Pinterest is an addiction.  It is easy to collect cool things and only a small percentage of them you will ever actually utilize.  I am super proud of myself, that I actually utilized two of my DYI pins in what I would consider a success.

My friend, Barbie is having a baby. In my vast collections of pins, I had a pattern on how to assemble a relatively easy baby blanket. I was assured by a mutual friend that recently spawned, that you can never have too many baby blankets.  It seems that baby blankets are often thrown up upon,  urinated on, privacy shield for feedings and are one of the most useful things to have on hand second to bibs. Bibs are the only thing that keeps the drool in check, since babies are constantly salivating for freedom. I had no idea.  Cats don't really care about baby blankets and certainly don't want anything to do with bibs.

I liked the baby blanket idea, because it is one of those things that you can really custom to the person.  Any one who has spent any sort of time looking for a baby shower gift, will quickly realize that everything is either pink or blue. It is going to be about flowers and cuteness for girls and trucks and robots for boys.  It isn't all that helpful if you have a friend that likes to color outside of the lines or has a very particular hobby or collection.

My friend Barbie, loves Nightmare Before Christmas.  She has a huge collection of memorabilia related to it, and any child that is going to be raised in her home, is going to be very acquainted with the movie.  Collaborating with Gat and Laura, it was decided that we would make three blankets in a Nightmare Before Christmas theme and bibs to match.

The pattern I used for the baby blanket was from Littlehouseliving.com and it was called 10 Minute Simple Baby Receiving Blanket Pattern.  It may have taken me more than ten minutes to make, mostly because of cats.  Any time you have to pin something down on the table and try and make sure it is even, the Dib cat wants to help.  He is a super helper cat by wanting to lay on everything.  My husband go tired of me complaining about Dib helping, that he locked the Dib cat in the kitchen so I could finish pinning.  The sewing really is the easy part.  I think that the pinning is the worst part of any project, but also the most necessary.    Over all I was very pleased with how the blankets turned out, and Laura even customized one of them by embroidering the baby's name on one of them.

The pattern that I used for the matching bibs was from a reference pin by mallybibs.com that gave the dimensions of a baby or toddler bib.  I drew out the dimensions on the back side of gift wrap to make the pattern.  It wasn't quite perfect, but it turned out decent.  I have since pinned a couple more bib patterns to try and perfect it a little more.  Most of them call for snaps, or Velcro but I have mixed feelings about it and my comfort level with snaps is no where near me wanting to gift it to someone.

Overall, I would highly recommend giving personalized gifts.  They have more meaning, and lets the person you are giving them to, that you cherish them as an individual.

Built To Last

Sometimes when life gives you a hiccup, you need to learn to embrace the sudden disruptions to life sustaining pathways and instead of focusing on how to prevent the next spasm. As of recent I have been working on the Battle Jacket project; however a short break was required on the jacket to finish up a couple of gifts for some dear friends.

I was in the middle of working on a simple stitch project and my sewing machine had a hiccup. Human hiccups and machine hiccups are two different things. When a machine spasms, it will only end in tears.  I was pretty close to tears when everything locked in the machine and refused move.  It took some fancy jiggling and manual moving of some gears for it to release the fabric from it's angry clutch.

Thankfully there is more than one sewing machine in my home.  My husbands grandfathers sewing machine has been living in our basement, untouched since he passed away. Dusting off the case, we set up the machine as I tried ignore my husbands as he encouraged me to go get a new machine as he tried to research how to operate a classic Singer on YouTube.   I don't want a new machine, I want my old machine fixed. Since it is going to take a little bit of leg work to find out who fixes sewing machines, and I needed to finish my project, the family sewing machine was going to have to do the job. After a few failed attempts we were able to get it working.

I don't often want to give myself a pat on the back, but this is one of those moments that I think I deserve it.  I was full of trepidation when it came to Jon's grandfathers sewing machine, mostly because I remembered Hank, and I still have a waffle iron from him that is almost considered a lethal weapon. Hanks sewing machine exceeded my expectations and also made me feel like a want to be hipster.  I am extremely proud that I was able to get it up and running.  There is something to be said about things that are built to last. While I might not convert all my sewing projects to the old machine, I am happy that I was able to finish some current projects in a timely manner.