Homemade Hot Chocolate

It's been unseasonably warm during the day here lately.  (Hooray!  I'm in no hurry for winter!)  But the evenings still cool down, and on a cool fall or winter evening, nothing warms me up like hot chocolate.  I decided to look for a homemade hot chocolate recipe and found two that looked good here and here. (That second site is full of all sorts of evil temptation!  The chocolate chip cookie dough fudge is on my list for making for a party this weekend.)  I sort of combined the two recipes and came up with a mix that was ok, but a little bitter.  So I added more powdered sugar, and the second time was the charm! :)

Here's what I ended up with:

Homemade Hot Chocolate Mix
2 1/2 cups powdered sugar
1 1/2 cups cocoa
3 cups instant non-fat dry milk
1 teaspoon salt
2 teaspoons corn starch

Mix all ingredients in a large bowl.  Fill mug about 1/3 full of mix and stir in hot water. Store mix in an airtight container.

Yummm!  Do you have a good homemade hot chocolate mix?  If so, please share!

Thanks for stopping by,
Nan 

Mystery sewing

This weekend I found some time to sew, and had a lot of fun getting some things done!  First, I finished step 1 of Bonnie's new mystery, Easy Street. Hot pink is my constant instead of her gray, but otherwise I'm going with her colors.

Next, I powered through Orca Bay (last year's mystery that I started this summer) step 1 and got it finished.

Finally, I got all the cutting done for Easy Street part 1.  These instructions were released on Friday.  I've just barely started sewing it.

It will be so fun to see how everything comes together!  Check out how others are coming along with Easy Street here.

Thanks for stopping by!
Nan

Resistance Is Futile

I love a good mystery.  Always have, going back to when I was a kid & couldn't get enough of Nancy Drew, and now with a good John Grisham thriller.  Combine my love of mysteries with quilting?  Heaven!  But I don't trust just anybody with a mystery quilt.  Bonnie Hunter runs a free mystery every fall through her blog (Easy Street tab at the top, or others under Mystery Quilts tab), and I've never been disappointed with how they come out.  How can I resist?

We got home Sunday afternoon from a wonderful Thanksgiving with my side of the family.  I printed out the Easy Street part 1 directions from my Mom & Dad's house.  My fabrics weren't pulled yet, but I had bought a fun hot pink "constant" and washed it, and decided that my other colors would be the same as Bonnie's.  I started last year's mystery, Orca Bay, over the summer as leaders & enders.  I'm using white on black for the background there, and since I can't seem to stop collecting them I knew I'd have plenty for this mystery, too.

The first thing I needed to do with my sewing time (which started within an hour of getting back in town - could have been shorter if I hadn't needed to make a quick grocery run!) was add the borders to my Minglewood BOM shop sample.  It's a big quilt, so that took a while.  I can't get it all in one pic from home, so here's a preview:

I'll take another pic once it's displayed at the shop.  I'm so excited the top is done!  Eula at the shop is going to quilt it for me.  I think it deserves fancy custom quilting and I just don't feel like doing that much these days.  Metallic thread is also something it might need, and my machine and I haven't had any luck with that in the past.  So it will hang at the shop as a top until my turn comes up with Eula.

But back to the mystery!  My reward for finishing the Minglewood top was starting Easy Street and spending some dedicated time on Orca Bay step 1.

These are my fabs, now pulled and ready!  Everything is stash except the hot pink constant.

Now that I see it in the pic, I think the top lime green isn't hot enough, so it might get the boot.  But it has purple and turquoise in it, so I'll keep it out for now just in case it will work when I see how it's used. 

No finished 4-p's (four-patches) from step 1 to show yet, but I have over half of the strip sets sewn.

After I took this pic I pressed the strips and now they're ready to sub-cut.

And Orca Bay is progressing!

This is 142 qst's (quarter-square triangles).  82 more to go, and I have a bunch cut and some pairs sewn toward that end.

Finally, while I haven't been faithful to an hour a day of "Sewing with Bonnie" handwork, I haven't abandoned my Vintage Tin embroidery either.  Here's the current block.  The BOM has now started at the shop so I need to get back at it if I want to stay ahead of the BOM participants!

 If you look closely at the pic below, you can see that I've got about half of this block done.

Are you keeping up with an hour a day of hand sewing?  How about Easy Street?  Are you jumping on the bus to Easy Street?  See the other blog posts of participants linking up with Bonnie here.

Thanks for stopping by!
Nan

Christmas in October

I have a finish!  I'm not sure there's a better feeling in quilting than finishing.  Except of course, starting.  Which explains why I have so many UnFinished Objects! ;)  This is a UFO from last fall.  I didn't get it done in time for last Christmas, so it fell to the back burner.  It traveled with me to a few retreats, but had gradually made its way to the bottom of my "retreat bag".

This week I decided that I wanted to finish it.  When I pulled it out it wasn't as far along as I remembered. :(  But I spent my sewing time this week working on it and finished it Thursday night.  Bonnie's quilt cam coincided with the last of the machine applique (which I did through all three layers, so it would double as quilting) and the embellishment.  It's fun to sew along with her and other quiltville.com fans.

Here's the project, from Jingle All the Way by Nancy Halvorsen. This is after machine applique, before embellishment.

The pattern called for lots of jingle bells that I didn't have.  I also didn't have the right color green buttons for the hanging tabs at the top.  At first I thought I'd buy what I needed tomorrow.  Drat, I really wanted to finish this up!  So I scrounged around my junk, err, I mean "notions" shelf, and came up with these things:

The scallop border at the bottom was supposed to have five large red jingle bells, one for each scallop. Guess how many cute little bells are in that bag on the left?!?  Five! :)  Since I'm in the bell choir at church, I decided it would be perfect, and my song could be rung, not sung!  I used one of the tiny jingle bells for Santa's hat, and found almost all the buttons I'd need in the middle package.  A little more scrounging around for another holly berry looking button, and I was good to go!

All done!

Finally, here's a close-up of my favorite part.

Thanks for stopping by,
Nan

Some show & tell...

I've been busy sewing, and have some pics to share with y'all.

Most exciting is the progress made on my Minglewood BOM.  All the kits for the shop are now cut!  Here are 2/3 of the blocks put together!

I have four more blocks made, and four others cut and ready to sew.

Last week I got the binding tacked down on this cuddle quilt shop sample that I showed you recently:

A couple weeks ago I got this quilt top done. It's only fused now, but I'll machine applique through all three layers.  I think it's so stinkin' cute!  It's also a shop sample. (Notice a theme? lol)

It's called Baby Bunny's Bedtime and is from a really great book called Story Time by Kim Diehl. All the quilt designs tell a story for you to talk about with the child.  What's your favorite thing that Bunny is doing to get ready for bed?  I love the potty block! :)  The machine applique will be done after I quilt it, and the embellishment for the faces will be last.

Finally, I finished the Vintage Tin embroidery block I was working on a few weeks ago and have started the next one. Here's the finished one:

Thanks for stopping by!
Nan

Still here!

Things have been so busy since we got home from vacation! And yes...I still promise to finish posting about vacation by telling you about Charleston, and one other stop we made.  Life has just rushed past and I haven't gotten to it yet.  Whenever I have a little free time, I've wanted to sew instead of sit at the computer. A post about that will be coming soon, too.

I had decided that even though our vacation wasn't until late September, it would be warm enough that I could still hold on to summer until after vacation.  And the weather was so beautiful in GA & SC that my plan worked out great.  Of course that meant that by the time we got back home, it was soon October and fall was in full swing.

This is a beautiful flaming red maple tree in our backyard, shortly after we got home.

And after some heavy rain and wind, here is the tree today. :(

Time flies...trite, but true.  It's still fall, and we're enjoying lots of fun fall activities like football, as well as a wonderful visit from my parents.  But before we know it, all the hardwoods will be bare like this one.  But this pic is deceiving.  Today it's 80 degrees!  A little taste of summer is back.  It will be winter all too soon, so I'm cherishing this unusually warm week in Oct!

Pics of my sewing progress and the rest of the vacation pics, soon.

Thanks for stopping by,
Nan

Sewing with Bonnie, update

I can't really call this post a "progress report". lol  This is where I was two weeks ago.  Since then I got the next two cut blocks prepared with interfacing and traced. Both blocks are now well traveled, having gone with me on vacation, but I'm afraid I didn't get any embroidery done until yesterday on the way home.  I decided to just enjoy the vacation and not worry about it.  The official commitment was for the month of Sept, but I'm going to keep going and I can make up for lost time this week. :)

So here's the stitching that I got done just before the trip and on the way home yesterday:

This is one of the license plate blocks for Vintage Tin. Eula at the shop drew a customized KS license plate to replace one of the license plates in the pattern.

How are you doing with one hour a day of hand work or other relaxing "me time"?  To check the progress of others sewing along with Bonnie, check here.

Thanks for stopping by,
Nan