Embroidery Books

Last post, I promised I would get back in touch with a link to the embroidery book from whence my little mermaid came from. Here you are: 

Doodle Stitching: The Motif Collection: 400+ Easy Embroidery Designs

And OMG only $7.70 Im gonna say that's an incredible steal for this book which is jam-packed with adorable and simple motifs, as well as basic instructions.

By the way, while I'm pimping products and services, do you use swagbucks? It's a search engine and works like this: You sign up and use it to search. Every once in a while your search will earn you a certain amount of "swagbucks". You can earn them in numerous other ways, not all of which involve making purchases, but it's way beyond me to outline them all here. I really recommend it. I am a moderate searcher, I probably search 1-5 things on average a day, and I seem to accumulate enough to chash in points for a $5 amazon.com gift card once a month or so. Considering the decent prices on amazon (there is also an entire swagbucks store you can get other stuff at) I think it's a super deal. They don't harass me at all and I get money for doing something I'd do anyway. Win! If you're interested in signing up, click here: http://www.swagbucks.com/refer/catd5b

I'll get some swagbucks for referring you and you'll get signed up :-)

Another book that has my embroidery wheels turning though I haven't actually made anything in it yet is this one:

Stitch with Love

Its really beautiful. I love how she stuck with the one color scheme throughout. She also gives instruction from a left and right handed perspective, which may be really helpful for you south paw out there!

Happy stitching!

Moving Right Along

Well, I'm daily taking on new challenges. This week I butchered a rabbit. That is not to say I killed (or harvested or whatever term you think fits) the bunny, I am so far running like a little girl in the other direction while my husband handles the life ending portion of the meal. I did however, thaw it out and then dismember it. By. Myself. And photographed the results for you. It went reasonably well, wouldn't you say?

The butchering was in the name of a rabbit pot pie recipe I found in an old book I got from Goodwill on raising small livestock. For the crust I used the same recipe from the America's Test Kitchen book that I used on my peach pie. Next time I'm going to add a bunch more veggies to this concoction, as it tasted darn good but I feel the need to jazz up the prison slop image it projects:

Food needs color, a little on the dish and  a little in the food, like so:

This is my go-to treat lately, cantalope cubed in vanilla yogurt with a little bit of granola and honey drizzled on top. YUUUUUUUUUUUUUm.

Life is really just amazing lately. I love this Stay At Home Mom gig. My biggest fear is that money issues will creep up and grab us around the neck and force me back into the workforce. But until that day I'm going to revel in how wonderful this is.

We've had a couple of walks in the desert after Daddy gets home...

The little guy seems to prefer my company to keeping up with the big boys and the dog who set a faster pace than meandering old mama. Im so blessed to have my little escort.

The big boys scout out amazing finds for us, like this:

If I were worth my salt as a blogger I'd have found out what kind of lizard this is but hey, I'm a total amateur. He was beautiful though. He was so perfectly intact, at first we thought he was just soaking up the rays on his little rock. On closer inspection we found the little guy had sadly passed from this realm, leaving a really beautiful corpse. Must've lived hard, huh? Happy Trails little dude.

These pictures (above and below) just make my catch my breath and wonder at the amazing life I'm leading. How can I manage to find anything to complain about?!

Finally, I picked up a needle and some thread and got embroidering today. I'm making myself a key fob. I've got a thing for mermaids, so here's a preview:

I'm not great at it, but I think she's pretty cute. Next post I will have the patience to figure out how to link to the book I got her out of and hopefully show off the finished product. 

Have a lovely weekend!

Accomplishments

I've been ignoring the big things this week, like laundry and the laundry room in general, which really needs to be gutted of belongings that have no real home. Instead I've been focusing on the small things, not so noticeable on the "will my  husband think I've sat on the couch all week eating bonbons" scale, but just as fun on a personal level.

I'm going back to cloth diapering, which I gave up when Boone was about six months old and started getting diaper rashes...I just couldn't troubleshoot the laundry while working full time. So I have a bunch of fitteds which require covers. I like fleece covers. I went online to find some cheapies, but my subconscious mind revolted and reminded me of all the fleece material I have sitting in my crafting closet. so I got to work and in less than two hours had churned out these two beauties:

Im proud, really proud. Of the soakers, not of my inability to rotate these photos. They are Katrina soakers, it's a free online pattern

Accomplishment number two is a peach pie I made today. On the way back from visiting my family in California last weekend, we stopped at a Central Valley fruit stand and I bought a shit ton of nectarines and peaches for $2.68 - locally bought certainly does pay off! I had peach pie on the mind. Good thing I didn't have anything in mind for the nectarines b/c Boone kept climbing up to the counter and stealing them. Kid was eating them like popcorn. Anyway, turns out that armed with the America's Test Kitchen cookbook I can throw down on a peach pie. Not that I'm picky, and Willie did refuse to try it (what the hell kind of five year old doesn't like peaches? Much less peaches drowning in sugar and cinnamon? Oh well, more for me and Boone and Daddy when he gets home).

Can I just remark on how beautiful peaches are. Beautiful. I dutifully boiled them then tossed them in ice water and sure enough they practically climbed out of their skins themselves. How pretty and refreshing does this look:

If you stick with this blog for any period of time  you will learn my oldest son is a shameless camera hog.  Anyway, prior to their undressing, we stood there marveling at the peaches, floating in their own personal Arctic Sea as we sweltered in the high 90s. Beautiful.

Then you know the rest, I mixed and rolled and refrigerated and I poked vent holes. Then I cooled. Then I ate....and partway through eating I remembered I would want to blog this later so I took a picture:

Yummy.

So those are the accomplishments. And here is a picture of a bottle:

An old mason jar, rather, that my parents dug up at their house. It was sitting around dirty so I took it home and it shined up like a diamond. I just love this color of glass and so I took a million pictures of it, thought I'd share it. Maybe someday I'll incorporate it into my blog layout.

'Kay, bye :-)