First Friday of Spring

Hi, fellow bloggers!

Yesterday was DH's birthday so I asked him what he'd like to have for dinner...thinking it would be the typical grilled steak, baked potato, etc.  Instead he went through our collection of Cooking Light magazines and came up with 5 possibilities.  I ended up choosing Risotto Primavera.  Aside from deciding and finding which veggies I wanted to use and all the peeling and dicing, it was a pretty easy recipe.  I'm not a big goat cheese fan but used it anyway (it called for goat and Parm cheese) and it had just a hint of that flavor...I really liked it in this recipe.  The guys really liked this too so I'll be sure to make it again.

He prefers pies over cakes so I made him an apple pie.  Instead of rolling the crust, I make a crumb crust that you press into the pie plate...you use the same mixture to crumble over the top.  Yum!

When we visited a LNS last month while visiting DS at college, he picked out a design with TX wildflowers that he'd like me to stitch for him.  I kitted it up in time for his birthday but it might not be finished until next birthday.  lol!

I'm a little sad this am.  My walking buddy is moving far enough away that we can't do our daily weekday walks anymore.  Today's my first day without her and I just couldn't bring myself to do the walk.  Instead I'm reflecting over how blessed I've been to have enjoyed walking with her for so long.  In addition to "keeping me honest" we talked about many various topics during all those miles.  I'll get going again...with my ipod....Monday. 

On the stitching front, I recently won 2 drawings which arrived this week.  It felt like Christmas again!  The first is a Primitive Needle design called "Follow Me".  Every time I think of these designs, I'm reminded of Lisa Roswell's tragic death.  We certainly lost a talented designer.  Thanks, Mamacat!

The other prize blew me away!  It was a bloggoverary drawing from http://morethanjustcrossstitchin.blogspot.com/ .  All I can say is Wow!! And thank you, of course.

I've been diligently stitching a  cute model from Country Cottage Needleworks and am on the home stretch.  It's a good thing b/c another model arrived from Little House Needleworks.  The LHN looks to be another "winner" too.  :-)  I love that I stitch for them since I love their designs.

I also finished a little Santa from Redbird Designs called "Joy Y'all".  He's for a block exchane in one of my groups but I love him so much, I'll stitch another one for us.  I may stitch him for my kids too.  We'll see.

I see I failed miserably at keeping this post brief.  Thanks for reading and have a wonderful week.

Ahhhh! Spring Break

I love our life with all our kids' activities and doing a little traveling but once in a while it's nice to just hang out at home with nothing special to do.  Our 2 younger kids are both on spring break this week and it's been a "hang out" week.  I've gotten into a little reorganizing, cleaning but also enjoyed a having a little more time to stitch.

Our college DS mentioned that they may be doing an Italian food cook-off for his Italian class so he and DH experimented in the kitchen making struffoli.  (I'm sure I butchered the spelling.  Ha!)  I teased them about how nice it was for father to be passing along his cooking skills to his son.

Here's the tasty result:

I've made a lot of progress on a new CCN model but can't show it here.  However, I can show you a few wips.

First off:

Ride a Bike by LK.  DD is "into" bicycling lately sometimes going on group long distance rides on the weekends and sometimes biking to work so when I saw this one, I just had to stitch it up for her.  I'm waiting on a couple more overdyes and a button to arrive to get back to this one.

I'm working on this  Redbird Designs Santa for a Santa themed block exchange in one of my groups  I'm waiting on another overdyed floss to arrive before stitching his cowboy hat:

Finally, I saw this freebie (tantes zolder???) stitched up and made into one of those little pillows with Christmas fabric and lace, if I remember correctly.  As soon as I saw it finished up, I knew I had to stitch him:

I've been cooking more this week to "fatten up" our college DS.  We're doing our St. Pat's meal tonight since he's going back to his school apartment tomorrow.  I made sure to buy some "fixin's" for Reubens for Saturday.  I don't know what I like best, the St. Pat's meal or the Reubens the next day.  I just know I'll have to get back to our normal menus after all this food this past week!  (Or start running marathons.....every day!)

Happy Thanksgiving!

Just in case I don't get on the computer tomorrow, I want to wish everyone a happy Thanksgiving.

I spent a good deal of time in the kitchen today teaching DS how to bake pumpkin pies, baking a pecan pie myself, as well as cranberry orange scones, and some honey wheat bread in the bread machine. The vote is in and the turkey will be deep friend tomorrow so I'll let the men-folk take care of it while I busy myself making all the sides.

I have a couple of small stitching finishes to show you. It feels so good to be stitching again after marching season.

One piece is a Prairie Schooler Santa that I stitched for my final "installment" of this year's Bride's Tree ornament sal blog. IMHO nobody does Santa better than Prairie Schooler. I picked a drumming Santa since DS plays percussion in band.

I also finished a freebie (part of the 2006 Indy Town Square freebies) by La-D-Da called Schoolhouse.

I like to display holiday pics of the kids from years ago so thought I'd post some here in honor of Thanksgiving. The youngest "baby" is 15....time sure does fly!