Need to get caught up...

I have gotten quite a bit behind in working on the temperature afghan. I have been keeping track of the temperatures though, and today knitted three days worth of stitches. I am caught up until the 11th of this month. Next year I will not do the afghan in garter stitch, since it ends up being two rows for each day to create the design.

The pictures are only of a small section of the front and back of the afghan.

Overnight Oats...

I decided to make my own version after watching YouTube videos on them being made in mason jars (as well as other meals). I made one version of old fashioned quaker oats, milk (I used lactaid although you can use regular or even soy milk), a little bit of honey, chia/flax seed blend (which is healthy for you and acts as a thickener), vanilla extract, and strawberries. The next version I had the oats, honey, lactaid, chia/flax seed blend, cinnamon, and raisins. The next morning I ate it cold, it was mushy, including the raisins which need to be added right before eating to prevent them being mushy, and it did have more of an oat flavor. My overall impressions was that I thought the strawberry version would be my favorite but it wasn't at all, the vanilla flavor didn't come through. I did a taste test of heating up a cinnamon oatmeal version with no raisins today, and it wasn't mushy but had less of the cinnamon and oats flavor. So next time I will need to add more cinnamon, and I didn't mind it either cold or warm.

I do reuse some glass jars not just regular mason ones. So have you tried this? What did you think? 

Should have had this done....

by now and it should have already arrived earlier in the week for the recipient. However, our nephew just turned two (a day before my birthday) so I don't think he will mind. 😀 I think he will like it, as it had boats, flags, helicopters, etc.

I have done it using the pillowcase style since I do not like to do binding. I think sometimes borders are distracting from the rest of the quilt, depending on how they coordinate. I still have the quilting to do. The back fabric was what I had on hand, and while I know it isn't really a boy fabric I liked that it had hearts on it.

Are you working on any projects right now? 

Great Leftovers...

Last night we had the left over chicken and baked it in the oven, as I didn't think it would be good reheated in the microwave. It turned out great and I couldn't taste the extra olive oil that was on it previously. We ate all of the cauliflower and onions, so I made two different side items. I cut up two large size potatoes and just added salt, pepper, butter and baked it until cooked. Last week I had made some more refrigerated pickling juice and never used some of it, so Tuesday night I added some baby carrots to it. Tonight the carrots were ready to eat. I didn't make the bread it was store bought french loaf.

Valentine's Day....

I had a great Valentine's Day and hope everyone had a great day (wether you celebrate it with a significant other, friends, etc. or even not at all). I received a package from my Dad and flowers from Mr. Crafts4others.

Mr. Crafts4others and I went out for breakfast and then later on cooked dinner together. Normally, I do the cooking by myself as I love to cook. We made two new recipes and besides a few tweaks on some of the ingredients, we will definitely have it again.

I didn't get a very good picture of the side dish, which was cauliflower, onions, garlic, shredded parmesan, thyme, olive oil, salt and pepper. We accidentally put the parmesan on too early, we were supposed to cook everything and then towards the end add it. We used a whole mini package of fresh thyme, but we couldn't taste the flavor at all. Next time we plan on not adding the thyme at all, less olive oil, and making sure the cauliflower and onion pieces are bigger.

The chicken breast (we had two fairly good size breasts and I cut it into 4 pieces) we baked had olive oil, minced garlic, crushed dried rosemary, salt and parmesan. It also was supposed to have chives but we didn't have any on hand. It was really easy to get too much olive oil on the chicken, as per the recipe it says to add all the spices together with the oil. Next time I will just brush the olive oil on both sides and then sprinkle on the spices. The parmesan then only goes on the top. 

We have leftover chicken so we will see how it tastes.

Future Book Reviews...

I received two books for free recently from the publishers and am pretty excited about reading them. Hopefully, I will find a new author to enjoy that I haven't read before.

The first one is called Unlock Your Dreams: Discover The Adventure You Were Created For by Philip Wagner. This is a christian book based on exactly what the title is, discovering the gifts God has given and how to achieve them. I like books that start to make you think internally, so I hope this is a book like that.

The Chilbury Ladies' Choir by Jennifer Ryan takes place in England during WWII. A group of women from the village of Chilbury tells the story of the lives of these women through letters and journals. They deal with secrets, romance, death, etc. Even though this is a novel, it sounded still pretty interesting to me.

I believe Unlock Your Dreams came out in December and The Chilbury Ladie's Choir will be released this coming Tuesday on Feb. 14.

More Work Needed....

to complete these projects of various crafts I have been working on.

I will start with the projects I have had for the longest.

I have picked up the hand quilting for Mr. Crafts4Others quilt. I have found one or two thimbles that I really like and at the same time been testing various types of quilting hoops/stands. I was quilting away on Monday while listening to the Senate.

I am a few days behind on knitting the 2017 Temperature Afghan, but this progress goes to the 3rd of Feb. I will get to add yellow again once I get caught up as yesterday it was 74!

I haven't crocheted on this baby afghan until the 2nd of Feb., but I got a little bit more complete.

The newest project was put in by request by Mr. Crafts4others it is knited in the garter stitch to keep the keyboard of his computer from sliding on his desk.

What are you working on?