Thursday, September 22, 2011

1. Work is still crazy, but I still enjoy it.
 
2. I am about to finish my fourth quilt this month (one was almost already finished, one I had the blocks sewn (but not sewn together or with a back or quilt), and two I have started from scratch).  I am feeling very productive.  I might start a few table runners or maybe even another quilt soon.  I even let myself buy some new fabric (because I used up so much old fabric) and 20 yards of Cotton batting. I did use that new fabric very quickly for a new flannel quilt that will soon be making its way to Colorado (for two cute little blond kids - that I get to see next week).
 
3. Less than a week until I get to meet the Stef's children and spend some time with my Hornor "family".  Vacation day!!! Not counting my wedding, because you really don't visit with anyone during your wedding, I haven't seen Stef in over 4 years when I was last out in Colorado.  I am so excited.  I feel like the day before Christmas. 
 
4. I have an amazing recipe for you, but I have to make it first and make sure it is as delicious as it sounds...  I might make it for the hymn sing.  It is something about peanut butter pound cake with chocolate chips (or Reese's cups inside) with peanut butter glaze and chocolate fudge icing... 
 
5. So I walked into my house last night and it smelled like an old person's house. It was musty and like walking into a house full of antiques or a thrift store.  I am not sure what is going on.  The windows are going to be opened tonight and the house aired out.  Also, I am cleaning everything this weekend.  YAY!  Maybe it is the large plant that Aunt Suzanne gave me that was part of her mother's grandmother's plant.   
 
6. Last weekend was great.  My parents and Annadrew and Jared and I spent the weekend in Shippensburg, PA at a Bed and Breakfast.  It was so relaxing to just hang out with all of them and do nothing all weekend.  We went on a 20 mile long bike ride and listened to some fun bands and some not so fun bands.  I bought a bunch of old sheets to turn into some quilts and some apples to turn into apple cake.  I love my family (as it grows and grows).  They make me happy.  Anna posted pictures on facebook.
 
Have a great week.  Recipe and pictures to follow.  Also, pictures of two of my quilts.  The other two are secret for now. 

Thursday, September 15, 2011

Today...
 
I purchased 20 yards of cotton batting on an amazing sale!  It is lovely.  I wanted the unbleached cotton batting because I think it is prettier, but no one is going to see it inside the quilt so I settled for the bleached batting.  They were sold out of the lovely nateral colored cotton. 
 
Listen to Jars of Clay (over and over again).  They would be on my top 5 list of artists.
 
Finished grading my 48 labs.  At least 10 of my students spelled flour as flower... really? 
 
Received a begonia from Aunt Suzanne that was once part of a plant from her mother's grandmother.  How cool is that!?!

Tuesday, September 13, 2011

Eating (taste): A banana (the third and fourth from the left are my favorite ways to eat a banana - green is good, when it gets too yellow it tastes funny).  It and the next one that I am about to start eating are my dinner today.
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Favorite activity right now (sight): quilting and seeing my newly finished quilt.  I just finished one quilt (it is going to be another present, so, you can't see it until later) and I started (and almost finished the whole top) another quilt, which is also going to be a present.  So for now, no pictures, sorry.

Listening to (sound): Majesty by Delirious? One of my favorite songs ever by one of my favorite bands ever.  On a side note, Jared's ipod keeps ruining the song for me because he has it on shuffle and it keeps jumping into a loud Rolling Stones song after Majesty ends.  It just doesn't work.



Here I am humbled by Your Majesty,

Covered by Your grace oh friend.
Here I am knowing I'm a sinful man,
Covered by the blood of the Lamb.
Now I've found the greatest love of all is mine,
Since You laid down Your life,
The greatest sacrifice.

Majesty, Majesty.
Your grace has found me just as I am,
Empty handed but alive in Your hands.

Here I am humbled by the love that You give,
Forgiven so that I can forgive.
So here I stand,
Knowing that I am Your desire,
Sanctified by glory and fire.
And now I've found the greatest love of all is mine,
Since You laid down Your life,
The greatest sacrife.

Majesty, Majesty.
Your grace has found me just as I am,
Empty handed but alive in your hands.
Singing Majesty, Majesty.
Forever I am changed by Your love,
In the presence of Your Majesty.
Majesty.

We're singing Majesty, Majesty.
Your grace has found me just as I am,
And I'm nothing but alive in Your hands.
We're singing Majesty, Majesty.
Forever I am changed by Your love,
In the beauty of Your Majesty.
Majesty.

Favorite Candle: Farmer's Market, Apple Pie, Cinnamon Spice, Pumpkin Pie... all those Fall and Christmas cooking scents.  And homemade english muffins with butter and honey smell pretty awesome as well.  They taste amazing too!!!

Wearing: Soccer sorts and a Gorden College t-shirt (most comfortable t-shirt ever created).

A pet peeve of mine: I thought I had finally solved the problem of having my meat bagged with my produce by helping out and bagging the meat before the cashier bags the meat.  We have a new problem with the cashier now, the last two trips to the store that I have bought eggs, the cashier has banged the eggs all around and rather thrown my eggs towards me.  Fortunately they haven't broken any yet, but it causes me to wince everytime they do it. 

I still love my job. For the last two weeks we have started out the day doing one thing and have had to rush around and finish up things for other projects.  It is always changing; it is great.  I love it.  I worked 9+ hours today and it seemed as if I only worked two or three.  Tuesdays are my favorite day because I have at least 3 meetings (and it makes the day go extremely quick); today I had 5 meetings. My favorite motto for meetings I found online somewhere, "none of us is as dumb as all of us".  ha ha ha.  I would love to start off every meeting that way.  If I had my way, every meeting that I had to throw would be a standing up meeting.  People start becoming tired of standing and they last maximum of 15 minutes.  Perfect timing to accomplish what you need and not waste too much time.  Tomorrow and the rest of the week I am leading a training class for one of my new cells.  We are going to make toast and draw crabs (or maybe make paper airplanes - I am not sure yet).  I might make banana bread.

I started teaching last night.  This year is shaping to be my best year yet.  Right now I have a nice stack of 48 lab reports to grade. 

Saturday, September 10, 2011

odds and ends

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I want to make these soon.  I love the bright colors and the way it uses up scraps.  I also like because it showed up on my favorite food blog because the pattern is named, "chopped vegetables".  Notes for myself below.  :)
For each pillow, you will need:

20" Pillow Form
3 Print Fat Quarters (or scraps, as described in pattern)
1 Yard Coordinating Solid Fabric
1 Yard White or other Neutral Solid Fabric
1 1/2 yards 36” wide Muslin

For pillows with a visible zip closure, you will also need:

22" (or longer) All Purpose Zipper
Zipper Foot
4" x 4" Print Fabric Scrap (can be cut from fat quarters)
12" Fusible Hem Tape
1 Batting Scrap 22" x 22"
1 Batting Scrap 22" x 25"


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I love these.

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I like this bedroom for three kids too. The father of these three boys made all of the beds, without glue, so he can reuse the wood later on.  He also says his kids have bins of toys under the bed and they have to give away toys if they want to put in more toys.  I love the book shelves up on the top bunk.  I would love to have books that close to by bed (I do, just not on shelves, so they don't look that neat). Anyhow, I think this is a great small room. 


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How fun are these? Maybe next time I make peanut butter stuffed chocolate cupcakes, I might die some of the icing orange and yellow... hmmmm.  that might be weird.

I am going to go finish a quilt and maybe start on those chopped vegetable pillows.   I have to go sort through some scraps.  There are some really creepy people looking at the house across the street from us.  Ugh.  College kids. Two families have looked at the house so far... I liked them better. Oh, and speaking of neighbors, our neighbor next to us just got a chicken. WHAT?!? I have been asking Jared for chickens since we got married.  :)  I want free eggs (not that they are free since I have to pay for the feed - I will do a study to see if they are worth it - I wonder how many years until they pay for themselves...). 

I am making pizza for dinner with my Grotto pizza sauce from Anna and Andrew.  Yum yum yum.  I still have 4 or 5 jars.  Delicious!

Tuesday, September 06, 2011

Some pictures from life

Jared sang at the Salisbury national day of prayer prayer breakfast at the civic center, but the video isn't loading.  So you will have to imagine that for now. 


 Jared sang on the Huckabee show the week of my birthday.

 Jared sang at the Shorebirds a couple weeks later.

Jared sings around the house ALL the time.

Jared is singing at the Salvation Army start of their football season on Saturday.  He sang there last year and they asked him back.

These are some quilt blocks that I have been meaning to do something with.  Jared pulled them out on Monday and arranged them for me (not like the picture - I failed to take a picture of the final result).  I sewed all the squares together and put on the boarders.  Now I just need to quilt it (my plan for tomorrow night). 

When I had shoulder surgery in 2005, Mrs. Shelton bought me this puzzle to play with.  I have always loved changing the triangles around and coming up with different combinations.  Well, Jared and I were playing around with this the other day and we had tried several different combinations before we came up with this one.  I saw this one and I said, "it would be fun to make this a quilt." Jared replied, "a Christmas quilt!!!"  And that is how the following quilt came to be. 

 Here is the quilt. The funny thing about this quilt is that Jared cut all the blocks and sewed them together.  The only thing that I did was quilt it and sew the binding on.  When I had the flu, right before Sarah's wedding, we started to pick out the fabrics.  Jared was so excited about the quilt that he cut out all the squares and once he was finished that and saw that I wasn't moving off the couch, he asked how to use the sewing machine. Jared has hemmed and altered his own pants, so I am not surprised that he can quilt too. 

 Closer shot and a picture of my foot (for Anna).

 The quilt draped over one of our chairs.

 Another close up.   I love the bright colors and can't wait until Christmas to be able to hang this on our wall!!!  YAY!!

 This is the back of the Sarah and Josh quilt.  That is all I am showing you until they see it. 

 Here are some doodles of the back of the Sarah and Josh quilt.  I had to sketch everything to calculate the sizes and boarders that I need.


And this is another doodle of the Sarah and Josh quilt.  Once again, this is the back.  You will have to wait to see the front.  I don't think I even have any pictures of the front right now.  ha.  My goal is to have it to them by Christmas.  It is not that long to wait until you will get to see it.  :)  I can't decide if I like the Annadrew quilt or the Sarah and Josh quilt better... I guess that is a good thing.  I love them both.

I am headed to bed now.  Thanks to the neighbors for the free Internet.  It is super slow, but it let me post pictures.  Yes. 

Today at work I was audited by two guys from France.  I am not sure that we understood each other completely, but it seemed to go well.  I had to explain everything that I was doing in my department and how I keep records and track everything.  Thanks to my Dad for making me write everything down and stopping me from doing things in my head.  There have been many times that I have been tempted to do things in my head and not document them, but it always seems to turn out better when I can track and find everything that I have done.  It is much easier to repeat what I need to repeat and avoid what I need to avoid. 

My department is slowly shaping up to be quite a great place to work.  I am starting to have all my own forms and documents that I can start to use over and over again.  At first I was reinventing the wheel each time, but now I can reuse some of the things that I have created. It is nice.  I am looking forward to next year.  There should be a lot going on next year.  They are looking to grow my department by about 8 or 10 more people.  It is going to be crazy; it is going to be awesome.  I am going to love it.  I am going to get so much done.  I can't wait!!!

Plus, I mean, how can you not love chocolate peanut butter stuffed cupcakes?!?  And how can you not love pizza parties and fried chicken picnics for the winners who have the highest audit scores? It is our goal to make people smile as much as possible.  I think people are starting to understand that we are there to help them instead of feeling threatened by change. 

I love my job.  I am so thankful for it. God is so good to me.  I NEVER NEVER NEVER thought I would find a job that allowed me to use so much of my degrees and that let me have this much fun on the Eastern Shore.  That whole year of misery that I spend in their engineering department was all preparing me for running this department.  I often asked Jared why I had to work at such a boring miserable job, now I know.  I am able to relate to some many things because I used to work with them.  And I am so thankful for a boss that talks to me like a normal person and for co-workers with a sense of humor and employees that do what they are told and want to do a good job and interns that follow directions and are creative. Thank you, thank you, thank you! I love my job.  I never thought I would be able to say that.  God is great.  Follows are the words to a wonderful old hymn.  It is so true and has been such a comfort to me since the days during college.  I know the igrace tune to this song (if you haven't listened to igrace music yet, you need to head over to their website RIGHT NOW and buy all their cds -- my kids are going to be raised on igrace, Judy Rogers, and GT and the Halo express, I am just saying, they are that good, they never get old and really, how can you beat the words of hymns (unless it is scripture, in that case, go buy some gt and the halo express cds)?  Go buy yourself some igrace and be blessed greatly!); that is where I first heard it. I just love the words.  I listen to this hymn often.  Praise God for his goodness and grace. He gives us more than we could ever hope or imagine.  He is awesome.  


1.Sometimes a light surprises
The Christian while he sings;
It is the Lord who rises
With healing in His wings;
When comforts are declining,
He grants the soul again
A season of clear shining,
To cheer it after rain.

2.In holy contemplation
We sweetly then pursue
The theme of God's salvation,
And find it ever new;
Set free from present sorrow,
We cheerfully can say—
E'en let the unknown morrow
Bring with it what it may.

3.It can bring with it nothing,
But He will bear us through;
Who gives the lilies clothing,
Will clothe His people too:
Beneath the spreading heavens
No creature but is fed;
And He, who feeds the ravens,
Will give His children bread.

4.Though vine nor fig tree neither
Their wonted fruit shall bear;
Though all the fields should wither
Nor flocks nor herds be there;
Yet God the same abiding,
His praise shall tune my voice,
For, while in Him confiding,
I cannot but rejoice.

Peanut Butter Stuffed Cupcakes

Has anyone listened to Alison Krauss's new cd Paper Airplane?  Love love love. I acutally bought it with an itunes gift card that Aunt Suzanne gave me for my first graduation. So, thank you, Auntie!! 

More wishes than a thousand hearts can count for you
More smiles than a merry-go-round
The sweetest ending to a bed-time story told
My love follows you where you go

More laughter than a kindergarten out to play
One Sunday morning song that says it all
More summer than a California beach can hold
My love follows you where you go

For those of you that know me, you will know that one of my favorite flavor combinations is chocolate and peanut butter.  I had a peanut butter and chocolate wedding cake (oh my goodness it was amazing, but it is SOOO much work).  Does anyone else LOVE these flavors together?
This recipe satisfies my cravings for chocolate and peanut butter without too much work.  I even use a box cake mix and applesauce instead of oil and it still tastes amazing!!  I am not a big cake person.  I think cake is only good for the icing and stuffing that it brings with it.  You NEED to make these cupcakes or at least find someone to make the icing and fudge sauce and eat it up.  This is the third time I have made them and I am still eating the icing with a spoon and dipping it in the extra fudge sauce (there is always extra icing and fudge sauce...). 


And I am making this, but without the Candy corn.

Monday, September 05, 2011

The Christmas quilt is finished!!!  And the Sarah and Josh quilt is coming along nicely.  I have had the front finished since sometime last year.  I just need to get the back sewn together.  I don't know why I keep jumping projects in front of the back.  The goal is to finish all the sewing squares together by the end of today.  Then all that will be left is to quilt it and put the binding on (my two favorite parts).  I used some of the same fabrics in Sarah and Anna's quilts, which I think is pretty cool.  I might also finish some cloth napkins today for my kitchen.  I keep promising myself that I will make some that aren't Christmasy (because that is all that we have right now - ha).