If you’ve spent any extended time around me, chances are you’ve heard me complain about the 20-year old compost pile in out backyard. It’s the one part of the backyard excavation experience that we couldn’t resolve on our own. We just didn’t have a place to go with the dirt. Sunday at dinner with my family, we were explaining our dilemma. The dirt is nice good dirt. We just didn’t want to dump it at [...]

This weekend turned out to be busy, busy, busy. I think it will be a two-post update. First our veggie garden: Our weekend started with a blank dirt slate. After a bit of muscle flexing by Ross, the fence-post cement was excavated. While it wasn’t easy, it did take less then time than we anticipated. This was the only event that took less time than anticipated. After a trip to Lowes and Western Gardens, our [...]

Last night (Monday), I made Sweet and Sour Pork stir fry with a recipe from Sunset. While I have no pictures to share, I assure you that it was delicious and very easy to make, which is home run in my book. I was fairly loyal to recipe. I used three bell peppers. I’m not sure how many cups that equals, but it felt like the right mixture. The pineapple chunks came from a can. [...]

This week, I spent my sewing time making hourglass blocks. This pictures represents 100 blocks. And this picture represents squaring all blocks to 4″, definitely the boring part of the project. Well after making 100 blocks, I decided to finalize a design and decide how many blocks I needed to make. No matter what design I came up with, I needed 144 blocks. I want the quilt to be symmetrical. Here’s the final design: Since [...]

Many many years ago, my grandma asked me to make pillow shams with a flange to coordinate with a quilt she made for one of my aunts. I immediately let the fabrics hide away in the bottom of plastic tub, aging as all good fabric should, because I knew she still need to quilt the quilt. Fortunately for the fabric, I have a running list of all my WIP, and I decided that I really [...]