After spending the winter at Lake Pleasant, Arizona, with the temperatures in the mid-80′s to low 90′s, we came home to very cool and windy weather. Needless to say, I wanted to turn around and go back! Once home, I had a couple of anniversary cards to make before I could get back to my knitting/crocheting.

When you’re relaxing in a lawn chair under a shade tree in the nice warm weather, it’s so easy to knit or crochet. This bag is crocheted and I am currently using it for another crochet project I’m working on. It’s such a nice size, I think I may end up lining it with fabric and using it for smaller items when traveling.

I started a pair of slippers … but only got one finished. I need to get the other slipper finished before winter because they will be very warm!

I just need to make the pompom that goes on the top of the slipper. These slippers are very comfortable and cushy!

This next bag needs to be starched and then it’ll become a basket. I actually made it for a Christmas present but liked it so much I’m thinking I’m gonna keep it for myself! I like to crochet (or knit) when I’m watching TV in the evening and like my work to be in a basket at my feet. This will be perfect for that!

Last fall, I made my mother a “shrug” for Christmas. She is always cold and I saw this pattern and realized it would be perfect for when she’s sitting in her recliner watching TV. She wears it every day and says it kept her toasty warm.

That’s all for now. I have a few more projects to post later.

I have lots of projects going right now. I get tired of working on the same thing all the time so Ichange it up.

I’ve finished two dishcloths and started on a third (you can never have enough of these on hand for quick gifts, or for personal use). I’m almost done with the first slipper of a pair of slippers (thanks to my cousin, Shanna, for the pattern). And I’m working on a quilted table runner. My mother-in-law gave me these Christmas squares years ago and I had no idea what to do with them. I “found” them again last summer and decided a table runner was the ideal project for these squares (of course since I quilt by hand it takes me longer than if I was running this up on the sewing machine)! And finally I started knitting on my socks again. Since it’s been so long since I worked on them, I need to go back to this post (http://stampinwithanita.com/?p=1564) and watch the youtube videos on how to make the heel!

The picture below is the first slipper in the pair. It’s not quite long enough yet to fit my foot. It’s the first time I’ve used the Fair Isle 2 yarn technique. What would we ever do without youtube videos to help us out?!

 After a quick trip to the grocery store, and since it’s raining outside, it will be a good afternoon to continue working on my WIP’s! The decision will be what to work on: socks, slippers, table runner?????

It’s been almost a year since I retired and I’ve learned a lot (I guess you’re never too old to learn new things)! For instance, if you make a 30/31 day meal plan, do all your shopping at once (except for milk, of course), it’s amazing how much money you save. Besides the fact that  we live 25 miles from the nearest grocery store which is in a small town, so I like to take a day and head to a bigger city where there’s a Costco and a Fred Meyer! My meal plans consist of the main dish, and at least one side dish. I plan on having that meal two days in a row. I freeze any leftovers (I try to make just enough for two meals) to be eaten on a day when I just don’t feel like cooking! I also make sure I have enough ingredients in my pantry/freezer for deserts (i.e., Cowboy cookies, chocolate chip bar cookies, fruit or berry cobbler, etc.). And, of course, we have to keep peanutbutter (we had to switch to Skippy since Costco quit carrying Jiff but they really taste the same anyway) and Ritz crackers on hand for snacks! And graham crackers, too!

As I was going through my recipes, I came across the recipe for my mother-in-law’s apple crisp. Depending on the fruit I have, I occasionally change it up a little (i.e., this crisp had apples, pears and raisins). Jim insisted we buy pears one day and then he wouldn’t eat them so before they went bad they ended up in a crisp! This crisp was delicious!

One of my new all-time favorite recipes is Pioneer Woman’s cobbler recipe. It is so quick and easy. This one is peaches, but I’ve made it with blackberries, too!

Another one of Pioneer Woman’s recipes I use several times a month is her pizza dough. It is so easy, never fails and tastes so good! I found a really good recipe for pizza sauce on allrecipes.com. I make a batch and it will last for about 3 – 4 pizzas. I think margherita pizza is our favorite. This first pic I added browned hamburger and it was pretty dang good! The second pic I added hot Italian sausage on half the pizza for Jim. He loved it. I use Costco’s Bel Gioioso sliced fresh mozzarella. It comes in a two pack and I can usually make 3 pizzas.

I’ve decided my favorite cookie is the cowboy cookie. It’s kind of a cross between an oatmeal cookie and a chocolate chip cookie – with butterscotch chips and walnuts thrown in the mix as well! I could make myself sick eating them! The recipe makes so many cookies, I can fill up my canister and still freeze about 6 quart size baggies full of cookies!

When we were first married, I decided to try my hand at making a pie. After Jim “compared” it to his mom’s (and not favorable to my pie crust I might add), I swore I would never make a pie again. After I retired, and started going through cookbooks, I watched Pioneer Woman making pie crust on her show for chicken pot pie. I wanted to make this recipe so I had to make her pie crust and guess what – it worked, tasted great and was flaky! The recipe made enough for two pies so I froze half of it (which she assured us it was perfectly fine to freeze pie dough). The pie I made with that crust was a pecan pie (I think pecan is my favorite pie ever). Obviously I had never made a pecan pie before. Oh dear, Jim & I ate it in three days! The second pie I made was key lime with meringue (I used a graham cracker crust already made but I think we prefer a regular pie crust and will make that for the next key lime pie). When we were in Key West last month I brought back some key lime concentrate. Jim said it was the best key lime pie he had ever eaten – needless to say I was pretty pleased with my efforts since I had never made meringue before either!

This summer, my neighbor told me I could have all the peaches I wanted off his tree. They didn’t want them and were just going to let them go to waste. I practically picked that tree bare. I froze several batches for peach cobbler. Then I made my all time favorite jam – peach! Even though it’s time consuming, I decided that homemade jam is so much better than store bought jam, yes, even Smuckers! All in all, I’ve made raspberry (for Jim and Tracy since I don’t like it), strawberry, peach and blackberry jams, and grape jelly (my other neighbor gave a couple flats of concord grapes but little did I know how much work it was to get those grapes ready for jelly making). This first pic, starting from left, is strawberry, blackberry and raspberry. The second pic is my peach jam. And the final pic is my grape jelly. I still have enough fruit/berries frozen to make 2 1/2 batches grape jelly, 2 strawberry jam, 1 blackberry jam and 3 peach jam! Holy cow, I better get busy if I want all this done before the holidays!

Another recipe from Pioneer Woman (hm, do I detect a theme here?) Jim & I absolutely love is her skillet cornbread. It is so good and the top and bottom are nicely browned. Mm mm good! Although we have decided that a regular batch is just  too much (we don’t like leftover cornbread) so the next time I make it I’m cutting the recipe in half and using a smaller skillet.

If you don’t have Pioneer Woman’s cookbooks, you really need to go buy them. She has some wonderful recipes and I haven’t even tried half the ones I’ve marked!

A couple of weeks ago at our scrapbook retreat (East Meets West) in Monroe, one of the gals was sewing several very ADORABLE bags. She had several almost finished and we all wanted to buy them. However, she was making them as Christmas presents. She found the pattern on Pinterest. This week, after going through my stash of material, I decided to make myself one! This fabric is double sided and, of course, I chose the pinker side! I bought it when I went to Florence, Italy in 2006 for my son’s wedding. Laura was at work so Kevin & I were wandering around downtown Florence and happened upon a fabric store. Neither one of us spoke Italian and due to communication problems, I ended up with a very large quantity of fabric! I thought I had asked for 5 yards but think I ended up with way more than that! Oh well, I didn’t mind since I knew eventually I’d use it. My plan is eventually to make a quilt out of it. In the meantime, here’s my bag!

In July we took a cruise to Alaska on Royal Caribbean’s Rhapsody of the Seas. Our friends Valerie & Ian (we met them on our 2009 Australia to Hawaii cruise) were able to include this cruise in their North America vacation. We were also joined by my daughter, Tracy, and her vacation friend, Melissa. One of my friends, Sue, and her husband, Don, were also on the cruise! We had beautiful weather, except the day we departed Seattle and the day we returned to Seattle – it POURED!

As a side note, we were on Rhapsody of the Seas on our Australia/Hawaii cruise. Our ship’s captain was Rick Sullivan. Captain Sullivan had just gotten back to work from vacation for this Alaska cruise.

(Click on any of the pictures to make them bigger.)

I wasn’t going to make a 12 x 12 scrapbook for this vacation, but this album was available on the ship and I just couldn’t pass it up! And thanks to Tracy, I discovered collages using Picasa! It’s so much easier than having too many pictures to try and fit into an album. Now I can pick a handful of pictures and turn them into a collage that fits onto one page! Love it!

I had actually just planned on making a smashbook album – I brought it, double-sided tape, scissors and pens along with me on the cruise so I could scrapbook every night before going to bed, leaving a place for the pictures I had taken each day and would get printed when I got home. My smashbook was getting filled up nicely … and then the last sea day I saw the 12 x 12 album. Now I had a dilemma: I had already cut up and taped down the daily Cruise Compass with some accessories, plus I had written a journal items about each day. I ended up tearing the pages out of my smashbook and attaching them to 12 x 12 paper. Sometimes I had taped/written on both sides of the smashbook page so I had to cut a hole in the 12 x 12 page to fit my 8 x 10 smashbook page into. As you can see from some of the pictures, it worked!

This picture was taken by the ship’s photography staff right before we boarded the ship in Seattle. What a motley crew! Left to right: Ian, Valerie, Melissa, Tracy, me, Jim.

Before every cruise, I sign us up on CruiseCritic.com. It’s a website where you find your cruise line, then your ship, then your actual cruise. Once there are 25 groups signed up on the website, the cruise line will hold a little party for the group on an “at sea” day. This little party is called a Meet & Mingle. They provide snacks, drinks and prizes. Jim won the final prize – champagne (we saved it for the last night of the cruise and shared it with the gang)!

Our first day of the cruise was an “at sea” day. And much to our delight, the ship was offering scrapbooking classes – for free! Of course we went! We actually just ended up chatting with each other and getting the free packet of paper/accessories. Sitting around the table, left to right: Tracy, Melissa, Sue, me! The sea was a little choppy that day, but thanks to my motion sickness pills I was fine!

After cruising through the Inside Passage, our first port of call was Juneau. The weather was perfect and the seas were nice and calm. Once we got off the ship, we wandered around town and then rode the Mount Roberts Tramway up to the top of the mountain. The view was awesome; you could see forever!

At the top of the mountain, we visited Lady Balderly! She was a beautiful bald eagle that had been shot and was now blind in one eye. She wouldn’t have been able to make it in the wild and therefore had to be kept in captivity.

Our ship was docked in the same harbor the seaplanes used for taking off and landing. It was fun to be up on deck and watch them. They flew very close to the ship – or at least it seemed awfully close to me! I think there were 5 cruise ships in town that day, and Juneau is not that big of a town! Of course we had to get a picture of that Palin woman who could see Russia from her deck (or igloo)! Valerie & Ian’s cabin was right next to ours so it was easy to spy on them!

Our second port of call was Skagway (or Skaguay as it was originally spelled).

We were already docked in Skagway when we woke up that morning and this is what we saw when we opened the curtains to our balcony. Lots and lots of paintings of ships names and the year they were in port on the cliff wall. Our favorite was the skull! Again, we had perfect weather!

Skagway is a very small town with basically just one main street and some little side streets. I did find the quilt shop but there were so many people in there you could hardly look at the fabric. I walked in … and walked out. We did some window shopping, spied on Tracy and Melissa as they were window shopping, saw lots of totem poles, and took a picture of a picture of Barack Obama!

There were two Royal Caribbean ships in Skagway that day, ours and Radiance of the Seas. We beat the Radiance out of port and as we were cruising by them our captain and their captain just kept tooting the ships’ horns at each other. It was funny to watch them getting tickled with themselves! They were on the outside bridge!

The day after we left Skagway, we cruised up the Tracy Arm Fjord to Sawyer Glacier.

We were up by 5:00 a.m. to make sure we got to see the entire fjord and all the “icebergs”! We even ordered room service – the first time we’ve ever done that on a cruise. I will definitely be doing that again!

You could hear the ice banging on the ship as we were slowly cruising up the fjord to the glacier. Once we got to the end of the fjord, at the Sawyer Glacier, the captain turned the ship around in a slow circle a couple of times. It was a pretty cool!

Our last day at sea was a little choppy. We were catching glimpses of whales; I was only able to get pictures of the end of their tales as they dove back down! But it was a sighting, nonetheless!

Our last port of call was Victoria, B.C. Another friend we met on the 2009 Australia/Hawaii cruise, Rebecca, who lives in Victoria, picked us up and showed us around the island.

Rebecca took us to Butchart Gardens. What a beautiful place and we definitely didn’t get to spend enough time there! That might have to be a visit planned for the future just so we can spend more time there! And also visit with Rebecca & Andreas!

A funny thing happened after we left Butchart Gardens and headed back to the ship. We were taking a little tour through town and all of a sudden Rebecca whipped into a parking spot and told us to get out and run down and back through this alley … so we did! It was called Three Fan Tan Alley! It was the funniest thing! We had a great time with Rebecca and hopefully will get to meet up with her again!

We drank the champagne Jim won (at the Meet & Mingle on the first day of our cruise) at dinner the last night on the ship. We had a great time and will miss Valerie & Ian. After this cruise, we are now Emerald status with Royal Caribbean which basically means we get savings on every cruise and every booking. Savings is a good thing! Of course, after a week of great weather, we came back to pouring rain in Seattle.

In 2009 Jim & I spent for two weeks touring around Australia before boarding Rhapsody of the Seas (a Royal Caribbean ship) in Sydney and cruising up to Honolulu, Hawai’i. We took a tour to the Blue Mountains (a rain forest), hiked around Uluru (Ayers Rock), snorkeled the Great Barrier Reef, visited Australia Zoo (Steve’s wife, Terry, is from Oregon), and drove down the Gold Coast on our way back to Sydney before sailing away! It was an awesome vacation and we met some wonderful new friends!

I decided to stick to Australia’s national colors of red, white & blue for my scrapbook!

Our flight (on Asiana Airlines) from Seattle to Sydney was through Seoul, Korea. I was so tired after 12 hours when we landed in Seoul, I only got one picture – of our gate number! Yes, I know — what a dork! The only other picture we took was of me sitting in my first class seat before we even left Seattle! Again, yes, I know – what dorks we were! You would have thought I’d at least have gotten a picture of one of us in our seats that turned into a single bed!

Most of the flights from the U.S.A. land in Australia in the morning. We were too early to check into our hotel but were able to drop off our luggage and walk around Darling Harbour – where we stayed the first two nights. Australians love something called Vegemite. I must say it’s the grossest thing I have ever put into my mouth! It is made from used brewer’s yeast extract (a by-product of beer manufacturing) blended with salt, celery and onion extracts. It’s a sticky black paste and Australians spread it on toast, sandwiches and crackers. It was originally produced to have an extremely long shelf life so this little packet will last FOREVER – but I can guarantee it’ll never leave my scrapbook!

The Novotel was our hotel.  From there we could hop on the monorail and also view Sydney’s AMP Tower (our version of the Space Needle?)! Of course we were lucky to have McDonald’s not too far from our hotel as we discovered that food in Australia is three times what we pay here in the U.S. (i.e. $35 for two meals at McDonald’s).

(Excuse the fact that I didn’t take my pages out of the page protectors. Once I got them in, I was just too lazy to take them out!)

After a good night’s sleep, we were up bright and early to take a day long tour up to the Blue Mountains with a stop in Leura (a little village on the way to the mountains). It was pouring in Leura, and since we were going to a rain forest, we bought oiled canvas Akubra hats and some wonderful hot cross buns (the best buy in all of Australia – 6 buns for $3.00; that’s what we ended up having for breakfast most mornings)! The forest floor was very dense with trees and ferns. It was beautiful. We had a wonderful board walk on the forest floor and our Akubra hats were just what we needed to keep our heads dry!

In Australia they have a different way with words. We go for take-out food, they go for take-away food. Same meaning, just different way of expressing it!

We rode this gondola from the forest floor back to the top of the mountain. It was raining and foggy so I wasn’t able to get any good pictures as we were riding back up to the top.

These flip-over pictures look down on the forest floor – it was just beautiful and made me wish it had been a nice day so I could get some great pictures. Oh well, not to be!

On our way back to Sydney, we stopped at the Featherdale Wildlife Refuge. We had such fun petting & feeding the kangaroos. The kangaroos would hold your hand so you wouldn’t take the food away. I kept hearing a little baby goat crying and crying and crying. When I stopped to pet him he tried to eat my finger! And look at that Tasmanian devil. He really was ugly!

These flip-over pictures show how the kangaroos can just wander around wherever they want. When I was feeding the kangaroo, he used his front paw (are they paws or claws or hands?!) to hold my hand so I wouldn’t take the food away!

Next up – the Outback.

Ever since April when my mom had spinal cord surgery, it’s been crazy busy with us running back and forth every week to do her laundry and take care of her business while she’s in the rehab facility.  In between, I’ve been quilting, knitting, sewing, keeping up a small garden, canning and planning an upcoming vacation!

For every vacation we’ve taken, I’ve been known to buy a t-shirt (or two)! However, I rarely wore them so decided to cut them all up and make a t-shirt quilt. I finished the quilt top and have started working on the back. I haven’t fully decided how I’m going to quilt it but have several ideas I’m thinking about. I quilt by hand so it takes longer for me to make a quilt (actually this is only the second quilt I’ve ever made). But it definitely won’t take 39 years to finish this quilt like it did my first quilt! Here’s the top.

Since I’ve retired, I’ve been very conscientious about the price of everything and have learned a lot of useful tips. For instance, I have so much scrap material that I’ve kept for years and years (one piece of fabric had a price tag from Sprouse/Wigwam which I had purchased BEFORE my 36 year old was born!) I decided to make napkins and quit buying the paper ones. They work great and I made plenty so we won’t run out in between washings!

Whenever we go anywhere, I always take my knitting with me. The one knitting project I can pretty much do with my eyes closed are 100% cotton dish cloths. I always keep a huge stash of these on hand for my own use and last minute gifts!

I have to be a little more diligent when I’m knitting socks. Jim keeps asking when I’m gonna knit him some socks but I’m still trying to build up my own sock drawer! Maybe one day but these definitely won’t work for him!

I’ve played on the computer long enough for today … back to quilting!

Last week when I was getting my stuff ready to spend Saturday in Moses Lake for our monthly (mostly monthly anyway) scrap day, I got an invitation to spend the night at Jane’s house (http://neighborjanepayne.blogspot.com/) Friday night. One of the “Bellingham girls” (Sonja Prink) had on her bucket list the chance to spend the night at Jane’s. We had a wonderful time and Jane & Calvin were  the perfect hosts! I always thought Calvin was a shy man – NOT! He’s a hoot!

Back L-R: Me, Donna, Sonja, Nicole

Front L-R: Sandy, Deb, Lexi

We also celebrated Deb’s birthday while we were there! Jane made lemon cupcakes with a secret surprise inside each cupcake – Lindor truffles. I have never tasted anything sooooooooo good! You can find her recipe here: http://neighborjanepayne.blogspot.com/search?q=lemon+cupcakes.

However, my creative juices just weren’t flowing Saturday! I’m still working on my Australia 2009 scrapbook and the only thing left to work on is the day we spent at the Australia Zoo. I did take my knitting with me so I could work on my sock a little! Even though I didn’t get much done, it was fun to just visit with everyone and see everything they were working on.

And today I just had some exciting news – Ree Drummond (Pioneer Woman) is coming to Seattle in April! I see a drive across the state to meet her and have her sign both of her cookbooks! I use her first cookbook a lot and have already used her 2nd cookbook. As a matter of fact, I can honestly say that her cookbooks are my favorite at the moment!

… and finally finished it last year!

When I was a junior in high school, my grandma asked if I wanted to make a quilt out of her scraps. She said she would help me cut out all the fabric and then show me how to stitch it together (by hand only). Grandma’s material was polyester double-knit and she had a lot of it! The pattern was Grandmother’s Flower Garden. I was able to get about 3/4′s of it stitched together before I started my senior year in high school and lost interest. I boxed everything up and completely forgot about it until 2005. Jim was being transferred to Scottsdale, Arizona and I was going through my craft stuff to see what I wanted to take with me. I decided to take this quilt with me and work on it down there since I wouldn’t be working.

After I finished stitching all the pieces together, I discovered that grandma and I had cut out enough pieces for a KING size quilt (it fits a queen size bed as a bedspread)! Upon the recommendation of the ladies at the fabric store, I used a very light weight t-shirt fabric since it would move with the polyester double-knit.

For the quilting, I stitched inside every hexagon (again by hand only). I set up my PVC quilt stand behind the couch and every night as Jim & I watched TV I would stitch. By the time I got the quilting done, I was sick of it and put it away for about 4 years before finally putting the binding on and getting it finished.

I’m so glad I finally finished it. I’m sure grandma would be so proud of me if she were still alive! Every time I look at it, I can see her in my mind’s eye wearing the dresses she made out of those scraps. Some of the scraps were things she made for me and my cousins. I even added some scraps from my mother-in-law’s scrap box of things she had made for my daughter when she was little. And my mother-in-law would especially be proud of me since I didn’t use the sewing machine on any of it. She always said quilts should only be hand sewn.

And a close up of the stitching inside each hexagon.

When Jim & I were remodeling the house last year, we were also trying to purge stuff. We’d had two places since 1999 and now we had too much stuff. So, while I was going through boxes, I came across the boxes of yarn that my father-in-law had given me after my mother-in-law died in 1998. She had two afghans started (which I finished and posted about last year) and black, gray and two shades of lime green set aside for another afghan, but no pattern. Since Christmas 2011 was all about being homemade, I decided to replace the green yarn for light purple and make an afghan (using the Chevron pattern) for Kevin & Laura (purple is Laura’s favorite color). I made it extra large so they could use it on their king size bed if they wanted.