Homemade Xmas Goodies

I had a few request for gifts again this year. Annette wanted some more pillows. I made her a few in high school and some more last year. She like the fabric on them, so she wanted some more.She didn't give me any instructions on fabric colors, so she wound up with this.  I think they are kind of gaudy, but hopefully she won't. I blame my odd color selection on being at Joann Fabrics at 7am on a Saturday taking advantage of their holiday discounts. The third pillow (the one in the solo picture) is a little more toned down. I think the plaid fabric just got to be a bit too much.

The second request was for several pairs of slippers. I made a few in my normal way, which essentially just ends up looking like a big crocheted sock. But then I decided to try using a patter for ones I made for my grandma. I think they look kind of silly too, but as long as they fit an are warm I suppose they are doing their job.

Quilt Club Xmas Swap

This year at quilt club I participated in the x-mas gift swap. I was not able to do it last year because I missed the meeting where they discussed the plan, and so I had no idea what was going on. This year I was prepared. I made sure to figure things out in time to get involved. The way it works is everyone who wants to participate brings three fat quarters in a paper bag. They all get set on a table. Then you randomly take someone's bag. You have to make some soft of gift out of the fabric that you get in the bag you picked. It can be anything at all that you want to make for the person. There was a wide variety of things that people made: bags, wall hangings, oven mitts, aprons, wine bottle covers.

 The bag I picked was for Robyn. I don't know her really well, but I at least knew who she was (which sometimes is a feat in itself considering there are 100+ members in the guild) My blog is still being stupid and rotating picture when I tell it not too. So I apologize for making you need to see the chiropractor. I wasn't sure when I was going to do with the panels. Since it was such a weird number to work with, I abandoned my original wall hanging plan and made the pot holders.

I received this really cool "book club bag. It's got a zipper pocket on the inside and place for a cell phone and a pen. And it's a great size for a book....hence the name. The lady that made it for me (Sandy) made it with another lady from guild, so another person got the same bag in different colors. I like mine better :)

I also was on the snack committee for this month and brought in some yummy cookies and pop for punch. It was a nice little meeting. Now I have to get working on an idea for the challenge fabric. We reveal in February I think, so after I make something I"ll write a post with a photo of what I cam up with.

The Uggo Xmas Sweater

My mom's side of the family does a drawing each year to see who will buy for whom for xmas. Back in August my cousin Orry told me that he was going to rig the drawing so that I got his name. His special request was going to be that I crochet him an ugly xmas sweater. He wanted it to look like the sweater from the live version of "How the Grinch Stole Christmas." http://media.liveauctiongroup.net/i/13062/13226707_1.jpg?v=8CF201495BE22F0

After several months of working on and off, I finally finished the sweater. It's not quite the same. I am really not sure how well it will fit since I didn't have a decent size reference or pattern, but hopefully it works well enough for his purposes.My computer was being stupid and rotated the picture. I didn't feel like figuring out how to fix it, so please turn your head.

I plan on giving him the sweater at Thanksgiving so he can wear it before the actual holiday for any ugly sweater parties he might have. I'll try to get a picture of him in the sweater once I've given it to him.

Runless

I've been training to run the half marathon on Oct. 20th since August. I had made it up to 12.75 miles. (A half is 13.1) Then on Sep 29th, I did a long run in the morning. In the evening my foot started to hurt. A lot. I went to urgent care the next day for an x-ray. It didn't show anything, but I have been unable to even walk without discomfort since then, up until the last couple days, when the pain finally started to ease off.

I tried running today. I only went a mile. It wasn't awful, but I am definitely not better. And the pain was worse afterwards just walking. If I am even able to run at all, I will have to downgrade to the 10k. It is kind of disappointing. I was so confident that I could do it, and proud of what I had accomplished. I guess I will have to settle for achieving last year's desire to run the 10k. Maybe next year I can do the half. I'd rather be able to run some rather than not at all, so I am not going to push myself.

I've been using the stationary bike at the gym. It definitely does not give me the same results or gratification, but it doesn't hurt my foot and it's better than nothing. And I can work my brain doing crossword puzzles or reading, so I guess it's not a total loss.

Lord, I was Born a Traveling (wo) Man

I checked my mail today, and my passport had arrived. On Feb 1st I will be traveling to Mazatlan with my friend Jill and two of her friends. I will be staying in a super sweet resort with a wrist band that gets me free drinks and meals. I don't have to pay a dime for all of this. All I have to pay is the ticket to get there and any souvenirs that I might want. I also had to get my passport, but I have ten years to make that $132 worth my time.

This will be the first time that I am leaving the country. Really the first time I've ever done anything more adventurous than going to NY and NJ which I did in 2005. I think it will be amazing, and I'm very much looking forward to it!

The New Job

I started my new job on Wednesday. So far I am feeling pretty good about it all. My new desk is super far tucked away in a little nook in the basement of the hospital. It's kind of creepy getting to it. There are also a bunch of unused hospital beds right outside the door. A couple of them have full-sized practice dolls on them, so every time I walk out of the bathroom and see them out of the corner of my eye, I jump a little thinking there is a dead patient laying there. I showed Donna where I am at. She likened the area to scenes from The Stand and The Walking Dead. That didn't to much to make the area seem less creepy, but it is fun to day dream about it when I'm down there.

The work is ok so far. It is definitely going to keep me busy. There are lots of phone calls that interrupt work, so I have to work on that balance of finding good stopping places and prioritizing. I think I will like it a lot once I get faster and more efficient, and more comfortable with all the programs I will be using.

A couple of nurses at work got me a very nice bouquet of flowers and a balloon as a going away present. It was partially a joke because the balloon had a huge smiley face on it and flowers are so girly. At work I'm pretty well known as a cynical and dry humored person who is not super smiley. However, the gesture made me smile a lot, so it was kind of ironic and very nice of them. :)

New Stuff

Today I played in the First (Annual she said hopefully) Farrow Family Golf Fest. A good-sized group of the Farrow clan got together at the golf course in Elmore. We played a fun best shot, 9 hole tournament. The weather wasn't the most cooperative, but we got most of the holes in without rain. We ended up stopping on hole 8, but I think it was still good. Afterwards we had supper and delicious ice cream cake and good conversation. I really hope that we do this every year.

On another note, I got a new job. I will start on Aug 28th. I am staying within the Mayo system, but now I will be working in the Release of Information department. My title is "release of information technician." Basically I will be completing records requests that are submitted by patients for personal use, to be transferred to other clinics, or sent to insurance/employers/etc. I am excited to start. I have been needing a change of pace for a long time now. I am not sure what exactly to expect from it, but I think that it will be a good switch for me.

Pizza and Aprons

I made another delicious pizza tonight. The crust is made from a white whole wheat crust. The sauce is a mixture or ricotta cheese, milk, grated Parmesan and, and a spicy hot saucy. I mixed up some chicken with chiles and a bit of the abode sauce, spread it over the top with some Italian blend cheese and some sliced grape tomatoes. All in all, the pizza was very much to my liking.

In the crafty realm, I recently made a silly maid apron. I have a little running joke with a PA at work. To bug me, he will rearrange things on my desk. I told him the least he could do would be to dust under stuff if he is going to insist on moving it and told him I’d even get him a duster and a maid uniform. So one day I got to work to find my desk completely messed up with a feather duster sitting on top of it. I decided to make the apron as a follow through on my threat. Tonight I snuck into his office and left the apron and duster on his desk. I am really hoping that he will randomly walk by someday wearing the apron.

Lastly, I finally got a picture of me on my new motorcycle. I’m getting used to its size and got a new front tire for it since the old one was getting pretty bald.

Filling the White Space

Quite a few months ago I decided to rearrange my living room. I ended up liking it a lot better, but it left one wall completely open and bare. Ever since then, I've intended to find something to put up, but I had not been able to think of what to do. Then, a girl at work gave me an idea when she was talking about something she saw on pintrist. I got a wild hair recently and decided to tackle the project. This was the end result.

I think it is kind of fun. But it also might be a but small for the space. Oh well. At least there is something on the wall now. I included a wider shot to show how it looks with the re-arranged room. The colors go well with the rest of the living room.
The pieces are just shoe box lids covered with fabric that I appliqued squared onto.

When I got home from the Leech Lake vacation I was struck by how bare and white my apartment was since none of the walls are painted. That was when I really decided I needed to get in gear and add more color. However I have not done much else to add color. The only other thing I did was repaint the frames of my kitchen chairs. That was something else I had intended to do for a long time and never got around to. I just made them an almond color instead of plain white. It looks good with the re-covered, brown seats, but  it didn't really do much to spice up the color in the room. Oh well. I will just have to keep thinking of little projects.

The Cabin

I went on the annual cabin vacation during the first part of the month. I left Mankato on Saturday the 8th and left the cabin mid afternoon on the 14th. It was probably one of the best vacations I've ever been on weather-wise up there. It rained all day on Sunday, but every other day was gorgeous.

The fishing was not amazing. We got the typical outrageous number of pan fish, but nothing impressive for larger fish. I ate probably the most amount of fish I ever have on this vacation. I have been thinking that I might fish a bit morehere and keep what I catch to experiment with recipes.

I went on a few early morning runs while I was up there and enjoyed the amazing scenery. A couple of the resort dogs even went on some of the runs with me. On nearly every run. I saw four or five eagles flying together, a deer, and a fox. It was awesome to see that much wildlife.

It was also nice to spend some extra time bonding with the family. I haven't been down to Fairmont much lately, so this was the most I've seen of them in quite awhile.It actually took a bit of adjusting to to get used to being back in by apartment by myself after nearly a solid week with people always around. Don't worry. I'm used to it again.

Revisiting and Old Friend

The bonus of selling my old motorcycle to someone I work with is that I can get status updates on how the bike is doing. The guy that owns it now has done quite a bit of work on it. He’s repainted it, changed the handlebars, changed the mirrors, cut off the exhaust pipes, and done a few other mechanical things. I got to see the bike today because he rode it to the hospital. It turns out he’s a Star Wars nerd, so he redid the bike with  a Boba Fett theme. If I pretend the decals aren’t on there I think it looks pretty cool. The nurse who bought it for the guy sent me a few pictures of how it looks now, so I thought I would share with a before and after shot. 

On a different topic, I joined a softball team with one of my friends. They play on Monday nights. The season was already almost half over, so I will only be playing 5 games, plus playoffs. My first game was this past Monday. It wasn’t even scheduled to start until 9:15 and then didn’t actually start until after 9:30 because the games before had run late. I didn’t ever even have an opportunity to field a ball, but I was up to bat three times. I got two singles, and grounded out. Overall I’m ok with that since I haven’t played a real game of softball since high school gym class. 

Lastly, the song from the last video [that no one even tried to guess (jerks)] was Tuolumne.

Filling the Quota

I don't really have a whole lot to talk about in this post, but as the title says, I'm filling my quota.

Last time I blogged about my amazing pizza. This time I will talk about my new craze: guacamole chicken salad sandwiches. I have been making a modified version of guacamole. I use lemon juice instead of lime because it seems like the avocado lasts longer this way. I think it might be the same concept as keeping sliced apples from turning brown by keeping them in water/lemon juice mixture. I also puree some squash and cucumber and maybe radish and asparagus in with the guac. I mix a couple table spoons of that in with a couple ounces of chicken. Add the bread, a slice or provolone, some slices of green pepper and some slices of squash or cumber and viola! It's delicious.

I recently watched Into the Wild. The soundtrack was all done by the same dude. I'm being vague so as not to completely give the answer away to this name that tune. I decided to try to learn one of the songs. I only have the first little bit learned, and I am playing it quite a bit slower than the real version. Your challenge is to tell me who the artist is and which song this is. Hint: the song is all instrumental....no vocals.... aaaaaannnnddd GO

The most amazing pizza

Today I made probably the best homemade pizza I've ever had. The crust was some that I had made a long time ago and pulled out of the freezer. It was a whole wheat dough with cornmeal and chopped almonds.

For the sauce I made a slightly modified guacamole dip. Avocado, lemon juice, a few slices of cucumber, a couple spears of asparagus, a couple slices of jalapeno, garlic, and black pepper. Then I sprinkled about 1/2 a cup of mozzarella on top of that. Next came some slices of red pepper, asparagus, a diced radish, slices of cucumber, a roma tomato, a bit of coriander, and basil. It was amazing.

Mmm Hmm

I don't really have anything spectacular to write about, but today is the last day to get a post in to keep up with the two post a month goal...

This weekend I was finally able to get my motorcycle up to Mankato. We had a couple days in a row of good weather, but the next few days are going to be pretty ridiculous for May. Soon enough though it will be nice enough to ride on a daily basis. I am still getting used to the bike being so much bigger than my last one, but I think it will all be good with a bit more experience on the bike. I'm currently looking into getting a new front tire which looks like it's going to set me back a sizable chunk of change.... sigh.

On Saturday I ran my first 5k race of the season. It went fairly well. I finished in 28:43, which is slower than the first one I ran in October, but given the abrupt change in weather and my lack of reconditioning in the warmth (it was in the upper sixties. A lot warmer than the 40-50s I have been running in) I'll take it. My foot and ankle have been fairly ok, but I'm still going to have to take it easy. The short run I went on tonight seems to have brought back some of the old pain. However, since it's going to rain and or snow for the next five or so days, I won't be running and it can get the rest it needs.

The fruit of four years of work

When I first joined quilt club, a lady named Brenda (who I haven't seen at the guild in a couple years) taught me something called English paper piecing. Since then, I've brought part of this project to work on at nearly every guild meeting. After all this time, I finally finished this quilt.

There have been a lot of ups and downs. I would get SO bored with it and not want to work on it at all. Other times I would work on it seemingly non stop. I set myself a goal of getting it done in time for the quilt show, which is coming up on April 20th and 21st. I got the top piecing done in February. My super awesome aunt Tracy did the top quilting in less than a week for me. She did a fantastic job. My other aunt Ali hand delivered the quilt to me at work so I could finish it up.

Putting the edging on this was probably the worst part of the whole process. I had to sew around the jagged edge of the blanket two times. It took a painfully long time. Then I had to carefully trim all the extra fabric and batting off before turning it right side out. This also took a painfully long time. Hand sewing the rest down was the easiest part of the whole finishing project.

In the end, I am really pleased with the outcome despite the quilt being so small for four years of work. It's about 56" x 68". It will be proudly displayed at the quilt show, and I would love to have everyone come see it. I'm also showing my two challenge projects. They are just two smaller wall hangings.

Goodbye Old Friend

It's the end of an era for me. After a winter of consideration, I decided it was time to upgrade my motorcycle. Stan (my old bike) has served me fairly well over the past three years. If you're not familiar and want to start from the beginning, click here. This was the first post I ever wrote about my old motorcycle.

There have been a lot of ups and downs in my motorcycling career. I had a lot of issues that frustrated me endlessly with the bike, but I learned a lot about how it worked and what I could do to fix it. In all honesty, I'm really going to miss working on little things on the bike. I had a few projects I wanted to fix with it if I didn't get it sold, but I found a buyer very quickly. I sold the bike to a nurse I work with who is giving it to her husband as an anniversary present, which I think is really cool.

Last weekend my brother Justin helped me pick up my new bike (which I am thinking about naming Pony). It is a 2001 Yamaha V-star 1100. It is quite a bit bigger than the Honda, but I think once I adjust to it, I will really enjoy it. Right now the bike is stored in my mom's garage. I am hoping to get it moved up here as soon as the weather is consistently nice, but I'm not sure when that will be.

The new bike is a bit dusty, but will look really spiffy once I get it cleaned up. I'm pretty intimidated by this bike. I know so little about it compared to the old bike. It will be a whole new adventure learning about this one. I hope I am up for the challenge. This bike came with a windshield, saddle bags, a passenger back rest and luggage rack.  I would like to take it out one longer cruises and maybe even get an overnight trip in sometime.

There was a whole big to do in getting this bike purchased. The guy I bought it from decided to let me know at 6:30 pm on the Friday before the Saturday I planned on coming to look at it that he had a loan out and I'd need to get the lien card. He was from a very small town, so the bank was not opened on the weekend. I didn't want to make two trips to see the bike and I work weekdays, so I was not sure how I could purchase the bike without getting screwed over. In the end I got a cashier's check written to him and his bank and had him sign a bill of sale specifying that he would use the check to pay off the loan. Then I had to trust that he would mail the lien card to me. THEN he showed me the title for the bike which early that morning had been chewed apart by his dog. I was reluctant to buy the bike with so many stupid little issues with paperwork and such, but I ended up going for it. I got everything I needed and the title was officially switched to my name this morning.

Regarding last week's movie quote, the line is from The Big Lebowski. Lately I've been going to pub trivia. I decided to throw in one random trivia question that came up during one of these outings: How many ghosts visit Scrooge in the book A Christmas Carol? Think hard. Our firs "obvious" guess was revised once we thought about it a little bit more.

It Really Ties the Room Together

Every since I moved into my apartment I've been thinking about getting an area rug. I never got around to buying one because I couldn't find one that I thought was quite right for a price I wanted to pay. I looked around random stores, at garage sales, and on craigslist but never found one. Then, I visited my aunt and she told me she had one I could have if I thought it would fit the room. Turns out it fit quite well, and the price was definitely good (cant argue with free!). The colors were a little darker than the quilt on the back of the couch, but they were all along the same range. It's taken me awhile to get used to having something covering the carpet (I kept walking in the apartment wonder what I'd left on the floor), but I definitely like the rug over bare carpet.  This week's post comes with a quiz. The title is a line from a movie. Name the movie.

The 100th Post

Apparently this is the 100th post I've put on this blog. I found out by accident when I went to add this one, but I decided it was neat enough to mention it.

So, the real title of this post would have been "Snowshoeing"

A few weeks ago a friend took me snowshoeing. Basically it's just like winter snow hiking made easier by walking with big, flat things strapped to your feet. People who take snowshoeing seriously are probably irate with that definition. Oh well.

Snow shoes are usually ridiculously expensive, but Mendards had some on sale for $50 so I grabbed a pair. They even came with ski poles (which might be more aptly called snow shoe poles in this situation, but are essentially the same thing). I took them out once a couple weeks ago, but didn't go very far and I hadn't had a chance to since. Then we got six inches of fresh snow and had a warm, non-windy weekend. I went to Seven Mile Creek and did some hiking. It was a great day for it. There weren't very many people out there. The temperature was perfect. I had my ipod, and there was lots of snow to tromp through. On my whole hike I only even saw two other sets of people and it wasn't until the very end of my hike.

My friend Dan wanted to see a picture of me in the shoes. I figured I could throw it on here so other people could make fun of it too. 

I went for probably a four to five mile hike. It was fun except for the last half mile when I realized I was developing a pretty nice blister on one foot. I climbed a few monster hills and slid down some others. I even tried to run in the shoes a bit for fun, but then I didn't bring my foot up enough once, so I tripped and nearly face planted into the snow.  I felt like a goon, but no one was around to see, so it was funnier to me.

I took a couple pictures since it was so neat looking out. The two on here are a couple of the hills that I climbed up. The first one was especially fun because I was the first person to do it. The rest had already been walked, but that was ok because I probably would have gotten lost if I didn't have a path to follow. I'm not super familiar with the paths out there.

Chairs and Pastries

 Last weekend I went to a fabric outlet in Burnsville with a friend from work. Ever since I got my dining room chairs three years ago, I've wanted to recover them. The fabric store had a lot of really nice upholstery fabric for pretty cheap, so I finally found some fabric and recovered the chairs.

The original fabric was very old school and not really in the greatest shape. There were a few different colors/patterns that I liked, but in the end I chose a simple brown. I don't really have a very decorated kitchen so I had nothing I needed to worry about matching, but I wanted to go with something fairly neutral. Hopefully when I get a real place someday the chairs will still fit in there.

I also made some super awesome scones a couple weekends ago. Really they weren't all that impressive, but they look neat and tasted ok, so I thought I'd also add a picture of them. If I ever make them again I think I will have to add more orange zest to kick up the flavor. They were a little more plain than I was hoping for.

Shorts

I decided to make myself a pair of gym shorts. I have scrawny little thighs, so normal shorts are way to wide and reveal things when I'm laying down doing crunches. So in an effort not to show everyone at the gym my underwear, I made this pair with smaller leg openings. I think they turned out fairly well. I might take them for a test run tomorrow at the gym. My lower leg has been causing me all sorts of problems, so again I am having issues with running. I think I'm going to have to take a (hopefully only) short break to let things heal up. Right not my ankle seems really weak and hurts with basically every stride when I run. I also have this weird pain on the inside of my lower leg that feels like I have a bruise that someone is constantly jabbing with their finger when I run. This might also be progressing into shin splints, so things really aren't looking good for me as far as running goes right now. Cross training it is I guess. *cries a little*

This video is not impressive. I recorded myself playing one guitar part and then played the second part over the recording. However the sound kept getting messed up on the video when I tried to records it, so I stopped putting real effort into my playing. My timing is off at first. Don't judge me. Oh, and be prepared to have your ears blasted off at the end when the next song in Itunes starts playing and is really load. Extra million bonus points if you know what that song is. The one one I'm playing is off a band's first album. They re-did it with the lead singer of Evanescence awhile after the original release. It's about 7 years old I think. 

Making Stuff

Congratulations to Emily for correctly guessing the last name that tune. She was correct with her guess of I Won't Give Up by Jason Mraz. Good work Em!

For a long time I've intended to make a little quilted thing to put on the back of my toilet. A couple weeks ago I bought the material for it and tonight I finally sat my butt down and made it. I like how it turned out with the exception of never being able to quilt something flat. The star in the center is all bunchy, but since there are things sitting on a good portion of it, I don't care all that much...However this is a problem I should learn to fix for stuff I will care more about.

I also decided to make a ruffle scarf because they seem to be everywhere these days, and I found a pattern that looked super easy. It was pretty quick to make and looks really neat, but I think I look like a goon wearing it. I think I'll try to sell it to someone at work.

I also made the first key lime pie I've made in something like three years. I forgot how delicious they are. I made it with Daniel in remembrance of the good old days. He's moving to Florida, so we got together this weekend for one last hoorah before he takes off. It will be sad not to have him close enough to easily visit, but I think this move will be good for him. Good luck Dan!

 In other news, I signed up for the half marathon. However, I've been dealing with enough random injuries that I'm not all that confident in my ability to stay healthy and together enough to make that distance. It would be awesome to run the race, but I'm keeping the option to downgrade to the 10k in the back of my mind. I ran 8.4 miles the other day and since then have been having random leg pains and one horrible run that was barely 4 miles long. I guess I need to do more cross training to save my legs. I'll keep my fingers crossed and expect some of you to come cheer me on if it looks like I will be able to run the half marathon. (For those who are unfamiliar, it is 13.1 miles). I have until late October to get there.