Lookie what my friends sent me! And other Random Thoughts.

I got these for Valentine's Day. I love them.

This one is from my friend Gay. She and I scrap together once a month and hang out together on the AMR message board.

This one is from my great Scrap Pal Cheeky! She lives way up north and is enjoying much snow while we are just wishing for it. She is so cute and I just love her card.

And now for some random thoughts:
I have been thinking a lot about those cute little crocheted flowers. I really would love to try them in a varigated thread. I am going to stop by the store tomorrow and check out their threads. I can't stand it. I think they may become addicting.
I posted a few cards for Cliff's Card Challenge (ha ha CCC) over on AMR MB. He is great and a scrapper too. He joins us for the crops over there and comes up with some fun layouts and some fun cards. He is so cute. His wife Melonscraps is an avid scrapper too. I guess in their family "if you can't beat em join em" fits. They are wonderful and I highly suggest you head over to Melonscraps blog. She has some great stuff over there. Okay, I am rambling. So I made two cards for the challenge. Here they are:

I started on my daughter's sweater and have chosen to do the child's size 6-8. She is petite and I think if the arms are too short I can lengthen them with no problem. I will measure her several times throughout the knitting process. Again like the last one, the back and front go so fast and then the sleeves just drag along. I am about a fifth of the way up the back already. She chose a bright blue and a coral color for her accent stripe. I think it will be cute and if she doesn't like it in the end I will give it to the other daughter and she will love it. I am not worried. Someone will wear this sweater.

Let's talk Spaghetti

Do you ever have the thought whilst cooking that you are on a cooking show like on Food Network and whilst cooking you start thinking in your head all the things you would say if you were truly on that cooking show? Well, from time to time it happens to me. I will be cooking dinner in the kitchen (because that is the logical place to cook) and I will be minding my own business and all of the sudden, suddenly, I start thinking, "now add a dash of this", "when you see it starting to brown....". Yup, those thoughts of what I would say if I were the host of my own cooking show pop into my brain.

So it happened tonight and I thought that I should be the next Paula Deen. Now I pick her because she cooks 'down home' meals. You know, with real butter and stuff. Now I didn't go get my camera which I probably should have but didn't. So we have no pictures here. But I thought I would post MY spaghetti sauce tonight.

I don't make mine from scratch and it would probably be good to take a moment to review my story about my father and his spaghetti sauce. You can find it here.

Now that you read that you understand that I have yet to actually make my father's world famous meat sauce. I used his suggestion and I doctor up a jar of spaghetti. So here goes:

Ingredients:

1 lb ground beef (or ground turkey)
1 TBS Italian Seasoning
1 medium onion
1 small can sliced mushrooms
1 jar spaghetti sauce (I use Prego chunky mushroom)

Brown the meat and chopped onion in a skillet. Drain the fat from the skillet and add the Italian Seasoning. Stir and cook until you can start to smell the spices. Then add the jar of spaghetti sauce and mushrooms. Cook on low (ish) until just boiling. Serve on top of spaghetti noodles and top with parmesian cheese.

Now this is a base for me. This is the normal sauce and we do eat this sauce as is often. But I have been known to doctor it up a bit by adding chopped black olives or pepperonis, or whatever else I have on hand. Sometimes I will add 2/3 ground beef and 1/3 sausage. Play with it and make it your own.

Leave me a comment and tell me what you add to your spaghetti.

Finished the Sweater

FINALLY!! It only took me almost 6 weeks to complete. That is way too slow for me. By the time I finish the next one it will be too warm to wear. I finished my son's sweater, and now I have the two girls to do.

I used Vanna's Choice yarn (2- 7oz skeins of Olive and 1/2 - 3.5oz skein of espresso). I used the Bernat pattern here "Berella 4-sweaters for the family". I didn't use a third color as I just wanted one small stripe on the collar and on the cuffs. This was an easy pattern to knit. The front and back was quick and the pattern was very easy to read. The only slow part were the sleeves which took longer because I had to count.

The sweater is a bit big. They have a child's size and then an adult size. My son needed the 10-12 size for kids but they had child's 6-8 and then adult small. So I opted for the adult small and he will grow into it.

Last year I knitted him a sweater using the Lion Brand Homespun yarn. A bulky yarn and the sweater knitted up quickly, however when it was washed the first time the yarn got matted up and looked horrible. I am hoping that this yarn will faire better in the wash. Thanks for reading and happy crafting.

Here is another flower

This flower pattern that I blogged about yesterday has been bothering me a bit. As I was working the other flowers yesterday I felt that the center was too big and that the flowers were still a bit large for scrapbooking. So today I worked up a few more. I used crochet thread this time, like the stuff you use to make doilies and a #6 hook (1.80mm). I chose off white in color because that was all I had available to play with right then.

I made these:

Now I know that they are a bit different from the original Lionbrand.com pattern. I made the center of the flower smaller making a chain of 5 instead of 8. I also only did 5 petals instead of 6. These measure 1 1/2 inches in diameter and are a good size for scrapbooking.

They sort of look like little pansies to me and I am anxious to try them in another color. But to do that I need to convince my husband to let me spend some money and I don't think he will go for it right now. I may need to wait a week or so. Laugh.

Trying new things.

I saw this:

on the Lionbrand.com website today and thought it looked really cute and would be fun to put on a scrapbook page. So when I got home from work I tried it.

I tried it two different ways. The first one with Vanna's Yarn a bulky #5 weight and I used an H hook. It ended up being 5 inches in diameter.

That was way too big. I knew when I started it that it would be too big but wanted to go through the motions of the pattern before trying on a smaller yarn. So then the second was using DMC thread (6 ply). I used a B hook and this pattern took most of a whole skein of thread. It ended up being 2 1/2 inches in diameter. A much more manageable size.

Paper roses

I made some paper roses. AND I think they turned out great. I followed the directions from here: http://nancyburke.typepad.com/scraps_and_ink/2009/02/roses-are-red.html and it was super easy.

Here is mine:

Need scrappy stuff???

My friend, Crop-a-holic, is purging a bunch of her scrappy stuff. She is getting into digital scrapping and now wants to reduce her stash of papers and embellies. Oh, just read it here. Anyway she is giving away 5 boxes of random items. One girl's trash is another scrappy girl's treasure! So head on over there and leave her a comment to enter. Hurry as you only have until February 17th!! Oh, and tell her I sent ya.

Here is the link!!