New Cooking Win!

Last night I was contemplating what I would like to cook today.  And decided taco's sounded good.  However, some in my family don't see taco's as a full meal, so I looked up Taco bake recipes and found this gem.  Definatly a win in my family and going to be used again in the future!

My changes to the recipe were I used dried onions instead of fresh as I'm not a big fan of onions, and I left the chili's out and used green sauce instead.  Also more than likely used WAY too much cheese but it turned out delicious!

Old Fashioned Cooking... a fail...

Tonight I decided I was craving some biscuits and gravy.  However, I did not have the biscuits in the fridge or the easy quick gravy packet.  Which meant cooking from scratch, something I'm trying to do more and more of, I know it's healthier for all of us and it's relaxing for me.

So I did a search for biscuit recipes online and found this recipe it looked simple and seemed like I should be able to do it without a single problem.  So I went to the kitchen and started the mix, it tasted fine and seemed to be rather simple.  I slid them into the oven while I went about cooking the sausage.

Sausage all nice and browned up, I put the water, milk and butter in and slowly started adding the flour.  I think I may have used too much milk cause you could definatly taste it over the nice sausage-y taste.  I also do not cook with salt or pepper and allow my family to add their own.

Biscuits came out and as I am taking them off the sheet right away I can tell I did SOMETHING wrong.  They aren't fluffy and frankly look like cooked rocks... But god bless my family, they say they look awesome and dig it.  Everyone ate and everyone's full, but I'm unhappy with the meal cause it's not my normal awesome cooking.  Ah well, win some and lose some!

New Crocheting Pattern

Well, for me anyways...

I've been making blankets for about two years now and decided it was time to expand my horizon into something a little different.  My friend Lydia has two little girls... One being super girly and the other... well, she's a rocker/toyboy.

Well, my little rockstar decided the coolest thing in the world is fingerless gloves.  And you know EVERY rockstar HAS to have them.  Which led me to rely on my FAVORITE crochet man in the world, Mikey.  If you haven't been to his page GO, it's amazing.  Not only does he have the patterns up on his website, he has video's on youtube from point of view, YOU are looking down at his hands so you can mimic his movements.
There are several video bloggers that are doing this now, but I love Mikey's video's cause he makes them personal, he talks about his everyday life between showing you what you are doing.  Again his website is http://thecrochetcrowd.com/

So I started the gloves tonight and finished one and I'm about half way through with the second.  However... not sure how or why but the gloves are fitting me and not the 10 year old I'm making them for.  We will see what happens when I wash them, but for my first attempt I'm pretty stoked!

Another 6 to 24 point attempt

This one is MUCH smaller than my last attempt at making this style of blanket and was made for one of the girls I work with... but I thought I would share it with everyone...

Next to be made is a five point star from the Mario Brothers games.  I'm about finished with that blanket and will be posting pictures soon as it's completed!

Slow on the Craft Front

I have been sick lately, the weather being what it has been has been causing horrid migraines to pop up out of no where.  Between that and work, I've not had much time to enjoy MY hobbies.  I'm hoping that changes soon (at least the sick part, the work parts really nice).

And I was put on restriction from crocheting for a while after I finished the last project and complained about my arm and back hurting *facepalms*.

So soon life will be normal again right?

The Blanket is Finished!

A little under a week and it's officially finished.  My arm and back are killing me, but I love the way it turned out.  Here is the resulting project for everyone to view.

Keep in mind this was made for a queen sized bed... THAT is a King sized bed... YIPES!

The increases again were done using the following instructions found here. I will post more instructions when I can feel my arm again.  LOL  only issue I find with the blanket is it doesn't lay completely flat when laid out.  I have a feeling I added too many stitches somewhere.  But for now... I'm not complaining...

 

Here you can see where the first round of additional points were added.  At this point the blanket was starting to get a little more difficult to work with but I was still able to move along fairly fast, adding the round quickly.     

 

Here is the first full round of white to break up the color some before adding more colors to the blanket.

 

This is the blanket as of Friday.  Second round of colors fully inserted in reverse of what they originally were.  Black points will come next and than another round of colors and than finishing it off.  Right now it's becoming extremely difficult to work with as it's a rather large blanket.  In the above pictures it's sitting on my queen sized bed so that will give you an idea of how large it truely will be when finished! 

So Far it's taken the large balls of each of the colors to get this done.  I think I might have to pick up another small of the white and the black as they are the most used colors in the blanket and I'm starting to run low on them both.  But the three shade of blue I should be fine on and actually have additional yarn left over.  I'm excited for this project to be over so I can find a way to take a picture of the entire blanket fully finished... Not sure how I'm going to GET that picture as it's a huge blanket, but I will manage it somehow ;)  

6-24 pt Round Ripple

Decided to make this blanket for my boyfriend and myself after seeing pictures of them all over the internet. One of my addictions is this style of blanket cause once you get going it's very easy to keep going. However, this one is different from most of the other's that I've made before in the fact that the number of points grows. You start with six points and end up with 24.

There is no actual written pattern for this that doesn't cost money, which sucks. But I'm cleaver enough I'm sure I can figure it out with the information I am able to find online. The ONE website I can find that actually tells how to add the points is here . She details how she added her additional points throughout the blanket and the pictures are pretty amazing as well.

The colors I've chosen for this project are white, light blue, Royal Blue, Navy Blue and Black. White is the center and the addional points, and I'm sure I'll work it in once I have to two area's of additional points added.

Apparently being sick from the heat makes me work fast. I have the blanket about two-thirds of the way finished. Soon as I get a chance I will upload pictures with more detail.

Addiction

Ok, I have a slight addiction to crafts. I'm not ashamed of it, but I do fear for when I move in a year. My boyfriend knows that I enjoy crafting but I don't think he understands how serious the "problem" is. I have half used balls of yarn all over the place, I try to wrestle them all into one bag and well, that bags a little full now. I have a tub, yes that's right a tub of fabric (which I know from friends that's really not a whole lot). Not to mention a tower of nothing but odd's and ends crafting stuff. And the misc. mini totes around my room. Plus there is typically ALWAYS a bag I carry with me with the current addiction in it.

Right now the addiction is round ripple blankets. They are beautiful and take almost NO thinking. I made some last year for a friend's daughter and step-son. Her's is a rockstar star and his a Spiderman blanket. In the last year I've made two others for friends, and I just finished two for mom to keep back for future baby showers.

And now, now I'm onto a huge one. One to fit a queen sized bed. This one will be used when I move down to live with the boyfriend. It's in our favorite colors and I'm excited cause it's a new design to me. It's a six point growing to a 24 point round ripple. It looks relatively easy but I'm going to admit, I'm scared I'm going to screw it up... but I'm like that with any project I undertake! So here we go with the pictures of two awesome ripples I mentioned before.

This pattern can be found http://www.angelfire.com/tx5/angelcrafts/patterns/spidermanroundrippleafghan.html I'm also looking forward to making this just in black and white only for halloween!

Unfortunatly I do not have the link I used to create this one, but I'm told that she wraps herself in it and says it's like a hug from Aunt Von... (*insert a little tear here)

So co-habitating will be interesting since I'm so crafty plus the computer... Better get at least a two bedroom ;)

Fried Chicken

I remember as a child going to my great grandmothers for home cooked meals. Ok, they weren’t really meals, it’s was more of a baffet of food. Didn’t matter why, or how little people she was serving, there was ALWAYS more food than we could ever eat. From homemade biscuits, to mashed potatoes, home made fried chicken (even though, she loved us to occasionally pick up a bucket of KFC and bring it over) to more deserts than we as children needed. No one went home hungry. If you did it was your own fault.

The biggest thing to always stick out in my mind however was her fried chicken. The recipe is no longer around for how she made it, I’m not sure anyone knew exactly how she made it to be honest. And frankly with my families weight and health issues I decided to try another route with the chicken.

Mom helped me with this tonight and while the chicken was nice and yummy the breading left a lot to be desired. Course all we used for the breading this time was flour. We try not to cook with salt as we all are pretty heavy salters when it comes to our own plates and high blood pressure is already showing it’s ugly little head.

We used chicken legs that were dipped in beaten eggs, rolled in flour, sitting on a foil covered baking sheet on a wire rack and baked at 450* for 40 minutes.

The chicken came out with some flour not quite fully stuck to the chicken. It was fully cooked and delicious, but I think next time I will be adding some form of spice to it as it tasted very bland to me. But for a first attempt, not bad. Nowhere near what grandma cooked. But it can only get better from here.

Why am I here?

Lately I have been obsessed with what some would consider being “old time” crafting, cooking and such. I’m all about learning how to make things such as bread, cookies, cakes, even fried chicken from scratch. Also I’m really into sewing, crocheting, knitting and all kinds of different crafty things. These things I’m picking up from video’s online, family members, and trial and error. This is my way of sharing with the world my learning process and hopefully helping others create fun things as well.