Simple knits for complicated lives
Today's recipe is for slow cooker crab dip. I won't be able to eat it (I'm Horribly allergic to seafood) but we play the Cowboys today, our team is pitiful this year (they may as well have Hayden and I playing on the team,) my husband has been working extra hard lately and he loves crab dip so... Slow Cooker Crab Dip. Maybe it will bring us good luck on the field today.
There's been a lot going on over the last two weeks and I haven't been knitting much. Or blogging for that matter.
Last Monday was pretty traumatic. My daughter was in an accident and totaled her car. She's okay now but I was pretty worried about her for a few days. The airbags deployed and the side one smacked her on the side of her head and she lost her hearing in that ear for several days, plus she was sore from both the airbags and the seatbelt doing their jobs. It could of have been so, so much worse.
And now that Sarah doesn't have a car.... I'm driving her all over the place instead of sitting at home knitting.
The same day as Sarah's wreck, I started an online class geared to improve my Etsy shop. I'm enjoying the class and even though I've had my shop for over ten years, the class is pointing out a few things I've been doing wrong, or not doing at all. The downside is it's time consuming and I can't knit and type at the same time. I need a talk to text program for my computer like on my phone. Except I'd need it to actually understand what I'm saying.
We are also preparing to sell our house and lots of extra time has been spent either cleaning and/or doing/fixing things the realtor has requested or vacating the house for the realtor to do what ever realtors do before they put the for sale sign up in the yard.
And now, we're spending our time preparing for hurricane Ian. As this post goes live, we should be getting the first bands of rain from the storm. We aren't expecting much wind but we are supposed to get an awful lot of rain and for days on end. Thankfully we haven't had much rain lately and the river is pretty low. We definitely do not need another Gaston.
One good thing about the coming storm is I have the weekend off from work. I was supposed to be going to the Montpelier Sheep Dog Trials and Fiber Festival this weekend but it's been canceled due to all the expected rain. I'm pretty disappointed I won't be going but my debit card is pretty happy. Specially since Sarah is still happily crocheting and talking about learning to knit. She's already raided my yarn stash mutliple times. It could have been a Very expensive weekend! And now, instead of spending ALL my money, I can stay home, hunker down and knit, knit, knit while consuming my weight in hurricane snacks and booze.
Anyway, I haven't been knitting much. But I have had lots of Hayden time and that's always a good thing.
Hayden is obsessed with my tripod. She thinks it's a telescope.
We had family firepit night to celebrate official fall and a sudden welcome drop in temperatures. Hayden was helping me get the firepit set up and decided to read to the fire. She's definitely spent some time at the library's story time because she was showing the pictures to the firepit and everything. Cutest thing ever!
She had fun roasting marshmallows but she wasn't impressed with s'mores. How can someone not like s'mores??
And she's learning to write her name. Well, she's learning to write an "H" but she does know the letters in her name. Mostly. She thinks the 'y' is "y and z." Also the cutest thing!
Hopefully Ian will be kind to us and I won't miss any more blog posts. My prayers go out to all the Floridians out there.
Boy, I wish I'd discovered this recipe earlier. Our local chinese restaurant burned down on July 4th and they haven't reopened yet. And I really, really miss having Chinese Night.
While this recipe for citrus orange chicken looks slightly more complicated than making a phone call, the cooking time is actually about the same, maybe even less, than having to drive the restaraunt to pick up our order. And my stove won't care if I'm dressed or still have bed head at 5 p.m.
Enjoy!
Can you improve on basic mac & cheese? Yes, yes you can!
Loaded Mac & Cheese. Loaded mac & cheese! My life is complete!
And while this recipe calls for ground beef, I see no reason why other meats couldn't be used. Or even no meat at all, although ours will definitely have meat. I mean, 'loaded' does imply loaded!
Enjoy!
Have I mentioned how much I love fall?
We have pumpkins at the grocery store now and I can't tell you how much that pleases me.
Perhaps even better than pumpkins at the grocery store are the yarn kits I recently found at Hobby Lobby. They are Sesame Street One Hat Wonders from Lion Brand and the kits have the yarn and a Sesame Street character head to attach in place of a pompom. They had four or five characters available. I bought three - Cookie Monster, Big Bird and Elmo.
We've been having some almost-fall weather lately and it was perfect for a trip to our local county fair last weekend with Hayden. She had a blast.
I couldn't believe she climbed that giant slide all by herself.
I really couldn't believe she came down by herself. And despite the 'slide' being more of a free fall, (she looked like she needed a parachute and it scared me to death but...) she climbed off the base hollering, "Again! Again!" She's a little dare devil!
I hope you are enjoying your fall weather. Happy knitting!
Enjoy!
In preparation for the craft shows I'm doing this fall, I knit a thing.
And a few more things.
I had planned to write much more elegantly but life happened today. I had the day off from work and have the thrill of jury duty later this week so my blog writing time was limited to today. I'd planned to show you a whole bunch of things I've made recently but I got sidetracked and never got the photos taken. And well, now I'm just too mentally exhausted to say much.
As many of you know, we live right on the edge of the railroad tracks and right beside a busy crossing. Sadly, there was a horrific, fatal train vs car wreck practically in our backyard today. It was just awful. A horrible, horrible accident that I won't go into details about and it seems to have shut down my brain. As in, completely shut down. I can't even tell you how many words I've had to correct already because I'm typing the letters backwards. Not to make light of PTSD, but I think I have PTSD.
I would like to send out prayers to the victim's family, the train conductor, the passengers on the train (the police told me there were no injuries on the train thanfully) and to the rescue workers and clean up crew. And if the accident wasn't bad enough, it began thunder storming a few hours into the investigation/clean up process.
And now, in an attempt to rid my mind of twisted metal, I'm going to go take a hot bubble bath with a bottle of wine and a trashy romance novel to keep me company.
Ya'll be safe out there, and for the love of all things holy, please, please don't try to out run a train!
Have you heard of patty pan squash?
I hadn't until recently. I'm sure I've seen them at farm stands in the fall but just thought they were cute little decorative gourds. Turns out, they are edible, a good source of potassium, low in carbs and have a bit of fiber and protein.
Anyway, the grocery store I work for has been selling them like crazy and I started asking customers what they planned to do with them. And each customer seems to have their own favorite way of cooking them. So far, I think my favorite seems to be baking the squash, mashing them a little and mixing with cooked sausage. Sausage makes everything taste better.
Despite my preference for sausage, I found this recipe for roasted patty pan squash from delish.com. It sounds incredibly easy and it's vegetarian for those of you who don't eat meat. And if meat prices continue to rise like they have been, we may become vegetarian too.
Enjoy!
While I hate to see life passing me by, I gotta say, Damn, I'm glad to see August end.
I am SO ready for fall!
We have a giant tree, a sycamore I think it is, in our yard and it always sheds it's leaves waaaay before all the other trees. I sat on the deck for a while today and listened to the leaves fall. It was awesome! I always think my favorite calming sound is water lapping against the beach, a boat or pier pilings but really, it's the sound of crunchy leaves falling.
I am SO ready for fall!
And since it's still 90 degrees in Virginia and not actually fall yet, this little guy joined me on the deck. He hung out and watched me knit.
Happy September y'all!
photo and recipe courtesy of foodlion.com
Grilled s'mores that you cook on the grill or in the oven. Need I say more?
No, I don't think I do need to say more... but if you know me, you know I will.
This recipe is basically s'mores nachos. Nachos are for lunch and/or dinner.... and that means that now s'mores are for lunch and dinner. My life is complete!
I swear, the more I knit, the more my yarn stash pile grows. For every yard of yarn I knit up, two more yards appear in my yarn crates. Does that ever happen to you? My goal used to be to use up all my yarn but at this rate, I will never, ever be able to reach my much smaller goal of just making a visible dent in the pile.
Maybe I should give up my goals, become a full-on hoarder and just go yarn shopping.
As usual, that photo has bad lighting and does not do justice to the yarn. That middle hat and coordinating fingerless gloves just may be my all time favorite knitted item. Okay, favorite set.
So, since the last post, I'm up to 18 slip stitch hats completed, 3 pairs of fingerless gloves have been knit and one way-too-stiff hair scrunchy has been crocheted. The hair scrunchy was super simple to make but I definitely need either thinner yarn or a much larger crochet hook.
I love how different these two hats look despite being knit with the same two yarns.
Something super exciting has happened here in our household. Sarah, my daughter, has become a crafter. She's chosen crochet over knitting which I'm dealing with. I keep reminding myself that at least this way, she won't be stealing my knitting needles. Sarah already has a yarn storage box and a project bag! She started off making pumpkin coasters, graduated to cup cozies and is now crocheting herself a granny square sweater. I'm just so excited that we can mother/daughter craft together,... Although, it is going to make the Montpelier Fiber Festival a lot more expensive this fall.
This cozy looks Much better on my travel cup/bottle that it was designed for but said cup is in the dishwasher so a plain water bottle is modeling it.
Oh, and one more exciting event - Hayden became an auto mechanic. I love her choice of attire. What else would a well dressed female mechanic wear to work besides a pink tutu and cowboy boots?
Okay, so maybe my Sunday Supper series needs to be retitled Food from Food Lion. I just can't help myself. Since discovering such quick, easy and delicious recipes on Food Lion's website, I can't help but pass them along to you.
Today I bring you Loaded Barbeque Ranch Chicken Bites.
The most difficult part of preparing this recipe is mixing the BBQ sauce and the Ranch dressing together. It's literally that simple!
I sure hope these bites are healthy and calorie free because I see quite a few of them in my future. Yum!
I've been a busy little beaver lately.
Remember the slip stitch hat pattern I mentioned designing a while back? I'm totally obsessed with it. TOTALLY! And yes, I realize I sound like an '80's Brat Pack movie and I don't even care.
I was going to wait until I'd launched the hats into my Etsy shop but who am I kidding. I can't stop knitting the hats long enough to photograph them for the shop, much less to 'launch' them. After knitting five or six, I decided I needed to order more yarn.
I beaded socks while I waited for the new yarn delivery. By the way, if you are ever beading socks and eating peanuts at the same time, be very, very careful. You're likely to get confused and break a tooth.
Sadly, the new yarn went on quite an adventure in New Jersey.
According to the tracking updates, it arrived in New Jersey three different times. When it finally arrived on my doorstep, it wasn't even in a Knit Picks box anymore. The only label on the box was from the local postal distribution center not 20 minutes from my house. And it was torn open on the bottom and the tape on the top of the box was only on one side so that the box wasn't sealed and yarn was poking out and stuck in the tape. No worries though. Knit Picks has excellent customer service and new, fresh, clean yarn was on it's way to me after just one quick phone call.
While I waited for the replacement yarn, I grew a tomato. Yeah, don't laugh. That one tiny "Big Boy" tomato cost about $45 and hours and hours of time and attention. It's pretty obvious I need to stick to knitting and not farming.
The replacement yarn arrived and I started hat knitting again.
And again. And again and again and again. I have now made 16 of these hats and I'm not even the slightest bit bored with the pattern. There are just so many possible color combinations!
It's probably a good thing I've signed up to be a vendor at several Christmas bazaars craft shows.
And while I knit, I watched Hayden play in the pool. She absolutely loves the water and while you wouldn't know it from this photo, she happily floats around all by herself. She doesn't jump in from the side of the pool but she does like to take a step or two down the stairs and jump in from there. Needless to say, the deck security has become like Fort Knox. Not to wish her life away, but I sure will be glad when she's three feet taller and can stand with her head out of the water.
Until next time, happy knitting!
Yep, another Food Lion recipe because once again, every third customer started buying pineapples and I got curious. I went to Food Lion's website and sure enough, they had a new recipe that called for fresh pineapple.
Bacon and fresh pineapple in one bite. Is there any need to say more? I think not.
After discovering the recipe, I started asking the customers who were buying both pineapple and bacon if they were going to follow this recipe and I was quite surprised how many people didn't know about it. They sure know now!
And let me just wind this up with a tip for the next time you are shopping. Please thank your cashier for bagging your fresh pineapple. Those suckers are prickly and don't like to be placed in plastic bags.
I've been wanting to get back to posting Sunday Supper recipes for a while but hadn't been able to find the motivation to actually post.
That is, until I found this recipe for Souther Georgia Peach Milkshakes. Oh! My! Goodness!
As many of you know I work for Food Lion, a local grocery store chain. It's a fairly large chain and if you if you shop there, you probably know it as The Food Kitty. Or simply, The Kitty. Anyway, they have a website with recipes. A website I hadn't ever bothered to look at to be perfectly honest.
A few weeks ago that changed. I noticed every third customer was buying butter pecan ice cream. And butter pecan ice cream was not on sale. What was the deal? Why are so many people suddenly buying this particular flavor?
Southern George Peach Milkshakes from foodlion.com
Come to find out, it's an ingredient in the peach milkshake recipe, So I bought some too.
I really hope your local grocery store has butter pecan ice cream and fresh peaches in stock. And I really, really hope you'll give this recipe a try. Yum!
