So far so good, but flip it over and...
Oh my!!!
I've been wanting to make a Tessellation quilt for quite some time and finally decided to start one last Friday. Being the clever girl I am I decided to change the measurement from 2" to 2 1/2" in order to use up one of the many jelly rolls that have been multiplying like rabbits in my absence. Here is the result...
Pretty clever huh? Duh, you'd think I would have realized my mistake when I had to cut my 5" inch strip down to 4 1/2"...I mean I've changed enough patterns around to know that changing one measurement means changing all the measurements... It doesn't end there, next I cut everything down to 2" and then feeling my confidence come back started sewing them on the diagonal without referring to the pattern as to the correct direction...arghhh. Not to mention how wonky those two end ones came out :(
Now I'm sewing with the pattern on my sewing machine table at all times no matter how sure I am that I have it down. I finally got it right and here it is so far. 
That bottom square is not sewn yet that's just how I audition the next block before I commit.
I don't even drink tea so I'm not sure how I ended up with a whole shelf full....
O.k. I'll stop there, you get the idea :)
Now on to Loser Monday business. In addition to my cabinets I have also completely revamped my "diet". I'm no longer on a diet. Why? Because a couple of weeks into it I realized I was on the same road I've been on so many times before and I don't want to be on it again. I want to lose weight and not gain it back this time. So instead of focusing on calories I'm just changing what types of foods I eat. I have to actually like the food because this is how I'm going to eat from now on, making allowances for real life of course. Remember the first picture I showed of what my meals were going to be consisting of? Delete it and replace it with this one.
The book is Nourishing Traditions and is my main Food Bible right now. I really love this book because it's not just some guy theorizing on what he thinks is healthy, it's based on the study of various peoples and cultures known for their longevity. You can go here to read more. I've cut out all refined sugar and grains. I use Sucanat and Blue Agave syrup in my coffee....you didn't think I'd give up my a.m. cup of java did you? I've pulled out my grain mill and my wheat berries, my yogurt maker and strainer for making yogurt and kefir cheese, I keep the whey for soaking beans and grains.
Organic eggs and sustainably raised meats, raw milk and lots of fruits and veggies and that's pretty much it in a nutshell. The only exception is Friday night pizza...I still use some white bread flour in the crust mixed in with the freshly ground stuff. I've been listening to Barbara Kingsolver's book Animal, Vegetable, Miracle when I walk and aside from being just an all around great book it has the added benefit of making me actually crave vegetables!! (Check out the website here)
The other day she was going on about rainbow chard so I went to Henry's and bought some and came home and cooked it up for dinner with some brown rice and it was yummy...chard is yummy, who woulda' thought? Since I have missed the dessert recipe (I eat fruit for dessert) and the salad recipe (I've actually never used a recipe for salad lol) I am going to post a recipe for rainbow chard. It's really good and so so easy. You'll need:
Olive oil, salt and red pepper flakes
Cook some brown rice and have it ready first, the chard cooks up really fast. I soak my rice all day in warm filtered water (2 cups to 1 cup rice) and 2 tablespoons plain kefir (or yogurt or whey) to make the nutrients more available. You just cook it the usual way in the filtered water.
Meanwhile roll the chard leaves like so
and chop up in 1" strips (hey kinda like quilting lol)
when the stems brighten and soften add the leaves, salt and pepper flakes to taste and cook until bright and tender, don't overcook! It should look like this.
Put it in a bowl with some buttered ( I use ghee, which is essentially clarified butter) brown rice and enjoy :) Now how simple is that?
Have a great day! Oh yeah and I lost another pound, so that's 6 so far. Slow? Yes, but hopefully and most importantly permanent!!
The one and only sewing project since the red and blue quilt a couple posts ago. I know. Pathetic. Oh except for this Brown Bag project. Thanks to Jo Ann and her class I can count on at least one completed project per month :)
Please note that I have read FIVE books so far this month though :)
Here's a closer look:
Some charm packs
and this cute valentine fabric...
oh wait that was from the Quilter's Coop in Temecula. We were done at Road by 2 o'clock and so we did some shopping on our way home.
and Amy at Windmills and Weathervanes who gave me this one:
These both came back in the begininning of December and everytime I finish posting I remember that I forgot to mention them....I feel kind of weird putting up awards to myself so maybe that's what took me so long. Anyways thanks so much to both of you, I really appreciate it! O.k I'm off to search for that pesky missing mojo :)
I have been intending to do this meme for quite some time. I think the whole html underlining thing intimidated me :) I just saw it over at Anna's and she did it with asterisks instead and so I am finally doing it "Ala Anna"And I’m throwing in ** for books that I want to read
1. Pride and Prejudice — Jane Austen **
2. The Lord of the Rings — JRR Tolkein
3. Jane Eyre — Charlotte Bronte *
4. Harry Potter Series — JK Rowling **
5. To Kill a Mocking Bird — Harper Lee**
6. The Bible * (I read it almost daily and have read it through at least once)
7. Wuthering Heights — Emily Bronte *
8. Nineteen Eighty Four — George Orwell
9. His Dark Materials — Philip Pullman
10. Great Expectations — Charles Dickens
11. Little Women — Louisa M. Alcott
12. Tess of the D’Urbervilles — Thomas Hardy
13. Catch 22 — Joseph Heller **
14. Complete Works of Shakespeare
15. Rebecca – Daphne Du Maurier *
16. The Hobbit — JRR Tolkien *
17. Birdsong — Sebastian Faulks
18. Catcher in the Rye — JD Salinger
19. The Time Traveler’s Wife — Audrey Niffenegger * (finished it last night and LOVED it)
20. Middlemarch — George Eliot
21. Gone With the Wind — Margaret Mitchel*
22. The Great Gatsby — F. Scott Fitzgerald **
23. Bleak House — Charles Dickens **
24. War and Peace — Leo Tolstoy **
25. The Hitch Hiker’s Guide to the Galaxy — Douglas Adams* (very irreverent, but oh soo funny!)
26. Brideshead Revisited — Evelyn Waugh
27. Crime and Punishment — Fyodor Dostoyevsky **
28. Grapes of Wrath — John Steinbeck**
29. Alice in Wonderland — Lewis Carroll*
30. The Wind in the Willows — Kenneth Grahame
31. Anna Karenina — Leo Tolstoy **
32. David Copperfield — Charles Dickens
33. Chronicles of Narnia — CS Lewis
34. Emma — Jan Austen **
35. Persuasion — Jane Austen *
36. The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe — CS Lewis*
37. The Kite Runner — Khaled Hosseini (audio book)
38. Captain Corelli’s Mandolin — Louis De Bernieres**
39. Memoirs of a Geisha — Arthur Golden *
40. Winnie the Pooh — AA Milne
41. Animal Farm — George Orwell
42. The Da Vinci Code — Dan Brown
43. One Hundred Years of Solitude — Gabriel Garcia Marquez **
44. A Prayer for Owen Meany – John Irving **
45. The Woman in White — Wilkie Collins**
46. Anne of Green Gables — LM Montgomery
47. Far From the Madding Crowd — Thomas Hardy **
48. The Handmaid’s Tale — Margaret Atwood *
49. Lord of the Flies — Wiliam Golding
50. Atonement – Ian McEwan
51. Life of Pi — Yan Martel**
52. Dune — Frank Herbert
53. Cold Comfort Farm — Stella Biggons (I'm almost positive I've read this...but I can't remember anything about it)
54. Sense and Sensibility — Jane Austen **
55. A Suitable Boy — Vikram Seth
56. The Shadow of the Wind — Carlow Ruiz Zafon
57. A Tale of Two Cities — Charles Dickens
58. Brave New World — Aldous Huxley
59. The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Nighttime — Mark Haddon **
60. Love in the Time of Cholera — Gabriel Garcia Marquez **
61. Of Mice and Men — John Steinbeck ** (starting this today)
62. Lolita — Vladimir Nabokov
63. The Secret History — Donna Tartt *
64. The Lovely Bones — Alice Sebold
65. Count of Monte Cristo — Alexandre Dumas*
66. On the Road — Jack Kerouac **
67. Jude the Obscure — Tomas Hardy
68. Bridget Jones’s Diary — Helen Fielding
69. Midnight’s Children — Salman Rushdie**
70. Moby Dick — Herman Melville **
71. Oliver Twist — Charles Dickens
72. Dracula — Bram Stoker **
73. The Secret Garden — Frances Hodgson Burnett* (my favorite as a young girl)
74. Notes from a Small Island — Bill Bryson
75. Ulysses — James Joyce
76. The Bell Jar — Sylvia Plath*
77. Swallows and Amazons — Arthur Ransome**
78. Germinal — Emile Zola
79. Vanity Fair — William Makepeace Thackeray**
80. Possession — AS Byatt
81. A Christmas Carol — Charles Dickens*
82. Cloud Atlas — David Mitchell*
83. The Color Purple — Alice Walker
84. The Remains of the Day — Kazui Ishiguro **
85. Madame Bovary — Gustave Flaubert
86. A Fine Balance — Rohinton Mistry
87. Charlotte’s Web — EB White
88. The Five People You Meet in Heaven — Mitch Albom
89. Adventures of Sherlock Holmes — Sir Arthur Conan Doyle**
90. The Faraway Tree Collection — Enid Blyton
91. Heart of Darkness — Joseph Conrad
92. The Little Prince – Antoine De Saint-Exupery
93. The Wasp Factory — Iain Banks
94. Watership Down — Richard Adams
95. A Confederacy of Dunces — John Kennedy Toole**
96. A Town Like Alice — Nevil Shute **
97. The Three Musketeers — Alexandre Dumas**
98. Hamlet — William Shakespeare
99. Charlie and the Chocolate Factory – Roald Dahl
100. Les Miserables — Victor Hugo**
O.k. hopefully this works this time. Apparently the list I cut and pasted at Anna's had an Internet Explorer bug--I use Firefox so I didn't notice anything until it was brought to my attention. Thankfully Anna had fixed it at her sight so I just cut and pasted again....thanks Anna :) Oh and the diet is going fine (this is Monday and that's my update...) I think I'm going to do something on my sidebar for the Monday Loser's... I just can't think of stuff every week diet related except " I lost another pound" and that get's old lol.
Hope you all have a great day :)
She asked Jonathan to help her come up with what to write and Daniel says he cheered her on so it was a group effort :) Poor Sarah got this far and Jonathan looked over and said no that's not right you've got to start over :) 
I made another trip to the used bookstore and this time I spent some time looking through their Japanese craft books.
I brought 2 home and immediately started gathering fabric from my stash ('cause I am stash busting) for this one.
Look at all this cute stuff! 
So here is my first project started in 2009
My camera card is being weird and won't load all my pictures so I'll try to get the other book up later.
I had a good week and lost 3 pounds, yay!!!
Yes Weight Watchers is my diet of choice and no I'm not doing meetings...this blog challenge is going to serve as my meeting :) I am not going to post my weight for the whole world to see (yeah I know the whole world doesn't read my blog) but I am giving you a big clue when I say I used to get 22 points a day and then I gained 5 pounds and now I get 24 points. If you are doing WW you will be able to figure out my weight from these clues. And no please don't give me your guess o.k.? LOL the whole point is to keep that offensive number off of my blog! I am pretty much a professional Weight Watcher...I have done the program hmmm o.k. maybe just twice that's not too bad. The first time was after my first baby and the second time...wait maybe 3 times...oh you know what? Just forget it.
This is how I will be starting my days almost without exception oh and coffee of course! 3 point coffee no less because I will have half and half in my coffee...somethings just aren't negotiable.
Never buy the Fiber One that looks like chex it is really bad. This stuff reminds me of honey bunches of oats and the fiber makes the point count really low. I will pretty much always eat either lentils or tomato pepper soup for lunch and then I get lots of points left for dinner, which is the most important meal to me. In fact when I'm not dieting I don't even remember breakfast or lunch half the time...which just shows you how much I must have been eating for dinner...yikes. Well that's about it...I do have one more picture of my cereal...diet posting just doesn't lend itself to photo ops. And no--no before picture yet...I'm still giving that some thought :)
O.k. ladies we can do this!!!!
