Bread Baking Fun

Our family had a friend stay for a week (last week) during his spring break from a local college. He was surprised to find out we make our own butter, bread, laundry detergent, and a plethora of other items.

One day he arrived back from an errand just as Emily had finished mixing up bread dough. Being the curious ever-seeking-learning-experiences college student that he is, he wanted to help finish making the bread. He was amazed that we mill our own wheat into flour, so we had to let him sample some wheat berries (the kernels before they are ground). Eating is believing.

Here he is after punching down the dough. Get ready to divide the large lump into thirds... "I do whaaaaaa?" Notice the three loaf pans below his right elbow.



Then the dough is pressed down into a rectangle, rolled up, sealed, and placed seam-side down into a bread pan. "Hey--I think I got the hang of this!" (Third loaf pictured).




Into the oven to rise (the second time), shaped into 3 lovely full-sized loaves. We let it rise in a slightly warmed oven...it speeds up the second rising. We just put the loaves in and turn the oven on to preheat. We turn the oven off after just one minute.


"Wow--making bread is a lot more fun than I thought it would be! Can't wait to make my very own PBJ using the bread 'we' made"...and that is the empirical 'we'...

~Joan

Perm Flop

Some have emailed asking about the success of "the perm". It was a near flop. Not a total flop--but really close. I guess I should have left the curling lotion on longer, but since this was the first time, I was afraid it would chemically burn her hair. The perm instructions said to unroll a curler to see if the hair was curly enough. Our test curl was perfect. I'm not sure why it wasn't a flag-wavin' success.

My question for you all is this...how soon can I try it again? I am willing to do all the re-rolling, applying, rinsing, etc. if it would = success. Any perm experience is appreciated.

~Joan

Triples Today!

Here is my trip this afternoon to Harris Teeter. I paid $7.98 for all of this. A few things were more than I wanted to pay, but they are things we use that I can't get for less somewhere else.

Here is the breakdown...

I just realized one item did not make it into the picture (oats)...

Quaker quick oats 18 oz. $2.39 - $1.80 = $0.59
Dole pineapple x 6 $0.99 each = $5.94 - $0.55/2 x 3 = $0.17 each
Pillsbury reduced sugar cake mix 3 x 2.05 = $6.15 -$3.60 = $0.85 each
Tide travel pack $1.00 -$1.00 = FREE
Rhodes frozen rolls 3 x $1.79 = $5.37 - $5.37 = FREE
Totino pizza rolls $3.28 - $3.28 = FREE *
Hungry Jack biscuits $0.99 x 3 = $2.97 - $1.20 = $0.59 each *
Pillsbury crescent rolls $2.00 x 3 = $6.00 - $2.25 = $1.25 each *
Pillsbury pie crust $2.69 *

* these items, when purchased in a group of 10, netted a $4 additional savings.

Two of my girls shopped with me, so we got multiples of many things.

I'm thinking of rehauling my whole coupon filing system. Stay tuned...

~Joan

Shelby Skies

Above is a picture taken of our sky here in Shelby just a few minutes ago. Looks very menacing, doesn't it? The weather is nearly 80 degrees. Hard to believe we had 10" of snow just a couple weeks ago.

I started thinking about our vegetable garden for this spring. That reminded me that I didn't get out my tub of hyacinths to put on the front steps. I hoped I wasn't too late. Then I went down to the area where we keep all our out-of-season pots and gardening stuff. These beauties were growing under a tarp. They were already fully grown, but they were very light green and all hunched over. After a couple days in the sun, the blossoms opened, and lovely hyacinth-laced aromas flow into the house every time the front door is opened.

Spring has sprung, the grass is riz. I wonder where the flowers is? There are two pink hyacinths, but they are leaning so far towards the camera that they got cut out when I cropped it--then I couldn't figure out how to uncrop it!

Hooray for spring!

~Joan

Perming Rachel's Hair

This AM I did something I thought I'd never do...I gave a permanent...to one of my own offspring. If you only knew how strange that idea (let alone reality thereof) is to my psyche.

I have never given a perm before, but I CAN read, so I figured we'd wing it. Below is Rachel before I gave the perm. She slept with ("those stinkin'") curlers in to achieve this look. Sleeping on curlers is not optimal, so she would like to avoid it in the future! Those curls would have disappeared inside 30 minutes, even if we hadn't washed her hair.




Below shows after I got all the rods in. Tedious, but certainly doable...

If you've had your hair permed, you know the drill between the above picture and the next one. Curling lotion, timer, timer, timer, timer...the key is determining how long the solution needs to stay in. Too short and you just wasted a lot of time. Too long, and you look like a Brillo pad. We wanted somewhere in between. It looks like the eagle has landed!

Here she is after the neutralizing solution was applied, rods were out, conditioner was in...me, oh, my! There are a lot of steps involved. I'll post a picture later of her newly curly dried hair. She's out on the porch right now, reading while it dries.

Hope springs eternal...

~Joan

Scrap Quilt Designing & Fabric Collecting

I have had this question often enough to answer it publicly. How do I choose fabrics for a scrap quilt? After the fabrics are selected, do I consciously choose where each will go in the quilt? Why do the scrap quilts I make look so coordinated?

There are so many aspects to making a scrap quilt. Here is the usual progression for me...

I am piecing a quilt top. I have my next quilt to make selected (in my mind, at least). I start cutting some units for the NEXT quilt while I'm finishing up the one being sewn. I cut up what's left over from the first quilt and try to use up my scraps (which are in plastic shoe boxes...a couple colors in each box). I use "new" quilt units as leaders/enders as I finish sewing the one in progress. By the time I have the in progress one finished, the second one is well under way. Usually at that time, I have quite a few blocks finished, but not all the pieces cut for the (second) quilt. It is at that point that I stop cutting any ole scraps on my cutting table and actually see if I need more or less or a color to have a good balance. The same is true for value...do I have enough lights to make the top sparkle? Too many? I will purposely pull out the colors or values that are missing to make the top pleasant.

In this top I used greens in the 4-patches in the center of each block, but did not use greens in the outside "twin peaks" units that touched the green triangles on the outside. I didn't want the greens to blend together and lose the design of the quilt.

When it came to laying out the finished blocks, I did not put any of the creams next to an identical one (the triangles around the 4-patches are all one cream in each block). I also turned the blocks so that no identical green outer triangles were next to each other.

I am blessed to use MOSTLY Thimbleberries. They all kind of go together. When I was nearly finished with the 4-patches, I found a little baggie of sample fabrics that were 2" squares (sent from a warehouse as samples of a new line). I just made the rest of the 4-patches from that bag since they were already the right size. To look at the quilt, you'd never know which ones were the "new" prints.

One rule of thumb is that if a fabric really sticks out when you look at the top, you should put it in several other places (spread out) in the top. I posted about this a long time ago here. I tried to find the post, but I can't. Sorry!

~Joan

Greener Grass Needs Two More Borders!

This is my Greener Grass quilt center. All it lacks to be a complete top is another border of the dark green inner border fabric and then a light green wide outer border. I really like this. I have a lovely green flannel that I will use to back it. See the original pattern picture here to understand the two final borders. It is about 47" x 53" here.

You probably know this, but if you want to see all posts on a particular subject, click on it under the signature at the end of the post...it's underlined and comes after "Labels:".

~Joan