Some Little Things

There are lots of little things to tell you today, but one big thing is this: 

Happy Birthday, Matthew! We celebrated the day you were born, and we have celebrated every year since. Kick up your heels and have a good one! 

After I posted the latest of the Irish doors, I realized I'd left out a little of the top-stitching. That was the first thing I did in the sewing room yesterday. Now, it really is finished...at least until I'm ready to quilt it. I'll add more details then.

There's quite a bit of stitching to do on the latest block for Lisa's retirement quilt. I hadn't even traced it out yet, and so I did that. Then, I spent some time machine stitching the lines in the background. This is a bit of a tedious job, and when I had taken it this far, I decided to do something else for a while. Hopefully, I can get all the rest of the lines stitched today.

Next, I wanted to start on my guild challenge. The challenge is to use a range of neutrals (in my case blacks to whites), then one color (yellow), and one zinger (bright glow-in-the-dark pink).

My goal was to get it cut out, but I surprised myself by getting all of the little houses stitched together. Do you see my zinger?

These are 8.5 inches unfinished.

Now here's something exciting. You know what a sugar fiend I am and how much I love to bake. The problem is, baking as often as I would like to is not (shall we say) in keeping with my goal of becoming a Victoria's Secret model. So, imagine how excited I was when I discovered this book:

See those cute little tarts on the cover? They're baked in wide mouth mason jar lids! (No snide comments about the "wide mouth" please.) Well, this made my little baker's heart go pitter pat. Not only that, but she bakes actual pies in those jar lids. Oh. My. Goodness. (Emphasis on the goodness.) Well. Obviously, I needed this immediately because it allows me to bake my pie and eat it too. Just once. Because the problem of baking desserts for two people is leftovers...and with this book, there will be none.

So I ordered the book right away, and when it arrived, I wasted no time perusing the pages telling me what I'd need to make the desserts in the book. Then without a moment's hesitation, I ordered the items I was missing...because in my kitchen, it's all about the tools to do the job. And yesterday, those came too! This is so exciting! So here's what I got:

I left my hand in there for scale. At the top left, a 6-inch cast iron skillet (for skillet cobblers, and such), to its right, a 4-1/2 inch springform pan (for itty bitty cheesecakes). Below the skillet is a 6-inch cake pan, and to its right is a 6-inch pie plate. Oh. My. Gosh. (Another version of Oh. My. Goodness. Can you tell I'm excited?) I can hardly wait. In fact, I'm so excited that I'm going to try baking blueberry pies in mason jar lids tomorrow. I'll tell you more about that when the time comes. I'll have to keep the camera handy, because I think the time between baking and eating will be rather short. Like, light speed. 

So, that's about all I have to tell you. Our weather has been wild. We can get sunshine, torrential downpours, fog, and hail all in the same day in the spring, and that's how the weather has been. With that kind of weather, we also get rainbows a-plenty. Gracie is celebrating spring by napping on her favorite quilt.

Smitty prefers his post by the fireplace.

I just added those last two pictures because to every blog post, there will be cats. Or at least there should be.