Warming Trend

The promised "heat wave" has arrived, my friends. When I got up yesterday, we were at 17°F. This morning we are at 40°F. Weird how that happens. Ice has been sliding from our metal roof. It sounds like thunder when it lets go. 

And so here we are, another Christmas Eve. I baked a cheesecake yesterday. Today, I'll add a topping, and I'm also trying a new apple skillet cake. It seems a little complicated...or maybe it's just because it's early, and I haven't had my full complement of coffee. I'm supposed to saute the apples, but then they have to come to room temperature before I can add them to the cake batter. And then all of that has to be baked. And then there's a caramel frosting, and that requires melting some soft caramels and then adding them to the mixture before they harden again. Oh, but they must be warm, not hot. So you can see there are a lot of rules I need to follow, and I'm barely awake as I'm writing this. All I can say is I'm glad I planned an emergency back-up dessert. Since I haven't yet added the topping to my cheesecake, I won't have anything to show you until tomorrow's post. By then, we will have eaten it, but I'll sneak in a picture before that. 

I braved the slick sidewalks for some winter landscape photos yesterday. Actually, no slippery sidewalks were involved. I took all of these through the window from the warmth of the living room. That's sleet, not snow, you're seeing in the image below. There was snow later in the day.

I felt sorry for this little bird trying to keep warm. Fortunately, I'd filled the bird feeders the day before, and so they had plenty to eat.

That's our little Christmas tree from a couple of years back. 

This is the Andromeda. It gets the most beautiful red foliage and white flowers in the spring. It's not looking so spring-like now.

This is the kitties' umbrella tree, straight out the living room window.

Looking past the umbrella tree...

Finally, this is the star magnolia. Hard to believe it can tolerate this cold and still bloom so pretty in spring. It puts its buds out early, and so it's one of the first bloomers of the new season.

Insert cheesecake baking here. It took a good part of the day. And, I don't care what anyone says. It's nearly impossible to mix cream cheese, even when it's at room temperature. Insert your own imaginary cheesecake picture here.

Okay, with my cheesecake done, I could get in some sewing time. I had to look back at an earlier blog post about this to remind myself what I was doing. I'm doing fusible machine applique, but this pattern is written for needle-turn. And since it's printed on both sides of the sheet, I have to copy the pattern onto single sheets, tape the pieces together and then flip them over on my light box to reverse the applique.

Then there's the issue of keeping all my fabrics straight. I'm using two different backgrounds, and I'm alternating the order of the sashing strips. Just to keep myself straight about this, I laid those out for future use.

Some of the blocks for this quilt have applique that extends out into the sashing. Some even extend into the block beside them. This first one isn't one of those, and so I can do the applique before trimming and sashing. First, I needed a wax-paper placement template.

And then I was ready to start fusing the applique. I had this one this far before I needed to stop for the day.

There's one more element to add to this block, and then it will be ready for top-stitching and sashing. 

Probably there won't be much (if any) time for sewing today. I have a busy day of baking ahead, followed by a busy day of eating. In between, I'll be hugging my family members. We're big huggers, and I like that about us.

I hope the bad weather hasn't impacted your Christmas plans too much. Either way, I'm so happy we find ourselves together once again, and I'm wishing you a very Merry Christmas. Stay warm. Take care. Hug an elf if you happen to find one somewhere. Oh yes, and don't forget to hug your cat if you have one.