Tutorial for Making a Pillowcase for Christmas!

Or--any other time!  I usually make several pillowcases, because they are fast and so nice to have.  Who wouldn't want a personalized pillowcase made by Mom or Grandma?  This tutorial makes 2 pillowcases, standard size.  These are great made in cotton, but also fun done in flannel.

 

The first 6 pillowcases I made for this Christmas.

This is what you will be making in this tutorial.
My second case was blue with a print border.

For this project you will need:
1 yard of print
1 yard of matching/contrasting/solid (whatever looks great with the print!)
Scissors
Sewing Machine
Iron

Optional:
rotary cutter and mat.  But this does make it easier to cut.

Step One:
From Contrast color, cut a band 12" x 40"
From Print color, cut 24" x 40"

Step Two:  Take the band and, wrong sides together, fold in half the long way.  Press the fold down flat.

Step Three:  Place this band on the right side of the print.  Sew across the seam.  Press the seam to the Print.

Step Four: fold in half, and sew down the side seam, and across the bottom seam.  Turn right side out, press and you are done! 

To make the second pillowcase, repeat these steps, but of course in this one, the band across the top will be the print.

Have fun!  Make lots!

Hip Padder Bars--a Recipe for Sheer Indulgence!

This might just be one of the best cookie bars I have ever eaten--ever!  They are so rich and so decadent you can only eat a small bit at a time.  My kind of cookie!

Preheat oven to 350 degrees.
lightly grease bottom of 13" x 9" pan. 

Ingredients:
1 can (15 oz) of Sweetened Condensed Milk
2 TBS Butter (real butter if you can, real margarine if you can't, but NOT any tub spread)
1--6 oz package of Chocolate Chips
1 Tsp Vanilla
1/2 Cup Butter, softened (yes, I know it is listed twice, lol.)
1 Cup Brown Sugar, firmly packed
1 Large Egg
1 1/4 Cups All-purpose Flour
1 Cup chopped nuts (optional but ohhhh--so tasty!)
1/2 Cup uncooked oatmeal (just have to throw in something healthy.)

Combine condensed milk and 2 TBS of butter and the chocolate chips in a double-boiler.  Don't have a double-boiler?  Me either--but I just put the ingredients in a saucepan, and set that in a frying pan of boiling water.

Cook on low, stirring constantly, until chips are melted.  Add vanilla, stir, and let this cool while you mix the rest of the ingredients.

Cream the 1/2 Cup of butter and sugar.  Add the egg, and stir that in.  Next, mix in the flour, oatmeal, and nuts.  Press only 2/3rds of this dough into pan.  Pour melted chocolate mixture on top of dough.  Carefully (because it may be slightly hot still) lick spoon.  With a different spoon, drop small piles of the remaining dough all over the top.

Bake in a 350 degree oven for 25-20 minutes.

Cool, cut, and eat!

Getting Ready for Christmas? I am!

Ok, I spend almost all year making little things here and there--and I vowed this year to get the three quilts for the grands done early. Alas, my good intentions are currently paving the road to hell.  However, I do have the top done for one! I have a grand who  refuses to eat any--and I mean ANY--fruits or vegetables.  I figured, if he won't eat them, then he can at least sleep under them!  The quilt features bright fruits and vegetables with a black w/dog paw prints background, and is called:  Paws for a Snack.

A Paddle Around the Pond

Soon the ice and snow and cold will keep us off the pond, but yesterday we had the perfect day to take a last, lazy paddle around the pond--and we took it!  Float along with me, and see what we saw.

Ice rimed the edges, as well as a hard frost.

But the sun shone brilliantly down, glancing off the ice.

We discovered some new neighbors moving in--muskrats.  This is their new house.

The pesky beavers have renovated a second lodge on our pond--long abandoned, made new and bigger.

 This is the top of their new dam, on the left of the point.We only had one little dam back there, now the beavers have gotten the water so high, they are building a second dam.

 

This is their original and main lodge. The 'brush' you see all around it is their feed pile. They've been cutting and cutting trees to stash for winter feeding. The feed pile extends down into the water--deep.

And ice storm and a microburst, several years ago, have wreaked havoc on the woods here.

This is the roots of an enormous uprooted tree. 

This looks like swiftly moving water, but it isn't--it's ice.

We banked the canoe on the far end of the pond, to see if there was much water being held back. There was! The Mister went up onto the second pond to see what the beaverswere doing up there, but I stayed behind to see what was right under my nose...and feet!

.

 My attention was caught by some bright red dots...whicht urned out to be some sort of fungus/moss growing on a dead tree.  It was in bloom.

Here are the blooms close up. In 'real life' they are about 1/4" tall.

There were lots of different mosses growing all over.

This one was about the size of a baby fingernail.

This looks like the top of a pine forest--but it is only two-three inches high, at best.

Here are some frosty samples, hiding in the shade.

Not sure what these are--but the little hairs on the plant were frosty and spiky.  Cool.

Hope you had as much fun looking as I did. It's cold and rainy today, and sadly, I would say our canoeing days are over for this season.

Squirrely Appleseed?

Well--I had noticed the apples were disappearing from my apple tree, but didn't really care, as the only ones left were not fit to eat.  I just figured they were dropping to the ground and the deer were eating them....until this!

A saucy little squirrel climbed right up my apple tree the other morning, grabbed an enourmous apple in his teeth and made a break for it.  I didn't have the camera ready then, and was a bit annoyed with myself, as it was so darned funny, that little squirrel running with that big ole apple.

I went out to the mulch pile about an hour later and on my way, an apple fell with a thud--from a pine tree!  Now, I don't know about you, but around here, apples rarely fall from pine trees.  In fact, as far back as I can remember--never.  Then I saw Squirrely Appleseed scampering away, swearing at me in Squirrel.  Ah-ha!  He wasn't just getting breakfast, he was stashing them for winter.

The next morning I was ready, camera at the breakfast table, waiting for him to come for his morning apple.  Sure enough, we spotted him scampering down the apple tree with another apple in his mouth.  I ran out, and managed to get one good picture--squirrels are fast!

So, Squirrely Appleseed is out somewhere this morning, spreading his apples from pine to pine, shoving them into holes and branches. Guess he thinks he's going to be eating them all winter!  That's ok, the way I see it, he's just taking a page from Johnny Appleseed. 

Our First Mystical, Magical Snowfall.

Well!  I was amazed to awake this morning to a Winter Wonderland. We were covered in snow!  See how much is on this bench?  Heh. I bet you couldn't even tell it was a bench, under all that snow.  It is, and you can just make out a stack of patio bricks behind it, if you look carefully.

This is where winter can get scary.  We are going to have to shovel off the roof before it collapses under the weight of our first snowfall.  Guess it's time to gear up!

X

The X marks the spot of the picture I tried to take of the wicked snow as it cascaded from the heavens.  It was just too, too much! 

The Other Side of Halloween the Brochures Never Mention

Dancing kids in Disney costumes scatter colorful fall leaves as they caper about.  Glowing jack-o-lanterns glower from every front porch.  The sun slants down through a ruby red Maple that is ever so artfully showering leaves in the light breeze.  But no one ever shows you what it looks like when Halloween is over and reality sets in.

Sigh.  This poor fellow is now bound for the mulch bin.  He's done his duty and is ready to go back to the earth.  This is one sad Jack.

His brother is in even worse shape--gray with furry mold.  Bet you never saw that in a Hallmark commercial!

And what about my glorious apple tree?  Well, the leaves are almost all gone, and the few remaining apples are pecked by the birds and hornets, and covered with frost.  I'd show you a picture of my ruby red maple with the scattering leaves etc--but it is bare and the leaves are soggy and dull.

Wait--where are all the other colorful fall leaves the kids danced through?  Gone.  Brown and scattered. Covered with frost.  Soggy. 

 Remember the grape vines I photographed earlier this year, so lush with foliage one couldn't even see the Fairy House that hides beside it in the summer?  Heh.  One can see it now.

The wheelbarrow had ice in it this morning. I hate ice unless it's in a glass with something really good.  And by really good I do not mean lemonade.

And why am I putting this photo up?  Because the %^*@# beavers chewed down two trees that should have been in the center of this shot.  Happy Fall?  I think not.

Hope you aren't too depressed.  But if you think this is bad, wait for the first pictures of snow.  UGH!!