New trees

When I bought the little trees that sit next on my hearth of my basement fireplace I thought I didn't want lighted ones. I can't remember why I thought that though because last week I decided that I did want them lit to fill the dark corner.
I grossly under estimated how long of light strands I'd need and bought short strands off amazon here and here. Thinking that 5.5 feet would be more than enough for my small two foot tree. um no...not even close. So I went to target and bought from their already set up Christmas selection, a regular lengthed strand and one half the length.

I came home yesterday and set to work lighting the trees, John said nothing to me while he sat on the couch, I'm sure he's use to my weird out bursts by now.

I think they look adorable. They're powered by a timmer that turns them on in the evening Monday through Friday and all day Saturday and Sunday, I'm obsessed with timmers.
For dramatic affect here they are with lights off:

I was in a decorating mood after that and wanted to buy new curtains to add to my family room, but John wasn't on board so that'll have to wait.

August's block of the month

I've procrastinated all my quilt blocks, but this one took the cake. I had to wake up at 7AM the Saturday off my class to finish the block by 10AM, luckily it went together really smoothly.

The only flying geese triangle ruler I have was too big for this block and since I procrastinated I didn't have time to go buy the correct size so I just made my own template out of freezer paper. It worked wonderfully and I'm pretty proud of myself. I don't think I could have made it without my other ruler and instructions as guides, but I still made it.

I watched more Daria while sewing, I'm almost done with the seasons so I'll have to think of something else to watch soon.
This isn't my sewn block, (I never got around to taking a picture of it) this is the demonstration one in class, but it's the correct block.

Labor Day

I wasn't too excited about it being Labor Day weekend, it meant that summer has flown by and I haven't properly enjoyed it. No camping, no hiking, no water activities, shame on me! We also didn't do much for this Labor Day so I'm extra naughty, we turned down our normal activities (the Soldier Hollow Classic) so that we could just enjoy some time at home.

We stayed up past midnight every night and slept in until 10:30 every morning like we were in college again. Saturday we divided up the mass amounts of dog food which always takes a couple of hours, but has to be done because we start getting bloody puddles on the kitchen floor and the dogs won't stop licking the boxes. A normal statement around our house that doesn't send up any cause of alarm is, "Enna's has blood on her head."

After that we slowly made our way into the backyard to do some yard work, last year we built a garden bed, but never got around to buying flowers for it. Probably for the better since the bricks were falling down and the dogs climbing in it, so John decided that we were going to glue the bricks together and it get ready for fall planting. There were millions of spiders and I was fine unless there were any that were arachnophobia big, those all seemed to live between the bricks that we were taking down. After a couple scares I let John take the rest down with the shovel and we'd bash in their little spider brains. Now it's all back together and I just have to think of ways to keep the dogs out.

Sunday I made cookies from this recipe since they're fat free, but my first batch was a bust. The dough was too thin so the cookies were wafer thin and  burnt. I added more flour to the remaining dough and it turned out much better. Once cooled I turned them into ice cream sandwiches with my homemade fat free vanilla ice cream.
People are always wanting my ice cream recipes, but I never make the vanilla the same, it usually just what I have on hand - boxed vanilla pudding, fat free vanilla yogurt etc. I always use fat free sweetened condensed milk though, that's the key to making it amazing. This time I used 2 cups fat free milk, 14 oz. fat free sweetened condensed milk and 4 oz. fat free cream cheese. When using fat free milk you have to use something that is creamy (the pudding, cream cheese or yogurt) or it won't freeze and scoop like normal ice cream.

Monday we relaxed all day and crossed some of the movies off of "1001 movies to see before you die", Strictly Ballroom, Beverly Hills Cop and Raising Arizona. I also went through 1970 through present in the book since I noticed that we hadn't been very diligent about crossing them off. We missed 10 titles that we had watched and it would have been more if John could remember movies he's seen. Now I just need to go through the rest of the book to see if we missed marking any in the earlier years. In the evening we went to Sugar House BBQ with some friends from Kansas as they were craving some back home cooking, they said it was almost as good as mama makes (Dad, we tried to go to Pat's but they were closed for the holiday).

It was such a nice relaxing weekend and I think all holidays should be that way.