My First Omelet

I'm 30. And yesterday I made my first omelet. I've attempted before but usually get irritated and it turns into scrambled eggs. But I like scrambled eggs. I don't think an omelet really has anything on scrambled eggs, as far as taste goes, but I think it's a prettier presentation, and now I can say I did it. I filled it with lots of mushrooms and more reasonable amounts of bacon and cheese.There may have been a ton of Cholula poured on after this picture was taken.

Mini Sampler Quilt

I made this mini quilt for the Mini Art Quilt Swap 5 on Craftster.org (gallery here). One of my partner's themes was "Whimsical Sampler/Album Quilt." While I loved the idea of a sampler quilt, I had a bit of trouble with the whimsical part. I finally decided that I would go through all my novelty fabrics and pick out some fun ones to include for the "whimsical" part of it. I found clouds, birds, hedgehogs, love bugs, butterflies, cherries, snails, turtles and more!

I found an awesome pattern for the Sew Small Sampler Quilt on the blog Wedding Dress Blue. I decided to not set the blocks on point, and to use white sashing instead of the settings squares.
Each tiny square was 3 1/2 inches after I made it, 3 inches in the finished quilt! I do love tiny piecing!



Because I think it's fun to look at the seams (I generally iron my seams to one side, but a little ways into this project I realized for something so small it would behoove me to iron my seams open).



Backing



A close-up on the quilting. I stitched in the sashing using natural colored thread, and then decided there was just too much white space, so I did some in lavender and blue,created by my friend Cherri and my go-to quilting pattern.



Aaaand my two favorite blocks! Shown with a bobbin to demonstrate the tinyness.





This project gave me the idea to do a Novelty Fabric swap on Craftster, if you'd like to see all the fun fabric coming in, our gallery link is here

Low Carb Fried Chicken and Gravy

Cooking is crafty, right? I've been doing some low carbing lately, it really helps to get rid of my sugar cravings and binges. Since I started getting a Farm Share from Zenger Farms I'm even more excited about being able to eat low carb with all my yummy veggies!

Tonight I made the yummiest dinner! Breaded, fried chicken with "gravy" for 3 net carbs!



Recipe:

2 butterflied chicken breasts, lightly pounded just so they were the same thickness
seasoned salt and garlic powder
1/4 cup almond meal
2 T coconut flour
1 T unsweetened coconut (I don't think this added anything, it wasn't coconut tasting, so will omit it next time)
2 T oil for frying

1/4 cup half and half
2 T chopped Italian parsley
red pepper flakes to taste

Heat oil on large pan until a bit of almond flour tossed in sizzles. Mix almond meal and flour in shallow dish, add any other seasonings you like. Season one side of chicken breasts with seasoned salt and garlic powder, then dip both sides in almond mixture. Fry on each side 3-5 minutes, or until browned nicely and cooked through. Remove chicken from pan, and into pan drippings (should be oil left + some of the almond meal mixture that fell off and browned) add half and half and chopped parsley. Cook and stir for a minute for the parsley to wilt, and add red pepper flakes and salt/pepper to taste.

ETA: The 3 net carbs were for eating 3/4 of this recipe, there is half a piece of chicken and some gravy left over.

Next up: Some Kale Chips I am going to attempt to make in my dehydrator! I got the most beautiful Red Russian Kale from the farm yesterday!

Sock Monkey Quilt

Sock Monkey Quilt

A while back I got a grab bag of 12 pounds of fabric from the Fat Quarter Shop. It had some great stuff in it, including several pieces (around 1/3 yard each) from Erin Michael's 5 Funky Monkey line. I finally decided to use it for a baby quilt for my dear friend's first baby.

I slightly altered the 4 patch pattern from Quilts for Kids to include more fabrics and increased the size of the blocks so I could get the number of them I wanted. I used 4 pieces of monkey fabric, plus two blenders from my stash for the front, and two other pieces of monkey fabric for the back. This whole quilt was from my stash besides the green solid on the back (Ikea sheet!) and a little solid blue for the binding. Also, I got my brother to buy the sheet for me :)

Front

Back! My first pieced back, it was going to be a strip all the way across but I love the brown polka dots and decided this would be cute.

Maybe next time I will actually do the binding "correctly" and handstitch the back. I'm still cheating and machine stitching it.

I still have some of this fabric left, definitely enough to piece another baby quilt (with a lot of sashing or blenders or something!) My friend really liked it!

AccuQuilt Giveaway

AccuQuilt Giveaway!

Amy, who has a great quilting blog that I like to read, is giving away an Accuquilt! These cutters are super cool! Check out her giveaway!

http://www.amyscreativeside.com/2010/06/accuquilt-go-cutter-giveaway.html