Pieced Gore Finished

I decided to go to storage this morning. I figured I would spend more time fretting about whether I had the gore the right size than just driving to storage. I think I was probably right. Though, it turns out, my piece was pretty close to the right size for what I wanted to make.

This was pretty fun. Now I just need to make 11 more!

My Latest Sewing Project

With us square dancing again, I've been thinking it would be fun to make a new skirt. Then while I was hanging out this weekend, this idea came to me. I'm planning to piece it like a quilt. I think I'll need to make at least a dozen of these two-gore panels. I'm also planning to add a strip of purple between the finished heart panels to separate the hearts. I suspect this project will go together much faster than a quilt!


I'm still working on getting the gore pattern right, so I haven't started it yet. All my square dance patterns are in storage, so I'm trying to decide if it's worth the trip to go pick them up. A gore is not very hard to design, but you do need to make sure you have enough of them to make a full circle. Here are the fabrics I've chosen.

This is the blouse I plan to wear with it. It's always good to wear a purple blouse on a holiday when everybody else is wearing red!

Okay, it's too late for this Valentine's Day, but I'll be all set for next year!

Happy Valentine's Day

Jeff and I are enjoying a quiet weekend at home. We would go out this weekend, but we're expecting restaurants are too busy to make it worth the hassle. We'll have to go out later in the week. =)

This evening Jeff and I went to another square dance; a valentine's dance. Most of our square dance clothes are packed in storage, so we went by this afternoon and picked up a box of holiday skirts. I wished I had another blouse and shirt set tonight, but we just don't have the closet space to unpack more of these clothes. Oh well.

We're doing pretty well at the Plus-level square dancing, but our round dancing is just too rusty. I want to look around for a round dance class so we can relearn Phase 3 and 4 round dancing.

Jeff and Shasta got new safety gear for their night-time scootering. I know I feel better now that they're wearing this when they go out at so late at night.

Tomorrow we have a hot date to play Pandemic; Jeff's new favorite board game.

Successful Food Experimentation

Anybody who knows me, knows I am not the cook in this house. Jeff is the cook and a good one; he makes beautiful, tasty food. But with him working full time and me still unemployed, I have tried a lot more crockpot cooking experimentation this year. I usually look to some recipes for inspiration, but I've mostly been throwing a bunch of ingredients, usually what we have in the refrigerator, together in the crockpot.

Additionally, one of my goals for 2010 is to learn how to cook dry beans. I'm on my third batch already—this week was pinto beans. I've also made red beans and black beans and they worked out pretty well, though one batch was a bit overcooked.

Today I tried my hand at crockpot chili. I had (grass fed) ground beef defrosted in the refrigerator as well as some black and pinto beans. I browned the beef along with some pork sausage and tossed it into the crockpot. I added the last of the black beans (about a cup) and a couple cups of pinto beans. I processed an onion and a couple carrots in the food processor and tossed them in and we had a can of chiles we needed to use up; I threw that in too! In went a can of diced tomatoes and chili-type spices and then I cooked it all day in the crockpot on low. It turned out very good—though maybe a bit spicy for my taste!

I have been working on clearing out the foods in the freezer. Every time I find an unidentified package, I pull it out. If it's good—we cook it. If not, we toss it. We need this freezer empty. We are not in stock-up mode because we still continue to hope that we'll be moving later this year.

Found a New Want—A Dog Cart

With all our walking to the store lately, we've often joked about how it would be nice to have a cart for Shasta to carry the purchases back home. Today we finally started searching around and I think we found a new want.

So far, we've only been doing small trips with the dog and having her carry a few things in a backpack—but having a cart would be so cool!

So, at Jeff's request, I'm currently searching for a good quality wagon that won't cost a fortune. I found a new one at the DogWorks website that we're considering; the little wagon, but it is a little spendy. Probably because it's designed to hold a lot of weight; really more than we'll need to carry, I'm sure. I'll keep looking for a few days and if I don't find anything better, then I'll probably order that one.

Subscribed to a CSA Again

Perhaps the best way to find the perfect house in Oregon is to make a financial commitment to stay here! =) Back in 2008, we subscribed to an organic farm (called a CSA—Community Supported Agriculture) and received weekly deliveries of produce. We enjoyed the many unusual varieties of produce. We didn't renew in 2009 because we were planning to move, but when we didn't move, we missed all the neat varieties of food.

We've had our lives on hold for a couple years now; not knowing when we'd be buying a house or in what state. I think it's just time to do stuff that's important to us! Subscribing to an organic farm is important to us. So, despite the fact we may move at any time, we decided we should just go ahead and sign up again. If we move, then we'll give our share to someone else in the family; if we don't, then we'll get to enjoy all this wonderful, healthful food without all the work of running to the farmers market every weekend.

In today's mail, Jeff and I received our Environmental Studies certificates! Woo hoo! We actually finished the classes during the summer of 2008, but I didn't figure out the paperwork to file until this last November. Here's a photo of mine. Jeff also received one as we took the classes together!

We don't really have current plans to use these certificates for anything in particular; we just enjoyed taking the energy efficiency classes. I had planned on trying to find employment in the field, but then I realized I liked the paralegal classes quite a lot more! I'm hoping to finish the paralegal certificate this semester.

After a many year break, Jeff and I are planning to try square dancing again tonight; I found a square dance club just a mile from where we live in Redwood City. After two months of consistent exercise, I think I have finally worked my way back into good enough shape that I should be able to last for at least an hour before I get too tired.

Happy Groundhog Day!

This is probably Jeff's favorite holiday.... =)

My class was cancelled tonight (not for the holiday, the teacher had a conflict) so we called our friend Sarahann and asked if she wanted to get together to play the Pandemic board game and she agreed. So, tonight we're off to San Jose for dinner and a game.

We had to hustle Jeff to CalTrain this morning so we wouldn't have two cars down there tonight. Since we were walking to CalTrain, I decided to drop in at Whole Foods for some produce. I loaded Shasta up with 5.5 pounds in her backpack for the trip back and she still was dragging me along. She is amazing—so much energy!

We did a 2.9 mile trip already this morning and I'm trying to decide if I should do an exercise video... I need to lose 2.5 pounds in the next two weeks. I joined a challenge back at Christmas time to lose 10 pounds by Valentine's Day; I'm determined to make it!