T Stands for Tuesday and Pillow Coverings Made & Homemade Ice Cream

  Hi everyone, and Happy Tuesday which brings us to T with our hostess Bleubeard and Elizabeth. We share T with friends and post a drink related photo. You are most welcome to join us.

  Wow I almost didn't think I was going to be able to post. For some reason when I clicked on new post it took me to the list of my posts etc. 4th try it finally led me to post. whew!

   No art again this week although I really wanted to do some watercolor and practice what I learned in the video I had shared. However Friday and Saturday I got out my two fabrics for making pillow coverings.
   I had saved some old ones that my Mom had made because I loved how she made these pillow coverings; an easy way to slip the cover off for washing.  I am slow at math but I did get it worked out.

  I had enough nautical fabric from Mia's gifts to make one pillow with a little left over for crafting. I washed it first and it didn't ravel too much more, but I did zig zag all the seams first because I think this will ravel with use.

This pillow was rather thin and tall so perfect for the back of one of these chairs

  I have this wonderful large desk with a large cutting mat for fabrics-but what do I do?  I sit on the floor to cut haha. My desk is pretty full with paints and mixed media items at the moment.

  This was taken early Saturday morning, so full sunshine coming in through the wall of windows.
     The fabric in below photos I had purchased last year when I bought the curtain fabric to make a curtain to go in front of our bedroom closet-that sewing project will be next.

I ended up with enough fabric to cover 4 pillows. I have a bit left of this fabric, but not allot, I think there was 2 yards of it.

   I had picked up a package of 2 pillow forms, and I replaced a cover for the thinner one on the left.

This is the back

I had a pillow that I had made years ago from a large cloth rice bag, so I decided to cover it with this fabric-I had just enough fabric going in the same pattern direction  I just posed this pillow here for the photo

    I also completed cushions for the two chairs that sit at the two ends of our dining table. These chairs were handmade years ago by our friend Lilburn that passed last year.  He made allot of furniture to sell before we met him, and I had asked him if he had anything left as I would like to have something from him and he found these two matching chairs.

    When I made these cushions for the two benches I had two pieces of the thick foam left-the two ends were just wide enough to make two cushions for these two chairs. I embroidered more fish to match the other cushions

These type of box cushions I do not enjoy sewing together at all-but I got er done.

  We are still sooooo hot and humid here. This year I just can not be outdoors much as I can't breathe in this air.  We only got a little bit of rain a week ago.

  I have ice tea and also lemonade in the refrigerator at all times now. I had poured us each a glass full with ice. These are both handmade pottery glasses from my pottery collection.

     This weekend the boaters are stressing me out-actually this is the first time it has really bothered me at all.
    Soooooo many boaters since late Thursday-speed boats, ocean boats, personal water craft  (motorcycles on water), and no one will stay 100 feet off our dock or our neighbors docks.  We brought in that used dock to work on, and it is not totally tied down yet as it needs to be.  Scares me sometimes with those huge waves coming in.  I am about ready to close the blinds so I can't watch lol

  wow now the text has changed here on it's own-sigh-not sure how to get what I was using back-oh well Blogger definately has some kinks in it right now lol

   I did not join in the atc swap-mostly as I don't like to work that small. So I was delighted to receive one along with goodies from our Elizabeth-thank you soooo much. 
     I Love the atc

     Oh and I wanted to share that a year ago I had hit 150 pounds which totally freeked me out. Before I hit 65 years of age I always weighed under 130 and my favorite weight was 117 -125.
   So a year ago I started watching what we ate more-less carbs, walked when I could, tried keto desserts-as those are gluten free and sugar free. My goal has been to reach 130 pounds-and over the weekend I finally saw that number on the scale-so excited I can't tell you.
    Now my new goal is for 125 pounds. I wanted to get back into my size 10 jeans and shorts but I need to lose allot of inches for those (4 inches) Once this heat goes away hoping to get in more walks per day.  I may just start walking in the house-I can walk down into the basement and then up into the house-I have a steps counter to help.

Happy T everyone and Happy 7th anniversary of T  If not for this wonderful event on Tuesdays I would have no one to blog with.  Hugs to you all.

Update:  I took a couple short videos of my ice cream maker-Yumm ice cream in the freezer again we love this keto vanilla ice cream

T Stands for Tuesday & Ice & We Have Cushions & Ready for Journaling

Happy T for Tuesday everyone,
 
   As many of you here in the States have heard allot of the nation is having wintry weather. Here in Missouri some areas like Kansas City got a foot and a half of snow, while here at my spot on the lake got thick ice and a dusting of snow and cold. We will be in the single digits tonight. brrrrr. I think this storm is now headed to the east coast.

  I took this photo Sunday  morning, and we never got any more snow-however when I went outdoors today (Monday) thick ice everywhere-that was fun getting the garbage bags to the top of the road and getting to our mailbox. (not lol)

  This weekend I was determined to get the cushions finished and tied onto the bench seats. My last seat cushions I had used repurposed cushions that someone gave me. These I had purchased online and chose firm-these cushions are really really firm almost too firm-but they should last a long time.
   I really struggled to get the fabric on to them, and one of them I needed to take off and readjust the corners. They are not perfect for sure, but they look nice. Even Larry commented how much he liked the fish. Which is saying something as he doesn't get my needing to do arts and crafts.
   The hand sewing of the one side was rough going through the thick layers of denim-I gave up trying to hide the stitches. This is on the bottom too so is not seen.

That area with the unstained wood flooring was underneath those stone planters that we took out-on the to do list to stain etc. This is the second bench across from the above. We eventually will pick up a nice rug to go under this table and benches.

When it gets cold and windy we do not see many birds, but this afternoon I did spot these geese looking out Hubs room-you can see that we managed to bring our old picnic table too-we bought that when we first retired at the woods house, it is made from recycled tires so very heavy I love he was able to get it here

This first photo is taken through a screen. I see from the photo there is a tear in this

This next photo was taken from the wall of windows looking towards Hubs room

I did make three big batches of Toll House Chocolate Chip cookies this past week. The original batch that I made for our friend in the Keys (Florida) I also added in two kinds of peppermint chips. For Larry's batch I changed the sugars to keto sugars, and for my batch I changed to gluten free flour and the keto sugars. They all baked up different do to the changes. Most of ours are in the freezer-I just kept out a few for us.

Yesterday I made a big pot of homemade chili, and froze half of it. Today I decided to make another comfort food for us biscuits and gravy with two over easy eggs. The biscuits turned out perfect.

Somehow I didn't take a photos of the wheat biscuits but here are my gluten free ones- turned out good too. My biscuits never bake up high but I think it is because I use a large biscuit cutter

After we ate our afternoon meal I got out my St Louis Blues hockey fleece fabric
  I don't like to cut and tie these fleece blankets. I just sew up around the edges leaving an opening to turn-then stitch down around all the edges-and then stitch around some of the motifs to quilt it together a bit. When I bought this fabric I had gotten the last 2 yards from the bolt. so one edge was really really off. I didn't measure to see if I got a little extra because of it. This will make a nice couch blanket-while I am cheering on the Blues of course 😀

You can see from what I cut off that there was a big difference in the length at the end

I wanted to thank all of you that answered my questions about gesso, altered books, and the journal page challenge. I really appreciate your help. I have never used gesso before.

  I did make an altered book several years ago with the guidance of Shroo, she gave me a simple technique to tear out the pages leaving various widths of the pages in the book-then I had hand sewn handmade papers with embroidery threads to make full pages and pockets. I really enjoyed making this and always wanted to do more.

   With the help from Elizabeth I now know to find old books that are sewn in and not glued in-I didn't know that for my first altered book.

   I remembered that I have a couple boxes of old cookbooks that we will be selling still at the woods house. So I grabbed several, along with two spirals that I think will be just perfect for the challenges. When I got home I forgot to check in the boxes with other odd books like gardening etc-I may still do that.
   So I am ready now except for reading through Elizabeth's lessons for altered books for new to me techniques, and I need to buy some gesso and liquitex.

The camp creek cookbook is from my Mom and Grandma's old country church, and my Mom has a recipe or two in this one. The herb one has construction type papers of different colors, and a very wide spiral-perfect to work in the book I think I will start with this herb cookbook for the challenges.

This was in my stash of papers for eco dye, that I had thought of using but am going to save this one back now

I grabbed this Christmas one to cut out things or perhaps make Christmas cards out of the pages for next year

and this one is a calendar I had made when I was on Multiply. I made one for my Mom and one for me. The pages are very heavy cardboard, and all the photos are mine-no year date though which was odd. Probably around 2007 or 08.  I am thinking of gesso over the calendar pages and journal about the lake house-as the photos are from when we were at the woods home

So I have some new projects lined up for the coming new year, along with learning and practicing calligraphy. Of course there is always spinning weaving quilting-I will not run out of projects that is for certain lol.

For my drink reference this week, I am back to drinking my decaf coffee with a bit of cream on top. and I wanted to show you the other side of this pretty pottery cup. They must have fired it with the shell in the pottery that then fell out but left the print. This is one of my favorite handmade pottery cups. We found it at a garage sale of all places when we first retired to the woods house. I also love the comfortable handle and the smaller size cup

I also wanted to thank all of you that sent me Christmas cards-I am really really enjoying mail in my new mailbox. We had Po Box for years and always had to drive to the post office-so this is a treat for me-to get mail at the house again.

I have these lumanari bags along both sides of the wall of windows with those little led candles-I have been placing Christmas cards between the bags, along with many on the Hoosier cabinets too. The candles are not showing up though.

(We are still working on redoing the electric here in the house-most of it needs updated-this area now finished so I can put the new plates on)

Happy T everyone.

    Any of my readers are most welcome to join us for T. Just click on the link in my sidebar which will take you to our Hostess Bleubeard and Elizabeth. only requirement is to share a drink related photo in your post