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