Thursday Looking at the Weekend

Gentle Readers and Dear Friends it is Thursday and I know I am and probably you are also, in fact we are all probably looking towards the weekend.  Ahhhhh those glorious two days of "rest." 

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Not very much to report this morning - just sitting here - eating my raisin snail...

we picked up on the way in this morning......  drinking my faux Mocha coffee...

I throw a shot of Hershey's syrup in my cup of XXDark French Roast coffee -  et voila - faux mocha - and it's healthy too - read the add!!!

Not much else to report - worked some on Shores - lots of dark grey for the roof - I also found a little Fallish/Thanksgiving piece I want to stitch up before I get to Christmas stitching - I need to make a working copy ( I try and never stitch for the original) and pull a piece of linen, but I had all the floss I needed so it is practically kitted up.  :)

I wonder how many of us try and stitch seasonally???  

I think that is about it for today sports fans - short and sweet..........sweet treats...... I do love a good raisin snail, now I'm back to the pastry!! - in fact I sort enjoy raisins in just about anything - delicious!!

Take care,

edgar

It Was Like Christmas 94 Days early!!!

Gentle Readers and Dear Friends... first let me again thank everyone for you continued kind comments!!  They make my morning so much brighter - I do love reading them and answering your questions and one question from Maggee got me to thinking.....  "What are Stone Fruit...?"  What a good question - and here is the WIKIPEDIA definition that says it much better than I....  "Stone fruits (or stonefruits or stonefruit), in botany, refers to drupe, fruits in which an outer fleshy part (exocarp, or skin; and mesocarp, or flesh) surrounds a shell (the pit or stone) of hardened endocarp with a seed inside. These fruits develop from a single carpel, and mostly from flowers with superior ovaries. The definitive characteristic of a drupe is that the hard, lignified stone (or pit) is derived from the ovary wall of the flower.

More specifically, "stone fruit" refers to members of the genus Prunus, which includes plums, cherries, peaches, apricots and almonds. It is traditionally placed within the rose family Rosaceae as a subfamily, the Prunoideae (or Amygdaloideae), but sometimes placed in its own family, the Prunaceae (or Amygdalaceae)."  I love reading about things and learning something - I just thought "stone fruit" where fruits with big pits, now I know a bit more - thanks for asking Maggee!!

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Now, on to what brought about today's Post title.....  a while back I was one of the winners of Terri's  Give Away over on her Blog - Dixiesampler - well, yesterday the package arrived and I was without words as everything tumbled out.....  here is a snap.....

Look at this pile of goodies!!!  How generous!!  I still can't believe everything - there are charts, there are three cuts of beautiful over dyed linen, there are numerous skeins of gorgeous over dyed floss,  the are skeins of linen floss, there are Cinnamon treats, there is yardage of finishing fabric, there is trim, there are magazines, there is the cutest puchwork pin, there is a super darning egg (I do love darning eggs - not that I darn anything, but I like the shape)  there is candy... and it goes on and on and on!!!!  Thank you so very much Terri!!!!  There you have it - my "Fall Christmas Present!!"

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There you go sports fans.  Thanks for stopping by - do come again.

Take care,

edgar

More Weekend Things

Gentle Readers and Dear Friends thank you so much for all the kind comments - you all certainly bolster my self esteem to no end!!!  I do love a visit to "Needle in a Haystack" - not only is it a great store but so nice to visit and just look!!  It is also great to be able to bounce ideas off the staff, they are so helpful with everything.  My visit as i said I took a list of things I was interested in and they went out of their way to find a book for me that I wanted to see - after looking through the book it was easy to pass on it and so I saved myself $27 - that I could put else where.

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On Sunday after Mass and some super scrumptious pancakes at Eddie's we headed over to our (I can get so possessive sometimes) Farmers Market - and here are some snaps.....

There where some beautiful peppers.....

My weekly adoration of the the tomato snap......

These where really great looking stone fruit....

There are still some great looking peaches coming out of the Valley - even this late in the season.

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On Sunday I baked up a quick Coffee Cake using the last of my Black Berries - I have made this before and you can click HERE to go to BBB for the recipe.  Here is a snap...

I left off any glaze and added an additional 1/2 Cup of berries to this cake -  and the cake was super moist and real berry-licious!!

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I finished up a great Biography of Judy Holliday - written in 1982 it covers her life and career very well.   It is the only Biography that is out there for Judy.  A great read!!

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There you go sports fans - thanks again for stopping by, and for taking the time to comment!  

Do come again.

Take care,

edgar

A Very Nice Weekend

Gentle Readers and Dear Friends we had such a nice weekend - nothing traumatic, nothing crazy - just smooth sailing and two lovely days of bright warm weather.  Out here our Fall season in the city are usually warm and beautiful and the past two days have lived up to that!! In fact we cooked a couple of steaks on the grill and sat by the "cement pond" (pool) for a long time yesterday afternoon........  

The pool heater is broken so the water temps are in the low 60's so no swimming - but the breeze was warm a delicious and the sun was shinning!!  It is supposed to be nice for the next couple of days so I see more "pool" sitting in our future!!

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I have some stitching stuff to share - on Saturday after a quick and quite tasty challah/bacon/schmear and a cup of coffee at Noah's we headed over to Alameda and to my LNS "Needle in a Haystack."

I know I have posted some snaps of the inside before but here are some I took on Saturday....

Just as you walk in the front door is a great Hallowe'en tree with lots of cute ornaments!!!

Then there are all the lovely colours.....

 and the gorgeous silks.....

and more silks...

and all the racks of great stash.....   

I was very good and only worked from a list of things I wanted/needed/wanted -  so my stash acquisition was on the small side!!  Isn't the Peach cute - she has to check everything out that hits the floor!!   I have two projects in mind that I want to do so that was my focus.  Both are Christmas themed pieces - the first is -

 - from the Blackbird Designs Joyeux Noel Book they released last year or the year before - "Tis the Season" - a great red bird piece I have wanted to do for along time.  I finally picked up the 36ct LL "Pear" linen for it - it has a green cast that I think will make the Belle Soie Silks really pop.  I had all the silks in my stash except for the Vanilla one so I also picked that up.  The second project is - 

This Christmas Alphabet - I have had this chart for a few years and just never got a piece of linen I liked for actually stitching it up on - it is an odd size 15" x 15' and the chart calls for "Natural" - whatever that means - the picture of the piece on the front looks blue to me!!  So I picked up a piece of 36 ct LL Meadow Rue that I think will look nice.  I had a hard time deciding on this as one of the colours is a sort of off ecru and bled into most of the pale beige linens I was pulling - this has enough contrast to make even the ecru stand out.  I am doing this in the recommended DMC as that is the only reference for floss.  I may switch it all to HDF silks, but for now I have the DMC kitted up.  Have a month to make a final decision.
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I did some actual stitching also this weekend - I finished up part 4 of Carol's mystery sampler -

I added little touches of Blueberry Soup and changed the heart to be a bit more open.   This great little piece is really coming along!!  I also worked some on "Shores" - here is how it stands now...

I was very happy to get the rocks finished and get started on the little house.

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I think I will leave off on that for today.  I still have some other snaps and a baked goodie to talk about, but I'll chat about that tomorrow.  Thanks for stopping by, do come again!!

Take care,

edgar

The 3 Big Holidays..... and a Lolly Snap

Gentle Readers and Dear Friends another week down and now - 

we only have 45 more days until Hallowe'en....  

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69 more days until Thanksgiving.... 

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and  .....99 more days until Christmas

  

(snaps from the Internet)  

The three big Fall Holidays are fast approaching.  I remember as a kid growing up in Maryland how they couldn't come fast enough - now time is so fleeting that I can not figure where it all goes??  Oh well, that's how it is I guess.

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I sent a snap I took of the Embarcadero to Beth Twist over at "My Heartstring."  She has a little blog called "My Heartstring Across the World" where you can take a snap of her header in your locale.  Here was what I sent....

Rico is holding his phone and the Ferry Building is in the background.

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I wanted to leave off the week with a snap of Lolly - she often runs upstairs and on the bed to get away from  the ever frisky little Smokie.

 In the last couple of weeks he has learned to climb the stairs and it is only a little time I think until he can get on the bed.  But, for now she has a safe place!!

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There you go sports fans.  Thanks again for stopping by and for leaving those great comments!!  

Have a super weekend - !!

Take care,

edgar

Cake and Pizza

Gentle Readers and Dear Friends - with a Post title like that how can you go wrong!!  I meant to post the cake recipe yesterday but just didn't get to it - and last night we were at a loose end as to what to do for dinner and came up with a "fake" pizza....  so I will chatter about two food things this morning.

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First up I have to talk about the cake. This is the "Sticky Orange Marmalade Cake"

It is a recipe I found over at "The English Kitchen" - a really wonderful Blog written by Marie all about her exploits in the kitchen!!  You can click HERE to go there.  I often make the things she posts and found this cake to be top notch and made with things just about all of us have in the kitchen - AND - I love me some Marmalade -  all different kinds and brands, they are all so very tasty!!  So this cake fits the bill and is simply delicious with a cup of coffee.... and comes together so quickly.  You can click HERE to go to Black sheep Bakes to see my posting of the recipe.

The crumb is good and you can see the bits of orange peel from the included marmalade.

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Now for the pizza - last night I hadn't a clue what to make for dinner so we started to look around in the fridge and cupboard to see what we had and Rico suggested pizza - Well, we had no dough, not the right cheese, no pepperoni....  but we did have.. two cans of Crescent rolls, some hamburger in the freezer and a can of pizza sauce...  we also had some "Mexican" blend shredded cheese, some olives and an onion .....

..... all the ingredients for "fake" pizza.  I got out a large pan and some olive oil and oiled that sucker up.  I then rolled out the rolls and pinched the seams together then laid them into the pan, covering the bottom.  I got the hamburger browning on the stove with the chopped up onion and some garlic.   Starting off by spreading the pizza sauce over the dough, then the cooked burger, then 3 or 4 TBL of olives. This was covered by the cheese and I sprinkled some Parmesan cheese over everything.  Into a 350 degree oven until brown and bubbly.....

...  and out pops a pretty tasty dinner.  Rico made a green salad....

and we had dinner last night and some left over for lunches today - 

I love it when everything is already in the house for a meal - even if we have to improvise one!!

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I think today I'll leave you with a snaperoo of the Pete - he is worn out being chased by Smokie and this snap sort of epitomises how tired he gets in the evening....

There you go sports fans.  Thanks again for stopping by my little part of the Blog Universe - do come again!!

Take care,

edgar

A Quikie "Shores" Posting

Gentle Readers and Dear Friends just a short post today.   Without much really to talk about I thought I would show my less than stellar progress on Shores...

.......  HOLY TILT Batman ........  whats up with that dramatic snap??  As you can see I am once again bogged down with more Pale Jade fill stitching - you would think I was cornering the market on this shade of Silk - I am still loving this piece, but be forewarned when you  - if you - stitch Shores - there is lots of Pale Jade Silk in your future!!  Since the Pale Jade is only a water line on this square I will finish it out and then start to work on the rocks upon which this water crashes.....

Another Shores snap is my evening help....

....as you can see I have my pile of stuff for Shores on the corner of the couch and The Peach just watching my progress.  Don't let the half closed eye fool you - this little ball of cute is smart and knows when she hears me pop the linen off the Q-Snaps that it is time for bed and she immediately hops down and trots off to warmer spots upstairs.

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There you go sports fans.  Thanks for stopping by and for you taking time to leave such nice comments!!!  Do stop by again.

Take care,

edgar