Double Delight with borders

This turned out so pretty! all from material I had on hand.

quilt blocks for Aussie fire victims

I'm tired to looking at that bucket of bread dough! I used the last of it up anyway. So here are my six squares for the Aussie quilt.


and here is the progress on Double Delight, or maybe it should be called Double Vision, that I've been working on since January 1st. Ready to add the borders... and I want to get this one finished before starting on Judy's Bear Paw quilt!

Gotta love this bread

I am trying out two different recipes of this famous no-knead bread. There is one on YouTube (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h8DvaDq7JPg#) and another is the recipe by the authors of Artisian Bread in Five Minutes a Day (Jeff Hartzberg and Zoe Francois) http://www.artisanbreadinfive.com/. and the video is here: http://us.macmillan.com/BookCustomPage.aspx?isbn=9780312362911&m_type=2&m_contentid=119255#video They differ slightly but the result is the same - delicious. I like Jeff and Zoe's idea of keeping a large amount of the dough in the refrigerator, and I have baked the bread both ways - in a pot with a lid and on a cookie sheet with a pan of water underneath for moisture. I can't see any difference in outcome with the two baking methods. I don't have a baking stone and don't plan to buy one when a cookie sheet works just fine! If you make the bread, be sure and handle as little as possible, as more handling results in a less rustic outcome. I like the holes. The flavor is reminiscent of sourdough and is wonderful with soup or any old way you want to eat it.



Here is my icecream bucket with dough in the refrigerator.


Take off a grapefruit size wad of dough and shape into a ball. Slash top and let rise 40 minutes.

Bake for 30 minutes, and looky here!

Slice and enjoy. This is a very small loaf and it doesn't have enough holes so that means I handled it too much. Hard for an old bread baker to learn new tricks!

Cruise 2009

Going on board the Paradise...

...

Dining room ... Sami's favorite thing to do is to make a face for the photographer - must be something 16 year olds do... he had his birthday on the cruise.

Old Tobacco Road top finished

I love how this turned out, in fact I love all of Bonnie's quilts! You can't really see the last border but it is a brownish color, probably should have been darker, but was what I had on hand. I want to get busy and quilt it as it will look pretty on someone's bed.

Christmas Drummer

I wanted to try and post a video...hope this works. Sami is a fantastic drummer, we think he needs a real drum set as he is quite a musician. All that hand/eye coordination from playing video games must have helped!

(The video would not load!)

Yasmeen also is a talented musician, she's taking beginning guitar and brought her guitar home to practice. I wish I had taken a video of her too.



Here are some pastries from Lebanon, baklava in the back and I don't know what these are called in front, but some are filled with dates, some walnuts, some pistachios.

and here the kids are watching a puppet show mocking Harry Potter. It really was funny but I can't remember the name of the spoof...

Here I thought Nizar was fiximg me a bloody Mary, but I was very wrong...he drank it himself! How rude...


Christmas was a relatively warm day, and we were anticipating a series of storms. Mother Nature smiled on us and gave us wind and rain, then around 8pm the snow rolled in but everyone was in their respective homes by then. There's no way I can get out for those after-Xmas sales today...

Christmas baskets

These cute little baskets are so fun to make... I really like them in Christmas colors although any material could be used. Great way to use up scraps or orphans from various quilting projects. How about pastels for Easter baskets... My sister sent me these roses and they fit perfectly in this basket

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