Truly Blessed

I am so truly blessed to have such good and true friends in this life - God is so good to me....

Lenten Reading

Here are a couple of good books to read for Lent. The St. Francis de Sales on has a reading for each Sunday and Thursday of Lent (and one for Ash Wednesday). The Saints & Sinners of Calvary one, I've read every year for as long as I can remember, is a good one to suppliment it with on the other days of the week. The Saints and sinners one is more of an easy read - story like - book telling of the lives of those who had a prominent part in the time of Our Lord's Passion. It's definitely worth reading! The book on sermons is good, more lengthy and in depth but takes simple subjects like, fasting, temptation, faith, etc. and gives examples of how to better them, get rid of them, and gain from them in simple - weak human ways. "In these sermons the Christian attitude toward life comes into clear focus on every page. All who follow the wise and holy counsels of St. Francis de Sales as presented here will indeed be on the true path of holiness and salvation, measuring all things in terms of eternity and advancing steadily toward Heaven, our only real home..." (taken from the back of the book)

Sewing Project: Cute lil Bags

The other afternoon I went through some of my scraps of material and decided to make a couple little girl bags. I wasn initially thinking the would make a good missal/prayer book bag for little girls to take to church with them, but really they could be used as any type of bag. I just think they are darling! They only took me a half hour each as well... so, scraps and half hour of time?! Not bad, if you ask me!

I like how the handles turned out with the quilted look to them. Adds a little something extra. Plus, polka dots are always fun!
I am making myself a bag, bigger than the small ones. I have the bag part finished but I have not finished or sewn on the handle part yet. I love the fabric I used! It will be a bag I can keep in my car so when I go grocery shopping we don't have to buy the stupid brown paper bags everytime...we NEVER remember to bring any back with us so we always have to buy more with each grocery visit...kinda a pain. So, I thought that if I had a bag designated for groceries I would remember more easily than a paper bag... not sure if it will work or not but its definietly a bag I will want to have around! Otherwise, I'll use it for any purpose really, as I LOVE neat bags! Here's a clip of the fabric I used for the bag.

The green - paisley is the body of the bag and the brown is the fabric I used for the bottom and the sides. Can't wait till it's finished!

I have also begun to sew some of the pieces for the iron board cover. That project is taking a little more time than just an afternoon because of the quilting aspect. However, I am sure it will be worth it in the end... even though I was having second thoughts about it, ONLY, because I was like, man these fabrics and patterns would make an awesome quilt! But, I planned for it to be used for the iron board cover so I am going to stick with it. Anway, thats an update on Sewing Project: Quited Iron Board Cover.

Until next time... Ciao!

Pasta Anyone?

On Friday afternoon Dom came home a little early and we made spaghetti and fettucini with our new pasta maker attachment for our kitchen aide! We had some pre dinner drinks as well. :)

Here is my darling husband, looking so adorable - and being a good sport for letting me take pictures, who mixed the dough together.

There are lots of variations of pasta, which I am SURE you all know, so we added rosemary, basil and red wine for our pasta. Here I am holding the first sheet we made.

Ahhhh, we have spaghetti!! I was so estactic when I saw it come out of the roller!

Here's Dom making the fettucini!

Doesn't it look so pretty?!

All cooked!
Yum! We had homemade spaghetti and homemade fettucini alfredo with a homemade cheese bread that Dom made the day before! It was delicious!

We had a lot of fun making a delicious Friday meal together - it took less time to make it from mixing the dough to cooked pasta then it would have taken to boil a pot of water and cook boxed pasta! It was very easy and simple and we both definitely like the idea of making our own pastas more often. Besides, we can make it according to what we want - like spinach pasta...i can't wait to try that one. Our fettucini we decided was a little on the thicker side and we will take it down a notch next time but the spaghetti was perfect! Hope you get to try it someday, if you haven't already!

My First Quilting Project: BABY QUILT

A long time ago, my mother gave me a quilter's kit, which had a rotary cutter, pins, a measure board, etc. I got it for my birthday one year and I was very excited to get it but have never had the chance or opportunity to open it and use it till now.

I decided, (Shhhh to those who know them! I haven't given it to them yet...) I wanted to make my brother and sister a baby quilt for their first baby they are expecting next month! I wanted to give them something special and I remember having a couple handmade blankets (which is terribly sad but no idea where they ever wound up....) made for me when I was born/little... one was a croceted blanket with white and pinks and yellows with tassels on the end and the other was a delicate blanket with blues, yellows, pinks and green in it. Anyway, I decided it would be my first quilting project. I have been wanting to make a quilt for many a year and after seeing the quilted iron cover and deciding it couldn't be that hard to do... I finally took a deep breathe and faced the fear of a complicated quilting project!

Here are some pics and steps of the quilt I made!

I got everything all together (yes, I used the kitchen floor - no worries I cleaned it that afternoon!)

Then I cut out all the fabric pieces to thier appropriate sizes

I sewed the four pieces to frame out the center piece

Then sewed all the side squares together and layed them out

*smiles* It's starting to look like a quilt!

Then pinned, pressed and sewed the sides together! Look below, almost done!

Yay! The top part is done!

Now time to lay out and prepare the top to be attached to the backing

Here it is! All finished!

It was a lot of fun to make and very easy! I got a beginner's quilt project as I have never made one before and thought it would be easy to start with something that had simple steps. I would definitely make another without buying the kit next time. It was not too time consuming either. One night, about 2 hours I spent reading through directions and cutting up the fabric pieces (prob normally wouldn't take that long but I was taking my merry ole time) and then I spent about 2-3 hours another afternoon sewing and pressing and putting it all together. So, if you're interested and fear it will take forever - it's definietly something it seems like you could do a little here and there and it not be a big deal at all and the overall time to be spent is merely a couple hours.

I am really excited to do another quilting project.... if you remember one of my lasts posts about the ugly ironing board cover... yup! I have already begun to gather scraps for it! I can't wait to start it and share it with you! Until then.... Ciao!

An Early Valentine Treat

On Friday, the hubby brought home a cute lil bag and said I could pick one thing out of it. Amoung the other things in it was this D.e.L.i.C.i.O.u.S. Sweet Potato Butter.... mmmmm it was so good, seriously I could have eaten it by the spoonful!

Up Coming Project: Darling Iron Board Cover

Do you have an ugly ironing board cover?! I do.... and have been thinking about making one for the last few weeks. Well I stumbled upon a new cool site that has just how to make one! Isn't it darling? I love it... I am going to attempt to make one after the next visit to the fabric store! I will let you know how it turns out!

Beef Stuffed Ravioli - What a Wednesday!

This morning as I pondered what I wanted to accomplish today, I thought of what to make for dinner. I decided I wanted to make some Ravioli's! I looked up some recipes and read through how they are made and how time consuming they were etc.... I thought about it and was like, it can't be any harder (and or very similar) than making pierogi's! So, I went to about my day then this afternoon I got to start preparing dinner!

First I took the flour and made a well:

Then I mixed the eggs, water and oil together:

And added them to the well in the flour:
After I mixed it up I laid it out on a floured surface to hand knead a little:

Then I cut it up into eight pieces (the recipe called to cut it in quarters but since I don't have a pasta press I did it in eighths to see if it would make it easier for rolling out the ole fashioned way with a wooden rolling pin). I then let it rest while I prepared the filling:

I browned the ground meat in a frying pan and added some minced garlic and chopped onions as well as some grated parm & romano, colby jack and pepper jack cheeses. I put it all in a bowl and then added an egg and mixed it all up. Then into the refridgerater it went to chill:

Then I came back to the dough to roll out the pieces into long, rectangular shaped pieces... I did not make perfect square shapes - I was more just whatever...

I did two pieces at a time, one bottom & one top piece. I maked the bottom so I would know where to put the filling:

Then added the filling and prepared to add the top piece of dough:

I then pinched the tops to the bottoms and cut around the ravioli's - aren't they so cute:

Here's most of the finished and resting (the recipe said to lay them on a floured cloth to dry out a bit... I just kept turning them on the pan):

All done cleaning up! Shwew! That wasn't so bad! Only took a total of less than two hours from start to finish!

MMMMmmmm yummy, homemade beef stuffed ravioli with sauce and a piece of garlic bread! Yum, YUm, YUM!