Did everyone have a good St Patrick's Day? We don't do anything special, no corned beef & cabbage or anything. We did meet up with some school friends of mine for a couple hours at a local pub down the road and had a good time. Then back at home, after dinner we made our own Shamrock Shakes from a recipe I found on Pinterest. They were really good but next time I will add just a bit more of the mint extract. We decided to make our own because when we had one from McDonalds several weeks ago, Jerry's blood sugar reading was really high that night. A small (12 oz) Shamrock shake has 73 grams of sugar!! Crazy! One tip, do not wait till the day before St Pat's Day to go looking for mint extract and green food coloring. I did find it but it wasn't easy. :) This is
the recipe I used:
I also realized that on St Pat's Day this year I have had my driver's license for 35 years! That's really crazy!
The first day of Spring was yesterday. I wish someone would let our weather know that! It has been a very cold, very long winter. Last year was way too warm in March and we had a terribly hot summer. I'm hoping since it's still cold maybe we will have a nice cool summer this year. I don't usually mind winter and hate hot weather, but this year I am ready for it to be done. Here's a comparison that our local news showed with last year's and this year's temps.
This pic was taken a few weeks ago. Jerry was digging out the drain pipes because we had all this snow one day and it was supposed to rain a lot the next day.
I think I mentioned last year about a homemade laundry soap I made. I made it last March and I am just now running out. It works great and all the ingredients cost just under $20 at Walmart. I can't use things with fragrance because of allergies. The bar soap that is grated to use in this does have a smell but it's not enough to bother my skin. If you try this, realize that there won't be any bubbles like regular detergent. That's because they add stuff to it to make bubbles. People equate clean with bubbles. But bubbles don't clean. :) I also got this from Pinterest.
Here's the recipe. Here are my ingredients all ready to mix together. There should be 3 bars of soap though.
On to the stitching. I have a lot of stitched pieces that are still waiting to be framed or finished into something. I brought 2 of them out and finally got frames for them. The Paris one is from a kit that I bought a long time ago to make for my daughter Amy. She really has been waiting forever! It didn't have a lot of actual cross stitching but instead was a lot of long stitches. I would set it aside because I would get frustrated and not pick it up for a while. It finally got stitched and then waited forever for a frame. The other piece is one I made for Jerry and I. :)
I finished my Halloween ornament for this month's
Halloween ornament SAL. The theme is Haunted House. This is from a freebie chart I had saved. It's from LucieHeaton.com. I'm not sure if it's still on the site or not because I've had it for a while. I'm working on my ornament for the
Christmas SAL now.
I haven't made as much progress on Paradise in the last few weeks as I would have liked. But it is getting there. I have about a page and a half left. I'll pick it up again on Sunday. I put a yardstick next to it so you can see how big it really is.
When I'm not working on Paradise or ornaments (which isn't very much lately) I am working on an Autumn Quilts piece that matches the summer one that I displayed at the library. There are 2 more seasons and a Christmas one in the series. Hopefully I'll get them all stitched. Someday I'll get back to my HAED. This is how far I was on Autumn Quilts when I pulled it out of UFOdom. Oh, and I didn't realize the piece was upside down till after I took the pic, put the memory card back in my camera and the q-snaps back on the piece. :p
I think that's about it. If not, it has to wait because this girl needs to get to bed. I have been doing the photo challenge again this month. I'll get a post up with those pics, hopefully this weekend.
(((Hugs)))
