As is now our custom, Sir Furbs and I settled in to work on our witches this weekend. While the first part of the sky went quicky, for some reason, that last little bit was a total slog…

Eventually we got through it, but it took its toll on poor Furby! And after that, we still had to do two solid rows across the top, then some 2 x 2 checkerboard

We almost got the checkerboard done, but not quite! Still, the hardest slog is done. We’ll be onto those letters soon. But not this coming weekend. As long as the weather holds, I’m off to Mom’s to do some quilting! I can’t wait!

This past weekend got a little discombobulated. The plan was the usual – spend on day doing chores half the day, and the second half working on a rage-craft (most likely my PBN). And a second day working in the studio.

But Friday night, I got a message from a neighbour asking me if I could pick her up some cat litter on our Friday night travels. Her car wouldn’t start and she was out. Sadly, I didn’t see the message until we were already on our way home. But I offered to take her out Saturday morning instead.

So Saturday I was up and out the door first thing. We headed to Walmart where she got her litter and other pet supplies. Like most of you, the winter storm was threatening our area so she decided to stock up. Dave tagged along with us and made me stop at the hardware store (more on his project another day).

When we got back, we noticed the furnace was acting up. While it was running, it wouldn’t bring the house up past 65F. It’s a problem we had a few months back, they came and replaced a part and everything seemed fine. Until it wasn’t.

Dave spent a good chunk of the early afternoon on the phone with the company, trying to trouble shoot. There’s a lot more computer stuff involved in these new units. Eventually, they said they’d send out a tech but it would be a couple hours.

I decided it was a good time to get some baking done. The house wasn’t freezing, but a little oven heat wouldn’t hurt. And our convience store lady had broken her ankle the other day, so Dave wanted to take her a little something next time he went in.

Sounds like a call for Chocolate Chip Cookies!!!

I don’t bake very often any more because Dave doesn’t eat sugar anymore. If I bake, it means I have to eat all of it myself or find people to share it with. I made a double batch. Enough for me to have a few, a pile to send to the convenience store lady, and enough to fill a bag for the poor furnace guy who had to come out in the snow and cold on a Saturday.

This recipe is one I can make without thinking. When we were little, Mom always involved us in whatever she was doing in the kitchen – and she did a lot of baking.

I think the recipe originally came from the Better Homes and Gardens red plaid cook book. But I have it memorized. (and to be honest, I don’t really measure most of the ingredients.

The BEST chocolate chip cookies

• 1 cp flour
• ½ cp white sugar
• ¼ brown sugar
• 1 egg
• ½ cp margerine
• ½ tsp baking soda
• ½ tsp baking powder
• ½ tsp vanilla extract
• Chocolate chips – measure with your heart (or approx half a cup if you don’t have a heart)

Preheat oven to 350 degrees
Cream margarine, eggs and sugar. Add in flour, soda, powder and vanilla extract. Mix well.
Hand mix in chocolate chips. Scoop on cookie sheet using a spoon. Space out -they will flatten (generally 12 to a sheet). Bake 8-12 minutes depending on oven.

I under-bake mine just a touch (so edges are just starting to get golden) and store in a plastic container as soon as they cool down. This keeps them nice and chewy.

On Sunday mornin,gDave informed me that

a) the furnace was acting up again (they were sending another guy out to look at it)

b) it was also one of our mechanic’s birthday this weekend and he wanted something to take over there on Monday.

I had already given away most of the cookies, but thankfully I had a couple of old bananas…

So banana bread it was! The recipe made eight mini loves – two for the furnace guy, and six for the team to share at the shop on Monday.

This is also Mom’s recipe, though I have no idea where it came from. I don’t have this one memorized, but it’s easy to whip up too.

Mom’s Banana Bread

• 2-3 ripe bananas
• 1/3 cp melted marg
• 1 tsp soda
• Pinch salt
• ¾ cp sugar
• 1 egg beaten
• 1 tsp vanilla
• 1 ½ cp flour

Mash bananas until smooth. Stir in melted butter. Mix in salt and soda. Stir in sugar, egg and vanilla. Mix in flour. (I do this all with a fork – no electric mixer needed)

Pour into greased loaf pan. Bake at 350 – 50-60 min (If you’re making mini-loafs – it’s about 20 mins).

I did get some crafting done around all the baking and furnace mayhem – I’ll share that throughout this week. In the meantime – maybe make yourself a batch of cookies! You won’t be dissapointed.

Have I told you about Louis? (Pronounced the French way -” “Loo-ee”)

Louis is a neighbourhood stray we’ve seen around for a long time. He’s very skittish and would normally run as soon as he saw us. But when we started feeding Furby outside (before taking him in), we’d often find Louis at the food dish. So when Furby started coming in for dinner, we decided to keep a bowl of food out for Louis. Over time, we noticed that he usually come not long after we filled the dish up. He figured out our schedule and was making sure he was nearby to get first dibs (Our neighbor’s cat Fryburger, and Orange Boy – another skittish stray who is Lemmy’s doppelganger – were helping themselves too).

Then the last few weeks, Louis was often sitting on the mat at the side door (food dish is on the side porch) waiting for us to come out and feed him. He still won’t let us touch him, but he only moves a few feet away while we fill the dish, and immediately moves back in when we walk away.

Now, Louis has been around for a while, and obviously survived many winter on his own. But Dave worries. He was lamenting the Louis wasn’t using Furby’s heated cat house (neither is Furby… but whatever). Louis knows it’s there – we have camera footage of him poking his head in once. But Louis rarely goes in the backyard. Dave wanted to make something smaller we could have on or near the porch.

I told him (for about the 10th time since BEFORE he got Furby’s house)… cats don’t need anything big. Or heated for that matter. It just needs to be insulated – their body heat in a small insulated space will keep them nice and toasty.

Finally, he listened. he found an old crate that held records, put a final side on it, insulated it, cut an entrance hole and put it on the porch. (He was also very happy it fit perfectly under one of my flower pots, so it wasn’t immediately apparently there was a cat house there.)

Louis ignored it for about a week. Then I said maybe he didn’t like the foil insulation and we should add some straw. It worked like a charm!

Louis is almost always in there in the morning waiting for breakfast. And he spends a good part of the day napping in there too.

Dave can see from the dining room window whether he’s in there or not, so Dave is happy. And Im wondering how long it will be before Louis will let me pet him.

And… if you’re wondering about the name… it’s because he has super light eyes, and it reminded Dave of his favourite vampire. (I’m more of a fan of Lestat.. but Louis is more appropriate)

This is my world right now

Barely a sign of the garden under all that snow.

I’ve only got a few things blooming inside.

My Crown of Thorns has these lovely mottled pink and cream flowers. And as you can see, there are quite a few of them!

My yellow orchid is still blooming, though it’s not looking great. One of the cats knocked it off the shelf, shattered the decorative pot, and knocked around all the medium. I wasn’t around when it happened, so Dave cleaned up… and he threw out the medium instead of putting it back in the pot. So that’s a task for this weekend – get this girl potted properly again.

That’s it for flowers, but…

Isn’t my Monstera Thai Constellation looking beautiful? This is one of those plants that went for crazy prices during the pandemic. But now it’s more readily available and the prices have come down significantly. Do you believe a plant this size would have once sold for over $100? Now I certainly didn’t pay that. I got mine last year at a much more reasonable price of $20. This will get very big just like other Monsteras

And… back in the summer, I bought a Bird of Paradise plant on clearance. I had it in the woodland garden for most of the summer. I didn’t have high hopes for it over winter. It obviously had to come inside, and I haven’t had great luck with plants like that (ie, Hibiscus, Elephant Ears, Banana Plants etc). They usually need too much humidity and light.

But look how amazing it looks??? Dave’s aunt had a huge one. I don’t want to get my hopes up, but it’s certainly doing well. It will go right back outside as soon as it’s warm enough.

Meet Audrey! I found her at the thrift store and I just had to buy, bring her home, and stick her in a plant! If you look closely, you’ll see she’s handmade…

Made from a styrofoam sphere, and what I’m assuming is hot glue. And quite expertly painted! And the teeth!!! Shells! Brilliant!

You’ve got to have a little fun while you wait for the snow to melt!

Houston… we have a problem

You will recall the Hello Kitty Squishmallow bed I got for Rupert. Well I’m happy to say, he still loves it.

And he really does just fit so perfect…

The problem was discovered when we came up to bed the other night….

Turns out someone else loves it too! Someone else who has turned his nose up at pretty much every other cat bed* I’ve brought in the house.

Rupert is going to have something to say about this, I’m sure!!!

*I mean beds actually designed for cats. He of course, has a selection of baskets I’ve brought home for him which he loves – and his bassinet and chaise. But actual cat bed… all unworthy.

Blockheads 5 – a mystery sampler sew-along – started way back in May 2025. Burton and I jumped on with much gusto, and made the first few blocks. And then we just kind of fell off. I was busy with the garden and other projects. And to be honest, I wasn’t loving the blocks*. And the project just languished. All the blocks had now been released, we’d only done five of the 24.

I was sooo tempted to ignore it some more and start something new. But part of me wants to start with a REALLY fresh slate.

So, after cleaning the studio, I pulled everything out and sat down to confer with Burton.

We had five blocks done. And somewhat of a plan to fussy cut centres, and add one solid colour, while alternating backgorund colours between black and white (like we did with our Mod Cat Quilt). And it was a great plan on its own. But it wasn’t going to work with even HALF of the blocks in the sewalong. (That’s the danger of working on a mystery QAL and trying to bend it to your whims.)

We needed a new plan.

After much discussion, Burton and I realized we could do one more block, which would give us six blocks. We could then repeat those blocks, and we’d have 12 – enough for a lap quilt! Brilliant!

I got to work making the sixth block,

It didn’t take long – which was good because cleaning the studio took up much of the sewing time for the day.

You will note, that while we have six blocks, we only have four accent colours. So that means, before I go and duplicate all these blocks – I need to decide which accent colour each will get. To ensure a proper distribution across the quilt, I’m going to have to sit down and actually plan it out.

Planning is not my strong suit. I’m much more a of a chaos goblin whole flies by the seat of her pants. But planning this one requires, so planning I shall do.

Burton is down with all this, so I guess I better get out my graph paper!

*We’ve decided no mystery sew alongs this year, not even our beloved Stay-at-home-round-robin. We’ve got too many quilt plans in our queue already and we need to clear them out!

I’d mentioned that as part of my “plan to get things done”, I’d decided to dedicated one day on the weekend to sewing.

Saturday didn’t go so well with this one keeping my in chair for far too long.

By the time we got the motivation to get up and do anything, it was already afternoon. So I decided to water my plants (that takes almost an hour) and then paint instead (of which you’ve seen the results). So Sunday was looking to be the studio day.

But then it took all I had to not just sprawl out on the bed and hang out with this one.

After some good belly rubs, I finally put the boots to myself, got up, and opened the studio door…

Oh… right. I have a REALLY bad habit of not cleaning up after I finish a quilt top. It’s usually close to dinner-making time, so I usually just make sure the iron and machine are unplugged, turn off the lights and close the door.

And I’m afraid that’s what I’d done after finishing Mr. Dragon.

Before I was going to do anything, I was going to have to clean up.

Putting things away didn’t take too long (maybe half an hour). But Scrap Mountain, the basket that hold all the scraps created by my projects was definitely in need of some attention. So I got to cutting, and putting all those scraps in their proper boxes. That was a couple hours.

When I was done the studio was clean

Or… as clean as it gets as it’s also terribly cluttered. I really need to make these quilts and clear some of this fabric out!

Happily, there was still a little time left to do some sewing, but you’ll have to wait until tomorrow so see what I got up to.

Sir Furbs was firmly in place over the weekend..

… stitches were stitched…

… and progress was made! A whole lot more progress than I expected. I’m almost 2/3s of the way through that sky. I decided to take it just 100 stitches at a time (ie a 10×10 stitch area on the chart). And as you can see, it worked out really well. This is the most stitch heavy part, so once its done, things should move pretty rapidly. I probably still have a month of work left – it’s a big sampler – but I think the end is somewhat in sight!

I did some more work on the hummingbird paint by number (PBN). But before I get to that, a few people were curious about the skull on the table in the last post on the subject. That is a skull planter that I bought at a thrift store ages ago. But I never put a plant in it (believe it or not, I have more planters than plants). But at some point, I stashed the PBN paint pots and brushes in there – and there they stayed.

And to be honest, it’s been a great way to keep everything together. I have another PBN to do (moths and butterflies) and I’ll probably use it for that. But after that, I think it may just end up as the permanent home for all my paintbrushes. It works well for it… and I have a lot of brushes to fill it. They are currently held in a mason jar. But they’d look much cooler in a skull, don’t you think?

Anyway.. here’s a where it started, where it is now of the PBM after this weekend’s session.

As you can see. It’s not finished. I did fill in all the rather… poopy… colours in the flower. They look a little out of place right now, but once I get the rest filled in they will look like they belong a lot more.

All that’s left are the colours that I need to mix up (because they were dried up in the kit). I could have started on it – but Dave was bugging me to go out. I didn’t want to mix up a bunch of paint, then have to store it. Or even worse, have to try and mix it up again and match what I’d already done.

So I’m saving it for a weekend when I have more time to take with it. Hopefully this weekend… I’m just going to have to find something to keep that husband of mine occupied…

This is just a little bit of silliness I had to share.

The Thursday before last, was grocery night. We were headed out at 8 pm, after Dave finished teaching for the night. (I prefer to grocery shop later in the evening to avoid crowds). The day before, I’d worked a 12 hour day. And that day I put in about 11 hours. To say my brain was zapped would be an understatement.

So … I shouldn’t have been surprised as I was when I got out of the Jeep at the grocery store and noticed this…

Yep.. I was wearing TWO different shoes. Now… they are both Skechers, so the footbeds feel pretty similar. They are also the same fabric and colour. When we got ready to leave, I didn’t bother turning on the light above the shoe bench… I just slipped them on and away I went. And I’m sure the state of my brain had something to do with it too.

Dave had a pretty good laugh about it. And I admit, I did too. But I will be a little more careful when slipping on my shoes from now on.