Pinterest Challenge: Buffalo Chicken in a crock pot

Over the course of our wedding, engagement shower, and wedding shower (in three different states), we wound up with 7 crock pots. Despite what many people who came to our wedding shower thought, I am not a big fan of cooking in a crock pot. It's very rare to find something I want to make in a crock pot, and rarer for me to actually try it in the crock pot. If I'm home, I'm rarely thinking 6 hours ahead of dinner. If I'm going to be gone, I don't trust our power company enough to go off and leave things running unsupervised.

After exchanging most of those pots for credit towards coffee makers, new pillows, and cash for our entertainment center, our single crock pot spends a lot of time in the original packaging, on top of our pantry, mostly collecting dust.

I can count the number of times we've used it so far on one hand.

But, when I stumbled across the recipe (at Tammilee Tips) via Pinterest, not only did I pin it - but I bought the ingredients and pulled the crock pot out of the box. And washed it, just to be safe.

Saturday afternoon and evening is social night at our house, so I often cook dinner - and the guys are often my guinea pigs for some new recipe. This weekend I knew we were going out for lunch but returning well before the chicken would be done - so just before we headed out, I turned on the crock pot.

By the time we were ready to break after our first movie of the night, the chicken was done and oh so easy to shred.

We all wound up adding both Ranch dressing and a little more buffalo sauce to our sandwiches, so I guess the chicken was a little dry. I had thought the sauce in the crock pot might get a little more bbq sauce thickness and really cling to the chicken, but it was thinner than straight out of the bottle. Maybe that's a side effect of having to use low/high instead of medium (ours doesn't have a medium setting).

Having to add our own additional sauces wasn't a problem, it let me add more spice, and the guys tone it down a bit, so I don't think I'd change that if I do it again.

Why did I say 'if'? This is happening again. Even with the crock pot's involvement.

I used four large chicken breasts and about 12 oz of buffalo sauce, plus at least two more ounces added after the meat was shredded. I didn't do anything to the chicken before I put it in - usually I pull off some of the fat and clean them up a little - and I only found one little spot that needed pulled out after cooking. The first night it fed three people (2-3 sandwiches each), then we managed to get two more meals out of it later. I wish I had enough left to try in a pizza, but I guess that just gives me another reason to make it soon!

Happily Ever After - Quilting

I was beginning to think I was going to make it through the whole month without making much progress on my major goal - quilting the Happily Ever After quilt.

After another hour of steam iron basting - this time with an extension cord, which helped - I figured it was as good as it was going to get on that front.

I had my husband help carry the sewing machine desk into the newly cleared living room, tuned in to a tv marathon of detective/cop shows, and went at it.

In the first hour, I managed four lines of quilting. That was discouraging - if I followed my plan, at that speed it would take me 16-17 more hours of work to complete the quilting. Needless to say, I began reevaluating immediately.

Straight line quilting (or something approaching straight lines, because these are more organic than ruler straight) is not my favorite thing to do. On small projects, it isn't so bad, but it's not what I'd call fun. So, after five hours when I had the opportunity to work in the other direction, I decided to cut from three straight-ish lines in the colorful fabric to one.

Considering it was approaching midnight, that's the best picture I could get.

So it's done. Ish.

What I really want to do is add some accent stitching around some of the wonky stars - either by machine or hand. Doing that kind of thing by machine is a lot more fun than lines, but dragging this huge quilt around and through the machine is not easy - my shoulder still aches from the effort the straight lines required so I'm a little scared to do anything more intense. Hand quilting it would cut down on that kind of effort but I'm not sure I want to showcase my hand skills...

And so, I may just call it done and move on to the binding aspect - which needs to happen relatively quickly before we get sick of the sewing machine in the living room and the living room in the kitchen. May I never again attempt a quilt too big to work in my usual space!

Small Project Marathon

I had a fairly light day at work - and a gift card burning a hole in my pocket. So I hit up JoAnns, and then spent an evening watching Harry Potter movies out of the corner of my eye and playing around with two little projects.

First:
I have to show off my new purchase. I have no idea what I'll do with it - and I already broke this year's rule of only buying fabric I have plans for - but I could not leave it behind!

My picture doesn't do it justice. Trust me. It's adorable. I have no idea what I'll use it for - maybe the back of a baby quilt? - but it was too darling to ignore.

Second:
Also purchased at the same time:

I did have a plan for these little Owl Chefs - and I started on that immediately upon returning home.

For the last 2+ years, our curtains in the kitchen have looked something like this:

Which worked. Much better than the mini blinds that were there when we moved in (they fell off the wall the first time I tried to use them and I never felt like I should put them back up). And while I still think these are cute towels, we've both been searching for the next look for this window for a while.

I can be certain that any time my husband comes with me to a fabric store, he will go down the rows after me and point out anything he likes. He has yet to miss a fabric that contains owls. So, when he spotted the little cooking/baking owls, I figured that would fit the space as well as anything else we'd seen.

Within an hour of being home with my new fabric, I had measured the space, cut the owl fabric and a white solid fabric, sewn them together, and had them hanging in the window.

Again, it's not easy to take photos at night, but I think even so you'll see it's an improvement over the towels!

I'm not going to be a morning person, but I'm actually eager to get up tomorrow morning and see how these look with some sunlight behind them!

Edited to add morning photos: 

I do expect they'll fade a little over time, and if they ever need washed I'll first need to run a top stitch all the way around to close the opening where I turned them outside out, but they make me happy - and I think that's the whole point of kitchen decorations. Okay, I suppose some people might want curtains for privacy reasons too... but happiness is still high on the list around here!

Third:
Fresh off my success from the curtains, I started a book mini quilt. Twice. Even though there are tutorials, even ones I have linked to and ought to have clicked over to, I thought I could wing it. Twice. My first attempt was a little cuter - but by the end not only were the books all looking more like magazines (way too skinny) but the whole thing was a bit more fan shaped than rectangular. My second attempt went together much more easily - even if I did have less dear fabric scraps left to choose from.

I'm  not usually one to keep selvages, so finding this many in my scraps was lucky. I wish I'd had a few more, but I suppose I could always go back and add them. Or maybe I'll save them up for the next time I try my hand at something like this. It could be cute as a larger quilt...

Not bad for an evening that started with no plans at all!

I'm Hoping for Colder Weather

I'm hoping for colder weather today because I'll be spending a couple hours crawling around the living room with a hot, steamy iron, an extension cord, and this: 

Having already done that once before, I am actually more nervous about the process.

The first time, I debated whether I should do a batting/backing set first, or if I could jump to all three layers. Well, I could and I did but some how in the process, the back got wrinkled, and I didn't notice until I was rolling it back up to put it away. So, I get to do it again.

Which requires borrowing an extension cord from the neighbors, carrying three chairs, the coffee table, and the loveseat into the kitchen, and - like I said - a couple hours on hands and knees with steam coming right up at my face.

I thought using the iron baste methoud would be easier than pinning this whole thing. At this point, I'm not so convinced...

Quilt Storage

A few months ago I was given a glass/wood quilt storage chest. Unfortunately, there is honestly no room at my house for another piece of furniture at the moment. So, my mother agreed to temporarily keep it in her living room for me.

Last weekend I finally showed up with some quilts to go in it - and Mom was thrilled to know that it was her house that would be getting decorated.

My full/queen duvet (a high school graduation gift) folded in perfectly, but Great-Grammie's queen-size quilt only barely fit in!

The works of my own that I added (for now) were all fairly small (baby sized), so it was no challenge getting them in - but you can see how much space Great-Grammie's quilt takes up. If I put a little more work into cleaning out the cedar chest (one of the other things I inherited from Great-Grammie), I think I'll move this quilt over to it (along side the other quilt of hers I have).

Both of the quilts I have from my great-grandmother use scrap pieces from outfits she used to wear. The other quilt is blue sash, white blocks with appliqued butterflies made of pieces of dresses and blouses. Neither quilt is a pattern I would want to make (I have a fear of applique, among other issues), but I love having these tangible reminders of my Great-Grammie. She was an amazing woman, and a huge part of my childhood. I consider myself incredibly blessed to have anything of hers - but to have two quilts and a cedar chest is beyond anything I could have expected (that side of the family is not sentimental, but I certainly am). 

I ought to refold the top one (the gift duvet) to show a little more color, but I thought I'd keep this one on top since it's more in keeping with Mom's decorating style than anything else in the chest at the moment!

I hope someday to have enough room - whether here or in our next place (whenever that happens) - to bring the chest to live with me, or to come up with another option of storing the quilts I have, but for now, I'm glad I can bring a little more color to Mom and Dad's living room.

My 13th Quilt: Camping Patchwork

First, the technicalities: 
My poor skill at photography is not aided by the less than picturesque look of this winter. This are too bright, too stark, and I haven't a clue how to try to over come that. I've tried to edit the photos as best I can, but I know they're not the best. If anyone has tips on how to take better photos in these kinds of circumstances, please let me know - I need to learn! 

Final 'finish' photo

This Camping Patchwork was my second 'unloved' quilt. When things didn't work quite as I'd planned during the initial 'patch working' phase, instead of powering through - or restarting - I set it aside and allowed my mistakes to make me think this one was a total loss.

Where I gave up...

 It took me a long time to get up the courage to pick it apart where needed, and piece it back together in a better way.

When I picked it up again

 Once the patchwork was looking a little less ugly, it didn't take long to add a yellow border and feel like the top was complete:

Unfortunately, the back put up a bit of a fight as well. I was going to a slightly pieced back, but a measuring error put me off by 11 inches, and led to the addition of the dark red fabric on the back.

I didn't love it, but I pushed through because I had high hopes it would be my last finish of 2012. Instead, thanks to a red/blue scrappy binding, it was my first finish of 2013. Binding went on at about 12:45 a.m. January First.

A few days later, when I was getting ready to put it in the wash at last and finally check it off the list - I realized to my horror that several inches of the binding were in the process of coming undone! Although I used the same method of machine sewing the binding in place as always, I had some serious flaws in the application process. Fixing these issues would have required unpicking two lines of stitching for at least the length of one side of the quilt. And to be honest, I didn't want to do that.

So, I set to town with my scissors and clipped off the red/blue binding as closely to the stitching as possible and set out to replace it with something I hoped would match both front and back a little better than the red/blue had:

Brown with cream dots!

Huge improvement. I don't regret the change at all.

Sadly, I still had a tiny flaw in the binding application, but rather than trying to unpick it (clearly, an idea I'm against, at least when it comes to two lines of stitching and this kind of minky or whatever it's called), I did a couple lines of tight zig-zag over it and called it good.

So perfect, it is not. But I finally love it. And that's more important to me.

And still the first finish of 2013.

I can't get over how much better the new binding looks against the back. 100% improvement. No question in my mind.

All materials came from my stash.
No intended recipient yet. And honestly, I might just keep this one. Someday there may be little ones hanging around my house, and this seems like a perfect quilt for a play surface or a picnic.

Well... I might be convinced to give it away... but only to the perfect home. What can I say, after so many months of feeling rather beaten up by this one, it is utterly freeing to finally be in love with it!

Pinterest Challenge: 4 Ingredient Tart

Are there recipes on Pinterest that fall between super easy and super difficult? If there are, I can't find them. In case you didn't guess from the 4 Ingredient bit, this is one of the super easy ones.

The recipe can be found here (note: the photos at the link are much more appetizing than mine are!) 

Since I didn't have any fresh fruit, I went with frozen. That did cause a little sogginess where the ice/water trickled into the dough, but I don't think the overall flavor was hurt by my cheap/lazy turn. 

I also went with mixed berries - again, because that's what I had. 

I didn't think these were anything special, but my husband said they just might be the best thing I've ever made. I'm not sure how I feel about that one, but he meant well, so I'll try to take it that way. 

I'm alive, but work is all consuming this week. Maybe over the weekend I'll have time to sit down and make a little recent progress on things. If not, next week is going to be a little quiet... 

Why I'm Writing to Myself

Maybe you've noticed this already, but I don't actually have any readers.

I toyed with blogging before, but never managed to stick my foot in the water. I had finally worked up the courage to get a name and try it out about the same time a friend of mine started one - which gave me the push I needed to actually start hitting 'publish' instead of continuing to chicken out. Well, she's moved on to different things, but I'm still here.

My goal had been to open my little cove of the internet up to other people over the winter - until I realized I'd already blogged about a quilt I was working on for a surprise present. So, I'm still hanging out alone, at least until I've given that particular quilt away.

So yes, I'm talking to myself. And yes, I feel silly about that sometimes.

On the other hand, I'm not the best about keeping track of what I've been doing. I never was good at keeping a journal or diary. Posting here gives me a sense of accountability and a bit of direction when it comes to keeping momentum on my various projects.

Sure, I hope someday to use this blog as a way to connect to other people - but even if that never happens, I'm going to keep it up because it keeps me motivated.

Most of the time... let's not talk about some of the things that have been in my progress pile for over a year now... 

My 12th Quilt: Zoo Square

First, the technicalities: 
1. I realize my last shared finish was my 9th. This is the problem with my 2010-2012 numbering system of assigning numbers at the beginning instead of the end. As of 1/1/13, new quilts will be numbered at the finish. 
2. Quilt 10 is Happily Ever After, Quilt 11 is finished but waiting for a reveal, Quilt 13 is the Camping Patchwork - also finished and up to be revealed later this month (it was my first finish of 2013, 45 minutes after midnight on New Years Eve/Day). 
3. Quilt 12: Zoo Square was technically finished 12/28/12 (except the washing). Yes, I'm often 1-2 weeks behind when it comes to sharing content. Sometimes more. But sometimes I really do post something the same day it happens. 
4. My poor skill at photography is not aided by the less than picturesque look of this winter. This are too bright, too stark, and I haven't a clue how to try to over come that. I've tried to edit the photos as best I can, but I know they're not the best. If anyone has tips on how to take better photos in these kinds of circumstances, please let me know - I need to learn! 

This one spent a lot of time hiding at the bottom of my to-do pile. It didn't even get mentioned here until several months after I started working on it. The poor little thing was seriously under appreciated for a long time - through no fault of its own. Every quilt I've worked on has moments where I second guess myself or wonder if I'm going about it completely wrong. Usually I just push past these moments, and usually they work out just fine. This quilt, and the other I started about the same time both got set aside just as I reached a major moment of doubt - and this doubt made it a real challenge to pick them up and start moving again.

I'm glad I did though. With a little bit more work, and some wonderful flannel, this went from something I didn't want to talk about to something I love.

This one is a little small, finishing at only about 40" square
Fabric: the top fabric all came from my stash (craigslist purchases), the flannel for the back was purchased just for this.
This was my first time binding in flannel, but it looks great. I expect it won't wear quite as nicely as other fabric might have, but I love the look and the additional softness.

This little quilt is joining the others in my quilt chest just waiting for a baby shower or baby announcement.

My 9th Quilt: Improv. Jungle Squares

My 9th Quilt: Improv. Jungle Squares (finished in 2012)

For something that started out as a few fat quarters of super cute fabric and absolutely no plan, this turned into an adorable little quilt.

How is this the only photo I have that shows the whole top?!

I took my time on this one, and debated every addition before I made it. Which is really a better process for me. The scariest part by far was adding the various brown dots around the littler blocks. But it turned out better than I could have imagined!

It's quilted in organic vertical lines with a random spacing.

And bound with some white/aqua wiggly stripes. Which isn't quite a perfect match, but it's just about there.

Post Washing (What is it about quilts that attracts cats?)

I didn't notice any color bleeding (whew!) or any real shrinkage.

Size: Alright, I've put off sharing this because I haven't measured it. Someday I will, but I'm tired of waiting to share it! 
Fabric: most of a small package of fat quarters plus some yardage of brown dots from my stash and orange dots from the stash, binding was 2 fat quarters purchased just for this.

Although I'm fairly certain there are at least three babies coming to people I know this spring/summer, this one is still waiting for a home. It's true that I love it and am tempted to keep it, but I've already kept enough. So, whoever's up for the next baby, this one is probably for you!

Camping Patchwork - Nearly done!

While again, this is only a wash and dry from being on the 'done' list, I figured I'd still share the progress.

This one has been a battle from the beginning. Getting all the patchwork-y blocks to more or less line up together was harder than it should have been. Doing anything with minky fabric (which I think is the right name for the yellow stuff...) is difficult and messy. Coming up with any kind of a back for it was nearly impossible!

I didn't quite give up, but I did settle a little bit to get this one backed.

Even though many of the little blocks match the ones used in the front (they should, most of them are scraps left from cutting those blocks!), the entire back is a little less coordinated than I'm hoped for. Somehow my math was off by 11 inches. Thus the addition of the dark red panel. The back isn't bad, it just isn't quite as coordinated to the front as I had hoped for.

Actually, quilting this was easy. Maybe the easiest part of the whole process. I attempted to stitch on/near the seams in the patchwork, then ran a single line through the center of the yellow border. I was surprised quilting the minky part wasn't difficult at all. I thought it would be much harder - but maybe that's only when attaching other fabric to it?

I've never used multiple fabrics in a binding before, but I've liked the scrappy bindings I see other quilters do. I think mine might have been better with a third fabric mixed in... but it's not bad. I think the colors go better with the front rather than the back... but whether it's true or not, I'm telling myself that something like this will spend more time with the top against a floor than being seen...

I wish I'd been a bit more careful in making the back - measure twice cut one and all that - but overall, it's still continuing to grow on me.

Just a wash and this one will be joining the others in waiting for a home/use.

WRONG!

I didn't see any issues with the binding earlier, but apparently there were several spots where it wasn't stitched on properly. So, I will most likely be removing the binding. Since I wasn't completely thrilled with the binding, I may use this opportunity to replace it with something different. I'm not certain; I keep looking over at some brown dots and wondering if that would look a little better.

Flannel Binding

Even though I wasn't completely certain it would work, I went ahead and bound the yellow/pink zoo square quilt with the remainder of the flannel I made the back out of.

It was a little tricky to work with - mostly because, as expected, it did add some bulk to the edges/corners of the quilt. But overall, it was still easier than sewing with minky... so really, not bad at all!

It's my first experience with non-bias binding, but thanks to the stretch of the flannel, I hardly noticed a difference during application.

Off to wash/dry and then it'll be officially done!