Sister's Choice Quilts

Instant Pot Newbie

So guess what came to my house yesterday?  I may be the last person on the planet to get one of these, but I am now the owner of an Instant Pot!  The Instant Pot is the modern version of a pressure cooker, with the addition of the features of being able to saute and even slow cook.  I've spent hours watching YouTube videos to get up to speed, and I have to say, the things seem pretty fool proof.  I remember growing up with my mother telling horror stories of spaghetti sauce on the ceiling from the things blowing up, but these new electric models have so many safety features in place, that would be impossible to do nowadays.

I started small, with the Mini size, which produces meals that feed 2-3 people.  I am on my own during the week, as my husband currently works a couple of hours away and just comes home on the weekends.  Unfortunately, without him to cook for, I have not been bothering to cook a proper meal for myself and have resorted to frozen foods or potato chips and a cookie for dinner.  Not good.  My idea is that since my Mini Instant Pot produces servings for two, I can have a decent healthy dinner and a nice lunch or maybe leftovers for dinner the following day.  If I love the Mini as much as I hope to, in the future, I may get the larger 6 quart size, as so many people say they can't live without it.

My first experiment was to make brown rice, which turned out great.  No mess, no boiling over, no constant  stirring and waiting 45 minutes for it to cook.  I made it ahead and will warm it up when I serve dinner over it.  Dinner is Chicken Tikka Masala, and I have my ingredients all out on the counter ready to go.

And I have to say, the recipe was a total success!

Chicken TIkka Masala from the cookbook The Instant Pot Bible.  I'm not going to post the recipe, because of course, the author would love for you to buy the book.  $13.38 on Amazon.  It was good, it was quick, it was easy and it served Sara and I a great dinner.  I had a portion and she had a portion and seconds!

Please share.  Do you have an Instant Pot?  The regular size or the mini?  Do you love it?  What are some of your favorite things to cook in it?

 

Snowed In

I woke up to a winter wonderland Sunday morning.  It had quietly snowed all night long, and our power had been out from midnight to about 6:00 AM.

This was the view out my bedroom door.  The trees were so beautiful with their branches all decorated with snow.

But our driveway was somewhere under all that whiteness.  And it is a hill.  My husband with his two knee replacements, was keen to start shoveling it, but I had grave misgivings about the wisdom of that plan.  

Luckily, my daughter and her husband, who live in the mountains and have a big truck with special snow tires, drove down and helped us out.  That is my son in law at the top of the driveway with a snow shovel, taking care of it for us.

We just are not used to this kind of weather.  It's California for goodness sake, and in February I am expecting to see the daffodils coming up and the cherry blossoms coming out on the trees.

However, some members of the family thoroughly enjoyed the novelty that the snow storm brought.

Too Pretty Not to Share

This was just too pretty not to share.  I had this little Bear Paw table topper quilted nearly a year ago, and just had not gotten around to binding it.  Valentine's Day is fast approaching and I thought it would be just the thing for a pretty tablescape.  My problem was the red/pink is kind of an odd shade.  Reddish pink with a coral vibe.  I looked and looked and could not find any candles that really went with it.  It was pretty on the table, but needed some accessorizing.

I walk several days a week with a friend, and was complaining to her about my dilemma of not being able to pull together a table decoration around my new topper due to the unusual pink/red color.  We were about half way through our walk when one of us (ahem, I believe it was me) suggested turning around and immediately heading to the nearest shopping mecca to shop (about an hour away).  And we did.  Now that's a good friend.  We rationalized that we were not getting our full allotment of steps in if we quit our walk halfway through, but after all, that tromping around the mall would certainly add enough steps to make our quota.

We went to Ulta, we went to Target, we went to Trader Joe's, we went to Hobby Lobby.  We went to Red Robin.  They did not have candles there, but my goodness, those cheeseburgers were good.  We spent lots of money on beauty products, but ultimately I came home with nothing for my table.  We drove an hour there and an hour back, because we live out in the country with no good shopping.  We talked about books, we talked about kids, we talked about clothes.  After saying good bye to my friend, seven hours after our morning walk, I ran to the grocery store five minutes from my house for some provisions.  There was a Hallmark store next to the grocery store.  I went in.  And they had candles in the perfect shade of pinky/red that I needed to match my table topper.

Do I regret spending an entire day on a fruitless quest for something that was five minutes from my house?  Not at all.  I'd do it again in a heartbeat!

What's Going On At My House

I know.  Is that pathetic or what?  Ozzie has been through a bit of "stuff" lately.  I am about to rant and rave a bit, so if that's not your thing, stop reading now.

He had a little growth on his lower left eyelid, which was successfully removed just over a week ago.  You can see how they shaved around his lower eye area, giving him a peculiar piratey look.  He got through that procedure with flying colors.  By all appearances he was completely unaffected.  He had great energy, his usual enthusiastic appetite and was just as mischievous as ever.  No eye patch, no "cone of shame", just some eye ointment.  I was prematurely congratulating myself on how we had sailed through that experience.

And then Friday rolled along.

There is someone in our neighborhood who uses his home near us as a vacation home.  He and his family use it maybe once a month for a weekend, if that.  The problem is, he brings his gigantic 160 pound Newfoundland, who resembles a bear more than a dog.  He named his dog Rover.  Seriously.  So, on the infrequent occurrences that they are staying at their house, this neighbor allows Rover to roam all over the neighborhood off leash.  The houses in our neighborhood don't have fences typically, so he goes in and out of folk's yards.  We do have a fence to keep Ozzie in and other critters out, but we are the exception.

Rover is calm and friendly and seems as dumb as a bucket of nails.  He doesn't do anything while wandering around.  He just strolls wherever he pleases, unsupervised and off leash.  And that's ok because he's a "good" dog, right?  No one is accompanying him, so anything he leaves behind is going to stay where it drops.

Well, Ozzie hates him.  Whenever he sees Rover on the other side of our fence (which is a split rail style covered with chicken wire) he becomes hysterical.  Never mind that Ozzie weighs 24 pounds to Rover's 160, Ozzie thinks he is a threat.  Because the fence isn't solid, Ozzie can see Rover just fine and runs up and down the length of it barking his head off in a complete frenzy.  Ozzie doesn't spend much time out in the back yard, but I do let him out at least four times a day to do his business and get fresh air.  If I know the people are at their house with Rover, I don't let Ozzie out.  But this time, I had no idea the people had come for the weekend and that their dumb dog was wandering along our fence.

However, Ozzie figured it out right away.  Ozzie saw Rover and started barking and running up and down the fence.  Before I could get to him to put a stop to it, Ozzie pitched himself at the wire fence in his hysteria, and caught his ear on something and tore the tip of it off.

It was a mess.  There was blood all over his head and face, and I couldn't tell at first where he had hurt himself.  I managed to get him into the car and take him over to our veterinarian, who luckily was still open.  It was around 5:10 on Friday afternoon.  He was still bleeding profusely and we caused quite a sensation when we arrived.  The doctor determined the cut was on the end of his ear and cleaned and patched him up.  Because of the location of the wound, he required a head wrap and the plastic cone.  $118, and over an hour later, I was back home with Ozzie who was now trembling and shivering with the ordeal of having his damaged ear folded back, a tight wrapping around his head and neck and the plastic cone flapping around his face.

We had our grand dog Remy with us for the weekend, and as you see by his expression, he is deeply concerned for Ozzie.  I was totally shook up with the ordeal and didn't calm down for ages either.

We keep our dog in a fenced back yard.  When I take him out front for a walk, he is on a leash.  We pick up (and dispose of properly) any excrement he may produce.  The only trouble we have ever had during the twelve years we have had Ozzie is with neighborhood dogs who are allowed to wander around unleashed.  Frankly, I am really tired of the thoughtless mentality that just because someone owns a "good" dog who they trust not to run off or be aggressive, that keeping them off leash is ok.   They may think they know how their dog will behave, but they sure don't know how other dogs may respond.

Ok, I'm done.

Wrapping and Ribbon

I was hoping for more interesting content for you all in my effort to post every week day before Christmas, but I swear all I did over the weekend was wrap packages, take Eva to see The Grinch, and wrap more packages.  The Grinch was adorable, and I enjoyed it as much as she did.  Benedict Cumberbatch does an incredible job as the voice of the Grinch.

I have piles of presents all over the house.  It looks like a lot, but we have a huge extended family, and everybody gets a present.  The end is in sight with the whole wrapping thing, thank goodness.  One gift is going to have to go out to the garage though, as it smells to high heaven.  I bought Sara's husband a pound of bulk garlic powder (he is starting up a restaurant), and boy oh boy, can you ever smell it.  When it was delivered to the front porch and I picked it up I wondered if one of the neighbors was doing some heavy fertilizing.  Um no, that would just be one of the gifts I am giving to a family member.

I mentioned in a previous post that I got a tip for decorating the tree with ribbon, that was super successful.  Here is a close up of my ribbon.  Next year I am going to use red for a bigger impact, now that I am so confident in my ribbon festooning abilities.  The trick is to cut the lengths of ribbon into three or four foot lengths.  Don't try to work with the entire spool.  You start at the top and secure a length of ribbon to the tree.  Pull it out a bit and tuck it in right below, making a kind of puff.  Just do this all the way straight down the tree.  Puff, tuck in, puff, tuck, puff, tuck, puff etc.  You get a great effect.  The mistake most people make with ribbon on the tree is that they try to go round and round like it's a garland.  No no no.  Take shorter lengths of ribbon straight down the tree, or maybe at a slight diagonal.  The effect is lovely.  I used five 10 yard long spools of 2 1/2" wide ribbon for a nine foot tree.

So, what I want to share with you in upcoming posts, when I get my act together. is a Gingerbread Bundt Cake with Rum Cream Cheese Icing, and Eva's Christmas gifts to her parents.  We are going to fill Mason jars with the dried ingredients to make batches of homemade Ranch dressing.  Decorating the jars will be fun. And Ahren is arriving from Ireland on Wednesday!  I won't see him until Saturday as he is visiting friends and exploring San Francisco until then.  After that I will have him to myself up here in the boonies.

Hope your week got off to a great start!

Christmas Stockings for Your Dog

Do you hang a Christmas stocking for your dog?  Yeah, we do too.  The cute ones shown above can be ordered from PetCo, but you better hurry for delivery by Christmas.

You could also make your own, which I did about a hundred years ago.  I still have the stocking:

It is pretty sad looking, and hasn't been in rotation for many years, but making the bone shaped pattern was easy, and done up in more current fabric, it would be adorable.  And my gosh, if you had one of those embroidery features on your machine you could even personalize it.

What kind of stocking stuffers would one give to a dog?  Here are my favorites for this year.

This is Marvin the Moose, a Kong chew toy.  Only $6.07 on Amazon.

This is the Benebone bacon flavored wish bone shaped chew toy.  Wow, that was a mouthful.  It is designed so that dogs can get a good grip on it and have a "satisfying chew".  It comes in several sizes and is under $10.

This is the OurPets IQ treat ball.  It dispenses treats or kibble if your dog manipulates the ball properly.  I am hoping it will keep Ozzie occupied for awhile so he doesn't bug me.

The dogs in our family love these Nutrish Savory Dog Treats by Rachael Ray.  You can pick these up at the grocery store, and you can be sure there will be a flavor your dog will enjoy.

Ok, I have to admit, I did not purchase this item, because I thought it was gross.  Ozzie would be over the moon to have it though.  It is the Perfect Curve Lick Lick pad.  You stick it to the wall, slap some peanut butter on it, and it is guaranteed to distract your dog while you give him a bath or do other grooming.  Innovative, right?  Still not buying it.  Although I wonder how long it would keep him out of my hair....

So, do you give your pets Christmas stockings?  What sorts of treats do you put in them?

Shop From Home

The photo doesn't really do it justice, but this little kitchen vignette is one of my favorites this year.  I bought a tiny fake tree at my local hardware store of all places, and it is just the right size for my little quilt from last year.  I strung some of those battery powered mini lights around the tree, and it is just darling, I think.

I did something completely insane on Saturday.  I knew that Bath and Body Works was having their annual sale on their candles, which I love.  The regularly priced $24.99 candles were reduced to $8.99 for one day only.  I live an hour and a quarter from the nearest Bath and Body works and it was pouring rain, but that did not stop me.  What nearly did me in was the huge crowd of people I had not anticipated.  It was so crowded you could not stand in the store without touching another person next to you.  But I got my eight candles and then stood in line for 45 minutes to pay.  Seriously.  It was so crazy.  Then I drove home for another hour in the rain.  And then found out the sale was online also.  I could have ordered on line.  Let's pause for a moment and reflect on that.  

Well, I certainly will not be doing that again.  But here are two of my favorite holiday candles.  Crushed Candy Cane and Spiced Ginger Bread.  I also got a couple of more wintery scents for January (Winter and Fresh Sparkling Snow).

I try to make it a policy to shop from home.  I do try to shop locally when I can, but living miles from everything foils that plan for the most part.  Particularly during the holidays when the crowds and traffic are so bad I find it much nicer to order from home and have things delivered.  So many places are offering free shipping right now that it just doesn't make sense to pay for gas and go through the frustration of doing holiday shopping. 

Hope you all had a splendid weekend.  I am going to try to post every week day in December, so we will see how that goes!

 

Holiday Preparations

You haven't heard much from me this week, because I am up to my eyeballs in holiday preparations.  The house is all decorated, the Christmas collections (snowmen, Santas, fairies) all displayed.  The decorating is just about complete.

My week has been spent on Shutterfly projects.  Have you heard of Shutterfly?  They are a company you can use to make holiday calendars or photo memoir travel books.  You can also use your photos to be printed on mugs or other gifts.  I highly recommend them for holiday gifts that are super personal.  Since Eva was about two years old, each Christmas I have made a Shutterfly wall calendar featuring photos of her from the previous year.  They are totally adorable and both sets of grandparents, her mom and dad and uncle all look forward to receiving them.  They do take time to put together, but relatively easy, and the results are so worth it.

See how cute the calendars are?  If you are at a loss for what to get those hard to shop for people, something like this might fit the bill.  The projects are fun to do, and everyone always seems to love them.

This year I did a 2019 Eva calendar and an entire photo book from our trip to Ireland this summer.  My husband will love the photo book, and it will be a forever momento of the trip we can access any time.

Tea Anyone?

The tea party was such a smashing success we have decided we must make it a yearly tradition!

My favorite thing was the cucumber sandwiches.  Super easy.  I mixed Philadelphia Chive and Onion cream cheese with a touch of mayonnaise and spread it on little rounds of dark rye bread I cut in circles with a cookie cutter.  I topped the cream cheese with a thin slice of English cucumber and sprinkled a bit of chopped dill over all.

It was so lovely to get together with friends and launch the holiday season.

Happy Thanksgiving to all of you who celebrate it.  Thinking of and sending prayers to all those in Paradise and Chico who have been displaced and suffered great loss this holiday season.  A quilting friend shared that of the 100 members of her Chico Quilt Guild, 98 have completely lost their homes.  This devastation is unfathomable.  Please consider making a donation to one of the many organizations that are helping out the victims of the Camp Fire in Butte County.

Centerpiece

I found the perfect red and yellow roses for my Royal Albert Old Roses inspired centerpiece.

Doesn't it go great?  So excited for my little party this afternoon.  I made scones and my taste tester Miss Eva tells me they are wonderful.

I used a Pioneer Woman recipe called Vanilla Chocolate Chip Mini Scones.  They were easy to make and look just like the picture on the recipe.  Ree says that with the glaze, they will keep a couple days.  I am always happy to find a make ahead recipe I can use when I entertain.

I've been playing Christmas music and watching Hallmark Channel Christmas movies.  I am such a nerd, but I am really going to enjoy the holidays this year.  Hope you all will too. I am starting early, so let's hope I don't lose steam by mid-December!