Rosy Red Rhubarb

Mmmm, I just love rhubarb! It's so good in jam, compote, pies, cobblers and more! My husband actually loves to eat it raw dipped in a bit of sugar. A little bit to tart for me that way but a great treat :)

Our rhubarb plants are exploding with rosy red stalks waiting to be eaten so I've collected quite an arm load that is sitting in the sink waiting for me. I haven't quite decided what I'm going to do with it tomorrow. Perhaps a pie or even some syrup that makes a very refreshing drink.

I've got a whole wheat and oat pastry recipe kicking around that I'm just dying to try out so I'm thinking that there just might be a pie in my future *grin*.

~ Rosina

Itching To Plant

I've been feeling a little bit under the weather the last couple of days so I apologize for the lack of blogging. I've been hitting my pillow pretty early and it's been cutting into my blogging time as I usually post in the wee hours of the morning *grin*.

I'm super excited as my garden got a final rototilling today and now I can get out there and start shoveling the rows for planting! We got hit by frost the other morning and it damaged some of the young trees so I'm definitely going to wait until closer to the May long weekend before really setting any of the warmer crops into the ground as we should be safe from any cold weather by then :)

Remember my poor broccoli & cauliflower that was completely eaten by the sparrows? Well I had left it in the ground with the slight glimmer of hope that it may recover and low and behold there are actually some little green leaves starting to come out of the center of them!! They look absolutely horrendous still but they just might make it after all *grin*.

Well I better go :) I've got a new copy of the Old Schoolhouse Magazine that came in the mail today and I think I'm going to curl up in bed and read a bit before snoring LOL. I'm hoping to do some blog hopping tomorrow and catch up on my nature buddy blogs and maybe share some pictures of L's dress as it's getting closer to being finished :)

~ Rosina

Happy Mother's Day

Wishing everyone a happy Mother's Day!!
~ Rosina

Recycled Leather Cell Phone Case

My mom has to be one of the few people that don't actually own a cell phone :) I must say at times I envy that she doesn't have one as I personally don't like mine and conveniently leave it in the trunk of my car *grin*. Shhh, don't tell my hubby! LOL. He uses his for work on the tugs so chats on it constantly but mine is pretty much for emergencies only and I avoid it like the plague!

Mom has been hinting that she wanted one and when we switched our cell phone plan a couple of years ago we got new phones and my old one has been kicking around in the junk drawer ever since. So as a special surprise I've had it activated for her on one of those pay as you go plans :) There is no cell service where we live so it only works when we head into the city but it comes in super handy when trying to meet up with my sister or if someone needs something brought home. So the pay as you go will be much cheaper than having a plan as I'm sure the $10 card will be more than enough for a month.

I found some really great red leather scraps at an upholstery shop and a leather skirt at the salvation army that were perfect to upcycle into a snazzy cell phone case. Most purses are like giant manholes and just swallow up things as they go in... well at least mom's and mine are so I thought I would make a case for her phone to go in so that it might be easier to locate it when it rings :)

I wanted to give it a two tone look and started by sketching out circles on paper to figure out my design before chopping into the leather. Who knew circles could be so hard! It took me a bit to work out the spaces in between each one where I had my little peek a boo triangles as it looked totally different with the pen drawings than it did when you flipped it over and looked at it like it was the leather.

Next was putting all of the pieces together which was quite fun. I love figuring out all of the dimensions. It's like a puzzle :) In the past I have given my mom my phone to hang onto when I haven't had a purse and when it has rung she has gone into a bit of a frenzy scrambling to get to it before it stops ringing so I thought having a ribbon inside that popped the phone out of the case easily would be fantastic! I stitched a button hole shape into the backside of the case, clipped it open and slid some nice wide grosgrain ribbon through it and looped it inside the case.

It works fabulously! You pull the ribbon, it shoots out the phone and when you push the phone back in the case it slides the ribbon back down with it and you don't have to try and feed the ribbon back in at all. It does it all by itself! Love it!

I can't wait to surprise her with it tomorrow for Mother's Day :)

~ Rosina

First Block Finished

I did it! I finished my very first block *grin*.
I decided that my first one was going to be about what a blessing my vegetable garden is to our family :) Every spring we start seeds indoors and outdoors, growing radishes, carrots, beans, peas, broccoli, lettuce, tomatoes and more. We try to eat as much organic produce as possible and being able to grow some of it to save money is a great help. I love to can our vegetables as well and my pantry is quite low this spring so I'm really counting on the garden to bolster our winter supplies. Plus it is so gratifying for myself and my children to watch those little seeds sprout and fruit before our eyes :)

As I created my block I thought of those aerial scenes of farmland that you see with the perfect little square patches of greens and browns and thought that would be a great way to do my mini garden. Of course you can't have a garden without something growing in it! So I used french knots for my little veggies and then ran knotted green thread through the finished french knots to create the green tops on the veggies. I really like how it turned out :) Now I need to come up with a new block!

Don't forget that you can find all of my stitch along blog entries in one convenient place on the special Count My Blessings Stitch along page I created!

Happy stitching
~ Rosina

Nature walk along the Puntledge

I know our daily nature sharings are over but that doesn't mean that our outdoor explorations have ended :)

Today we trekked along the Puntledge River with a small group of homeschoolers to find a marshy area where we could search for frogs & salamanders.

After flipping over rotten logs, collecting worms and seeing lots of little wood or sow bugs we finally came to a good wet spot to search for frogs but there were none to be found. There was a brief sighting of a tree frog hopping out of a skunk cabbage but other than that we came up empty handed :(

Check out the size of that skunk cabbage! It's just about as tall as M *grin*.

There were lots of native plants to be found. This beautiful pink Salmon Berry bloom...

Trillium flowers...

I'm not sure what these are but they had the most interesting blooms that looked like they were ready to explode...

and loads of pretty Bleeding Hearts :)

As the rest of us scouted out the area for salamanders and other critters M and daddy stole a quiet moment by themselves and watched the river rush by :) It was a great way to spend the afternoon.

~ Rosina

Stitch Along Update

Oh my I don't know what happened to the color of my photo but my beautiful yellow is not so pretty looking here is it :(

I'm just about finished stitching my grid. Yay! I took it along in the truck today and worked on it while hubby drove us in :) I'm just doing a simple back stitch and it's coming along nicely. Only a few more rows to go and I'm finally going to tackle my first block!! Slow and steady wins the race right? *grin*.

We were hauling our travel trailer behind us today to have it checked over before heading out camping for the season and I thought I'm definitely going to have to stitch a camping block. Perhaps a cute little teardrop trailer would be perfect :) I've always thought they were the sweetest little things LOL. Much to small for our family of 5 but so cute just the same :) Hopefully tomorrow I'll have something much more exciting to share with you!

Happy stitching :)
~ Rosina

Easy Sweet Pepper Pasta Sauce Recipe

I haven't posted a recipe in quite some time so I thought that I would share one of our favorite quick and easy pasta sauces that just takes minutes to make and is super yummy :)

You will need one large sweet onion such as a walla walla and one red or orange sweet bell pepper. Chop them up into large chunks and toss them into a sauté pan and cook for about 5-8 minutes until the onions start to get slightly translucent and soft.

Next toss your onions & peppers into your blender along with half a tomato and pureé. We like some spice to our sauce so for a little zip you can add 1/2 a tablespoon of chili spice and a few dashes of garlic tabasco sauce and give it a quick whiz in the blender. Don't worry though if you don't like it hot, this sauce is delicious just on its own to. I actually never add any salt to it as I think the natural flavors of the vegetables are so sweet on their own that it doesn't need it but feel free to salt it to your liking if needed :)

It's great on pasta topped with a little bit of cheese and it also doubles as a great sauce for homemade burritos to!

Enjoy :)
~ Rosina

New Obsession

Okay I admit it... I am utterly obsessed with quilts and every time I see a new pattern I just want to try it out *grin*. I've had this bright and cheery stack of fabric waiting to be turned into something fabulous and Oh Fransson's great New Wave Quilt is just begging to be made with it! LOL.

Photo courtesy of Watch Meesh Run via Flickr

I think it's going to look fabulous with the strikingly bright pinks, greens, blues & yellows dissected by the white sashing. Oooh so yummy *grin*. I need to get my hands on some template plastic tomorrow or find something around here to use so I can get started!

What sewing projects do you have on the go right now? I'd love to take a peek :)

~ Rosina

100 Block Grid

Wow! 100 blocks. I decided to go ahead and create the entire grid of 100 blocks for the stitch along after all *grin*. Talk about indecisive!

Thank goodness I've got a nice long quilting ruler. It made creating the grid much easier as I could line up 6 inches at a time of the one inch intervals consecutively across the ruler using the markings and keep watch to make sure I wasn't getting off track and crooked with each new row :)

Even with all of the checking and re-checking it is slightly out but not noticeable and I made one little boo boo and drew a line to long but I'll just have to cover it up with some creative embellishment *grin*. Tomorrow I'll tackle stitching up the grid and covering the pencil lines!

Happy stitching,
Rosina