i'm not slacking, i've just been busy!

i finally have a few minutes to update the blog, complete with pictures of the jambalaya from tuesday night & the quilted table runner that i'm working on, oh there's even pics of the finished scarves! granted, i could've posted yesterday, but chose to take a nap instead...the nap works out better for my sanity than updating the blog does!

i made the chicken jambalaya recipe, from the joy of cooking cookbook, on tuesday evening as part of the fat tuesday celebration. zatarain's box jambalaya was what i've always made in the past, so using a recipe and not a box mix was all new to me. jordan and i went to the store to pick everything up that we would need so i could get started early since i didn't know how long it would take to make everything. it was a relatively easy recipe to follow, i made a few changes like only using chicken legs & thighs rather than an entire chicken, crumbling the sausage rather than slicing it and doubling the ingredients so that the batch would be a bit bigger. what i ended up making was a brown jambalaya rather than a red one, which is the kind that we are more used to. i cooked it for a bit longer than i should have, thus making the rice mushy but not really effecting the rest of the taste. everyone seemed to like it, mushy rice and all, so that's one that i can make again sometime...finally there's something that everyone liked! (those are the stripped bones and bay leaves from the jambalaya, which i wanted to use to make a chicken broth, only to realize that i didn't have enough "stuff" for it.) 

wednesday was a craft day so i decided to work on a tablerunner that i had, in all honesty, completely forgotten about. i had found it about a month ago when i was pulling out the beast/five year quilt and the serendipity quilt, both of which needed to be finished and have since been finished. i got everything together, the tablerunner top and backing fabric were freshly ironed and the batting for the middle was just the right size, and got to work spray basting them all together to make it easier to quilt. just as a quick side note: i love spray basting (it's a fabric adhesive in an aerosol can)! it's the best thing i could have as a quilter, it makes life so much easier when putting quilts together. i had everything basted together and headed up to my little sewing nook to start quilting it, i got about 15 minutes into before i had my first "incident": my needle came out of the machine in mid-stitch! i tried to fix it without having to really stop my progress, but it didn't seem to want to go back in so i made the decision that i just needed to replace the needle only to discover that i couldn't find any of my replacement needles, thus meaning that i would have run over to the local quilt store to pick more up.


so i left jordan with luke while i ran to the little quilt shop right around the corner from the house. (thankfully, luke works from home, so i can make quick little trips like that when the situation arises). i was very proud of myself for going to the store and not even looking at the fabric, it is my favorite quilt/fabric store that really was quite an accomplishment for me! anyway, back home, new needle in place i set back to work on quilting the table runner. i got it all done and then stated working on the binding, first in the same fabric as the backing only to discover that that was really too light so i then found a better suited fabric and started the process of making the binding all over again. it turned out to be a very busy afternoon/evening so i didn't get to complete the binding until after the kids were in bed...which really didn't bother me too much since i like working on things more at night when i won't be bothered by anyone. (the pic below shows the tablerunner with the binding on the front)

i always make more binding that i really for my quilts and now i know why! after i got the binding sewn all around the top of the tablerunner, i started trimming off the extra fabric and batting so that i could then hand sew the binding to the back, thus finishing the tablerunner. anyway, while trimming one of the edges, i cut off the corner piece that wraps around to the back! and that's not a good thing! at first i thought i could rig something so that i wouldn't actually have to take off the binding strip, but after about 20 minutes of trying to pin, fold, press, and cuss the fabric into place, i knew that iwas going to have to take off some of the binding and replace it with another strip. luckily i had extra binding, since i make more than i need, and i set out to fix the corner piece. with the piece all fixed i decided it was time for bed and so i'm now left to hand sew the binding over the next couple of days, thus making that my crafty/creative thing to do. (that's a pic of what the corner piece looks like when you don't cut into with your rotary cutter! all folded so when it's wrapped around to the backside there's no rough fabric.)

here's a quick side note before i go get ready to take on today's crafty project and other plans for the day: i've found that i love reading cookbooks so that's taking up some of my crafting time, like yesterday i spent more time reading through a cookbook then i did on actually working on the tablerunner! oh well, i'll work on the tablerunner today while jordan's at a playdate to make up for not working on it more yesterday. 


up next for me: making pancakes, waffles, franks and beans, and more crocheting and sewing! it's gonna be a busy weekend and really, i can't wait! and below are the finished scarves, mine is folded in half since it's long and jordan's is the pink one, obviously!