I've been a bad blogger

No, really, I have. My re-found love of my kindle has kept me reading for days...

And lately, I've been reading Joanne Fluke's Hannah Swensen Mysteries. If you like murder mysteries and an easy read, they might be for you... The main character is a baker (and I'm realizing how lame and ridiculous it seems as I type it) and the author lists recipes in the book, much like the Leslie Meier Lucy Stone Series, if you've read those.

So I've been baking. I made an awesome batch of peanut butter cookies from my favorite cookbook:

And they were gone so quickly, I never had a chance to take a picture.

So, I decided to make my FAVORITE cookies in the whole wide world: ginger molasses cookies.

I was so excited to finally have the ingredients and the bf wanted to help. Somehow, I got distracted... It happens to me a lot when I'm baking. My mom can attest to my many baking fails growing up. But I'd been on such a roll and I don't think I'd messed anything up in at least a year.

But, I only added half the flour needed.

So they looked less like this:

Courtesy of my mom @ Red Gate Farm

And more like this:

They taste fine, but they aren't the cookies I grew up eating.

I think I'll have to give it another go today.

On a better note, the table is DONE!

It looks quite different in different light, so I did one photo with and one without flash:

With flash

Without flash

With Miss Freyja playing fetch in the background

I love the new chairs. Not only are they much more comfortable than the old ones, but I don't feel like my chin is on the table when I'm eating.

And the chairs still need some work done...

Sorry it's so blurry; my camera didn't want to focus (and you can see we really do live in a basement!). But some of the joints need to be re-glued....

And I'd like to recover and re-pad the seats... Maybe something from tonicliving.com?

I haven't decided anything on that front yet.

Freyja seems to feel right at home at the table....

Maybe the salt and pepper shakers are at fault?

And an EVEN BETTER note, Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows Part 1 came out on blu-ray yesterday, so we picked it up at Costco.

For those of you who don't know, I'm a big Harry Potter nerd. 

Lucky for me, it's stormy outside. I'll be on the couch in my sweats for the next few hours dorking out to my favorite guilty pleasure if you need me :)

Oh how I miss sewing projects...

Completed family tree quilt

Before I struck out on my own (well, maybe not my own, but moved out and went to college), I was known for various other craft skills besides knitting... For my senior culminating project (which I think my mom explains pretty well here), I even sewed a full sized quilt with an appliquéd tree to represent my own family tree I had been researching and photos that had been taken throughout my life.

But after that project and god only knows how many hours, I'd never wanted to see a sewing machine or an unsewn, unfinished piece of fabric again...

That was over four years ago; now I find myself itching to make things... Nothing as complicated as that quilt (it makes me want to run my fingers under the needle of a sewing machine just thinking about it), but I'd just like to be able to do some of the things I want to do with a sewing machine:

1) Our basement apartment is essentially a bachelor pad... Other than the fact that there is a basket full of yarn and knitting supplies, I'm not really sure you would know a female lives here. When I moved out here, I essentially did so in 4 suitcases and have had my mother mail me other things as I need them; there wasn't any room for anything decorative.

2) Although I've never been much of a decorator like my mom, let alone a seasonal one, I've had the itch lately to do something to spruce the place up for fall... I also have to consider that thanksgiving, the Canadian one, is quickly approaching; yet by the looks of things here, you'd never know it. And Christmas... it takes time to prepare and make things for a holiday that big.

Freyja, getting ready for winter

3) I'd like to make some stuff for my cute little pup. No, not clothes. When it comes to animals wearing clothes, I believe they should only be worn when necessary for warmth. But I found this cute pattern for a dog    bed that would be easy to make it the perfect size for her. My dog is a snuggler, but I can't snuggle all of the time and it would be nice if she had a little place of her own that fits her well and isn't covered in atrocious fabric or insanely overpriced.

4) I hate hand sewing. It doesn't matter if it's joining seams on a knitting project or repairing or hemming a piece of clothing, I hate it. On knitting projects, it's not that it takes a lot of time and patience, I just don't think I'm that good at it. My seams end up bulky and don't really stretch, no matter what stitch I use. In a conversation with my grandma last winter, she suggested just using a machine. That's fine by me. As far as repairing and hemming things goes, My hand stitching looks atrocious. I know sewing by hand is a past time and an art form, but I think god endowed us with the knowledge to invent sewing machines for a reason.

Really, there are probably a billion other reasons an sewing machine would be practical... And maybe, at the same time, I am turning into my mother (one of the craftiest people I know); but I don't really think that's a bad thing at all.

And although this project (pictured left) is a no-sew project, I'm pretty excited to try this one out :)