Wordless Wednesday: Chocolate Peanut Butter Balls

Three hours = 152 CPBBs.

(Please excuse the camera quality of my phone)

Very sore, but worth it

What a weekend I had. Saturday was stressful and exciting. I finally got to skate with my Mobsters. We didn't win our bout but we worked so damn hard. The final score was 111 to 136 with the Rats going to the championship. We were neck and neck most of the night. I landed on my butt pretty good on the polished cement. I feel like an old lady when I get up, but I'm a badass old lady! :) I didn't get home till 2am from the after party. I love spending time with the PRD ladies.

Yesterday was a lot more relaxed. I only left the house once to get my ingredients for dinner. I spent the whole day knitting for my commission project and only stopped to cook. Zeus stayed loyally at my side, waiting for attention and keeping me warm. He is so sweet. He's helping me build my light box right now.

For dinner I made a broccoli and cheese calzone. It was sooooo good. It was my first calzone ever. I'm a big kid now! I based it on a simple recipe that I found online.

Broccoli and Cheese Calzone
1 clove garlic
1 head of Broccoli
Romano cheese
Mozzerella cheese
Olive oil
Pizza dough

I chopped up the garlic and threw it in the pan with enough olive oil to spread across the pan. Then I added the broccoli. I sauteed it all till the broccoli was tender. Preheat the oven to whatever your pizza dough says. I put mine at 450. Once that was done, I set the broccoli aside and rolled out the pizza dough. Once I got it to about 12 inches across I laid it out on a cookie sheet. I added a bit of romano and then a bunch of mozzarella to the broccoli. Sorry I eyeballed it, not measured it. After that was mixed well I just plopped it all on the pizza dough and folded the dough over the filling. A few pinches on the edge and it was ready to cook. I left it to cook for 15 min on the timer and checked every 5 min or so to see if it was golden brown enough for me.

Such a good dinner with a minimal amount of work and a great way to end the weekend. Back to working on what will be my next blog post. :)

The cycle of my life: Chaos, Vacation, Chaos

Life was so busy before I went camping. There was chocolate peanut butter balls to make, a squid to felt and sew a pocket on, a Derbytaunt Ball to attend and packing to do. Needless to say, I needed my camping weekend after all the chaos.

Here's the remaining chocolate peanut butter balls that I had saved for the boy. =)

Below is the lovely Squid (click to see larger photo). The felting was a little off but I think he came out great. There is a pocket inside but I failed to take a photo of it. I love this guy though, and Val was so excited to receive it. I love reactions like her's. Before she goes to India I will be reciving an adorable crop top hoodie.

I had a blast at the ball, but I still don't have a working digital camera so I don't have any good photos from the event. There was fabulous music and everyone looked great. I love the PRD girls. I really need to get that manual camera out. Cindy gave it to me, but I fear wasting film and lack photo skills. We'll see. Maybe there will be camera adventure posts.

My time at Forest Folk was amazing. Charlie and I got there Tuesday but it was raining too much to set up. That led us to a cozy and dry evening at the lovely house of Bruce and Jess. We all hung out, enjoyed stew made by Cate and made notes on the registration. We had to make sure that the important procedures like strip searches were not forgotten for certain attendees. =)

The rest of the week went by with maybe a sprinkle here and there. The weather was beautiful, the music never stopped, everyone was full of great food, they were cooled off by the frigid water, and warmed up by the roaring fire in the hearth. It really doesn't get any better than that. My stressed melted away when I was there. It was exactly what I, and many others, needed.

I'm glad I had a beautiful time there since now my life is about to become chaos for a short time. I arrived home finding out that I will have to move out by July 1st. My roommate can't stay anymore and I refuse to let another stranger in my place to F-up my finances. I don't need that kind of bull so off we go. We'll see where my new home will be. The fun never ends.

Somebody having a case of the Mondays?

It feels like the weekend just goes way too fast. I think I already have a case of the Mondays. I've been pretty creative and busy this week. Probably going to hibernate before the Derbytaunt ball and my camping trip.

I updated my derby helmet to have my name and my number.

I got to be undead.

I baked about 10 dozen oatmeal raisin cookies for Forest Folk.

I spent some time with my new niece Gretchen while I caught my runaway tent on this blustery day.

And I gessoed (if that's a word) a couple of pages. I plan on having some ready for when I'm camping in case the mood strikes me, which it tends to when I'm surrounded by creative people.

I ended my weekend with finally seeing Practical Magic and starting to watch True Blood. I'm glad Charlie showed me where the local video store is on the east side. Sadly though, my computer won't play any DVDs and I don't feel like fiddling with it. I have plenty more creative things coming up during my hybernation. :) Now I sleep.

Spring means new projects!

The weekend was amazing. The Forest Folk and I celebrated a special B-day and the first day of spring the only way we know how. A SLEEP OVER! As of late I fail at taking pictures since I have too much fun and forget about my camera. I will show you one picture though that I did post on my FB the other day. I was happily making vegetable pot pies for the event and my oven really sucks. It wasn't crisping up the top at all so after they cooked for a while I decided to try out my broiler. I had it in for the the right amount of time, but just like the rest of the oven it's not even. The oven definitely received much profanity for the turnout shown below. It is totally lucky that everyone loved the pies despite the mishap. I don't even know if it knows how lucky it is.

On to crafty update. Now that my knitting commission is done, and I won't take another for a while, I can now continue to work on stuff for the store I need a banner for. Today was a good night to start since I was winding down after a day of work and an amazing weekend with the lovely folks from CT.

What did I do for the next creative endeavor? Well I made my own yarn...out of a T-shirt! It was pretty fun. It was really easy. I found a tutorial here. I found it to be really simple, but I recommend using some good fabric scissors. I intend to pick up a better pair for this. Today was a test on just a plain white t-shirt. I didn't want to ruin one of the pretty ones I got from Bruce yesterday. I didn't take too many pics since the tutorial has great ones. Below is the chaos as I just started to tug the strip into tubes. It worked so easily. The directions couldn't be any better. It turned out well even while I was watching season 1 of Rome.

After all the tugging I was able to wind it up into a nice ball. I didn't take a size comparison photo, but I can next time.

I can't wait to make more. After some final felting of the swatch for my art trade I will make some with the different colored t-shirts I got. One day I'll learn how to spin but till then I'll recycle for mother earth with some old t-shirts. :) I have a couple of projects in mind, for the cotton yarn, that I'll sell online. I love when the creative juices are flowing!

Valentine's Day weekend

(Published a little late because I was procrastinating on photos. Enjoy!)

In preparation of the amazing weekend to be had, I made a montrous amount of cookies. I was afraid to count how many till I was done, and it was rightly so. I ended up making 13 dozen adorable heart shaped cookies with royal icing. They were chocolate sugar cookies. The recipe can be found here. I brought 3 dozen to work and the rest were eaten at the lovely party I attended this past weekend. I did the minimum amount of water in the icing but I should have added it more slowly so I would use less and make it easier to draw with. I highly recommend the recipe though. The icing is way more pink than this looks.

I recently went to an antique store and found awesome V-day cards which I failed to bring to my Valentine. Oh well. He did get Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtle cookies. He's been sick lately too so we don't need to jinx him with these kick ass cards. I love the Curiosities store in Providence. They have such cute and random things there. You can click to enlarge them since I didn't get a chance to crop them. =) They are the front and back of each.

Saturday I met up with my Valentine in Hartford and we headed to Bruce and Jess's house in Oxford. They are lucky enough to rent a house on a beautiful farm in Oxford. This just moved in and it was their housewarming party. We had a cozy party with about 30 people of our Forest Folk Tribe. They all are really great people and our parties are always the best. We had great lasagna, cupcakes, rib roast, peirogies, cookies, quiche, bacon, and alcohol. =) We never are left hungry or thirsty at these events.

Something hilarious happened at about 6am. I was innocently tiptoeing to the bathroom on an important pee mission. It was pitch black in the living room and I was relying on shadows. Well shadows failed me because my toes met up with a dark box with a few bottles on top of it. My silent trip wasn't silent for long. The bottles fell right into a ceramic jug announcing me. I scared the crap out of sleeping innocent bystanders along with myself. Thankfully I made it to the bathroom in time. Sorry to Nici for the Charley Horse you endured afterwards.

The next day we all had breakfast and lounged around. Then Bruce fired up the tractor and we went for a beautiful winter hay ride. There were pheasant and hawk sightings. It was weird seeing the campground we party on all covered in a blanket of snow. It was so peaceful and quiet. I can't wait to return to our site in May. On the way back to the house we stopped and visited sheep with their lambs and pigs of all sizes. Finally back at the house we had a choice of homemade beef or chicken soup. A perfect ending to the weekend. (Again they are thumbnailed.  Hover over the photo for a description. Just click to see a medium sized version or go to my flickr page for the largest.)

I couldn't have had a better weekend anywhere else. For now I'll relax here in hartford ill it's back to derby practice and work. Life is good.