Marvelous Monday Update 8/27/12

Did you miss me last week? Probably not, but that's OK! LOL  I didn't have much to post about so I decided to lump it all together for this week.

COOKING
Do you like dill pickles?  I do!  My mouth starts to water just thinking about them... literally!  I don't know why, but it always has.  The BF brought me a couple of large cucumbers that someone at work brought in.  I decided to make refrigerator dill pickles for the first time. 

My trip to the grocery store to buy fresh dill was interesting and disappointing.  Interesting in that I wandered to the produce section thinking to myself, "Where would the fresh dill be?"  At the same time I was thinking it, I smelled it!  So I wandered a bit and found it.  The disappointment?  It was the saddest selection of dill I have ever seen.  Half dead. Dried up.  For $2, I grabbed the best of the bunch and hurried home to try my hand at making the pickles.

The first 24 hours they looked like this:

There is no cooking involved in making these. After the first 24 hours, they "marinate" in the refrigerator for a few days.  The longer they marinate, the better they taste.  Mine turned out very tasty!

My coworker generously offered a box of white peaches to us at work.  She brought them in on my day off, so another coworker called to tell me.  The lady who brought them in said she was really happy that I came in to get them because she hates to have things go to waste.

I spent all day last Friday canning.....

12 pints of peaches

 

11 jars of peach preserves

 



3 mini peach cobblers

 

I had enough leftover that I also froze some peaches for a future peach cobbler, and gave my mom a small bag of peaches.  I thought I'd never get through that box!

GIVEAWAY
Victorian Motto Sampler is hosting another wonderful giveaway. Go check it out! Tell her Meari sent you. :)

STITCHY STUFF
I made more progress on Sampler aux Bouquets.  I'm to the halfway point now.  Woo Hoo!

Here's what it looked like before:

and now....

Other WIP photos can be seen HERE.



I had a start and a finish last week, but can't show pics until I get acknowledgement from the recipient.

 

I started a second project last week called Bluebird Welcome.  Here's a snippet of what it looks like so far:

 

 

Until next time,

 

TUSAL 8/20/12

I am late once again for the TUSAL! The Totally Useless SAL is coordinated by Daffycat.

This month, my jar features threads from:
• Japanese Garden
• Sampler aux Bouquets
• Fleurs et Papillons

Marvelous Monday Update 8/13/12

SUMMER OLYMPICS
About 6 months ago, the signal for NBC stopped reaching my TV.  I was really disappointed to miss the Olympics as the games are one of the very few sporting events I like to watch.  On Friday, the signal came back!  I was able to watch a few of the remaining events and the closing ceremonies.

Congratulations to the USA athletes on doing so well!

~ 46 Gold Medals  ~  29 Silver Medals  ~  29 Bronze Medals ~

FRUSTRATING MONTH
Last month, I decided to clean the carpet in my living room... The only room in my house that has carpet.  I sprayed the spots on my carpet, plugged in the Bissell cleaner.  I've had this carpet/upolstery cleaner for 11 years and it's worked beautifully.  This time, it was not meant to be.

When I pushed it forward, it made a horrible dragging sound. I went online and found a solution on the Bissell website. Easy enough. I did what it said.... the front end still drug across the carpet and made the terrible noise. I then called "Customer Care" and got a lady with a terrible accent. I told her the problem and explained what I did per the Bissell website. I kid you not, she told me to do what I just told her I did.... not just once but multiple times. Within 15 minutes, I was so frustrated that my sarcasm came out big time. Thirty minutes later and after being put on hold multiple times (When I say multiple, I mean in excess of 3 times), she told me that I needed to take it to an authorized service center. Since it's not under warranty, I asked her if there was going to be a fee (which I knew there would be). After she confirmed it, I said "Well then I can take it to ANY service center... not necessarily an authorized one!" Then I told her in no uncertain terms that I was not happy with the customer service seeing as I told her at the beginning of the phone call what I did according to their website and she could've told me to take it to a service center right then rather than waste and hour of my time having me take it apart only to do the same thing I already did. When she went into her canned speech about how customer care was doing their best.... I hung up on her. I was soooo frustrated at that point! So, I had spot pretreater all over my carpet and nothing to clean it up with.
Mission #1 - Failure.

After I told the tale of my woes to the BF, he looked at the carpet cleaner. I told him what I did. He took the same piece off and said there was a little clip on it that was broken. The little clip holds the piece up so it doesn't drag across the carpet. Funny thing is that I looked at buying a replacement part before I even called customer service! The part ended up costing $10.55 including shipping.  The Bissell site or "Customer Care" didn't say anything about replacing the part.... only removing it and re-installing it.

Fast forward a couple of weeks.  Part is installed and pretreater is once again sprayed on the carpeting.  Furniture extracted from living room.  I turned on the Bissell only to have water spraying out of the upolstery hose.  What the ?!?!  No matter what I tried, I couldn't get it to stop.  Most of you know that I'm pretty handy around the house so I was really disgusted at the Bissell. I pushed it in the corner of the kitchen and put the furniture back.  Again, pretreater all over and nothing to clean it up. Humph! 
Mission #2 - Failure.

The next time the BF came over, he started to look over the Bissell to try and figure out the problem. Before he dismantled it, a lightbulb went off above my head. Bzz--Bzzt!  Turns out I had the upolstery attachment in its holder with the sprayer button wedged against the side... which is why water sprayed all over! Duh... I felt so stupid. 

This brings me to last Friday.  Mission #3! I removed all the furniture from the living room and pulled out the Bissell again.  You know the routine by now.... More pretreater on the carpet. Some of the stains from the previous owners re-surfaced, and high traffic areas really needed it!

Mission #3 - Accomplished!!

PHOTO MIGRATION
Last week, I and many other Multiply users received a notice that the site will discontinue blog and photo hosting services as of December 1st.  It's really unfortunate as I really liked using the site for my photos.  After trying many free photo hosting sites (snapgalaxy, dotphoto, flickr, fotki, bravenet, photobucket, mejuba, picasa), I have decided to move my photos to Webshots.  It's got many of the same features Multiply had for their photo gallery.  I've been a member of WS since 2002, I just never used their site until now.

SEWING
A few weeks ago, the local thrift shop had a clothing sale... everything was $1.  I bought a 3-piece suit for $3.  It came with a blazer, skirt, and slacks -- nice additions for my work wardrobe.  The skirt was floor length... definitely needed to be shortened, and the slacks needed to be hemmed.  I knew I could hem the slacks, no problem.  Even though I've sewed clothing from scratch (in high school), I've never attempted major tailoring jobs.  I figured if I screwed it up, I was only out $3, right?  Right!

I have a pencil skirt that I just love, so I used it to pattern the skirt overhaul.  I shortened the sleeves on the jacket, and took in the jacket a bit.  I also put blind hems on the slacks.  Everything fits great now!

STITCHY STUFF
I finished up Part 4 of Fleurs et Papillions last week.  Here's what it looked like before:

and now it's 2/3 done:

Since I finished Part 4 of Fleurs, I switched projects and worked on Sampler aux Bouquets by Jardin Prive.  Here's what it looked like before:

A few days progress.... several motifs are complete:

Until next time,



What To Do with Leftovers

What do you do with the floss, thread, beads, and other elements you have left over from full project kits?

I have a DMC color card... the one with the *real* floss samples.  So, I match up leftover threads to the closest DMC color and then label a floss card and attach the floss.  Sometimes, I will use the floss for ornaments or other "smalls".  Recently, I used some floss from a kit to try out punch needle.

If I have leftover beads, I will put them in my bead storage containers to be used on other projects that I think they may look good with.  I always save the needles, too.

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