The World Surrounding Me

I just put up my manger scene, hand-carved by my uncle Larry circa 1991. No tree yet, but it’s starting to feel like Christmas. (though, it’s never “officially” the Christmas season at our house until we get uncle Joe’s letter and tub tub of popcorn!) This year, I set the nativity it directly under one [...]

Here’s Matt holding one of the pies we made for Thanksgiving dinner this year: buttermilk delight. It has a buttermilk interior with a coconut-chocolate-pecan topping. We also made an apple pie (or, as our friend Robert put it a “brown sugar pie”) – it turned out way too sweet. And, if that weren’t enough desserts, [...]

I felt like sewing tonight. None of my many quilts & bags in-progress inspired me, so I whipped this up – a little felt ninja (inspired by some pics I found while browsing aimlessly at flickr). Clearly it’s a good ninja, since Matt is scared of it (or something, judging from his expression). See a [...]

This weekend, we made Chicago-style Italian Beef sandwiches from scratch (roughly following this recipe). It’s quite the process! Didn’t turn out quite like Portillo’s, but it was still pretty good. The picture looks like a blob of meat, I know, but it tastes much better!

I came home last night and had the annual realization that it’s about time to put up the Christmas lights. Want to know why? It was dark out. Yes, shock of all shocks, it actually got DARK after the sun went down! Christmas lights would help this problem immensely, since ours go on a timer [...]

(Title translation: A recap of our Halloween adventures!) From Halloween 2009 Since we were invited to a Halloween party this year, Matt and I decided to make costumes. I’ve gotten good use out of the jack-o-lantern costume my mom sewed for me during my final year to go trick-or-treating when I was a teenager. But, [...]