Super Mario Galaxy

Did you know you can have a second person when you play super Mario galaxy?
Well we just found out, man that makes playing so much easier! The second person is like a phantom hand that can collect star bits and stop most of the enemies (we learned that you can’t fire balls or a Boss).

So cool, between work and school and Patrick’s business, all our free time is going to playing this game. Every new level amazes me. I didn’t know a game could be so fun! Especially a non-RPG game. I which they will have another RPG paper Mario… those were so fun.

Sorry I have had no crafty updates. Hopefully soon! ^_^

Wiiiiiiiiiiii

Me and Patrick got a wii together. ^_^ Yay. Now we are cool wii owners like everyone else.

Patrick thinks my definition of cool is a little off but I think it's just right. ;-)

At home

I stayed home from work today because my leg hurt a lot.

Ouch!

Tonight I went to the emergency room because I cut my leg. I was trying to get a plate for dinner when the plate fell and broke on the kitchen counter and shattered and one of the peices fell to the floor and cut my leg pretty deep.

Went the emergency room, took 3 hours to get stitches. Got 9 stitches.

Human Footprint

http://channel.nationalgeographic.com/channel/human-footprint/



I found this website online and this is pretty cool. You should check it out and see how much of all these things you consume and what other factors goes along with it.

When you eat an egg you're not just eating an egg, you're also consume the gas the truck used to deliver that egg, the coal used to generate electricity for its refrigeration, and the resources used to boil, fry or poach that egg - that's your human footprint - how much of th world you use in your lifetime.

Easy Sausage Strata

Easy Sausage Strata
Ingredients
1 pound pork sausage
6 (1 ounce) slices bread, cubed
2 cups shredded Cheddar cheese
6 eggs
2 cups milk
1 teaspoon salt
1 teaspoon ground dry mustard

Directions
Place sausage in a large, deep skillet. Cook over medium-high heat until evenly brown. Drain, and set aside.

Layer bread cubes, sausage, and Cheddar cheese in a lightly greased 7×11 inch baking dish. In a bowl, beat together the eggs, milk, salt, and mustard. Pour the egg mixture over the bread cube mixture. Cover, and refrigerate at least 8 hours or overnight.
Remove the casserole from the refrigerator 30 minutes before baking. Preheat oven to 350 degrees F (175 degrees C).

Bake 50 to 60 minutes in the preheated oven, or until a knife inserted in the center comes out clean. Let stand 10 minutes before serving.

I put in mushrooms too just 8 ozs or a package of them pre-cut.

I have heard some people substituting bacon for the sausage before, and it’s really good. Also you could get really creative in adding ingredients like onions or ham and broccoli. The leftovers make a really good breakfast on the day after Christmas, too.

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Here is a picture of mine

I made it the night before and it was in the fridge for about 10 hours before I put it in the oven for about 55 minutes and then I let it cool for 10 minutes.

Just out of the oven.



On the plate after cooling for 10 minutes. ^_^



Super yummy. ^_^

Dragon Puzzle

So a few weeks ago I got a puzzle. I was window shopping with Patrick and saw this dragon puzzle.

Here is the progress the first week.



Second week.



Third week.



Beginning of last night.



A little later that night.



Finally done!! ^_^



I really like puzzles maybe I'll get some more. *smiles*

Double Sided Tape

During the Lone Star Baby Quilt class, Connie showed us a little tip. If you stick double sided tape on your ruler and stick it to the fabric, it works great to make sure that the ruler doesn’t slip!

It works out wonderfully. I personally haven’t tried it since I didn’t need to fussy cut my fabric but it worked beautifully for everyone that did use it.

Now the trick is you have to be careful taking removing the fabric from the tape because you don’t want to stretch it out too much.

I think this is great because I know Omnigrid made non-slip rulers but they are bright green, sort of harsh on the eyes you know? So being able to make your plain yellow Omnigrid ruler non-slip is really awesome!

Copia's Garden

Copia had a very small garden but it was nice. It was basically four very small plots of land with rather pretty trees. We were lucky that it was a nice day.













Here are me and my high school friends. I wonder if we are going to start having reunions now because of this. ^_^

Copia

There was a lot to write about from Napa so there will be a lot of future blogs about it. Mostly to cover all the pictures I took there! ^_^



In Napa with my friends we went to Copia in Napa. It was a pretty cool place here's a picture.



We signed up for a wine pairing class but we had some time to kill so we look around the gift shop for a bit. I found some neat chocolates! They were tea infused chocolates. I got the dark chocolate infused with earl gray and the while chocolate infused with chamemile. One of my friends got this small German chocolate bar.




Me and my friend shared pieces from each. They were all super yummy.

The food and wine pair course was really well done also. We got a glass of white and red wine with things like a slice of lemon, potato chips, chocolate, rasins, rosemary and salt. It was interesting to learn about the smell and color of wine and how these different flavors can affect it. The biggest point of this was to just drink what you like with what you eat, it doesn't matter what's right and what's wrong just do what you want because it's you that's eating it. ^_^ I thought that was a good message.

The Cat's Meow

I started this so long ago! Finally it's almost done. This is the top and so all I need is the border (which is going to be the black print) and then I'll have this quilt top done!



I learned a lot from this quilt, I don't think before this I would have put orange and purple together... I mean who puts purple and orange together? Crazy people I thought! Well purple and orange is really good together! I'm pretty happy with this quilt, and I'm even more happy that it's almost done!

You can get this pattern at http://www.debbiescreativemoments.com/free-patterns.html

Taylor's Automatic Refresher

I went to Napa this weekend with some of my high school friends. It was sort of a reunion sort of thing.

Anyways we went to Taylor's Automatic Refresher while we were there.

Here is the pager they gave me when I ordered my meal. I got a classic burger and some onion rings.



Here is my food, the burger is made with an egg bun.




All my friends got some sort of side dish to share, I got the onion rings to share. The above is chili fries, garlic friends and sweet potato fries. All of it was super yummy!

I got an ice tea also I thought the cup was interesting, it says "This cup is made from corn, environmentally sustainable and 100% compostable." I thought that was cool! It was just like plastic, everywhere should change their plastic containers to this.

Anyways when I got back home I thought this was so good that it should be Zagat rated so I checked my book and it was there!

Here is what my Zagat book said.

Food : 21/30
Decor : 12/30
Service : 14/30
Cost : 17 dollars (this usually includes cost of a drink also) My meal was 15 bucks for the burger onion rings and ice tea.

I would suggest this to anyone that wants a quick meal while they are in Napa! I sort of wished we went somewhere more "fancy" but this was super good anyways. ^_^

Diva Bag

Candice, Cheri, Connie and Me met at Holly's place to work on the diva bag.

I had to work that day but came later. Connie already cut her peices and Cheri was cutting hers. So I decided to work on my mystery quilt.

The diva bag takes a lot of work to cut out! Candice started cutting her's after Cheri and that was like 2+ hours!

I was really into trying to finish my mystery quilt so I didn't start cutting yet. I think I'm going to cut mine before the next diva bag meeting. Which is next next Friday. Woohoo!

I'll have pictures of my mystery quilt up later this week!

Chinchillas

The paper piece Chinchillas!

I was looking through old pictures on my computer and I thought I would post them here.

So back in May 2007, I helped Holly with her chinchilla rescue project. Holly is really loves chinchillas and loves helping to rescues them. So she found a chinchilla paper-piecing pattern (paper-piecing is a type of quilting) and she wanted the whole group to help out to make some so they can use it for a fundraiser to support chinchilla rescue.

So I went over to her place with my sewing machine and paper-pieced for about 7 hours. These are the ones that I made.






They each took about 2.5 hours to make. So I was half way done with my third (the purple) one before I had to leave. It was pretty fun. The hardest part is the eyes; if you look closely I had to sew like 7 pieces of small fabric around the eye.

See quilting is cool. Well I think it’s cool and that’s all that really matters.

Later I heard from Holly even though the purple one was a little silly because it was really purple, someone at the fundraiser actually stole that one! Haha someone really must have liked purple chinchillas but they should have bought instead of take it so that money could be use to save the animals they adore!! ^_^

Sadness!

This weekend Patrick was helping with my quilting stuff and he was a little clumsy and broke my long ruler (6" x 24"), he was just carrying too much and it fell down and broke! I was kind of upset because me and that ruler have been through a lot together!

I thought it was my fault since I asked Patrick to help me carry it, but I was still pretty sad about it. Patrick felt really bad and offered to replace, even though I said it was okay. I mean rulers are expensive!

This is what he got me.



So he got me more than just the ruler! That's very sweet! Even though I lost my original ruler, I think this one is a great replacement. Now when I quilt I will remember how sweet Patrick is! ^_^

Stuffing Chicken Casserole

Spray a 9x9 pan with cooking spray and preheat the oven to 350.

In a big bowl, mix together:

1 cup cooked chicken, chopped

1 can whole kernel corn, drained

1 cup herb seasoned stuffing mix

1/2 cup chopped onion

1-1/2 t. dried parsley flakes.

In a separate small bowl, mix until smooth:

1 cup milk
1 beaten egg

1/2 cup mayonnaise (light)

Now pour the small bowl contents into the large bowl which has the stuffing in it. When combined, pour into the 9x9 pan. Bake for about 30 minutes in the 350 degree preheated oven.

From - http://www.mom-mom.com/stuffing_chicken_casserole.htm

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I made this last night, but modified it just a little bit.

I just put in a whole can of corn which was about little less than 2 cups and a whole can of string beans.

I also used non-light mayonnaise, I wasn't about buy light mayonnaise just for this.

Also I just bought a whole roastery chicken and just cut that up and put in this dish. I’m going to use the rest in another dish. I heard you can use the left over (the bones and such) to make a nice soup, but I haven’t tried that yet but maybe someday I will.

Even with these small modifiations, it turned out really well. I didn't know how well bake mayonnaise would taste so that's why I was a little worried about it but it's actually really good.

I brought some left overs to work today and my co-workers love how it smells!

This is a pretty quick and easy dish, I plan to make again some day in the future, and I am blogging about it mainly to have a place to store this recipe to that time.

So I hope everyone tries this out for themselves or maybe I'll bring it to one of Holly's pot lucks in the future. ;-)