Tea or Coffee?

"This is what we do."

"We have fun."

Life was so much simpler

in elementary school...

...a wonky drawing of a tall-ish

square-ish coffee mug...

and some fun quotes. It's

also an example of what happens

when you watercolor over a pen

drawing that you thought was

permanent, and then discover

that it's 'not quite permanent'

after all. But the fuzziness isn't

too unappealing...

...an observation about one

of my favorite British tv shows,

Midsomer Murders. (click on the

image for a larger view)

Linking up with the

T Tuesday gang over at

Altered Book Lover blog...

"We have fun."

Little Things on Journal Pages

Art deco motifs and poetry quotes

combine to create this 

art journal page, above.

I had several restaurant meals

this week, and the temptation to eat

too many high calorie foods can

sometimes be avoided by 

drawing my food!

These colorful tea bag wrappers

went onto a journal page.  The

cranberry muffin recipe is a good one!

You may notice that I've substituted

applesauce for the oil in the recipe.

Still tastes great and less calories.

Now is the time of year when I stock

up on bags of fresh cranberries and

put them in the freezer, then I have 

them to use in recipes most of the year.

Sharing my coffee cup and art with

the T Tuesday link party over at

Elizabeth's Altered Book Lover blog.

She's making homemade tea bags...

what are you creating today?

I am looking forward to receiving

 my copy of the book 

Art Journal Kickstarter, in which

I have had one of my art journal pages

published.  You can see the cover

of the book here.  I hope you will

check it out when it hits the store

shelves, which should be soon.

I love art journaling, can you tell?

Re-Posting a Favorite: T is for Tuesday, Q is for Quilt

Elizabeth invited us to look for 'buried treasure'
within our T Tuesday posts of the past, so I
am sharing an old favorite about the quilt I
made for my daughter and son-in-law.

I began working on this quilt in the summer of 2012...

A gift for the newlyweds, which they'll be lucky to receive

by their first anniversary in 2013!  (They did)

When I'm working on a quilt, I am careful to keep my

coffee cup (or any beverage) far away from the quilt!

The pattern is called Merry-Go-Round,

which I completely hand-pieced, and
 also hand-quilted..

It has bright happy colors, and includes many fabrics 

from the bride's past:  vintage fabrics from the bride's

great-grandmothers' stashes, fabrics from clothes 

that I sewed for her when she was little, and many

fabrics from the numerous baby quilts I've made.

I set the quilting frame up in my parents' home, as 

they have a bit more room, and it gave me an excuse

to go visit them and quilt!

My quilting stitches aren't exactly perfect,
or even tiny, but I tell myself that it's
 part of the 'charm of hand-made.'

I do attempt to keep them uniform in size.

In the block above, the red gingham was a dress that

I made for my daughter when she was in grade school.

A couple of the fabrics are from my maternal grandmother's

scraps, and one is even from a guitar case that I 

made in high school.  Yes, a quilted fabric guitar case.

Weird, I know. But I liked it much better than the

black 'cardboard' ones that you buy.  (I used

pre-quilted fabric on part of that guitar case, wasn't up to

hand-quilting in high school! and no, I don't

 really play guitar any more)

The cable quilting designs are marked in pencil and

then stitched.  The triangle and rectangle shapes are

just 'eyeballed.'  So they aren't always perfect...

It's challenging to get your shoulders, arms and hands

to 'turn' in the right direction to follow the quilting design.

I find I have to pace myself so as not to get sore muscles.

Many quilters have their quilt tops machine-quilted these

days, but I really enjoy hand quilting.  I don't exactly know

how many hours I have in this quilt. At least 500 hours, 

at a guess.  If I kept an accurate track of how long it takes,

I might never make another!

Here's how I have my morning 'mocha' coffee...

to your coffee cup add 1 heaping teaspoon of cocoa powder,

a pinch of salt, a teaspoon of vanilla, sweetener to taste,

(I use any Stevia sweetener)

and a splash of fat-free milk.  Yum!

Visit Bluebeard and Elizabeth at

Altered Book Lover

to see what others are doing on Tuesday!

Perhaps they are having Tea on Tuesday,

instead of coffee, like me...

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