Over the Kitchen Counter: Angie's Place for Cooking and Crafts

Reese's Chewy Chocolate Cookies

I adore Reese's Peanut Butter Cups so when I saw my friend Maureen's post about the Chewy Chocolate Cookie version, I knew trying the recipe was a done-deal! Once I bought the peanut butter chips (something I don't stock because of DH's nut allergy) I made the batch right away.

It is a very stiff cookie batter so I'm glad I have my Kitchen-Aid mixer to do all the work. There is the addition of cocoa powder to the flour mixture so it is a bit dry and hard to mix. I used a small ice cream scoop to portion out the cookie dough on my professional sheet pans, which I absolutely love because I can get so many cookies baked off at one time with zero sticking and super easy cleanup. They were an awesome purchase.

Maureen warned not to over bake the cookies and she was totally correct. You would never believe that they are done and will set up after they come out of the oven in only 9 minutes but they will! After sitting on the cooling rack they become firm enough to pick up yet still moist and soft on the inside.

I don't think I need to tell you how delicious the chocolate and peanut butter combination is. I ate several cookies off the rack - a bit messy when hot from the oven but oh-so-scrumptious in their melty goodness. Wrapping the cooled batch in foil and promptly freezing them in bags for my kids was the only way to put a halt to the binge (and avoid killing poor hubby who cannot resist a warm baked treat long enough to verify it isn't full of nuts!).

You can get the recipe from Hershey, HERE...and thanks, Maureen, for the super yummy recipe share.

Revlon 915 Creme Brulee

My all-time favourite brownish O.P.I. nail polish (so old there's no name or number on the bottle any more) is getting really difficult to apply, despite using polish thinner and a good shaking. I am so sad...but I went to the store and compared my nails to all the bottles of metallic-y browns to find a new one.

The closest I got was this Revlon 915 Creme Brulee. Bottle next to bottle it didn't look too different, just a bit lighter. I was very excited to do my mani and see if it could become my new replacement fave. While the polish went on great and is very pretty unto itself, I was a little disappointed in terms of a dupe for my O.P.I. It came out quite a bit lighter and looks more like a gold polish than a brown. It's like a light tan gold - very wearable and goes nicely with my skin tone. (It looks really gold in the pic but it is actually not a true gold).

I will keep an eye out when I find an O.P.I. salon and see if there is anything closer in shade to my old bottle (I guess I will have to carry it around with me) but for now I will definitely keep Creme Brulee in my rotation.

When I was a teenager I had beautiful, long nails. My secret back then was vitamin e cream (or ointment) and it really worked to moisturize my nails and allow them to heal and grow stronger. I don't know why I suddenly remembered that product but I promptly bought a pot of it at the drugstore to give it a try once again. The harsh winter temperatures, cold, and dry air have really taken a toll on the condition of my nails. I've only been using the cream twice a day for about a week and I already notice a huge improvement. The cream goes on a little greasy but quickly absorbs in a couple minutes. My nails are looking much better when I take the polish off - healthy and pink, with white tips and no dryness. It has been a long while since I've had any length beyond the tips of my fingers but I'm hoping the vitamin e cream will do the trick. It's also helping with my very dry hands!

Vegas Scrapbook

We had a fun scrapbook night this weekend; I got a good start on my Vegas album Friday night with the ladies and finished it up on my own by Sunday. It is getting a little more difficult to pull together the pages with my very diminished paper supply but using an 8x8" album keeps the negative space on the layouts to a minimum. Still, I'm pretty determined to use up what I have before ordering any more designer paper. I am in need of tape runner though so I will give the new Creative Memories/Ahni & Zoe a small test purchase soon.

As usual, I added in memorabilia (tickets, business cards, and even the string that was wrapped around my Cake Boss cupcake box!) so those tidbits embellished the pages quite a bit on their own. I had a few title stickers and Smashbook tabs I could include and the rest of the decoration was simply layered scraps of paper. The whole album came together so well and I'm happy it's all done before our next trip.

Here are some sample layouts...

For the Rock Vault show spread I found an old paper stack in my stash called 'Rockstar' and it was perfect for a shiny foil, guitar, and skull background. I even cut out the name 'Rockstar' from the packaging and popped it up for a page title! 

 

 Here's my Cake Boss page and you can see the baker's twine in the photo and on the border!

 

 I have a couple shopping pages. I like them...pictures of things I want...AND things I don't! (Like a tablet case with a ferocious dog or the world's ugliest jacket).

Of course, I always scrapbook the restaurants and food! 

Even if I don't have any, or good quality, photos (like when you are not allowed to take pictures at a show but you quickly get a blurry snapshot at the end to prove you were there!), I scrap the page to remember the event. I took these really bad snaps of Olivia Newton-John but the layout still works, along with the tickets and my journaling to come, to mark the evening.

 

To finish off the album, I included pics of ceilings: from the gorgeous masterpiece of the Venetian to the psychedelic rock and lights of the Freemont Street Experience...and a little note on the back of my boarding pass - the perfect ending sentiment!

Raskog

I've been on the search for a while for a tall trolley in which to house my quilting tools, especially those I use when working on the frame. I like to have my magnetic pin bowl, mirror (to check under the rolled quilt for tension quality), snips, tweezers, bobbins, etc. at the ready but often don't want to leave the machine or frame to retrieve them off the counter.

I first imagined a hairdresser's cart - the one's where they keep the rollers and tints, but couldn't find one at (Canadian) Sally's Beauty or through my hairdresser. The storage trolleys at the discount store are drawers, not open baskets, and that wasn't what I wanted. I also was looking for something taller than one of those kitchen organizers and I preferred a quality construction rather than those plastic units usually seen. I eventually gave up and forgot about my search.

Then, as luck would have it, the other day I ended up re-visiting my old stamping favourite, Angie at Chic n Scratch. It has been ages since I was on her blog and ever since I packed up my Stampin' Up supplies and started quilting (funny enough, thanks to Angie's Flower Quilt), I lost touch with her. I discovered that Angie has been quilting again and started back-tracking through her posts to catch up with her newest quilt tops. One such post describes her love of the Ikea Raskog, a rolling trolley of open baskets! This was exactly what I was looking for. You can read the description at Ikea HERE. (As I added this link I was distressed to see the carts cost $29.99 in the U.S. Mine cost me $69.99!!!! No wonder she has 3 of them! It is very unfair that the same item should cost $40 more here).

Anyway, I ordered mine in dark grey and bought 2 Basket Inserts to keep things organized. Even though the order cost me just over $100 with shipping, I'm still very pleased and I love the cart. It's so well made and rolls nicely. The baskets are fairly deep and the unit is tall enough to reach while standing. The middle basket is adjustable and can be moved to a different position to accommodate taller items. (Hubby assembled mine and put it in the centre.) I will probably use the lower baskets for rulers and maybe over-flow fabric and the upper baskets with the inserts for smaller notions and often used tools.

DWR Progress: Binding

Yay! I'm finished the quilting on the Double Wedding Ring! I spread it out on the bed and it looks amazing. The small stippling really made the feathers pop and the quilting looks so even and balanced. I don't want to show you until I have it totally done.

I made the bias binding using the continuous tube method. It is a brilliant way of making bias binding and you get a lot of length already joined. However, I still find it confusing and awkward and it was especially cumbersome working with such a large starting square of 40". I had a hard time even cutting a square that big and wasn't sure I was even doing it all right but I ended up with a big pile of binding and it feels kind of stretchy so I guess that will work! It took me a while to cut the tube with scissors (of course, you can't use a rotary cutter for this method) and I think my Ginghers were so sharp I couldn't keep the cut on the line perfectly straight (the sharp blade was slicing before I could even engage the scissor action!). I found the Quilty video below very helpful while sewing the weird seams of the tube. Another great tip from one of my other quilting bible books is to put the tube around the end of an ironing board before cutting. It makes it easier (and prevents accidentally cutting through the bottom layer) to cut along the lines with the scissors.

It is going to take me a while to even sew the binding on the scallops since I will do one at a time, as recommended by Mimi Dietrich in the amazing Craftsy class Finishing Schools: Edges & Bindings, which has been SO helpful with all this. I've been re-watching the segment on my i-pad, gearing up for the process. Hand-stitching the binding to the back of the quilt will probably take me forever since I'm pretty slow and the quilt is SO big and heavy. Speaking of which, I'm pretty sure there is no way I will ever be able to wash it. The quilt weighs about 8 pounds (lighter than I thought...it sure feels like more when trying to move it under the machine needle!) but it would be a lot more when wet. I'm really scared to put it in a machine. I figured I would test it out with the 'quilt'/comforter (p.o.s. from the store, lol) that's currently on my bed and see how that fares first.

I trimmed up the sides of the quilt sandwich but didn't cut right to the scallops yet. I want to sew the binding on first (because the curved edges will be more stable) and then trim afterwards. Adhering to my tidy workshop resolution, I've already cut and sandwiched the scraps for free-motion warm-up samples and tension testers. I think that's a great use of would-be trash and I don't have to stop and make a new sandwich every time before I quilt. Saves time, landfill, and good fabric! 

Janome Long Quilting Guide Set

It's here! I just got my Janome Long Quilting Guide Set for use with my 3160 & 7700 machines. The short bar that came with my models works well for lines close together but I really struggled when I wanted 2" or more between my rows of straight-line quilting (as seen on the outer border of my Frozen quilts, for example). I also had to improvise when using the stitch line to the left of the foot as a reference - the short bar is only shaped to glide along the previous stitches on the right of the foot and that makes it difficult to work from the centre of the quilt, out.

This set includes both a left and right side quilting bar and is exactly what I needed and wanted. Each bar simply slides in the hole on the back of the foot, either from the right or left side. They measure about 4-1/2" in length which should significantly increase the distance between my straight-line quilting. I still will have the issue of the bars slipping a bit on my open toe Accufeed foot but my solution of wrapping a bit of Glad Press 'n Seal around the bar seems to have done the trick. (I figured that if I couldn't make the hole tighter, I could make the bar smaller!) I don't encounter the problem on my closed-toe Accufeed foot or regular quilting feet on either machine.

I have really enjoyed both the look and texture of straight-line quilting (not to mention the ease of quilting and beautiful stitches), that I've done on several quilts now. I'm excited to use this guide bar set to make the job even easier and more precise. After all the free-motion work I did (and am continuing to do) on the Double Wedding Ring, I am totally ready for some walking foot quilting!

i-Phone Camera Fleck

So I've had a problem with my i-Phone camera since early December. I use my phone for almost all my photos, personal and for the blog, and of course was horrified to see a big, black fleck suddenly appear in all my pics. I took it to Apple and they opened it up and tried to clean it but determined the fleck was IN the camera lens itself and said it was most likely a scratch. I also thought it could be a crack from dropping my phone on occasion! The fleck was obvious enough in a regular shot but huge when I cropped or zoomed. Can you spot it??

It really sucked because the convenience of having a camera on me at all times has made me dependent on it and even though I have a 'good' camera, it's bulky (and expensive) and a pain to carry around. I'm not eligible for a phone upgrade under my contract for another year and a half so I figured I was really stuck with creatively situating the 'fleck' in dark areas of my photo compositions, editing it out, or switching to my Nikon for important subjects (which I did for blog posts & Christmas and it really does take fantastic pictures!).

Then, and you can file this under the 'must be living right' category, I think I dropped my phone again and the fleck disappeared! I suppose it was a hair or shaving of plastic or something and when the phone got knocked, it bounced out of view! I am so, so happy and thankful and truly relieved that I have my camera back in my front pocket. It is amazing how reliant I am on my i-Phone and I'm just so glad it is now back to being my camera too!

(Also around Christmas time my i-Pad stopped charging. I hadn't done anything differently and I'm super careful so I was irritated it wasn't working all of a sudden. I hadn't realized just how much I use it until the battery life was ticking away and I couldn't do anything to restore it. Apple said it would be an outrageous $200+ to replace the connector but I tried an off-sight place and they quoted $110. I left it there and within an hour or so they told me it was just a loose connection and the $35 pre-paid deposit was all it would cost and I was all set to go! I was really relieved then, too!).

Beef Stew with Parsley Dumplings

I made this Beef Stew with Parsley Dumplings because once again, the lure of a one-pot meal combined with my favourite, dumplings, was too hard to resist, especially on an extremely snowy weekend. We are completely buried in drifts at the moment so as I look through "The Dutch Oven Cookbook" I'm already thinking about which soup to make today. My new Dutch oven is getting a ton of use already!

This cookbook has a different approach to stew than my usual technique. The beef is slow-cooked in a flavourful sauce of wine, water, and beef broth, for two hours before even adding the veggies. The recipe calls for bouquet garni and herbes de Provence, both of which I had to substitute with what I had on hand (fresh thyme, rosemary, celery leaves and parsley, and dried marjoram, oregano, and peppercorns), which worked out just as well. After the slow bake in the oven I added the standard onions, carrots, and potatoes as listed, but I also included a bit of chopped garlic, peas and carrots. I found I definitely had to add more beef broth as the liquid had completely evaporated in my hot oven - but the meat was so tender at the end of the process.

The Parsley Dumplings were a tasty accompaniment (I usually bake up a batch of biscuits) and the cornmeal in the mix was an interesting twist. The flavour of the stew was amazing and we were all very satisfied with the outcome of this recipe.

The kids were home to enjoy the Super Bowl with us (along with the Frank's Red Hot Buffalo Chicken Dip (sooo good!), chili, cornbread, nachos, veggie sticks, and cherry cheesecake) but unfortunately, they are now snowed in and can't get back to their respective universities. (Nobody's crying too hard!). I guess we will hunker down and snack on the yummy leftovers!