Sundae Funday on a Sunday

 

Can't you just taste the chocolate and cherry?  It looks too good for words to me.  I wouldn't know though because when I finished the pictures, I gave it to my husband to eat.  Yes, it is a magic shell sauce; you can tell it has begun to harden because most of it has a matte finish.  I made the sauce and it is very simple to make.  It has a more intense chocolate flavor than commercial sauce.  The directions are from Cook's Illustrated magazine.  

You do use coconut oil and contrary to the information on its label, it is a cholesterol and fat nightmare.  But coconut oil is what makes the commercial magic shell sauce harden and it is what makes this sauce harden.  Coconut oil solidifies at a very low temperature.  The coconut oil I purchased was solidified.  My sauce was liquid in the house until the temperature dropped to the 70's F; then it too solidified in its jar.  I zapped it in the microwave for a couple seconds to be able to drizzle it on the ice cream. 

Using 2 parts coconut oil and 3 parts baking chocolate, melt them together in a microwave proof dish at 50% power.  Stop the microwave and stir the melting chocolate and coconut oil together several times during the melting process.  Add a pinch of salt to the melted mixture and continue to stir it in.  

I used bittersweet baking chocolate; you could use any other type of baking chocolate or chocolate chips.  You could probably use butterscotch chips.  The flavor with bittersweet chocolate is divine, truly one of the basic food groups.  

Because 2 tablespoons equal 1 ounce, I used 4 tablespoons of solid coconut oil and 3 ounces of baking chocolate.  

I encourage you to try it.  It is a lot of fun and tastes good too. 

Wedding Sampler

For the wedding sampler, I will be selecting from the displayed materials.  I am not yet certain how many of them I will use.  The fabric swatch above the spools of Trebizond is the color of the bridesmaids' dresses.  The bride will be using accents of peacock feathers.  The materials are on top of the fabric that I will use for the sampler.  It is ivory and so is the bride's dress.  The bride's mother and I are extremely excited about the colors. 

We have not seen the buck lately.  Some of the neighbors and I are wondering about him and hope that he has not been killed or even injured or harmed. 

The hummingbirds are back.  We think that we are seeing the grown up young of this year.  A couple weeks ago, a female oriole was eating out of one of the hummingbird feeders while a hummingbird was eating out of the opposite side of it.  Since the hummingbirds are very territorial, I wonder if the hummingbird was trying to tell the oriole this was not the place for her. 

Wasps are attracted to the hummingbird feeders.  One day a hummingbird swooped in.  I wanted to tell it that the wasp was probably too big to eat but I think the hummingbird was trying to chase the wasp away from the feeder.  The cardinal vines were so successful attracting hummingbirds last summer that I planted more seeds this summer.  The vines are growing very vigorously; I hope they produce flowers soon. 

Speaking of vines, our vine crops, squash, cucumbers, pumpkins, and melons, are producing very vigorous vines.  When we stand outside, it seems like we can see them growing.  The melon vines are growing up on one of the hummingbird feeders.  Even the tomato vines are growing all over; we are cutting them back to try to encourage the plants to produce tomatoes.  We are now beginning to harvest tomatoes but they are a little small.  I think that we no longer have to buy tomatoes.  We have even had BLT's for lunch. 

Charity Stocking Update

Yes, I have been working on the charity stocking. 

Yes, I am currently working on the horse's patoot.  I had hoped to have it a little further along just for propriety sake.  There is a monumental amount of backstitching in this section and I seriously wonder if I will have the stocking done in time. 

As I work on the stocking, I will also be working on a wedding sampler for the daughter of friends.  I honestly do not know how I will manage both together but I have to do it. 

Tomorrow, I think I will post a picture of the materials I will be using for the wedding sampler. 

Tuesday I took a bulk mailing for our church to the post office.  Significant amounts of our information did not agree with what the post office thought.  It was an extremely hot, humid day.  I really did not need to deal with that kind of problem at the same time.  The post office could not find where the problem was but said that I could send it for their calculated amount which is 6 pounds heavier than ours.  I said that I would bring it back and we would then decide what to do with it.  The good thing about that day was that on the way home I passed the shop where I could get the remainder of supplies I need for the sampler.  I had rounded up a lot in my stash but still need some specific items.  Now that I have them, I think they round out the threads very well. 

Exchange Gifts

Wednesday was the target day for the VSCyberstitchers July Exchange.  Christine was my giftee.  She posted on her blog about the gift I sent.  You can see what she said here.  

I posted a picture of the gift a couple weeks ago but will repost it now.

Deb had my name.  Here is what she made for me.

She included the card that is in the foreground.  She told me that she did not write in it so that I could send it to someone else.  Is that sweet or is that sweet?
Not shown here are a couple other gifts, a bottle of Stitchers Lotion and a nice little combination ruler, thread counter, thread holder.  I feel royally spoiled. 

Progress on Stocking for Charity Auction

Finally I was able to trick Blogger into uploading and posting my picture right side up.  It is coming along very well.  I should be able to have it finished by 1 November. 

Our weather is awful.  At 11:00 a.m., it is 89°F; the dew point is 65°F.  The heat index is 91°F.  It would be fairly accurate to say we are a tad uncomfortable.  I need to hang the sheets out on the line; hopefully they will dry still today.  ;-) 

Summer Saturday Fun

We went to a smoothie tasting event/fund raiser.  Eight tenants of an international market place prepared nine different smoothies for participants to taste and then vote for their favorite.  Participants were encouraged to wear aloha shirts because the sponsors would be looking for interesting shirts.   To tell the truth, most of the shirts looked ordinary.  It did not surprise me when people running the event wanted to take pictures of us.  They said our shirts looked very nice.  I told them that I made the shirts.  They said, "Oh, wow!"

I made Roger's shirt for our vacation in Hawaii in 2000.  I call the shirt Blue Hawaii.

I made the shirt that I am wearing for one of our sons.  At the time I was extremely ill and made a major mistake as I assembled it.  I did not know what I had done at the time and manipulated the pieces of the shirt to fit correctly and hang correctly which it does do.  I entered it in the State Fair that year and took home a Third Place; that was as high as the judges were willing to go on it because it had short sleeves, not long sleeves and because it was a casual, cotton shirt.  It was after the fair that I realized what I had done wrong.  Then everything that I had to do to the shirt made sense.  It still amazes me that you cannot tell how seriously flawed the shirt is. 

Our favorite smoothie was a strawberry, vanilla yogurt smoothie.  We also liked a mango smoothie with bubble tea and a non-alcoholic pina colada smoothie.  I was quite surprised that the date vanilla smoothie tasted as good as it did.

I would love to show you my progress on the charity stocking but blogger is refusing to upload and post the picture horizontally and is turning it on its side.  When I can convince blogger to upload and post correctly, I will show you my progress. 

An account of what I have been doing for the past week

We have new pictures of the eight-point buck.  I am beginning to think that perhaps we ought to give him a name. 

This is what he looked like last week.  For comparison, I will post the first picture we took of him a couple weeks ago.  Take a look at the antlers. 

In response to Christine's comment about stitching the red and white band of the stocking cuff, yes, it is very tedious.  I stitched it diagonal 3-stitch row by diagonal 3-stitch row changing the color for each row.  The second time I stitched it below the lettering, it was equally as tedious.  The band with the diamonds and hearts is almost as tedious.  I sincerely hope that once I finish the cuff and get to the main part of the design it will not be tedious and I will enjoy the stitching. 

Unfortunately I have not been able to stitch on the stocking very much this week.  On Friday a week ago, we discovered that we had lost track of two baptisms which were scheduled for last Sunday.  My stitching time this week was devoted to adding the names and dates on those banners and finishing them.  I understand that it may have been fortunate that the banner for one of the families was not ready.  Apparently the older siblings were very sticky from s'mores.  I probably would have spent this past week trying to get the chocolate and sticky off the banner. 

This has been an extremely busy and overloaded week.  One of the major points was loosing power as a result of a tree downed by a very heavy thunderstorm.  It turned out much better than we thought it would.  Power was out for only about 3 hours.  A little earlier that same day, our clothes washer quit working.  I was waiting for it to develop a second problem which would then make it economically feasible to replace it.  Through a series of very fortunate coincidences we were able to get the new one that I wanted and have it delivered the next day.  Laundry went along very well with just a slight delay until the power went out.  We discovered that the other side of the freeway had power so we ordered Chinese take out for dinner. 

Rewards were in order yesterday for having survived an extremely trying week.  We were free yesterday afternoon and I was able to talk Roger into taking me to an estate sale that attracted my fancy.  It was supposed to have sewing and quilting items but I had seen in the online directory of contents pictures of some bowls and a plate.  I fell in love with them.  Realistically I knew the probability of seeing them late in the afternoon of even the first day was going to be slim.  But an hour before the close of the first day of the sale, we were there and so were they.  Not only were they there but the prices were reduced by half because it was late in the day and the people running the sale wanted to clear things out.  When I saw the plate I wanted, I tucked it under my arm while I went around checking everything.  I was willing to leave the set of bowls because I did not want to pay for a set of twelve when I only wanted one.  When I discovered that the prices were reduced, I went back upstairs to claim the bowls; for that price, I felt I could find some place to keep them. 

Here is the plate.  It is lustreware and so it is a little difficult to show it off to you in a picture.  It is not a valuable plate but it is hand painted.  The lavender/orchid band is the color of one of my Siberian irises.  Maybe that is why I fell in love with it. 

Here are three of the twelve bowls.  They are not valuable porcelain but I fell in love with them at first sight of the online picture.  The designs are hand painted and are not transfers.  The bowls have three little feet and you know how much I love plates and bowls with three feet.  I did not know they had three feet until I saw them in person.  We really do not know what one would do with twelve of them.  They are not soup bowls or fruit dishes.  I supposed that they could be used as ice cream bowls but they seem a little large for that.  One of our sons thought they might be finger bowls but they are too big for that.  I really only need one and I could use it as a candy bowl or decorative piece.  I wonder what I can do with eleven more of them.


All of the major highways and freeways we needed to drive the 50 miles to the sale were seriously affected by construction.  There were significant lane closings and traffic restrictions.  Several of the secondary roads we had to travel were also detoured for construction.  In MN, we have two main seasons, nine months of winter and three months of road construction.  That certainly seemed to be true yesterday. 



I did find a book published in the 1980's with some crochet stitches, designs, and patterns.  It is extremely interesting.  It has directions to make the pattern stitch that I have been using to make baby hats.