confessions and an evening concert

I have a confession to make...I'm kind of a nosy mail opener.


Yes, sometimes I open mail that doesn't belong to me. It works to
my advantage at my job, because I am the chief mail opener and I
usually get a lot of fun packages at work. I open all of our mail at
home (except when it looks special and is addressed to Jon). Plus, Jon
knows me well enough to send mail that I shouldn't see to his work
office.



 The most awful thing that I've ever done was when I was in high
school. There was a thick envelope from the Detroit Symphony addressed
to my mom. Thinking that they must have addressed it to the wrong
person (I was the musician in our family, of course), I opened it
thinking that it was just a sales brochure. But, it wasn't a sales
brochure. It was a large stack of tickets. My mom walked in the room
just in time to scold me, yell "Rebekah" in a deeply disappointed
manner and grab the envelope away from me.



Why was it such a big deal?

I had just opened up my Christmas present of season tickets to the symphony two months early. Yikes!

She
threatened to return the tickets, but she didn't and I was able to
enjoy lots of great concerts with the Detroit Symphony that year.


 

Ever since then, I've tried to go to a handful of concerts each
year. We've been really fortunate to get great deals on tickets through
friends and discount organizations. These past two years, we have
participated in the 37/11 series. If you're under 37 years old, you can
get tickets to selected shows for $11 each. Jon bought tickets to the
first concert of the series this year and, for some reason, the tickets
were only $3.50 each. That's $7.00 total! That's less than a yard of
fabric!

The best part about it was our seat location...first row of the
dress circle and our favorite seats in the house. Tickets in the seats
where we sat normally go for $75 each. Ever since he scored the
tickets, anything that we buy is automatically referred to in DSO
amounts. "that's five times as much as tickets to the DSO" or "man,
this lunch is good, but we could have gone to see the DSO twice for
what we paid for this."

So, we got to hear our favorite symphony and watch our favorite musician friends for only $7.00.  The featured artist of the evening was, Sharon Isbin.  She is incredibly talented. I loved hearing her playing her guitar. She sounded like buttah! And, she played one of my favorite pieces, Fantasia por un gentilhombre by Rodrigo. As much as I love playing it on the flute, I have to admit that it was made for the guitar and sounds so much better on a stringed instrument.

 

One day...one day, I will pull out my guitar and work up those calluses again! Hearing her play was such an inspiration!

Day of the Dead Embroidery

My embroidery has fallen to the wayside as I've gotten into knitting more. I've got lots of patterns from sublime stitching waiting to be stitched up and I recently found this fun embroidery site, Badbird (via QuiltDad). I heart the buffalo pattern and would love to stitch that up someday.

I have a hard time doing embroidery because I'm just not sure what to do with the finished piece. Do you have any suggestions for me for cute, finished embroidery projects? So far, I've incorporated them into a quilt, made a pillow and made some fabric backed tea towels.

Day of the Dead is almost here and I've been seeing lots of fun DOTD embroidery popping up on blogs. Here's a collection of some of my favorite pieces:

 

1. Memento Mori necklace, 2. Marigold Sugar Skull, 3. Front - Day of the Dead mirror case, 4. details, 5. Day of the Dead Portrait, 6. Sugar Skull Brooch, 7. Day of the Dead Magnets, 8. Sugar Skull Softie Stack, 9. WIP

And here is my favorite Day of the Dead themed embroidery project of all time:

Happy Birthday, Rachel!

 
(my early photography days: Rachel on my mom's lap, sitting next to our middle sister, Ruth)

Hard to believe that it's been 20 years since we met you at the hospital for the first time!

 
And, now, we both share a similar love of ice cream birthday cake and strawberry shortcake ice cream bars from the ice cream truck.

kaleidoscope quilt

 

I saw this quilt in a Crate & Barrel catalog last year. At the time it was out of my price range (and easily re-createable). I just went to check to see if it was still available and now it's half off and out of stock. Bummer.

I think this is going to turn into my winter quilt project when I'm on break from school (yay December 16th!).

It's fitting that it's a quilt made out of solid colors...my favorite quilts always seem to be with plain, solid fabric (you've caught onto my secret, Michelle!). I think I'll be purchasing the fabric from this site (thanks, Melissa, for the link).

Right now Jon is moaning in the background..."do we really need another quilt for our bed?" (I kid!)

Fall Blogger's Quilt Festival

Thank you, Amy, for hosting this quilt festival! It's so much fun to click through all of the links for great quilting inspiration!

Here's my favorite quilt (of the moment):

I based this quilt on a pattern from Amy Butler's quilt patterns cd and selected colors to match my living room. This is my favorite color scheme of all time, so I love seeing whenever I walk through our living room throughout the day. Originally, I was going to save time by stippling it instead of doing straight line quilting, but I opted for cross-hatch quilting at the last minute and I love how it turned out.

This quilt is the perfect weight and size for afternoon naps and reading on the couch...which basically has been my life for the last few months while I'm working away on schoolwork.

Here are the details:

Original pre-cut block size:

8" x 8"

Four yards of fabric in four different colors are needed (1 yard each color). You will be able to cut 20 blocks from each color.

Then, the 8" blocks are cut in half on the diagonal (40 triangles of each color).

Sew
the triangles together to opposing colors. You will have 80 blocks
total. Arrange the blocks in 8 columns and ten rows and sew together.

Binding (for 2.5" strips): 1/2 yard

Backing: 4 yards

The quilt is 54" x 68"

(Psst: Here's my other favorite quilt from the spring blogger's quilt festival)

Soup Swap: Mediterranean Lentil Soup with Spinach (slow cooker recipe)

Thanks to Jessica for doing the soup swap again this fall! Check out her site for lots of links to tried and true soup recipes.

 

Here's a delicious recipe from my new, favorite slow cooker vegetarian soup cookbook, 125 best Vegetarian Slow Cooker recipes. I checked out lots of vegetarian soup and slow cooker cookbooks from the library and this one was my favorite, by far.

 

Mediterranean Lentil Soup with Spinach (slow cooker recipe)

It doesn't look pretty, but it is such a delicious, thick and hearty stew that's perfect for fall and winter months.

Ingredients:
1 cup green lentils
1 TBS vegetable oil
2 onions, chopped
2 stalks celery, chopped
2 large carrots, peeled and chopped
1 clove minced garlic
1 tsp cumin OR 1 tsp toasted cumin seed, crushed
zest of one lemon
1 potato, peeled and grated
6 cups of vegetable stock
8oz fresh spinach leaves
2 TBS fresh lemon juice

Directions:

Place lentils in a colander and rinse thoroughly with cold water.

Heat oil over medium heat. Cook onions, celery, and carrots, stirring until softened for about 5 minutes. Add garlic cumin and lemon zest and cook for 1 minute.  Transfer mixture to slow cooker, add lentils, shredded potato and stock.

Cover and cook on low for 8-10 hours or on high for 4-6 hours. When vegetables are tender, add spinach and lemon juice. Cover and cook on high for 20 minutes until spinach is cooked and mixture is hot and bubbling.

My notes:

I just realized that I should have chopped the spinach before adding it to the soup. I just placed whole spinach leaves into the soup. It's a little hard to chew whole, cooked spinach, so I would definitely recommend chopping it first.

The book recommends toasted cumin seeds. I've tried both toasted seeds and regular cumin and the toasted, crushed seeds were definitely tastier. I was surprised that I could tell the difference, but I'd definitely stick with the toasted, crushed cumin seeds.

root vegetables

I should have posted questions about the loom and quilt sooner...you guys were so quick to answer my call for help! Thanks to Patty for coming up with the directions to the loom. And thanks to John (Quilt Dad) and Becky for directing me to the name and directions for making the block. It's called a Flying Swallow, and there are directions for making it right here.

• • •

I had some fun in the kitchen today when I set out to use up a bundle of root vegetables hanging out in our vegetable drawer this week. I usually stick to recipes closely, but this time I got a little bit creative. I roasted some turnips, carrots, onions, garlic and parsnips with some olive oil, rosemary, thyme and sage at 450 degrees for about an hour. Then I added the vegetables to  6 cups of vegetable stock and some canned whole tomatoes. Once everything was boiling, I pureed it with my immersion blender and let it simmer for a while.

The soup was delicious! It has lots of flavor and depth to it. Many thanks to Jessica for introducing me to the roasted root vegetable soup that I based this pot of soup on.

And, while I had some peeled turnips on my hands, I made up a batch of turnip fries. Melissa blogged about these fries this summer and I finally got around to making some myself. I highly modified her recipe due to lack of the spices it called for in my collection. I covered the fries in smoked paprika, aleppo pepper and a dash of turmeric. Turnips are one of my favorite vegetables and this batch of fries were really delicious.