reFresh: California Salad

Jon and I stumbled across this cookbook, reFresh, while we were in Toronto in March. We bought it as a souvenir of our trip and headed to the Fresh restaurant chain featured in the book for dinner.

The restaurant food was delicious and it looks like most of the dishes on the menu are included in the book, too. You can check out the menu here to get a peak of the types of dishes in the book. The book has lots of great sauce and dressing recipes too.

The cookbook has the most interesting set of salad recipes I have seen so far and this recipe, by far, is my favorite.

California Salad

Ingredients:
Spring Mix
Sliced Hearts of Palm
Sliced Avocado
Toasted Pecans
White Beans & Spinach Pesto
Marinated Tofu
Tofu Marinade
3 1/2 cups Tofu
1/2 cup Apple cider vinegar
3/4 cup Tamari
1/4 cup Water
1 1/2 TBS. Sunflower Oil
Mix and marinate a block of cubed tofu for at least 1 hour

bee blocks

Here are my belated bee blocks for last month:



Audrie's blocks for BEE beautiful
Audrie set us up with lots of pre-cut pieces to make a block from the Material Obsession 2 book (her directions are here). I was worried about getting this block to work out after hearing lots of complaints from the other group members. I took things slowly and I only had to rip out one seam, so there are no complaints from me for these blocks. :)


Wendy's block for Common Threads
She wanted us to make a lady block that represented us. The block layout and overall quilt pattern is from the Material Obsession book.  So I made a tall person wearing a sweater (that's a swatch of superwash sock yarn that I used for the boxy sweater).

Amanda's block for Common Threads
Amanda sent us this gorgeous teal fabric and told us to make a large block with pluses and minuses. You can see some of the other blocks she's made here. I had a hard time remembering how quilt blocks were constructed so there are some extra seams in the block. Once I got into the groove, I was able to make everything fit together, though.


PS. Aren't the stamps Wendy used on my envelope the coolest?

reading time

I started a long to-read list while I was doing my library practicum last semester and as soon as I was finished with school I placed a bunch of books on hold. Now, I've been playing a game with myself by trying to read these books before they're due.

I've also been more diligent in keeping my goodreads page up to date. You can friend me and see what I've been reading by clicking on the goodreads link in the sidebar of my website.


It's fun to sit on the couch with Jon and the kitties at night and lounge and read instead of researching or writing papers on my computer.

PS. My Kandinsky quilt was featured on the blog, quiltporn, on Sunday. Wendy has been featuring gorgeous quilts on her blog. Check it out!

graduation!

I walked in my graduation ceremony last Friday. It was a little on the long side, but it was filled with some fun and emotional moments for me so I'm glad I participated.



I have to thank Jon for being so supportive to me throughout these past two years. He has been such a champ putting up with me being gone for school or studying all the time and he always had time for a "you can do this" pep talk when I was feeling down.


Here is one of my dad's signature poses. A "look off into the distance so this doesn't look posed" shot. (We've been teasing him for the last 20 years about his photography).

baby shower

I've had requests left and right from family and friends to update this blog, so here goes.

I spent this past week recovering from school and crafty commitments and now I'm wondering how in the world I got everything done that I got done while I was in school. It feels really nice to come home and read a book on the couch instead of working on a project. Now I'm wondering if I'll be able to finish my list of projects to finish by the end of May. It's starting to look doubtful.

I spent most of last week throwing a baby shower for my friend, Chikage. She's expecting a baby girl in the next few weeks, so I...

...made some bibs and burp rags. The bibs are backed with white flannel and the burp rags are quilting cotton backed with chenille and are 12"x18".


...sewed a nursing cover (tutorial here)


and knitted a Berry Baby hat (ravelry link here).

For the shower, my mom decorated the cutest cake ever...

And, she also decorated these sugar cutout cookies for shower gifts. (Jon and I helped, but my mom did all of the detail work on these).


The shower turned out so well and we were able to get everything finished within 2 hours because Chikage kept everyone on track with her super fast/turbo speed gift opening.


Now we just have to wait a few more weeks to see the new baby. I can't wait!

Kandinsky Quilt

My friend, Shannon, is organizing the Recreate Project, an art show and silent auction to benefit Invisible Children and To Write Love on Her Arms. She put out a call to artists to contribute a project that recreates a famous work of art. All pieces included in the show will be auctioned off in a silent auction and the proceeds will go to both charities.

I spent a while trying to come up with a painting to recreate and I finally settled on this painting, Colour Study: Squares with Concentric Circles, by Wassily Kandinsky



I recreated this painting with a stack of Kona charm squares from Pink Chalk Fabrics and a few extra solids from my stash.  



I attached the circles with machine applique. I had originally tried to use my free motion foot to do the applique but found that the regular presser foot worked better and allowed me to feed the fabric to stitch in a circular motion.




The final size is 18" x 13.5". I stitched in the ditch between the squares and binded it with a solid gray from the stash.



PS. Shannon writes the most delicious food blog, Bread and Jam. Check it out here.

Owl Quilt

I finished the quilt top for this back in November (see here) and it's been languishing in my overstuffed craft closet ever since. I finally bit the bullet and sent it out to be quilted a few weeks ago (best decision ever).


The long arm quilter did a beautiful job and it was so nice to be able to sew on the binding while admiring her work.


I am officially in love with this color scheme...I started dreaming about redecorating our living room in these rich colors. Then, I came to and realized it would be too much work. (phew!)


Here are the construction details: 
The blocks in this quilt are 5". I used 10 fat quarters from the Timeless Treasures Apple
Collection and 3.5 yards of fabric for the top. I was able to cut 12 five inch squares out of each fat quarter, for a total of 120 squares that were then cut in half. I cut the green fabric into 5" wide strips and cut out 120 squares from each strip and used the remaining fabric for a border.

The quilt is 14 blocks wide and 16 blocks tall with a 5" border of sashing around the edge. The final quilt is 72" x 81"


The kitties have been taking turns sleeping on it in this accidental, makeshift hammock I made. There has already been one fight (with growling and hissing) over who gets to sleep on it.

Nuku nuku won this time!