dolin bliss

Canning and Quilt Crazy

Over the long holiday weekend I wanted to get some canning done, with the veggies I bought at the farmer's market and also some veggies from my garden.

 

All of the above were picked fresh from my crazy prolific garden.  I canned the beets, zucchini, some of the jalapenos, lemon cucumbers and crystal apple cucumbers.  I didn't want to waste the beet greens, so we sauteed those on Sunday night.  YUM.  I had big plans to can all afternoon, but our little Domino pup, decided to eat a black widow spider, that I had poisoned the night before.  So we spent the afternoon at the vet.  He is just fine and never even showed any signs of being sick, but I would rather be safe than sorry.  Once we got back home I settled into my crazy night of making pickled vegetables.  I was up until midnight getting all of this done.  I know, what a wild way to spend your Saturday night!  

Everything turned out pretty good, but I am in love with the green beans and the beets.  I used this recipe for the green beans from Sunset Magazine.  Soooo good.  I want to make more of them.  Sunset has a great guide to canning, if you have never done it before or just rusty at it.  This guide has been very useful to me lately.

For the past nine weeks, every Monday night I have been going to a quilt workshop that I planned in partnership with the San Jose Museum of Quilts and Textiles and Santa Clara Valley Quilt Association.  We were trying out this workshop for the first time with participants from Next Door Solutions to Domestic Violence.  There have been 5 women who have come every week to work on making their own quilt.  Most of them have never sewn before, so this has been a great skill building exercise for them.  It has been great fun for all involved and we are all almost finished with our quilts (I got to make one too).  

 

Here is a little peak at mine:

 I will post pictures of the finished quilts, in the next few weeks.  We have a few more sessions to go, before everyone will be done.  

New Adventures in Canning!

Last week was my first try at canning and I had a blast.  We were overflowing with zucchini, lemon cucumbers and crystal apple cucumbers.  I needed a way to preserve it all so it didn't go to waste.  A few weeks ago I found a 1964 copy of The Farm Journal Freezing and Canning Cookbook at a thrift store for a buck.  Then my sweetie found the Burpee Way of Home Canning booklet for .25 cents.  The stars were aligned for my first canning experience.  I tried two different recipes, a dill pickle one and the sweeter pickled zucchini one.  They were both a great success when I had some friends over to try them out.  But the favorite was the pickled zucchini.  Here it is:

I did the dilled version and made these adjustments: 

-only used 1 1/4 cup sugar

-added about 6 jalapenos, sliced into rings

-used a bunch of fresh dill instead of the dill seeds

They are so good!  My zucchini plants in the garden aren't producing much right now so I went to my local farmers market this morning to get more supplies.

I got a about 7lbs of squash, 1 bunch of dill tops, 4 bunches of dill and a couple of red bell peppers all for canning.  The rest is ready for eating now.  Fun Fun.  

If anyone has some great canning/pickling recipes, please feel free to share.  

I really haven't been totally slacking off!

Want a little peak into what we have been up to here at Lulubliss...

-Growing leek and jalapeno seedlings.

- More leeks and tomato seedlings.  

- Make my own worm compost bin!  I was too cheap to buy one for $80, so I made this one for $12.  Here is a video on how to do it.  I have some bricks set inside the bottom one, so the top one (where 400 of my new wormy pets live) has some air circulation.

- My first contribution to feed our wiggly worms.

As I am sure you have already guessed, the gardening bug has bitten me.  So here is what I asked my sweet husband to help me with while he was on his spring break.

- Marking the territory for our two raised beds.

- We had to dig up all the grass, where the beds are going.

- Fantastic 10'x3'x1' bed my sweetie made for me, in place.  Mikey has to check it out.  

I missed taking a picture of the next couple of steps.  We dug out a good portion of the dirt pictured above, then lined the sides of the bed with some heavy duty plastic sheeting, laid down 1/2" grid wire mesh on bottom (to keep the gophers out) and finally filled it with some "veggie mix" soil (that was so stinky).

- Bed #1 all planted.  There are zucchini, lemon cucumbers, bell peppers, tomatoes, basil, jalapenos, leeks, spinach, carrots, radish and a variety of lettuces all in this one bed!  I am so excited for things to really get growing.  We had to put up the little wire fence up to keep the dogs out, they were eating the stinky manure dirt (yuck).  Domino still tries to sneak a taste now and then.

- Here are both beds, the covered back bed measures 12'x3'x1'.  We have to keep it covered and unplanted until we can make the other doggie fence.  I am going to plant more peppers, lettuce, herbs and persian cucumbers in this bed.  

Just one of those weeks!

We all have had them.  Start off the week on the right foot, ready to conquer everything on your To Do list... Then it all comes to a halt, because you get sick.  Ugh, I am so tired of feeling sick and tired.  As of today I am on the mend, but I think that allergy season is now in full swing with a vengeance, so I am very sniffly and I look like Rudolf the red nosed reindeer.  Oh yeah, I had to deal with two dead birds in our yard this week too!  I stumbled out of bed on Wednesday to go to the store and post office.  On my way out the front door I see a hawk on our front lawn with a headless pigeon in it's mouth (not a great thing to see when you are feeling well, but being sick it was almost to much to handle).  The hawk got scared and flew away, but left the pigeon on our lawn.  Great!  Then yesterday I see Domino playing with something in the back yard and go out to investigate.  Get up close to him and he has a dead bird in his mouth!  Again, YUCK.  

Enough of my pity party.

I have been meaning to post about this for awhile, but I just got around to mending the hole in the cushion cover.  Remember the cushion cover I made way back in November... Well I was sitting on it with Domino, rubbing his belly (forgetting that I had put Advantage on him earlier that day).  When he got up the nasty Advantage stuff had eaten a hole in the cushion cover fabric!  

Okay, grated this fabric is vintage repurposed drapes (and I have no idea what the fiber content is), but for this stuff to eat a hole in it!?!  What was it doing to us and our dogs?  I haven't used it since, but now need help finding a good natural remedy to rid the dogs of fleas.  

I did patch the cushion cover.  Luckily, I had underlined the drapery fabric with a layer of cotton.  So I sewed a straight stitch around the hole:

Then cut away the torn fabric:

Zigzagged the raw edges:

I had some left over drapery fabric, so I cut out a piece of it, trying to match up the pattern.  I applied sticky back fusible webbing to the patch, to hold it in place while I topstitched around the patch edges:

Viola!  A mended cushion cover:

So if any of you out there have a natural way to get rid of fleas on your pet, please let me know.  Right now, they are getting bathed weekly and I am putting eucalyptus oil on their collars.  I am also washing their bedding often, vacuuming often and spraying where they hang out with a mixture of apple cider vinegar, water and a few drops of the eucalyptus oil a few times a week.  But would love to know if any of you have better ideas.  

Some sprucing up going on.

Since all of my extra time is now not going towards our wedding, I can now focus on the smaller details of the house, mainly decorating on the cheap.  I got this little rattan love seat from my last apartment.  It was left behind, really dirty and had no cushions.  But I needed seating and thought it could be spruced up, even made cute.  So I bought some foam and cut it to size for the seat and the back of the love seat, that is where my project got derailed.  I had planned on covering the foam cushions with custom made slipcovers, and other projects just kept coming first.  So I was covering the ugly foam with blankets or fabric, until I could finally sew the slipcovers.  Well the time has come for the slipcovers!  

Here is a before of the sad looking little love seat:

And here is the much more attractive love seat:

I used some off white home decor fabric I had laying around (I actually don't remember where I got it), and I made the piping from a chocolate brown table cloth that I had.  All three pieces have zippers either at the bottom or the back, so the covers can be easily washed.  I am very happy with how it turned out, now I am just wondering if I want to paint the rattan a different color?!?  I guess I will wait and see how the other living room decorating goes.  

Color inspiration for my studio

Since my life is now getting back to normal, after all the wedding festivities, I can start thinking about my studio.   My studio now was set up very quickly so I could work on my wedding dress, but it really needs to be redecorated and organized.  So I am starting with my color inspiration... Granted these aren't the greatest pictures, but you get the gist:

This is a beautiful vintage scarf that my friend Lynn gave me years ago.  She gave it to me because the sewing theme, reminded her of me and I have treasured it ever since.  I want to paint the walls of the studio the pale turquoise background color, all the trim white and then decorate with the pops of other colors in the scarf.  

Here is a close up the dressform and little emery strawberry:

And a close up of the center sewing machine, with some hooks and eyes and a thimble:

I just got another very important tool for my studio...

(image from the Apple site)

Yes, a MacBook Pro!!! I am so excited, this is my first ever computer that I have bought and I feel so grown up.  So now I can finally download my Adobe software that I have missed since leaving the corporate job.  I am going through a bit of a learning curve with this computer, since I have only used PC's before, but it is fun.

FINALLY SOME PROGRESS!

kitchen, originally uploaded by lulubliss.

As you can see we got the new kitchen floor in and it looks beautiful! I LOVE IT! It was a hell of a lot work getting that old floor out, but it was worth it, seeing how good this looks. There are many more pictures of what we have been up two in the last few weeks at my home renovation flickr set, check them out.

So sorry for lack of posts. My dad extended his stay one week, so we could get more done and we have been wiped out everyday. This weekend was the first time I had an actual day off in a few weeks.

Next week I will be working on my toile for the couture class I will be taking starting on May 5th. I will post about that process.

I have never been so SORE!!!

Oh my goodness, I never thought tearing up 70 year old linoleum would be such back breaking work!  I am wiped out and sore all over.  We have been working on the kitchen floor for the past 3 days about 4-5 hours each day and we aren't even close to done. 

Here is me just getting started:

The iron on the tin foil is supposed to heat up and loosen the adhesive, then you scape it up.  Sounds so easy, but NOOOO, this stuff is evil and doesn't want to come up. 

This is after one day of work on the floor (I didn't show what Matthew has done, he started working on the other side of the kitchen):

Not such a huge dent in the 300 square feet of tile we have to rip up!  BTW, I bought the cheapy $5 knee pads, seen in the above image, thinking that they would be fine.  Don't do it, if you want to save your knee's!  Today, I broke down and bought the $20 one's and I feel like my knee's are on pillows:

I heart these fancy pants gel lined knee pads!  If you know me, you would have never thought I would get excited about great knee pads.  I guess this is a sign that my life is really changing. I am entering my new domestic DIY part of my life and I do enjoy it, even if it is hard work and a huge learning curve.  Here are my other two lifesavers:

A new sharper scraper and the pink canvas/leather gloves (a girl has got to save her hands from blisters). 

The progress is slow and I won't bore you with the pictures of daily progress, but it will be a while before we will have it all ripped up.  We just picked up our brand new linoleum tiles yesterday!  They are going to look great but right now they are just waiting, ready for us to lay them down, but it will be a couple of weeks.

I will keep you posted. 

What have I been up to?

Not crafting, that's for sure. 

I know my images aren't the greatest, but you can get a sense of what types of things we have been doing for the past week.  We have started renovating our 1922 house and the first room on my list was the living/dining room that was remodeled in the late 1960's or early 1970's.  This room made my skin crawl.  Take a look for yourself:

This is a good view of the real pretty light wood paneling and the lovely gold drapes that came with the house.  You can get a peak at the fancy popcorn ceiling and gold shag carpeting.  I know you want some!

Another image of the funkiness that was our living room.  You can see in a bit of the hardwood floor that we discovered when we took up a corner of the carpeting.  The lamp also came with the house, the previous owner's love gold!

And they did the unthinkable... tiled over perfectly fine hardwood.  We ripped this stuff out too!

The below image is the night before the guys came to remove the popcorn ceiling, we were taking out all the paneling and drapes.

We had a helper... Mikey is enjoying his last night of running in circles on the carpet.  He is still a bit depressed that it is gone.

Ahhh.. the after shot!  Such a big improvement, even with the glue marks on the walls.  We kept the gold flowers up (again they came with the house), I think Matthew is a bit attached to them.  Mikey is testing out the slipperiness of the hardwood floors.  You can also see on the bottom left side of the the picture, what looks like a patch in the hardwood, that is where the original built-in cabinet was (which we still have and will re-install in the same place).  We also learned where the french doors went, that are in the basement... this huge room (28' by 14') used to be two separate rooms separated with the french doors.  I would love to rebuild the wall and install them again, but that will have to wait for now.

Here is my next project... pulling up the original linoleum in the kitchen and laundry room.  I love the color and pattern of this stuff, but it is just crumbling under our feet and needs to be replaced.  We are going to put in new tile linoleum, in a yellow and black checkerboard pattern.  The new linoleum will match our yellow and black tiled counter tops (that are original).

Quick Little Vintage Tidbit...

I recently found this vintage pattern beauty, on one of my thrifting outings:

I love love love the styling of the A version!  The tie at the front waist and the tucks at the curved shoulder seam, these type of details you don't see on many modern designs. I want to make it in something soft and drapey.  I still need to actually check to see if the pattern has all it's pieces.  There have been many a times that I picked up some fabulous pattern and to find out later it is missing pieces.  Not really a big problem for me, since I am a pattern maker.  But it can be frustrating, if it is  important piece/s that go missing. 

One the home renovating front... the biggest issues I have with our house is living/dining room that was redone in the late 60's or early 70's.  It has all the ugliness of home decorating from that time period:

-faux wood paneling in a light beige/off white combo

-gold shag carpeting

-matching gold drapes with sheers and antiqued gold curtain rods

-and the topper, A FREAKING POPCORN CEILING!

While doing a little preliminary research on where to start with this room remodel we came upon this forum.  Just gotta love a forum out there uniting all the popcorn ceiling haters.  I learned a lot, but it has also brought up more questions.  I am pretty sure (based on the time period the popcorn was put up), that we have the type with asbestos, so the question is to test or not to test it.  If we test it and it comes back positive for asbestos then we only have to options, have it removed by asbestos abatement folks (very spendy) or remove it our selves (there are very detailed instructions and a lot of safety stuff to deal with).  We haven't decided what we are going to do yet, but I am leaning towards doing it ourselves, with the proper equipment and disposal, it could all be done in a few days. 

I will post some pictures of our oh so dated living room soon.