Cookbook Club, Occasional Report

Tonight was Cookbook Club at the library. We did Martha Stewart's One Pot Meals. When I signed up for my recipe, I saw we were lacking desserts, so chose "Blender Chocolate Mousse." So easy! Only four ingredients--chocolate chips, sugar, milk, and egg whites.

I do contend that since you heat the milk in the pot and whiz everything in a blender before you put it in a container to chill, it's not exactly a one pot dish. But since it will take more time to wash the dishes than to whip up this mousse--which won a round of applause--it's worth making.

Many of the recipes were delicious--the mac and cheese, the chicken and mushrooms, the pot roast with sweet potatoes, the stuffed tomatoes--so the book looks like a keeper.

Bizzy Bizzy

Friday night was the opening night of the Friend's Book Sale. It's the members-only preview. Since I do membership, I get to play bouncer! (Of course, if you grease my palm--with membership money--I'll let you in.)

Then Saturday, after I ran my errands in the morning, I stopped back from 1-5 to take money and arrange the books. Traffic has been super light*, so the books won't be too picked over for today's $6 per bag book sale--which people apparently think we do for the whole weekend. Jeez, people it's a fundraiser not a cheap books for you celebration. While I was working, I found a few books (and DVDs) that I needed.

So not much stitching.

But one of my morning errands was to pick up Charland's threads at the LNS. And I found a few other things that I needed. What? I had a 20% off coupon!

* I vote that the Friends write to the Vatican and demand they make up our losses!

Honored

Tonight the libarians hosted a dinner for the volunteers. It was at the library; beautiful flowers and lovely touches tranformed the "Hub" (the medium size meeting room) into a little bistro. All the volunteers who came had a book dedicated to them "for [their] many hours of service to The Haverford Township Free Library." Mine is Bespotted: My Family's Love Affair with Thirty-eight Dalmatians. The Dude got I Must Say: My Life as a Humble Comedy Legend by Martin Short. Both lovely and appropriate.

I Made it Monday--The Masquerade Edition

This past weekend was my library's masquerade gala and silent auction. You've heard me complain enough about running the silent auction to know that I ran it again this year. I did have a lot of help, but somehow we ended up with fewer items and thus, lower returns. We did well, and I know the librarian who runs the homebound book delivery program will be happy with the money. And it's all profit since everything was donated. I guess I just want to do better year after year.

Anyway, I was left with the conundrum of how to wear a mask that would work with make-up and not obscure my vision too much. (You should watch people wearing masks try to drink out of a glass; you don't realize how important the ability to look down is to drinking!)

First, I want to apologize for not taking the picture before this project ended up at the bottom of a bag! The legs were a little wonky by the end of the night. These are a Martha Stewart design, and the project couldn't have been easier. You trace the spiderweb onto the glasses with white paint pen. (And the next time I do this, I will keep the orientation the same between lenses, although the cock-eyed look may add something special!) Then you hot glue chenille stems that you have trimmed at the ends. Eh, voila!

If your eyes are over 40, and you find you need a lot of extra light to see, you will find this mask a little dark, especially in the dim light of a gala. (Plus, those are not my prescription lenses for obvious reasons.) But putting them on and taking them off was easy (just ask the people who had masks tied to their heads) and it didn't mess with my hair or makeup. Altogether I think the project ran about $3--and you should see how much white paint and how many chenille stems I have left over.

The committee is thinking about The Great Gatsby as a theme for next year, which seems appropriate for a library. (I don't know why they haven't been doing book themes for years!) What other book themes could we do?

Day Seven: Bats in my Belfry

A couple of years ago, I saw this really neat specimen box on tatertots and jello {via One Pretty Thing}. It was a shadowbox with bats punched from Halloween scrapbooking paper.

(Maybe all those people who think I have so much patience because I cross-stitch are right. Here I am waiting two years for me to get myself together to make these cute projects. No instant gratification here!) 


First I punched and laid out my bats. I don't have a lot of Halloween paper, so I stuck with an orange, purple, and green color palette--the new official color palette of Halloween. (Orange and black is so 1972.) (I made some visual puns, like the tiger bat in the lower left and the tropical fruit bat in the upper left. Okay just two, what more do you need from me?)

The elusive tiger bat.

Then I pinned my specimens to the board. Then I went and checked the tutorial that Jen had put together. It turns out I was doing it all wrong. So I just kept doing what I was doing. Because I liked the idea of really being able to see the pins. And I hated the idea of using a grid to lay them out. I figure if they look pretty much gridded to me, they're going to look pretty much gridded to you too without all that geometry. (Also, she bought a regular frame and made it into a specimen box. I spent $10 on a shadowbox with a padded fabric background. She saved $6 but I saved my sanity.)

Don't mind the one that turned upside down.

Then I closed the frame and by some miracle of vacuum-age, a lot of the bats fell right to the bottom of the frame. So I revisited Jen's tutorial and saw that she used dimensional adhesive. So I got out some pop dots and stuck the bats to the pins.

I can't wait for Halloween! 

**But wait, there's more!** Our "Flat Granny" is ready to move on. If you're interested in a visit, check out Jo's blog.

***Also*** the article about library stitching has appeared! Clickez. I'd like to point out there are things I would never say. "She's xx years young." My grandmother is 90 years old. My niece is twelve years old. I am 45 years old. What I said was, "Here, I'm the young one. I'm 45 but you don't have to print that." I also did not say "substitute grandmoms." I don't have a grandmom. I have grandmothers who are called Mimi and Ma. I said "surrogate grandmothers." The rest is fine. But seriously someone tells you you don't have to print their age so that's what you open with? Gah.