My Grandma Sadie made each of us kids a twin quilt and I also received a queen quilt when I graduated high school. Both of which I treasure and each patch was hand embroidered! She taught me that fancy embroidery stitch when I would visit her years ago, but I cannot recall how to do it. I am sure I could find a tutorial for that online. My second oldest son requested to bring it back to college with him when he came home at Christmas.

I always have admired handmade quilts and "wished" I could do that myself. Raising kids, side tracked by other creative endeavors and other excuses I tabled the idea until recently.

I ordered some yarn online from Craftsy.com and they included a little "gift" of a charm pack as a thank you. I thought to myself, "How did they know I wanted to try quilting?" So online I went to learn via tutorials and lessons (thank you to all of those ladies who take the time to do this by the way). Quite a few quilts later, I am feeling more confident and creative and am going to branch out into baby handmade and such.

As if I haven't got enough projects to finish, I am now addicted to my sewing machine that I received from my in-laws for Christmas quite a few years back.

Here is the first quilt I made with the gifted charm pack and some minky fabric I had on hand.





Seriously there are so many wonderful designs on fabrics that it makes me want to start designing textile patterns. For now, I am content in finding them and piecing them together.

In order of creating, here are the others I have completed so far.

I've been eating clean now for almost a month. Going great I might add! I've lost a total of 8 inches and about 7 pounds so far! I am following Avisae's Guide to Living Clean and Lean. I am including an image and a link to order the products I am using if you are interested. I am healing my gut so I am excited about the continued weight loss along with more energy less fatigue and fogginess which I am already experiencing.

I've been coming up with some of my own recipe concoctions. I'm not one to follow a recipe to closely and I get off in the rhubarb sometimes. This time however, I thought to write down what I did in case the recipe turned out to be a winner. Lucky I did, since these are amazing!!!!!

I took a few pics along the way. Sometimes that is helpful but I don't like to put a ton so that you have to scroll all the way down to the post before you get the recipe.

These are decadent and healthy! Yes, I used those two words in the same sentence to describe this little beauties!

Here is the recipe for Wickedly Wonderful Brownie Batter Energy Bites

Pecans and Oats ready to go in Ninja Blender

Pecans and oats after I processed the a bit.

Batter.

Drop by teaspoon full on wax paper lined cookie sheet.

Take out of freezer and store in container in freezer or fridge. (Yes, yes, they look as good as they taste!)

Huh, just realized that it has almost been a year since my last post. That's quite sad because there has been so many creative things to share that are unshared. Well, probably shared them on Pinterest. Ok, I know I pinned a bunch of things on pinterest.

Then I was thinking about doing something fun with the new 2015 Pantone color of the year and it brought me back to my blog where I realized my last post had to do with the 2014 Pantone color of the year.

But what brought me to my blog was a photo I took of a bowl of soup from a recipe I whipped up for lunch today. Super easy and yummy. I've been making a batch of veggie soup since the beginning of the year to have a healthy low Weight Watcher's point option for my noon meal.

Here is my scientific recipe:

Thai Chicken Vegatable Soup Recipe

Swanson's Thai Ginger Broth—32 oz. or so
Frozen Chicken Breast (I used 2 in the batch of soup)
Birds's Eye Stir Fry Thai vegetables frozen including seasoning packet (half bag)
Ka-me Stir Fry Noodles (half-bag)
Trader Joe's Asian Seasoning Dry mix

Just boil the chicken in the broth (I boiled the whole bag of frozen chicken breasts and saved the other 4 breasts for later.)

Removed the cooked chicken, added frozen veggies and seasoning until simmer.  Added back 2 chicken breasts shredded into pieces and the noodles and heated through. Wha-lah! About 5 pts. per large bowl!

Add some hot pepper if you like your Thai Soup Spicy! Enjoy!

I will try to enter more random creativity this year. Even if it's just a blurb. Promise.

I like eating with chop sticks! Slows me down and I feel pretty cool!

Trying to work the Pantone Color of the Year into my design or home some how. I love the color. Just not sure the other 5 men I live with (hubby + 4 boys) would appreciate me splashing the color all over our home.

Instead, I stopped and played with some digital creativity on one of my favorite photos of a succulent plant. Transitions with the amount and use of the color. I really like the results!

Looking forward to getting my hands dirty once all of this snow melts in Minnesota!