Patriotic Finishing Pieces

 A couple of weeks ago Denise sent me a photo of a Freedom Flock that she had finished and she was showing me the frame. Denise had found it online and it was on sale when she got it. I immediately went to Hobby Lobby's website and couldn't find it on there, but I kept thinking about it.

Debbie is so good about saving all the good stuff she sees on flosstubes and Instagram and sharing it all with me. Last week she showed me a "pear" that Recovering Monogamous Stitcher had shown. If you go to about the 12:45 mark, you will see the finished pear. She used this little patriotic hair "bow" on top of the pear and it was so cute.

After adding a couple of the patriotic hair bows for both to the online cart for us, I went searching to see if they had the patriotic frames back in stock and they did! Not on sale but I showed Debbie and she liked it too so we each ordered one of those.

I hope to get projects finished in time to use both of these this year but, if not, there's always next year (I hope!).

I had already checked our local Hobby Lobby and they didn't have the frames. When I was back in there after seeing the hair bow, I checked on that and they didn't have that either, though they have rows and rows of patriotic items. My guess is that Hobby Lobby has LOTS of patriotic fun things, as well as other seasonal items from time to time, that are on their website but not in the stores - maybe in some but not in all so I'm going to start keeping a closer watch on the website.

The Spring Garden - 2026

 We're now five days past the middle of April. I had planned to get the garden starts planted around April 15 -17 but am still waiting. Next week, we have  a night or two with lows in the mid 40's. When Accuweather says 47, that's usually about 42 at our house in a valley. I almost always count on 5 degrees lower than the prediction, which is for in town. We also have several chances of hail. I guess I'm a little cautious because last year I lost every plant I had started due to hail but, waiting until there's zero chance of hail probably means no garden! So, I'm REALLY hoping to get things planted by the first of May. Crazy but we've had a couple of days where the high was 90 degrees. Where cilantro was planted last year, the seeds dropped, cilantro sprouted and has already grown and bolted - even while we're having nights that get too cool to plant tomatoes and peppers.

Another weird garden thing . . this pepper is going to get harvested before I ever get the plant out of the temporary cup and into the ground. Funny that it's a jalapeno - the pepper I'm having so much trouble finding in the grocery store. Hope this means I'm going to have a good crop of jalapeno peppers!

Waiting til the cold and hail has ended could mean planting so late that everything burns up in the heat. Gardening can be great and productive for many years, then there can be years of failure - we're pretty much at the mercy of Mother Nature. I really appreciate those farmers who work so hard to provide food to feed our families.

Vince had a couple of places he needed to go yesterday and one of them was Menard's so I went along because I wanted an electric (battery powered) sprayer. I'm tired of pumping to get the pressure needed. I often use the sprayer for fertilizer and I often use the sprayer for Neem oil/water mix. We got this one.

I knew we would want a Ryobi because we have quite a few Ryobi products which means many Ryobi batteries and chargers. This one has two 2 gallon tanks; a battery and a charger. It can be used as a backpack sprayer or carried using the handle. According to the info, 30 tanks full can be sprayed on one battery. That could mean I wouldn't have to change batteries more than once a month. Doubtful . . but maybe. I don't spray every day but some days I go through several tanks of spray - whether it's Neem for bugs and/or fish emulsion for fertilizer.

We've had so much rain and wet days (I am not complaining about the rain - we needed it badly!) but some of the grapes now have rust so I pulled off as many affected leaves as I could and cut back some of the vines that seemed the most affected. I need to get out there one evening in the next few days and spray the grapes with Neem oil/water just as the sun is setting.

I know NOTHING about growing grapes or raspberries. From the raspberries we harvested last year, I'm going to say they require zero attention so that leaves me to learn about grapes. From what I've read, grapes don't really need bees for pollination but do bees come to the grape flowers, whether needed or not? That's why I'm not going to spray Neem until dusk . . do not want to harm the bees.

The grapes are at the calyptra stage so I probably don't have to worry about the bees yet, right? Please correct me if I'm wrong and feel free to give me any advice you want to share. I would love to get enough grape juice to last us a year . . not happening any time soon but maybe some day.

The horseradish is doing great. We love it when it's young and tender. I add it to salads and love to best on tuna salad sandwiches. Other uses: slice, saute and add to omelettes or use in place of lettuce as a wrap.

The raspberries have exceeded my expectations. We planted them down that center row and you can see how many have popped up outside their "bed". I've dug up five or six of the runner plants and moved them to another bed. They look good so I'm hoping they survive and produce next year.

I'm going to stop complaining about this bed where I haven't planted potatoes in four years but every year, it's full of potatoes that have grown from tiny little potatoes that were accidentally left behind. I'm not planting any other potatoes this year. If these grow and produce, then I have what I'm going to consider a perennial bed of potatoes (though I know they are not perennials). I had been trying to make this a second asparagus bed but I'm giving up. The potatoes have won this battle.

I am not a flower gardener. Most anything I grow has either a food or herbal remedy type value but we have four peonies. Our first year here, at the end of the season, I found this peony at a big box store and it looked like it was beyond saving. It was on the $1 rack in the garden center. I had never grown peonies but had always heard how amazing they were so I got it, came home and planted it. The next spring, it had a couple of blooms and they were so pretty and smelled so good that we bought some kind of variety pack that had three more peonies and that's how we ended up with four of them. When I walk out the back door, I can smell them and I love them.

There are other things in the garden that are looking good - onions, rhubarb, garlic is just about to produce scapes.

So many of y'all are probably having scary weather today (Friday evening). Even though a lot of the warnings didn't materialize, thank goodness, we've had tornado chances, some pretty high, every day this week except Thursday. I was never really afraid of the weather until the Joplin tornado in 2011 and now, I find myself really being a weather wimp and I try to do better because Cooper is a big weather chicken and I  he senses my fear.

I try to keep the TV off and depend on the weather radio to let Vince know when we need to get in the safe room so today I took a long nap. Woke up to find my timing was off and the storms were going to be later than they had said earlier. I do have a headache - not weather related probably. Vince asked if I wanted aspirin and I told him wine was probably better but I opted for the aspirin.

OK. Lots of places have it way worse than we do . . Illinois & Wisconsin according to Ryan Hall. I'll stop complaining. 

Today Vince had some errands to run so I went along for the ride. Really, I went along because he said we could get lunch at Texas Roadhouse! I took the measurements for 4th of July Rules.

I could finish that one in the next week or so. I found two pieces that might work for getting this one fully finished. Once the stitching is done, I'll figure out how I want to finish it and, of course, I'll share it all when it's finished and fully finished.

Racing to Beat the Storm

 Today was my day to go stitch with Debbie and it was the day I drive up to her place. We've had storms predicted for almost every day this week - not tomorrow. In fact, Vince had a doctor's appointment scheduled in Kansas City and convinced them to do it by telephone/video so we would have to risk driving through storms. Yesterday Vince and I were debating about whether I should drive an hour north to cross stitch today but this morning, we both looked at the weather and decided it was safe to go, so long as I got home by 5 p.m. Early in the afternoon Vince called to tell me the storms seemed to be moving faster and he thought I should come home earlier. He said definitely be on the road by 3:30. I looked out the window about 3, towards the west which is the way the storms were supposed to come in and it seemed to be getting dark. I asked Debbie if she thought it looked darker and we both agreed that we should probably go ahead and call it a day. We got packed up. I left, made a pit stop at Freddy's for a shake and got on the interstate. The sky seemed to be much lighter towards the south (the way I was headed) but when I got off the interstate, headed west, I thought . . at best, I'm going to get in some rain but hopefully no hail. I prayed that I would make it home safely. The memories of the Joplin tornado can get me really nervous on days like this.

I drove into the driveway, got out and walked around behind the car and it had started raining.

I thought . . that's weird. I JUST pulled into the garage and there's not a drop of water on my car. I started looking more closely and nope, not a drop.

After I came inside, talked with Vince for a minute, loved on the dogs, then looked at my phone and saw a note from a local news station "Gnarly Storm headed to Carl Junction/Asbury area. History of damaging hail and power lines down." I'm not in those towns but they're 5 - 7 miles northeast of me. I was cutting it pretty close and was very thankful that I made it safely. 

It seems like lots of places near us have way worse weather predictions than we do so I'm hoping and praying everyone stays safe and hopefully doesn't sustain damages tonight.

Index With Symbols Received

 Thanks to a VERY nice reader, I now have a copy of the key (symbols that go with each color).

I do believe I could have matched colors with what I've already stitched and compared those symbols to what I needed to use but that was making me quite nervous and stressed. I can't tell you how relieved I am to have this.

Thanks to all of you who offered assistance, even if it was just moral support.

Butter Croissant Sourdough

 Not sure how I came across this recipe for Butter Croissant Sourdough. Saturday I started the bread and baked it this morning.

My dough doesn't always come out of the banneton looking so good.

I pre-heated a Dutch Oven that was too small and had to pre-heat another one that was still almost too small so my boule got a little squished.

Vince and I both thought it was one of the best breads I've made in a long time.

Tomorrow we're having tuna salad sandwiches for lunch . . and I can't wait. I'm going to go ahead and get another loaf of this bread started tomorrow too.

The Next Five Day Project

At this point, I'm not guaranteeing that I will work on this project for five days because I do not have the key that tells me what symbols go with what colors. At least three years ago, Oscar shredded about 1/3 of the paper chart. I didn't worry so much about it because I had made a PDF and had it in Markup. I guess I was frustrated and put it aside with this much done on it. Or maybe (probably) a new chart caught my eye and I switched over to working on that one. You know how I am!

When I got it out this afternoon to work on it, I opened Markup XP and I had not copied the key. In the early days of using the app, I could not figure out how to get the key included in the project so I just left that part off and used the paper key (chart). Now, I have no idea why I struggled with that because it isn't hard and here I am without a key because I didn't take the time to figure out how to do it. Or, maybe because my dog was out of control and shredded my chart. Either way . . I'm frustrated!

I'm thinking with as much as I have done, I can look at the symbol I'm supposed to use, find somewhere else where I've stitched that symbol and match up the colors. If not, I'll probably put it aside, get over my frustration and order a new chart.

I've looked at the floss (Vikki Clayton Silks) and noticed there were only two colors I had not used yet but then I realized those are just second bobbins of colors I've already used so I think I can figure this out. As I figure out a color, I'm going to make myself a key. 

If I can figure out the colors, I'm going to work on this one for five days and IF I make decent progress because there is so much done already, I may stick with it and get it finished so I don't have to pick it up again and deal with the key issue.

 

Everything BUT Stitching

 I am not complaining - please don't think I am. Everything I do . . well, mostly everything I do is by choice. I don't HAVE to do most of this. But . . I must just be a very poor planner or maybe just wanting to do too many things.

This morning getting out of bed, I was thinking about what I planned to do today:  Fix breakfast, wash a load of clothes, heat up leftovers and spend the rest of the day cross stitching.

Here's how the day really went!

- Fixed breakfast

- Vince told me he needed more rye bread, Ezekiel bread and sunflower seed butter. Didn't need it all today - any time this week is fine.

- Checked email and saw that my order of raw milk and eggs was ready to be picked up. Could be picked up any time between today and Thursday. I told Vince I'd rather get it today because there are some things I want to get done tomorrow and Thursday and Wednesday is my stitching days.

- Ground grain and got the rye bread mixed up to rise. Baked it later this afternoon.

- The washer was done and as I was putting clothes in the dryer, I thought . . it's such a beautiful day. I should hang clothes on the line. Did that!

- Didn't have time to make the Ezekiel Bread but since I had all the jars of grains out, I measured them and got them in the bowl. I'll grind it all tomorrow and make that bread.

- Made two pints of sunflower butter for Vince. Got the blender cleaned and put away. I dislike cleaning the blender after making those nut butters.

- Left to go get milk and go by Aldi. Vince wanted to go by Walmart. Then we decided to go by Lowe's and check out the faucets there. I wouldn't mind getting a new kitchen sink. The one we have now is probably the one put in the house when it was built in 2003. I thought it was cast iron but Vince looked underneath it and said it's some kind of plastic. Not sure about that. It's white and everything stains it because the finish is pretty much gone. I want stainless but honestly, I just don't care. At this point I want a faucet that isn't leaking so I can put everything back under the sink.

Got the milk, 2 dozen eggs and 1 dozen duck eggs.

From there we stopped at Aldi. Thank goodness they had jalapenos and pistachio cream. Both seem to be quite difficult to find around here these days.

Oh, actually - Aldi was out of jalapeno peppers. Vince stopped at Walmart for something and found jalapeno peppers in there. The guy in the produce area told Vince they are having a very hard time getting them now. Crazy. I'm going to plant at last two jalapeno peppers in pots and try to keep them alive either in the greenhouse or in the heated garage downstairs. We use so many and I hate having to search for them in the grocery stores.

- Then we went to Lowe's. The man working in the kitchen sink, faucet area was VERY helpful. Vince was determined that our sink has one big hole and two small holes. The big hole he said was for the thing that controlled the water. The small holes were for the actual faucet and the sprayer. We actually have a brand new Moen faucet still in the box from Texas that we bought and didn't use when we re-did the kitchen there. It has the sprayer thing that is attached to the end of the faucet and that's what I've been wanting. Anyway -- the sink man confirmed what I thought that it would be VERY unusual to have a large hole and two smaller holes in the sink. Vince came home and looked at it again and they're all the same size so we're he is hopefully going to change the faucet some time very soon!! I'll just keep the sink I have and be happy.

- Came home, put everything away. Decided to pour the cream off the milk I got today and make butter. In the picture with the rye bread  you can see the butter and the buttermilk left over from making butter.

- It was time to clean up the mess, and it was a big one, get the clothes off the line, folded and put away. Now I'm tired . . and it's now 8 p.m. How many stitches can I get made? Probably not many!

Stitching on The Lord's Prayer

I'm very pleased with the progress I made on The Lord's Prayer. This is where I started when I picked this up again on March 29.

My plan is to work on a project for five days. Each week I stitch with a friend and we're stitching on patriotic projects so, while I document my progress on that project each week, I don't count that day as one of the days I work on my five day project.

This "five day" plan turned into a seven day plan because one day, I was working on organizing my linen and didn't make a single stitch. Saturday I was getting started on the food for our Easter meal and only got 116 stitches made. My plan was to start a new project on Sunday but I was tired after Chad, Nicole and Addie left so I took a quick nap, had a hard time getting motivated to stitch so I worked one more day on The Lord's Prayer. I thought I wouldn't get many stitches done but I did get 446 stitches made.

Like I said . . I'm really pleased with my progress on this one.  Sometimes the progress is easy to see and sometimes it's spread out over the entire project but I think the progress on this project is easy to see.

Lots of color was added and I'm really pleased! The entire top border is finished except for filling in the center of one flower.

Now it gets put away for a while. I'm not sure what I will pick up tomorrow. Right now I'm thinking I'll pick up This is the Day because I might could finish that one. No telling what I'll decide by the time I get back to stitching tomorrow.

Week 14, 2026 Stitching Report

 

Monday, March 30, 2026
Project: The Lord's Prayer (Day 2)
Stitches Made: 583
Percentage Stitched Today: 
Percentage Completed as of Today:

Tuesday, March 31, 2026
Project: The Lord's Prayer (Day 3)
Stitches Made: 459
Percentage Stitched Today:
Percentage Completed as of Today: 33.92%

Wednesday, April 1, 2026
Project: 4th of July Rules
Stitches Made: 284
Percentage Stitched Today:
Percentage Completed as of Today:

Thursday, April 2, 2026
Project: No Stitching - Worked on organizing linen
Stitches Made:
Percentage Stitched Today: 0
Percentage Completed as of Today:

Friday, April 3, 2026
Project: The Lord's Prayer (Day 4)
Stitches Made: 408
Percentage Stitched Today:
Percentage Completed as of Today: 35.68%

Saturday, April 4, 2026
Project: The Lord's Prayer (Day 5) (Cooking for Easter -not much stitching time!)
Stitches Made:
Percentage Stitched Today:
Percentage Completed as of Today:

Sunday, April 5, 2026
Project:
Stitches Made
Percentage Stitched Today:
Percentage Completed as of Today:

Stitches Made in Week 14, 2026

The Lunch Report

Our Easter Lunch was amazing. Not only did I get to spend most of the day with Chad, Nicole and Addie but the food turned out great.

The Jalapeno Raspberry Chicken was maybe one of the best dishes I've ever made. When I made the sauce yesterday, I made about 1-1/2 x the sauce recipe, put jalapenos in half and didn't in the other half. Vince and I ate the batch with the jalapenos. We had two thighs leftover. Can't wait to have that for leftovers. The chicken was so quick and so easy. I seasoned it last night and left it in a zipper bags in the fridge so seriously, all I did today was brown the meat, cook til the temp was 165 degrees, pour the sauce over it, simmer it for a few minutes, add the fresh raspberries and it was done.

The Dinner Rolls were good - also very easy, but not the yeasty, pillowy type rolls I'm looking for. I will make them again when I need an easy roll recipe. I made these 60 grams each. I'll probably bump it up to 70 grams next time.

The Mac & Cheese is the recipe I use most all the time and I'm always happy with it.

The Lemon Blueberry Cake was equally as good as the chicken. I am NOT a dessert baker. I can make bread all day but I love eating bread more than I love eating dessert so maybe that explains it. But . . this cake . . so delicious.

It was a three layer cake! That was quite an accomplishment for me.

Easter Meal Preps

 Chad and his family will be here tomorrow (Easter Sunday) so I decided to do as much as I could in the kitchen today (Saturday). 

I spent almost the entire day in the kitchen.

Using magic tape, I taped the four recipes up where I wouldn't have to be constantly picking them up or moving them out of the way. I planned to make Jalapeno Raspberry Chicken, Rolls, Lemon Blueberry Cake and Mac & Cheese.

A while back I had seen a receipt for Jalapeno Raspberry Chicken and have been wanting to try it for over a month. I decided this was a good time, except neither Chad, Nicole or Addie will eat jalapenos and finding jalapenos at any of the Walmarts around here has gotten to be a challenge lately. I had a few still in the fridge from Aldi so I used those and made one batch of sauce for Vince and me and one batch of sauce for them.

Below is a photo of the seasoned chicken thighs along with two separate jars of sauce. There's also a dish of mac & cheese. Tomorrow I will put the topping on the mac & cheese (Panko, grated Parmesan, melted butter and paprika) and bake it.

Next thing I stirred up was the rolls. This recipe is super easy and they can be shaped into hamburger buns too. I had planned to let the dough sit while Vince and I ate lunch, then shape them into rolls, put them in the fridge and tomorrow, I'll take them out, let them rise and bake them but the rolls were rising way faster than I expected. I guess I need to get used to the kitchen being warmer, except we have frost tonight and tomorrow night. Poor garden.

I asked Vince if we could put dinner off for half an hour while I got the rolls shaped and, of course, he was fine with that.

The last thing was the cake. I made this Lemon Blueberry Cake. It looks so good (and the batter tasted yummy). I hope it turns out good.

This one by far had the most ingredients of anything I made today. You can kinda see to the right where the Mac & Cheese ingredients start but there was a lot for the cake and I combined all the baking powder, soda, etc. in the bowl with the flour and I combined the brown sugar and the white sugar in one bowl or there would have been even more containers.

I ended up using 9" cake pans where the recipe called for 8" pans because I think I threw out my 8" pans because they were dented and looking pretty gross. I need to remember to get more because I prefer 8" layers.

The layers cooled and I took them out and put them in separate gallon size zipper bags and will ice and assemble the cake tomorrow morning and stick it back in the fridge (as directed in the recipe).

I will report back on how the recipes turned out.

Milk!

Today was a happy day for me! I was able to snag a gallon of raw milk. When we lived in Missouri from 2007 - 2011, we hadn't been here long when I heard about a dairy in Carthage where we could buy raw milk. It was in the middle of winter. Vince got home from work, it was kinda getting dark and I said "Would you like to go to Carthage and get raw milk so I can make yogurt?" I know that these days, he would say no but for whatever reason, he said ok. We left, we got near Carthage and I told him which exit to take. It had started snowing and it was very dark and neither of us have ever liked driving at night. We got off the highway at the exit and he said "What now? Left or right?" Hmm . . I have no idea. Did our phones even have GPS back then? He was rather upset with me, and rightfully so but in my defense, I have zero sense of direction, I cannot follow directions and I cannot read a map. I think I ended up calling the dairy and getting directions (again). Every single time we go to the dairy, one of us will say "remember that night . . " and yes, we both remember it. Today it was funny because we had been somewhere else in Carthage and were coming from a different direction and had to use GPS to get to the dairy. We both started laughing without either of us saying "remember that night . . ".

But, I got my milk. The dairy lady told me that so many people are wanting raw milk, they've set up a plan where you reserve your milk at least a week in advance. Our milk order has been placed for next week.

This is our milk shelf. My first choice is the raw A-2 in the gallon carton. My second choice is the Kalona brand (pasteurized but not homogenized) but it's sometimes hard to get too.  Vince bought the A2 milk a week or so ago, just so we would have whole milk in the house but I didn't drink it. I'll use it for biscuits or other cooking. Vince drinks 2% milk (he won't drink raw milk) and we both drink buttermilk. Kalona is my favorite buttermilk here. There's no place I can buy full fat buttermilk here . . that's my favorite.

Today it dawned on me that during the winter when the dairy doesn't have milk, that's when I cannot get the Kalona milk. I guess everyone buys it there when they can't get it from the dairy.