Crafts and Things

 I have been nesting through my oven.  I still really need to get our pictures up on the wall and then our house will be good to go, but I keep putting it off to bake something or make something new for dinner.  I am happy as a clam right now if I am elbow deep in all purpose flour!  I made this home made bread earlier in the week to go with the home made chicken noodle soup.  The recipe makes four loaves and we pretty much finished off one loaf with our dinner that night.  We have had sick girls and sick Daddy this past week and a half so I felt like a steaming pot of soup would help clear out the yuckies.  It was so good!

 I also have been getting crafty.  Every Thursday they have a basket weaving class at the church.  For 500 Yen (and bringing your own wood clue and clothes pins) you can make yourself a sweet purse/tote bag.  I love it because all the supplies are there (like all the wood weaving stuff) and the directions are there as well as people who know what they are doing.  It is an ongoing class so I can make as many of these as I want!

I am pretty numbers/math dumb so trying to figure out what I need for crafts and how to get started pretty much keep me from doing a project.  But if someone can do the leg work (and the math work) for me, then I am good to go!

 Here is one of the two quilt squares I have done for the Memory Quilt.  My friend Jessica helped me to figure out how much I needed of all the fabrics and my general design (see again with the numbers??) and now that I have that all figured out I am good to go!  So I have two done, I only need to do 23 more before the baby arrives!

I finished weaving the side pieces of my bag this morning.  There are different colors you can choose as your accent colors and I chose red/white for this one.  Now when I go next week I can finish off with the handles and the top and then I shellack it and it is ready to go!  Some of the gals here use them as their purses or church bags or scripture bags.  You can make it any size you want, but I am starting with this size.  It is pretty fun so far and it has been great in getting to make new friends.  The kids just play with toys while the women craft.

Also I am loving listening to Dario Marianelli station on Pandora.  He composed the music for Pride and Prejudice (with Keira Knightly) so the station has a lot of film scores and nice quiet music.  I can have it on all day and it is quiet and relaxing for our home atmosphere.  Plus I will recognize music from somewhere so I will play a game with myself of which movie the music came from.  I highly suggest this station for anyone!