Lemon Bread...

Lemon Bread...

1/3 cup shortening
1 cup sugar
2 eggs
1 1/2 cups sifted all purpose flour
1 1/2 teaspoons baking powder
1/4 teaspoon salt
1/2 milk
grated rind of one lemon
1/3 cup sugar
juice of one lemon

Cream shortening, gradually add 1 cup of sugar, beating well. Add eggs, one at a time, beating well after each addition.
Combine flour, baking powder and salt, add to creamed mixture alternately  with milk, beginning and ending with flour mixture. Mix well after each addition. Stir in rind.
Pour batter into a greased 8 1/2 x 4 1/2 by 3" loafpan or whatever loaf pan you use. Bake at 350 for 50 minutes, (mine gets done faster). Combine the 1/3 cup sugar with the juice of the lemon, stirring well and immediately pour over the bread after you take it out of the oven. 

I wanted to share this website with free flower crochet patterns. It's pretty awesome...

 http://melibondre.com/blog/?page_id=2076

 This is just for the June patterns, there's more on the sidebar.

 I went crazy yesterday with all this burst of energy and did some spring cleaning in two rooms. Whew! What was I thinking, it took me hours moving furniture and taking all the things off and down, changing curtains around and washing clothes. :P I was so happy when I finished, though. When you pull everything out, it's so surprising how much dust collects from the winter under and behind things. I have electric heat that blows through the registers, but still changing the filters collects all this dust. I say that every year, but it's still amazing and any wonder people can breath, unless you don't wait from season to seaon to do it. ;D

It all feels so clean and you're so exhausted the next day after all the cleaning, but I was happy walking downstairs this morning. I grabbed a cup of coffee, went back upstairs and started knitting, wonderful day.

It's Spring, I love Fall and Winter, however I love the flowers, birds singing and the changing seasons. I'm excited, because strawberry picking, apples, peaches, the Farmers Market and all the yard sales are right around the corner. :D

 

I'm getting pretty far on my knitted afghan and decided to play around with this new yarn Paton has out. Well, it's not that new, but I've never tried this and it's very pretty, but really tedious. It's  Patons Pirouette yarn or thread, whatever. It's the ruffle scarf and I found a more detailed instruction video than the Paton site. It's http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jpWKVYG8Quw 

I worked up to the point in the photo and decided to get some size 7 needles as the Paton's instructions gave. The video called for size 10, which is what I'm using in the photo, but I think it's too loose for me. I'm going to see how it works. It took like seconds to undo all that work, so I'd sew the edges to where you can't see them on both ends when finished. It came unraveled way too easy.

My daughter bought me a Keurig a number of years ago for a birthday present, I love it. However I have one of those little cups you can put in ground coffee, instead of Keurig cups and never had luck with that thing, I like strong coffee, because I use alot of creamor, sooo when I fill it, oh my gosh, what a mess. When I put less, it's not strong enough. Forget that, I'll only use Kcups.

The other day I wanted to grind up some of my coffee beans. I pulled out my coffee maker, saw my old popcorn hot air machine and thought, "Why don't I ever use that?". I haven't used it in forever and they're so neat. How many gadgets do we have that we just stop using or whatever, because we get things easier? Microwave popcorn is so easy, just throw it in, yet that butter on it is not butter. So I pulled out the popcorn machine with my coffee maker.

It's so easy to just pop in a Kcup and so fast, I didn't think my coffee in the Mr Coffee was ever gonna get done. LOL It was good though and so I tried the popcorn maker, it was fun watching it. It also tasted good with real butter instead of, well, I don't know what that fake butter stuff is on the microwave popcorn and the maker was surprisingly fast.Just for your FYI, my daughter got the red striped popcorn cup in the dollar section in Target. Don't bother, it's cute, but when the outside paint starts coming off on your hands and it's "Made in China", that can't be good. @@

Target had the Pop Secret popcorn, it popped up pretty good, it's where the microwave popcorn is sold. I'd try 1/4 cup at first to gauge how much you'll need and the machine can get pretty warm, so kids shouldn't be using it. You don't put the butter in the machine, just microwave some, but we all know that. :D I'm just saying it in case some young person reading this decides to pull out Mom's old popcorn maker to use it.

I thought of this, because this evening my teen was heating up some cinnamon sticks and icing pack in the microwave. I watched her pull off the foil top of the icing and throw it away. I remember her first experience of putting foil in the microwave, sparks and spits of fire were popping, freaked her out. She doesn't need to be told now. LOL I did the same thing years ago when I put in a butter stick with foil paper on it. I'd never had a microwave before, and I learned real fast what not to put in one. :D Now I think I'm going to pull out that bread machine and check it out. 

 It was a really nice day today and very peaceful. I felt like cooking and working on my afghan. I made a Sour Cream Banana Cake with cream cheese frosting, hadn't made it in awhile and felt nostalgic today. :) I have tons of recipe books, but it seems my favorite ones are in an old folder I've had for years. You can tell by the recipe page it's been very much used. LOL
 

So when my husband came home from work, he could smell barbecue chicken and banana cake. Was he ever happy, then we watched Lincoln on demand, was very slow, more like a documentary. They did a good job with Lincoln, one of my fav actors, Daniel Day Lewis.

My DIL and son brought me my first spring flower to plant outside today.

I finished the little knitted blanket for my daughter. It's a small blanket that's from one of her favorite shows.

I also started another one, using Lion Brand Pound of Love and it's the antique white,the pink is Deborah Norville's Baby Pink. I'm excited, my first changing colors and it's no big deal, but for me it's another stepping stone. :D

My daughter sent a photo of a ball of yarn in an old teapot and I thought it was adorable. What a great way to keep the yarn in one place and not having it roll over the floor. :D Yeah, my favorite old teapot I pretty much killed the finish off by leaving it on the stove too long years ago. ~sigh~ I still love it though.

The Christmas afghan again...

Okay, now I'm back to making my Christmas afghan that I didn't finish before Christmas. I've decided...again... that this year I'm going to finish all these Christmas patterns I've collected online before Christmas. No... really... ;D

If I crocheted as much as I spent gathering patterns, oh my goodness, I'd have piles of things. LOL I love looking at what people do and reading what they say, so interesting. But I'm on a mission to do these patterns, so we'll see how that goes. Everytime I come on I make the mistake, ahem, of seeing what others are up to and I'm amazed at the talent so many have. There's such creative people out there, it's awesome and I think, "Why didn't I think of that?". I love it.
 

Packing away Christmas...

Here's some of the things I'm putting away and it just looked so pretty sitting there I took some pics. Took the tree down, keeping the Christmas village out and starting to put things away, it all goes so fast. It's my time of year, but everyone always says my house reminds them of Christmas, I love red and green and always have my twinkle lights going. :D