Blue and White Quilt

I’m absolutely in love with solid  two colored quilts. Red and white, blue and white, gray and white, you name it. So many gorgeous antique quilts fall in this category and my modern aesthetic approves.

Well yesterday my hand-quilted ‘Storm at Sea’ quilt in blue and white arrived from New Holland, Pennsylvania. Isn’t it dreamy?

Paul and I were in Philadelphia in June for a conference he needed to attend. I tagged along and wandered the streets of Philly for four days, eating my way through the town and going to all their glorious museums. After the conference we took a road trip out to Lancaster County to see the Amish homes and of course to see the quilts. I went with high hopes that I’d find one for my king-sized bed. Oh and I wanted to see an Amish buggy. I know, what an amateur.

I looked and looked for a blue and white quilt to no avail. All were gorgeous and well made but most were busy with dated fabrics. Dust rose and burgundy ain’t my favorite colors.

I would’ve happily looked through every stack in this shop above! And then I did look at every stack in this shop below. It it called Witmer’s Quilt Shop in New Holland, Pennsylvania.

How cute is Witmer’s Quilt Shop from the outside? Just a little old house turned quilt shop.

I saw this red/white quilt with the classic ‘Storm at Sea’ pattern in her shop and thought….. “Now we’re getting close!” (In fact I’ve since seen this exact quilt on her daugther’s etsy shop. Click here.)

I’ve been eyeing this pattern in one of my quilt books for over 10 years now. But dang it I am one lazy quilter. You know what they say about good intentions.Not gonna happen.

Once I saw this blue and white version of it hanging to dry on her back porch I knew that was the one I wanted, but with no border. This one was heading off to a customer but the owner Emma assured me she could make me one of my own.

That was June 4, 2015 and yesterday August12, 2015 it arrived! (I know the turquoise dresser doesn’t match the room anymore—time to strip it and stain restain it.)

I’m gonna be in a a lot of trouble when navy blue goes out of style and dusty rose takes its place. Even my doors are blue now. Read here about those doors.

Did I mention this king size quilt is hand quilted?

Look  at those tiny stiches? A thousand years ago in 1997 I hand quilted a baby quilt in anticipation of our son’s arrival. I swore on a stack of batting I’d never do that again. But I love the look of it. Leave it to the Mennonites and Amish in Pennsylvania to keep that skill alive. God bless them and their fingers.

I’m tickled pink at this quilt. I wanna spend all my savings and order quilts for every bed in my house.

Oh and I got new carpet for our room last week. Isn’t that basket weave pattern classy?

Between the new carpet, new paint (Benjamin Moore’s Balboa Mist) and now my quilt my master bedroom has gotten quite the overhaul this summer.

Fitness Blender makes me happy—and healthy!

Normally this is how I feel about exercise posts.

But I am not a skinny minny who starves herself. I am a real life middle-aged mom who believes in exercise and cake. So I hope this post is ok and doesn’t make you roll your eyes.

I love to exercise at home, in the comfort of my living room. I went to the gym for years when my kids were babies—it made a great escape. But it’s been at least 12 years since I’ve had a gym pass. Instead I opt for workout videos. As we approached January 2015 I asked my husband if he’d like to start exercising with me. He’s never been much of an exercise in our 20 years of marriage but he agreed. He’s trying to make healthy mental and physical changes to his life. That left me thinking, “Well, I better find some less-feminine workout videos that we can both do together.”

In comes Fitness Blender. I discovered them on You Tube searching for different workouts. You can find their workouts on You Tube or their website.  Daniel and Kelly are a married couple who think everyone should have access to good fitness trainers no matter your income. We tried their Five Day Challenge and Paul and I were hooked. Those five days covered High Intensity Interval Training (HIIT), cardio, abs and core, upper body strength training, lower body strength training and even some yoga.  Did I mention all videos are FREE!? And they have over 400 exercise videos?

It has been six months of working out 5-6 days a week with Fitness Blender videos. We have also purchased (under $10)  and completed some of their fitness programs, like their 8 Week Fat Loss Program and most recently their Butt and Thigh Program which was a 4-week program. Loved them both! But I also love to just choose my own workouts for the week and set it up using their FREE calendar program. (I honestly don’t know how they can keep this up for free. They must get really great advertising dollars from You Tube. In fact, I hope they are millionaires if that’s possible from hosting a You Tube channel. I love their no-nonsense personalities.) Here’s what our calendar looks like so far this month. The red dots are all our scheduled workouts.

 

It makes waking up at 6am easy (well, relatively) because the schedule has already been made for the week—just click on the day and start working. The little yellow squares you see on some days are when I add a note, like “this routine was a great combo, do again”. Here’s a sample of one day’s workout routine with my added note:

Previous to doing Fitness Blender workouts I was working out 5 days a week with Tracy Anderson workouts. Those are great toning workouts but I have to say I am happier now that I am doing heavy strength training which Tracy frowns on for women. Boo!  My measurements are nearly the same but I actually weigh 7 pounds more now than I did a year ago! That proves the scale means nothing and it also proves that strength training adds loads of muscle. I can eat more calories now because muscle requires more calories than fat. Oh yea! Win-win!

I post these photos with complete embarrassment because I don’t ever want anyone scrutinizing my body but the photo on the left was working out 5-days a week with Tracy Anderson videos and the photo on the right is with Fitness Blender. A lifted bum for sure!

Exercising is NOT about looks for me. It’s about having muscle mass, a strong heart, lower cholesterol, and dense bones. I am 41 years old now. I am not interested, nor is it possible, to look like a model. Or to even look 21.  I want to be strong. These photos simply prove that exercising changes your body. Just do it.

Stash your weights under your furniture. Tacky, I know! But I have fallen in love with strength training again.

I want to have strength to run around with my teenagers and also to run around big cities like Philadelphia. I walked the old downtown cobblestone streets of Philadelphia last month for 5 days straight, alone, while Paul was stuck in a CPA conference. My iphone says I walked about 5 miles a day. Never got tired. We even did our Fitness Blender workouts in our hotel room. Body weight only since we didn’t have weights. Don’t I look happy outside the Benjamin Franklin museum? This was day 6 as I was just about to head back to the airport and return to Utah.

My top three Fitness Blender videos are At Home Cardio (better than a stupid treadmill, very dynamic moves), Tank Top Arms for upper body—the pulses are killer!, and Lower Body Workout for strong legs.

So ladies and gents, strength training is the key. Lift heavy weights. Dumbbells are cheap. Work your heart through cardio to keep it ticking too. Do it for your health, not for your looks. Oh, and keep on eating cake.

Navy Blue Doors

I have finally painted all my interior doors (on the first floor) of my home a beautiful navy blue. And I couldn’t be happier.

 

I’ve seen so many others paint their interior doors black but black is too harsh for me. I did, however, want a neutral color like black, dark and rich and classy, but not quite as harsh as black. Hence navy blue which in my opinion is a neutral.  I tried it out on my garage door, as seen in this photo below, a couple years ago and knew that would be the choice for my interior doors as well.

My Dad lives in California and I live in Utah. But he comes to town a few times a year and we always end up doing some DIY project, like painting dining room chairs or building this headboard. There isn’t much my Dad can’t do, he’s the handiest man I know. So on this particular trip to Utah we painted the doors navy blue. And by we, I mean he painted and I did prep work like wiping doors, pouring paint, and getting him a diet Mountain Dew every hour. My dad rocks. And he has 30 years experience spraying with an air compressed sprayer so I am happy to let him do the real work.  I am not a perfectionist but even I know that some things need to look nearly perfect.

The color is Archipelago by Sherwin Williams in a Satin finish purchased at Lowe’s. (The original color was Sailor’s Coat by Olympic paint that I used on the garage door. Both colors are virtually identical so choose either.) A true navy blue is almost black so I chose carefully—I wanted it be a cross between a navy blue and a royal blue. We used a gallon and half to paint 12 doors. The week we painted it was nearly 100 degrees each day so we figured (through trial and error) that watering the paint down with quite a bit of tap water enabled us to spray the doors really heavily for nearly a one-coat coverage BEFORE the hellish desert heat would dry them. Before we watered down the paint it was drying so quickly it was leaving marks on the doors, kind of like when you use spray paint from a can. Watering it down to about 90% paint, 10% water did the trick. Had the temperatures been lower I’m not sure we would have needed to water it down but it did seem to make spraying them go on easier, hot or not. With a few exceptions one heavy coat is all they needed.

My kids are old enough to be helpers. And summer vacation dictates I use them as slaves. So they did most of the removing of the doors, cleaning the doors, and drilling off all the hardware. And then they added all the hardware back. And hung them again. Good kids.

Spraying 12 doors took 2 days. Utah is hot and never humid so the doors dried fast enabling us to flip them and coat the back usually within two hours. When we flipped the doors over we laid towels across the 2x4 strips for a ‘softer’ place to rest them. We didn’t want any new paint being scratched while we painted the flip side. I had one set of saw horses and bought another so that Dad could spray 5-6 at a time.

As mentioned above, it was so hot at 100 degrees that the overspray dried before it hit the garage floor. Well, most of it did. So I could actually sweep up the excess paint at the end of the project. But the floor is still a little blue and my Dad said a pressure washer will remove that. I don’t really care, it’s the garage floor. Lay down tarps though if you do care.  My husband cares. Bummer.

I am in love with these doors. It really classes up things around my house.

Above is a small hallway, below is the master bedroom which is all neutrals and navy blue anyway.

A few tips:

1. Make sure you label your doors with a pencil on the bottom. Even though we didn’t paint the bottom of the door the overspray covered them and then I couldn’t see which door went wear so I began writing the name of the location of door, then covering it with tape to protect the name. Once we were done painting I removed the tape and could easily tell which door went where.

2. Color is Archipelago by Sherwin Williams in a Satin finish. I chose Satin for a slight sheen that is only seen when light reflects off of it. Yum.

3. Don’t dry doors in direct sunlight when it is 100 degrees. The door will warp. We did this to a couple doors as we got antsy for them to dry and it took us a day or two to ‘bend’ them back into shape.

4. Watering down the paint makes it spray on with no trails or spray marks. More details in blog post above.

Raspberry Squares

I’ve made these ultra-easy raspberry squares twice in the last 10 days. They are a long time favorite. Minimum effort, maximum output. I found them in my cookbook The New Best Recipe by America’s Test Kitchen but I’ve also seen the recipe here at Cooks Illustrated.

You make a buttery-oaty-nutty crumble and press half of it in the pan then save the rest for the topping.

Bake the crust for a few minutes…….

add the raspberry jam and the crumble topping, bake a few more minutes, and that’s it!

 

I do not usually like nuts in my dessert but the pecans really do add a nice texture and flavor to the crust and topping.

They keep well for a few days if you can make them last. My kids love them but I make them because I love them.

RASPBERRY SQUARES

Click here for printable PDF version

Original recipe from cooksillustrated.com

1 ½ cups unbleached all-purpose flour (7.5 ounces)

1 ¼ cups quick-cooking oats

1/3 cup granulated sugar

1/3 cup packed brown sugar

¼ teaspoon table salt

1/4 teaspoon baking soda

1/2 cup finely chopped pecans or almonds, or a combination

12 tablespoons unsalted butter (1 1/2 sticks), cut into 12 pieces and softened by still cool

1 cup raspberry preserves

INSTRUCTIONS

1. Adjust oven rack to lower-middle position and heat oven to 350 degrees. Spray 9-inch-square baking pan with nonstick cooking spray. Line with foil or parchment for easy removal. Spray foil or parchment with nonstick cooking spray.

2. In bowl of standing mixer, mix flour, oats, sugars, baking soda, salt, and nuts at low speed until combined, about 30 seconds. With mixer running at low speed, add butter pieces; continue to beat until mixture is well-blended and resembles wet sand, about 2 minutes.

3. Transfer 2/3 of mixture to prepared pan and use hands to press crumbs evenly into bottom. Bake until starting to brown, about 20 minutes. Spoon and spread preserves evenly over hot bottom crust; sprinkle remaining oat/nut mixture evenly over preserves. I like to very lightly press the crumble topping down, that way it’s not too crumbly and messy when you bite into a square. Bake until preserves bubble around edges and top is golden brown, about 30 minutes, rotating pan from front to back halfway through baking time. Cool on wire rack to room temperature, about 1½ hours, then remove from pan using foil handles. Cut into squares and serve.

Teaching Children about Objectification

I’ve been thinking for a while about how I can teach my teens what it means to objectify someone and why I feel it is so dangerous. I wanted to teach it to them simply so that they wouldn’t tune out within 3.5 seconds. I want them to feel empowered in their thoughts. I want them to understand their value and the value of others.

I prayed and asked God how I could teach this to my kiddos. Here’s what I came up with:
I have this beautiful blue vase in my house. I can look at it, criticize it, and decide if it has any value. Do I like the color or the curves of the blown glass? Does it make me happy to look at it? Does it please me? Is the glass too wavy? I can criticize its parts because it’s just a thing, it’s an object. I decide whether it has any value to me.

But we can’t do that with human beings. We can’t take them apart with our eyes or thoughts and decide if they have any value. We can’t do this because everyone is divine. And because we each have a divine nature, we are all valuable. Infinitely valuable in God’s eyes. I love what Tad R. Callister has to say in this speech:

“There is a sentiment among many in the world that we are spirit creations of God, just as a building is the creation of its architect or a painting the creation of its painter or an invention the creation of its inventor. We are more than creations of God; we are literal spirit offspring or children of God our Father. What difference does this distinction make? The difference is monumental in its consequence because our identity determines in large measure our destiny. For example, can a mere creation ever become like it creator? Can a building ever become an architect? A painting a painter? We are the spirit offspring of God with inherited spiritual traits that give us the divine potential to become like our parent, God the Father.”

We can’t use a person (ogling, lusting, fantasizing, judging) for our own pleasure because the instant we do this we remove their humanity. And ours. We turn them into an object like my blue vase, something to be discarded in our thoughts when we’re tired of looking at it.
As I taught this to my children (ages 17, 14, and 11) I made sure I used examples so they could understand that this is something we all do yet we all have the power to stop it. If a man sees a women in a tiny tank top with large breasts (yes the kids giggle when I said breasts—we have some work to do!) he can choose to look at her breasts and have sexual thoughts. He can blame her for his thoughts because she chose to wear such a skimpy top. Or he can choose to see her as Divine. He can look at her face instead and wonder, “Is she happy today? What are her struggles? Is she worried about paying her bills? Does she know God is her Father? Has her heart been broken? Is she safe?”

Likewise,  a woman can look at another woman in the Wal Mart line in front of her who is overweight and make judgments about how large her butt is or how ridiculous she looks in those tight pants. Doesn’t she know everyone can see her cellulite? Why doesn’t she just go to the gym? Or she could choose to humanize this woman and proclaim to her brain that her value is just as valuable as her own.

There are infinite ways we objectify others and ourselves but I wanted to keep it simple for my kids. I told my children that I am trying to work on ridding my mind of objectification as well. I want to look at each person (including myself) and see value, to see sorrow, to see happiness, to see anguish, and worry and joy. Society will teach them otherwise. It will teach men that they are not responsible for their thoughts because they are wired this way. To that I say, horse manure. I teach my son that he has the power to control his thoughts, to see a woman as a daughter of God, literal offspring of Deity.  He is not an animal—he has self-awareness and that’s what sets him apart from the animals. I love this Father’s take on teaching objectification to his son. Brilliant.

The lesson was just a few minutes long, and my examples were a little humorous to them, but serious in intent. I hope to have talks like this again and again with my kids. In the weeks since I taught this to my kiddos they have even said things to me like “Mom don’t objectify!” in reply to comments I would make. Hooray for them! I’d love to hear your ideas on this subject as well. Life was sure a lot easier when I simply had to teach them to not throw their food on the floor and to say please and thank you. But I’m up to the challenge. I have to be.