Taylor's Automatic Refresher

I went to Napa this weekend with some of my high school friends. It was sort of a reunion sort of thing.

Anyways we went to Taylor's Automatic Refresher while we were there.

Here is the pager they gave me when I ordered my meal. I got a classic burger and some onion rings.



Here is my food, the burger is made with an egg bun.




All my friends got some sort of side dish to share, I got the onion rings to share. The above is chili fries, garlic friends and sweet potato fries. All of it was super yummy!

I got an ice tea also I thought the cup was interesting, it says "This cup is made from corn, environmentally sustainable and 100% compostable." I thought that was cool! It was just like plastic, everywhere should change their plastic containers to this.

Anyways when I got back home I thought this was so good that it should be Zagat rated so I checked my book and it was there!

Here is what my Zagat book said.

Food : 21/30
Decor : 12/30
Service : 14/30
Cost : 17 dollars (this usually includes cost of a drink also) My meal was 15 bucks for the burger onion rings and ice tea.

I would suggest this to anyone that wants a quick meal while they are in Napa! I sort of wished we went somewhere more "fancy" but this was super good anyways. ^_^

Diva Bag

Candice, Cheri, Connie and Me met at Holly's place to work on the diva bag.

I had to work that day but came later. Connie already cut her peices and Cheri was cutting hers. So I decided to work on my mystery quilt.

The diva bag takes a lot of work to cut out! Candice started cutting her's after Cheri and that was like 2+ hours!

I was really into trying to finish my mystery quilt so I didn't start cutting yet. I think I'm going to cut mine before the next diva bag meeting. Which is next next Friday. Woohoo!

I'll have pictures of my mystery quilt up later this week!

Chinchillas

The paper piece Chinchillas!

I was looking through old pictures on my computer and I thought I would post them here.

So back in May 2007, I helped Holly with her chinchilla rescue project. Holly is really loves chinchillas and loves helping to rescues them. So she found a chinchilla paper-piecing pattern (paper-piecing is a type of quilting) and she wanted the whole group to help out to make some so they can use it for a fundraiser to support chinchilla rescue.

So I went over to her place with my sewing machine and paper-pieced for about 7 hours. These are the ones that I made.






They each took about 2.5 hours to make. So I was half way done with my third (the purple) one before I had to leave. It was pretty fun. The hardest part is the eyes; if you look closely I had to sew like 7 pieces of small fabric around the eye.

See quilting is cool. Well I think it’s cool and that’s all that really matters.

Later I heard from Holly even though the purple one was a little silly because it was really purple, someone at the fundraiser actually stole that one! Haha someone really must have liked purple chinchillas but they should have bought instead of take it so that money could be use to save the animals they adore!! ^_^

Sadness!

This weekend Patrick was helping with my quilting stuff and he was a little clumsy and broke my long ruler (6" x 24"), he was just carrying too much and it fell down and broke! I was kind of upset because me and that ruler have been through a lot together!

I thought it was my fault since I asked Patrick to help me carry it, but I was still pretty sad about it. Patrick felt really bad and offered to replace, even though I said it was okay. I mean rulers are expensive!

This is what he got me.



So he got me more than just the ruler! That's very sweet! Even though I lost my original ruler, I think this one is a great replacement. Now when I quilt I will remember how sweet Patrick is! ^_^

Stuffing Chicken Casserole

Spray a 9x9 pan with cooking spray and preheat the oven to 350.

In a big bowl, mix together:

1 cup cooked chicken, chopped

1 can whole kernel corn, drained

1 cup herb seasoned stuffing mix

1/2 cup chopped onion

1-1/2 t. dried parsley flakes.

In a separate small bowl, mix until smooth:

1 cup milk
1 beaten egg

1/2 cup mayonnaise (light)

Now pour the small bowl contents into the large bowl which has the stuffing in it. When combined, pour into the 9x9 pan. Bake for about 30 minutes in the 350 degree preheated oven.

From - http://www.mom-mom.com/stuffing_chicken_casserole.htm

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I made this last night, but modified it just a little bit.

I just put in a whole can of corn which was about little less than 2 cups and a whole can of string beans.

I also used non-light mayonnaise, I wasn't about buy light mayonnaise just for this.

Also I just bought a whole roastery chicken and just cut that up and put in this dish. I’m going to use the rest in another dish. I heard you can use the left over (the bones and such) to make a nice soup, but I haven’t tried that yet but maybe someday I will.

Even with these small modifiations, it turned out really well. I didn't know how well bake mayonnaise would taste so that's why I was a little worried about it but it's actually really good.

I brought some left overs to work today and my co-workers love how it smells!

This is a pretty quick and easy dish, I plan to make again some day in the future, and I am blogging about it mainly to have a place to store this recipe to that time.

So I hope everyone tries this out for themselves or maybe I'll bring it to one of Holly's pot lucks in the future. ;-)

New Fabric!

I went to Joannes the other day because Patrick went to the shopping center in Mountain View and I noticed it and I have never been to that Joannes before.

They had some awesome deals. I got all these patterns for 2 dollars a yard. Can't pass that up! But for some reason they all ended up being purple and pink, weird I know. I know I'm a sucker for stashing fabric.

Here is a picture of them with the flash on.



This is a picture with the flash off.



I'm not sure which one is better, so I have both. Which is better with the flash on or off?

I never can tell, both look okay to me. *nods*

Anyways interesting story, this Joannes I went to that was in Mountain View the one that is next to the Walmart, though I usually go to the one on Stevens Creek, near Wolf street.

So the one in Stevens Creek is super nice, usually when I buy the whole bolt, they give me a discounted on the last left over yard (one time they gave me a whole yard discounted). It has happens more than once. Even the big super store one in Fremont has done that for me.

The one in mountain view is not so nice! I mean I guess it's not store policy to do that but I asked about it and the lady who cut my fabric, made a face (okay maybe I'm making this up) and said we don't give that discounts to people that just want the whole bolt.

So I was sneaky and asked for whatever I thought would be "just enough" to see if she would offer it to me, and she offer it once but never again. I guess she figured out what I was doing, I was even surprise, she just cut off like 1/4th of a yard that was left over on the bolt from what I requested and didn't offer me the rest of it. I guess she didn't like me after that, but people that normally shop at Joannes know these things, I don't think I asked for something really unreasonable.

I thought to myself jeez this person must have had a bad day! It's okay, I'm still happy with my fabric but I'm not sure if I'm going back there (maybe if I'm in a cruch and I happen to be there), when I know that the Stevens Creek one is way nicer!

Baby Lone Star Quilt lesson

Last Saturday Connie taught a baby lone star quilt lesson at Holly house. It was super fun!

I wanted to use my set of yellow/orange fat quarters to make a star in the sky. It seems for every fat quarter you can get 3 points (but some how Candice got 4 out of her fat quarters!).

Here is my finished one.



I think the color is a little off I should have asked for help!!

Here is Kathy's finished one (me, Kathy and Candice were the only one's that finished but Candice didn't like hers so I didn't get a picture of it)



This is so cute a bunch of cat faces and cat butts! ^_^

Anyways since I got 3 star points from my fat quarters that I decided to cut 8 fat quarter to make 3 long stars!

Here are my other ones (not finished)



I showed these to Holly, Cheri and Connie and the purple and orange are okay now (with some rearranging from the original set up) but the green/purple/orange is still a little off. It seems the culprit is that light purple point.



I have it in black in white because I think I read in some quilting book somewhere... that if you look at it in black in white it would help you be a better judge of the color. So you can see that Holly and Cheri were right were correct about the light purple point, I need to do something about it... ^_^