Rushed June Wedding....

Oh, about a month ago or so my niece tells me her wonderful news, she's getting married.  She's a military gal; I am so proud of her!  Well she is being deployed in October :( ,so she wants to get married before her deployment!.  June 15th!  She's done a great job preparing for her wedding.  She will be getting married in Texas.  We own a home there, it's a golf course gated community on the lake.  They have a chapel and pavilion as well as some other nice amenities.  She lives in North Carolina, (she hates it there, very liberal  state.)  So here we are planning a wedding long distance.  It's going to be a small, mostly a family event but we are going big Texas style with the reception...a pig roast is in order!  She loves Texas and considers it home...a good ole Texas BBQ is definitely a Texas thing.
She's decided on a carrot cake for her wedding cake so I'll bake up the layers in the next couple days and freeze them.  We (including the groom) will be decorating it...she loves bows so we will be having fun with that.  I'll post a picture of our hard work once it's completed.   Even her wedding ring is a bow.  She has  managed to find so many bow accessories, it is amazing.
It's a bit of a mad rush now but we are managing very well.  I think we will pull this off beautifully, even though we've not had much time.
Here is my project.  Rose rice throwers...a bit time consuming to make and I'm not at all great at floral arranging but she loves it...so I'm over the top.
Rose Rice Throwers Basket:

Black Bean Hummus

So if you love hummus as much as I do you are going to love the fact that you can use all kinds of things to make it.  Any bean, roasted egg plant and I'm sure you can think of other ways to make hummus.  My favorite way to make hummus is with cannellini beans, but then I tried black beans and well now I'm not sure which bean is my favorite.  I start always with organic supplies so I do get organic black beans for this recipe.  You must try making it yourself.  So much better than store bought I promise you.  Now when you are using your food processor to mix this us and make it creamy, if you find that it is lumping and the mixture isn't freely going around and around in the processor then by all means add a little more olive oil...just a little more at a time...you can always add more but trying to take it out once you've added it, well that is impossible.  So here's the recipe:

1 regular size can of organic black beans (no flavors added) rinsed well!
1/4 cup a good olive oil
1/4 cup Tahini (this is a must for the best flavor)
3 cloves of garlic chopped or minced well
1/4 tsp red pepper flakes (optional)
1/4 tsp pepper
1/2 tsp salt
1/2 tsp thyme (not ground) fresh is best if you have it use 3/4 tsp for fresh
Pita chips, pretzel chips, pita bread or whatever turns you on!

Put all the ingredients into a food processor starting with the beans.  Process by pulsing your processor on and off for about 3-5 minutes.  If it looks dry or isn't going round and round add a little more oil.  The mixer should be thick but not dry.
Enjoy!

Portable Potting Bench

As you might know (or not) that I love to work with wood.  I've been making the raised gardens now for almost 2 years for others because I loved mine so so so much!
I have been wanting a potting bench so bad.  I purchased one and well it lasted about a year before it fell apart. I was so sad about this.  I paid a lot for it and it was so small and I couldn't move it around.  Well yesterday I decided to make my own potting bench.  I decided that I wanted to move it around so I made it like a wheel barrel I guess you might say.  Anyway I put wheels on one end.  I also put sides on the bottom shelf so that stuff wouldn't fall out if I decided to move it closer to my raised gardens.
I am so over the top about my portable potting bench.  I still have to stain it but haven't decided on a color yet.  I was thinking of doing it in red and yellow, what do you think????
Here are some pictures of my price possession:

If you'd like one...call me.  :)

Karen Kay Buckley and the sewing organizer.

Karen Kay Buckley did a workshop at Quilters Crossing for her Fiesta Texas Quilt.  You can see all the blocks here:  http://www.karenkaybuckley.com/weblog/?p=4618
My friend Linda Love talked me into the class and I agreed even though I felt that hand applique would be more than this girl could handle.  I was wrong, I'm not too bad at it.  So I've been working on my block when it's my TV sit down and relax time.  Here is what I have done so far on the block she demonstrated:

The class was large with many participants but we had plenty of room and the class was loads of fun.

While taking this class Karen told us about the items she sells of course and one of those items is a thread carrier....  Looking at this thread carrier I noticed it was the exact same size as our May's boutique project, the sewing organizer.  We got the pattern off the Pfaff website for free and altered it so it only had three zippered sections to save time and money on this project....  the thread bag was also altered but much less than our alteration.  She made the bag with 4 thread pockets and two larger pockets for sewing supplies.  Anyway, I loved the idea but didn't like her selection of fabric or the generic way it was put together so I decided since I already have the pattern I would just make one for myself!  And of course I did.  Now I am not the worlds best with zippers but I'm pleased with the results.  If you look closely at the picture of the thread in the pouch you will see the each spool was threaded with a needle and run threw the wool I placed along the zipper and the tail left hanging.  This is so you do not have to take the thread out of the pocket.  All you have to do is pull on the tail, cut off what you need and leave a tail for the next time you need that color...  I've seen this before and meant to make one for myself but didn't have a pattern for that one...but I do have this pattern!  You can find the pattern for the sewing organizer on the Pfaff website under free patterns.  You would not even have to alter the pattern except to add wool or some other thick material on the plastic right below the zipper to run your thread through.
http://www.pfaffusa.com/images/content/us/SewingOrganizer_Pfaff.pdf
Here is my thread organizer:

Here it is with all my new thread in the pockets!

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