Cloth Coasters!

I first got the idea for quilted coasters from this blog. To be honest, though, inspiration is about the only thing I followed here. I'm sure if you do follow the tutorial, you will end up with beautiful, rounded coasters. If you are impatient and distracted like myself, you can just make it up as you go and STILL end up with cute, scrappy little coasters! Basically I just made six tiny little quilts, which I gave to my beautiful and talented cousin, whose own work can be found here.

Here it is in action!

And of course, the backs of them.

Chocolate Chip Heaven

This morning I made these Chocolate Chip Cookies... And let me tell you, they were amazing. (ok, really I wanted to say "Yumazing," but I thought that might be taking it too far...). I based the recipe off of the Chewy cookie recipe in this month's Food Network Magazine. 

Don't these just look delicious? I did make a few changes to the recipe, though. (No offense to Food Network, I'm sure if you follow their directions exactly you will also end up with something delicious!) 

• With the butter, I added about 2 tablespoons of smooth peanut butter. I think this just adds a little more flavor to the cookies, without tasting like a peanut butter cookie. 
• I also replaced the eggs with Enger G brand egg replacer, and the butter with Smart Balance dairy-free buttery spread (basically it acts just like margarine, but is vegan friendly!) 
•  I was out of white sugar, so I just did the whole thing with brown sugar.
• My only other change is that I did not refrigerate the dough... I'm too impatient for that.

I used Ghiradrdelli 60% Cacao Bittersweet Chocolate Chips. I love the way these chips taste, but they are kind of huge in terms of chocolate chips, so they can be a little overwhelming. 

It's a miracle these ever made it out of this bowl and onto the pan, rather than just strait into my mouth!

Quilt #1

As in, this is the first quilt I made, not that this quilt is #1 above all other quilts. 

About a month and a half ago now, I decided I should start quilting. Well, to be more specific, I stumbled upon This Blog. After fawning over all of the cute quilts and fabric, I thought "I could do that." And then I thought "And I want to." So the next day I went to the store, and by the end of the week, I had this quilt. 

There are definitely things I decided to do differently after making this quilt. For example, I made up my own rules for basting and binding, which resulted in some interesting crinkling in the fabric, but all in all I'm pretty pleased with it! Also for some reason, the swirl design on the back makes me think of cowboys. Am I alone on this one?

Getting Homely: The Beginning

My darling former roommate, whose own work can be found here, used to refer to anything crafty or homemade as "Homely." So here I am, getting homely.