This n' That Thurs 2/8

My railing is finished, and I'm thrilled with the way it came out. Obviously, the steps will now have to be painted and so on-probably in a more reddish color after seeing the stain on the railing. Handyman also repaired and painted the basement walls post-egress window installation, and re-attached my fireplace cover to the brick wall.  After two and a half days of work, count me a happy camper.  

In a happy coincidence (or maybe not), some local socialization events have come to my attention. Folks on my Next Door group are looking at forming a bunco group or two, a daytime book group, and I found out about a local crafting dinner group that's meeting once a month. Not necessarily up to all of these once a month groups, but happy to know that there are things local. Oh, and as I was writing this, I received an invitation to the "Young at Heart" group at my neighborhood church! These folks may be mainly older than I, who knows. But it sounds like fun!

Along the same line, my "knitting group" (which has already spawned a book group and  quarterly ladies day out) is now going to try a ladies lunch bunch. Our first event is on the 16th of this month, and since that happens to be Chinese New Year, we are each making an oriental pot luck item. Time to look at Chinese dessert recipes. I think next month we are going to play with a 60s style meal-meatballs with grape jelly, anyone?? I know this sounds like I am expanding beyond "slow", but each of these fun things is once a month and my goal is to add no more than one event a week to my current life-at least for now. 

As the queen of custard, I was thrilled to find out there is actually something called a chinese egg tart!!  yeah!!

Today I'm living proof that no matter how long you've had a skill or a hobby or other expertise, errors can be made. It wasn't until I pulled this now wrinkled vintage quilt from my machine to iron it that I realized I sewed my border on entirely backward-with the seam facing up.  Time to do some cutting and ripping!!  

I subscribed to an email list from Pillsbury.com, and one from Betty Crocker. Both on slow cooker meals, so that I can return to my "frugal slow cooker" posts. The most recent were an "Asian beef" recipe made from pot roast and a chicken Alfredo recipe. I'm all in, except the cilantro will need to be eliminated. We have one of those folks for whom cilantro=soap taste. They require some ready made ingredients but still...........cost effective, tasty and low effort.

Asian beef from the Betty Crocker Website

Tuscan Chicken From the Pillsbury Daily Slow Cooker Fix Email!

This week, I'm embracing two non fiction books. I'm reading Soulful Simplicity by Courtney over at the More with Less blog, along with Gretchen Rubin's Happier at Home. I'll share with you what I think when I'm finished. 

It looks like, after saying never, never, never again, I may be selling quilts and such-again. As my son enters the last year of his IT undergrad before grad school, he has to design a business web page. So I gave him some good quilt photos and put him to work. Perhaps my first return to the fold should be some Philadelphia merchandise, considering the Broncos performance over the past year.

And now, I'm off into the rabbit hole! I've promised to do some Valentine crafting with the homeless shelter next week, and being me of course, I have to look at all my options -and then some-before I choose that one single project!