It's Growing in Red, White & Green!

I'm having fun adding different bands of color to my Christmas Round Ripple.

It's getting bigger too.  

Luckily I'm not. 

We had such good results losing weight last year by counting calories we are continuing the practice this year too.  How much did we lose?  I lost 35 pounds and Hubby lost almost 40!  

Just the other day I discovered a neat app, MyNetDiary, for our iPhones.  It's an app that tracks our daily calories by meal and automatically totals our daily meals for us.  It keeps track of our weight too.  No more manually writing down the foods we eat in a notebook and fussing with the calculations.  After trying out the free version we ended up buying the upgraded app version - it's under $5 and well worth it. 

I have just two New Year's resolutions - continue to lose weight and add more RED in my life!  

Back to crocheting...I'm running out of the lime green color but I'm pretty much done with it.  

Next I plan to add another white band maybe with some of these fancy yarns.

Are you the type that plans out your color design and stitches ahead of time?

Or do you sort of "wing it" like I do?

In this band I added another two rounds of variegated yarn in red, white and dark green.

I may have to get on a step ladder to take the next photos.

I think I want to name this one...something better than just Christmas Round Ripple.

Any suggestions?

And there are more REDs to enjoy with our host, Sue, at 

It's A Very Cherry World

(here) 

for REDnesday!

Crochet & Coffee

Crochet and Coffee!

I'm having a very relaxing Sunday morning doing a little crocheting on my Christmas Round Ripple, playing with my new iPhone and drinking some delicious coffee made with my new Keurig single coffee maker.

How do you like my red iPhone cover?

That's Jessie from "Toy Story" as my background screen.  

After posting this I'm off to our finished basement to finish putting all the Christmas boxes away in their storage area. 

 How about some more of my crocheted reds to look at.

I love color...lots of it!

My crocheted throws...

Let's add their names shall we....

I can't pick a favorite.

Can you?

A Study in Pink

Source: francine-patchworkandlace.blogspot.com via Teacup Lane on Pinterest

Doesn't this make you want to get those embroidery needles & pink thread out?

Source: getcottage.blogspot.com via Teacup Lane on Pinterest

Ah, a pretty pink floral pillowcase resting on that lovely white Chenille bedspread!

I love Chenille bedspreads - have two of them! 

They are so soft and wash up beautifully.

Source: zsazsabellagio.blogspot.com via Teacup Lane on Pinterest

Throw the diet out the door and eat stuff yourself with a yummy pink frosting cupcake in pretty pink paper cups with pink beads!

Source: chateaudelille.blogspot.com via Teacup Lane on Pinterest

I love this lovely design pattern especially in pink - it rocks my socks!

Source: thenest.com via Teacup Lane on Pinterest

Must have...a pink wall with plates!

Source: flickr.com via Teacup Lane on Pinterest

I'm going to make a pink granny square or ripple throw - I swear by the end of this year!

Source: this-is-glamorous.tumblr.com via Teacup Lane on Pinterest

I wonder how much this beautiful pinkish ring costs?

Who cares!

Get it anyhow!

Source: weheartit.com via Teacup Lane on Pinterest

If you have the pink wall you must also have a pink mailbox!  

That's according to Murphy's Pink Laws.

Source: bing.com via Teacup Lane on Pinterest

And lastly let's add in a pink clothed cute little doggie for all you pink lovers.

Don't ya just want to pick this sweetie pie up and hug and kiss her!

Welcome to Beverly's Pink Saturday .  Click on her link to see more PINK

IKEA Billy Bookcases

Going to get our IKEA Billy Bookcases!

Tuesday morning we got up fairly early for us so we could arrive at the IKEA store a little after opening at 10:00 AM.

We drove our one ton Ford F350 pick up truck so we could load and bring home any bookcases we purchased.

We decided on a total of five Billy units, three of what we call double bookcases, and two single bookcases in birch veneer.

Let me tell you these bookcase units were HEAVY!

There isn't much customer service at IKEA - I guess it's to keep costs down.  You have to select the items you want and carefully write down the item, aisle and bin number.

On the way to check out we grabbed a loading cart and found the items in the pick up area ourselves.

The only checkouts were self service too.

I don't know but I would hope that someone could assist you if you needed help because as a woman there was no way I could lift any of the packages by myself.  But I don't know if that is true as there were no signs telling you to ask for assistance if you needed it.  

At least we didn't have to worry about the weight with our one ton pick up truck!

At first we were only going to put one of the single units downstairs for my Christmas china but after putting one in place we decided two together balanced out better on the wall.

  Hubby assembled both single units and even attached them to the wall.

We bought an extension so the unit would go to the ceiling but then we realized we couldn't use it in our living room with the crown molding.  

We only have one glass door and we need two so next week we will return to IKEA.

This whole project started because we needed to add a wall of bookcases in our upstairs paperback library so we could move some of our hardcover books upstairs.

When we got the units home I thought wouldn't it be wonderful if we used one of the single units in the living room for my Christmas china.  So that's how two single units ended up there instead of upstairs.

I had so much fun gathering all our Christmas china together last night and putting it in one display.

Read about my Christmas China Pattern (here).

I'm assisting Hubby with assembling the double units for upstairs.

We'll have to buy two more single units to go with the three double units to make a full wall of bookcases 9 feet in length for the library room.  We may buy extensions for all the upstairs bookcases.  I think some doors would look nice too and help to control the dust.

Have you visited IKEA yet?  

The price is good - for five Billy Bookcase units, one extension and one glass door - the total was just under $500.  We're trying to control our collections and clutter one step at a time.

You'll have to wait to see the upstairs library units installed in a future post.

Join me for:

Cindy's Show & Tell Friday

Pastry & Ripple

Good Afternoon!

I just ate this piece of homemade Pumpkin Pie along with a cup of delicious Keurig coffee...life is good.

Oh, I knew it would happen one of these days...I forgot to put my cup under the machine when I hit brewing.  But I quickly caught it.  Luckily there's a neat drip pan that catches liquid if you forget - so it doesn't spill all over the countertop.

I accomplished two of my three goals this weekend.  

I tried out The Pioneer's Woman's recipe for pastry (here) and made Pap's Chip Dip.  

I did NOT get the Christmas tree put away.  

I'm not perfect....ha!  

Hubby doesn't care if I leave it up.  

However, I would like to get it down before the Merry Maids come on Thursday.  

I thought Ree's no fail pie crust recipe seemed familiar.   

I found a recipe I cut out of the newspaper probably back in the 1980s that was very similar to hers.  

Now I've tried both and both are excellent.

My Never-Fail Pie Crust recipe

I've been crocheting in the evenings the past few days and have a couple more rounds done on my Christmas Round Ripple.  

I wasn't sure about it at first but now I'm really loving it.  Maybe it's the colors but I'm liking the design too...finally. 

I started out with a pattern (here) and couldn't figure it out after the first couple rounds so I started to do my own thing.  

And, no, I'm not writing it down because I didn't know if it would work out.  

I wing things a lot. 

I never would have believed that I could "wing" anything at crochet when I started this hobby several years ago.

It's not perfect but who cares.  

It's handmade and one of a kind!

I working on the green, red and green band now.  

I may add another variegated red, green and white yarn I have on hand between two reds.  

Check out the Flickr group where we are posting our round ripples.

Do you have a hobby you love? 

Our Wall of Books

OUR WALL OF BOOKS!

This is the view of one wall in our upstairs "Paperback" room.  

Can you tell we love to read!

We have books in just about every room in our home.

We recently cleaned out this room and gave around 800 paperbacks to Good Will.  

Some were so old the pages were yellowed and/or falling out.

My Hubby put up these shelves (I sanded them!).

They are just the right size for paperbacks.

Believe it or not we have two more bookcases in this room filled with science fiction paperbacks.

One of my favorite authors...Taylor Caldwell.  

You must read "A Prologue to Love"...it is wonderful and sad at the same time.

I read it in 9th grade - that started my love of this author's works.

The beat up book with the rubber band is her masterpiece, "Captains and Kings". 

You may remember that was a TV miniseries many years ago with the fantastic Richard Jordan.

Apparently it's available on DVD now.

I'll have to put an order into Amazon!

With all the junk that comes out of Hollyweird these days...why can't they do a miniseries on Colleen McCullough's "Masters of Rome" series?

You probably watched and/or read "Thorn Birds" another McCullough masterpiece.   

Some more well read books from John Jakes.  

You may also remember the great 1985 miniseries "North and South," with our beloved Patrick Swayze, based on John Jakes book of the same name.   In case you didn't know...there's more than one book to this historical series! 

I have "North and South" on DVD! 

This week we plan to go to Ikea to look at bookcases for the remaining wall without any books.  We like their "Billy" bookcases.  I want to move some of our reference hardcover books upstairs to make more room on our Danish wall unit in our living room for newer hardcover books.  

Do you like to read?

Are you crazy about books like we are?

No Kindle for us at Teacup Lane...we like to hold real books in our hands.

Yarn & Snow

I'm adding more rounds to my Christmas Round Ripple...trying to adjust so it will lie flat.  

Well, as flat as I can make it.  

I mean...it is a "ripple"...and shouldn't it "ripple" at least a little?

  

I'm working on a band of two rounds of white then a round of variegated white, green and red which I will follow with another two rounds of white.

That will bring me to about 20 rounds total and then it's back to a lime green, red and lime green band.  

It is almost too big to put in the light box.  

It's so dark here today because of the snow. 

Yep, our first snow of the winter season finally arrived last night.  

Just a light dusting...one to three inches.

I didn't get the last Christmas tree down yesterday.  Gosh, I'm slow.  

Today Hubby asked me to make Pap's Dip (our family recipe) and I want to try making Dee's (of The Pioneer Woman fame) recipe for perfect pie crust (here).   

That's just three things to do - wish me luck! 

A Study in Pink & Blue

A beautiful painted pink flower...

Pink and blue flowered combination...

Pink loveliness revealed in stunning gold and royal bluish purple...

A pink flowered teacup resting on a blue flowered plate...

Presenting my paternal Grandmother's treasured Aynsley's Pink Flowered Teacup!

Welcome to Beverly's Pink Saturday .  Click on her link to see more PINK