Monthly Archives: January 2015

Monday Mix

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IMG_8752I haven’t excelled at being productive on loom knitting my new blanket. I’ve worked on it a few hours, so far. After this update, I’ve decided to give updates on my blanket only when I’ve made significant progress, so it may be one a month or none-a-month…
But for now, I’ve 14 rows done and happy to have them. The first 10 rows are the toughest (and the last ten).
I’m off to a slow start after 11 days, but at least I’m off to a start. 🙂
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IMG_8745I’ve been working on a plastic canvas project for my Grandson. He enjoyed the minecraft blocks that I made for him and I wanted to make him something else. I decided on a tissue box cover and was inspired by a pin on pinterest. I made my own pattern. I enlarged it to where everything is centered and made it large enough to fit a tissue box. I’m working on the top, I hope it goes as well as the sides did.
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00IMG_8729I bought a couple new lamps the other day. The main selling feature to me was the swing arm. So, far it’s worked out great. The swing arm helps when I’m reading and crafting.
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IMG_87132In sadder news, Sunday 1-11-2015, Rex the triop (tadpole shrimp) lived to the ripe old age of 21 days and then curled up his 80 toes and died. I’m not sure what went wrong with the little feller.
He was a fun new friend and we’ll miss him.
Thursday 1-8-2015, I switched Rex to a beta bowl tank . Rex moulted within a half hour after I put him in the new tank. I figured he would continue to grow larger, so Friday I went to the store and stocked up on distilled water and even bought a small aquarium that’s about a gallon or so. I was saving it for when Rex grew larger, but it won’t happen now… sigh…
I’m going to keep the new tank & water. I might grow some more triops someday and probably will… but not right now… or I might get a guppy… or a beta… we’ll see…
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s-1-8-2015Shelibean will miss Rex too. While I tended to Rex each day Sheli would enjoy napping on our spare bed. It was short naps, but enjoy them, he did.
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IMG_8695There’s not much going around here lately, except for cold weather. Brrr. We got a dusting of dry snow on 1-7-2015. Over the course of the next few days, the temps got down to as love as 3° during the night. Fortunately, our pipes didn’t freeze.
The temps have warmed back to the mid 20’s to 30’s and if the sun happened to make a rare appearance the temp went up to nigh-on 47°. lol pull out the shorts and the sunscreen… oh yes… lol
I am so ready for Spring!!!
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Do you have many projects going at the same time?
Wishing you all a great week!spring-017

spgrnbgln

Boiled Custard Bread

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IMG_8003During this past holiday, I decided to try drinking some boiled custard. I hadn’t had any since I was a child and I forgot what it taste like. The custard was quite nice and had the taste of melted ice cream.

picgifs-cooking-166988I thought about the boiled custard. Since it tasted like melted ice cream, I figured it might be good to cook something with. The only melted ice cream recipe I recalled was for bread.
I looked up ice cream bread recipes and then adjusted the ingredients to fit my needs. I used just 2 ingredients: boiled custard and self rising flour.

The bread turned out beautifully. The texture of this bread is firm and it has a light cakey taste to it. I’m tickled how just 2 ingredients made such a nice loaf of bread.

My hubby says the bread doesn’t have much taste, but it does have a nice texture. He thought it might be good with sugar added to the mix.
I think he’s right, it’d make a dandy strawberry shortcake. but I haven’t tried making it with sugar yet.

Here’s my recipe if you want to try it.

Boiled Custard Bread
1 1/2 cup Boiled custard
2 cups self rising flour
Mix together.
Pour into prepared 8″ loaf pan. (I use olive oil baking spray to prepare the pan)
Bake in a preheated 350 degrees oven for 45 minutes or until done.
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Let me know if you try my recipe and any changes you make to it.
Have you made anything using boiled custard?
Do you make your own boiled custard?

Wishing you all a sweet rest of the week!
chef
spgrnbgln

Triop 16 days old eating spinach

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shed16daysIt’s hard for me to believe how quickly our dinosorta has grown. I figure you all will may get tired of seeing posts/videos about him. But I can’t help myself. lol It’s fascinating to me to see how fast Rex changed.
He shed his exoskeleton yesterday. It’s the light color thing on the left, Rex is on the right. I kind of hope he doesn’t get very big. I’m setting up a beta bowl for him right now. I plan to put some aquarium gravel in with the sand. Rex likes to dig and maybe the small gravels will keep him occupied.

I figured that Rex might have been hungry after shedding his exoskeleton, so I went online and looked up some things he can eat. He’s an omnivore, so he can pretty much live off anything within reason.
I par boiled (blanched) a sliver of carrot and a small spinach leaf. I wasn’t sure how Rex would react to the food. I was surprised when he pounced on the carrot. He didn’t seem to care much for it, but then he pounced on the spinach and ate his fill. I’m happy I was able to video a few seconds of his spinach feasting. It was something to see and I’m glad to be able to share it with you.

I hope you all are keeping warm during this freezing cold snap.
I hope that none of you are getting iced or snowed under.
Wishing you a warm & healthy rest of the week.
🙂spgrnbgln

2015 WP Weekly Photo Challenge – New

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2015 WordPress Weekly Photo Challenge
~New~0-IMG_86780-1

I’m starting the year off with a new Dell 15.6″ Laptop. My old gateway laptop was good for 6 years or so, but this past week the keys started falling off and it required too much attention to reboot it… sooo I went out and bought this new Dell laptop.
Within a few minutes of opening it, I put a band-aid over the camera lens. lol I’m not comfortable with that little glass-eye staring at me all the time.
This Dell was supposed to be 1tb, but it’s not, it’s only 921gb and then it’s actually 884gb because of the Windows programs.

I originally was going to replace my old gateway laptop with a tablet. I ordered a Dell Venue 8 pro 32gb. I really really liked it until I realized after a couple days that it had only about 6gb free. It went from 32gb with 11gb free to about 6gb free after updates. I was not happy at all, so I returned it and got a refund.

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I’m joining in on the WordPress Weekly Photo Challenge.
I may miss a week or so, here and there, throughout the year but I’m going to give it a try anyway.

Wishing you all fun with the WP photo challenge!
compuspgrnbgln

Triop – 14 days old

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Right now, my hubby & I fondly refer to the triop as ‘Rex’ (our grandson may rename him though). Rex is growing quickly (it’s probably partly because he ate all the fairy shrimp.) Rex may be full grown, depending on which website you read.

Yesterday, I managed to make an okay video of Rex swimming. It’s pretty neat that he/she actually looks like the 200 million year old fossil of it’s forefathers.

Rex’s a pretty neat critter. I’m happy it’s doing so well, so far.

Wishing you all a pleasant week!

🙂spgrnbgln