Fresh Fruit Drinks

I don't know about you, but I love fresh fruit in drinks like lemonade and punch. My only issue with this, however, is how quickly fruit can go bad. Especially berries! So, i have found a simple way to be able to have fresh fruit drinks year-round.

First, buy the fruit when it is in season. So right now, that means I'm buying berries like crazy!
Second, mash said fruits in a bowl. Make sure to remove stems, leaves, pits and other non-edibles.
Third,  place mashed fruit pulp into ice cube trays and freeze.

Now you can plop a fresh fruit cube in any lemonade any time you want fruit! You can also eat the fruit cube as is but I'm a fan of them in drinks.

FYI this makes great drinks for parties. Serve several types of flavors for guests to put in lemonade or alcoholic beverages. It gives them options and saves you the hassle of finding fresh fruit for that party in February.

A Long Absence, A New Job, and a New Craft Room!

Hello!
     Well here I am almost a year later. It's been a long and crazy ride. I got married in January of this year to the love of my life and we had a huge party up in Montana. It was amazing and I was so happy to have all my friends and family there.
     Next up in the world of crazy came a new job! Finally! Now I work as a Metallurgist for one the mines around Elko and am loving it. It keeps me super busy and I get to learn a whole new field that isn't my degree. I've gotten to help solve process problems and see the inner workings of those processes. Plus it equals enough income that Josh and I could buy a brand new house!
     Said house is out in Spring Creek. It is on two acres, totally quiet, has a huge kitchen and is pretty much amazeballs. Now owning a house, we don't have to rent. Which means we no longer have to deal with our landlady. Which is super awesome because she's nuts. We also now get to have two cute dogs. Sasha and Rascal are our new babies. Sasha is a dachshund and Rascal is a dachshund/chihuahua mix. We adopted both of them from the local animal shelter. On top of that, owning a house allows me to have a much larger office/craft room with it's very own walk-in closet! This has helped me get all my fabric/patterns organized which means more craftiness in the future. Oh! And it's also allowing me to take on custom clothing commission work! I even have my own business email! (cuttlefishcustomclothing@gmail.com)
     Currently, there are two gals I work with that are expecting. So, I have been working on some super cute baby type things. One item is a shopping cart cover that keeps babies from chewing on nasty cart handrails. the other is a play blanket. I'm doing a set of these items for each gal so will be definitely be posting about them in the future.
    For now that's all you crazy reader you. 

Various Crafty Endeavors

Since I have not been employed for the past two months, I have decided to take on various projects around the house. Here are updates for all the projects.

#1)Refinishing antique dresser:

I have sanded and refinished all the drawers. I have to finish sanding the main drawer holder and the mirror and refinish them.

This is the dresser before. This is after sanding.

#2) Making a quilt

So, for the longest time I've had a quilt designed but have never gotten around to making it. Well now I have. I'm making a kirby and metaknight quilt with applique. It will 7ft x 7ft. Right now, I just finished cutting out all the background blocks and am working on sewing them together. Here's an idea of what I'm going for.

#3) Learning to draft patterns and make cool vintage stuff

Well, I got myself a cool vintage 50's skirt pattern and resized it. So now all I have to do is try out my handmade pattern. Here's the skirt.

I have more crafty stuff I've been up to, but I don't have pictures yet. More to come.

Kraken: A Book Review

Book: Kraken

Author: China Mieville

I initially picked up this book for two reasons: 1) I love squids. So, the title appealed to me. 2) I have read Mieville's Un Lun Dun which I thought was brilliant. Thus, I ended up reading Kraken.

Kraken recounts the odd and twisted tale of Billy Harrow, a simple preserver at the Darwin Center who suddenly finds himself in the middle of a police investigation when the giant squid specimen he helped preserve disappears. His life gets even weirder when the police tell him not to speak about the incident, it doesn't show up in any papers, and a strange squirrel keeps watching him. Suddenly, Billy finds that London has much more going on than he thought. Magic is around every corner, there's something big going down (like end of the world big), and he lands in the middle of it. Is Billy really the key to preventing the end of the world or is this all just a big mix-up?

At first, I thought "What in God's name have I gotten myself into?" I consider myself generally intelligent, but at first I could not make heads or tails of the storyline. The British slang, if hilarious, was occasionally hard to follow, but I honestly didn't think that was the problem. As I forged ahead, I realized that being lost was purposeful. I was as lost as Billy and ha the feeling that I was standing to close to a mosaic. I could see the colors but not the picture. After about the first 50 pages, I felt like I could put enough of the storyline together to understand a small notion of what was going on- thank God. Mieville manages to be irreverent yet indisputably honest in his views of religion and all other forms of hocus-pocus. I felt that as I read on I was putting together a puzzle- piece by piece. Overall it was a good read. As per usual, Mieville creates his own version of the world to great effect.

My Rating: I give it a 4/5. It dragged a smidge in some parts but had me laughing out loud at others.