NEW Blog Location!!

In order to streamline my business website and my blog, we have combined the two at www.ingridbarlow.com.  All my new blog postings will be at this site along with all my old posts.  Please change your booksmarks so you can find me in the future!  We will keep this site up temporarily to help people make the transition.

Come enjoy life with me at www.ingridbarlow.com!!

Meat and Flowers…

It’s getting close to that time of year again–deer season!  Tony and I depend on him shooting a deer for our “beef” supply all year round.  By this time of year I am usually running low on ground meat, but still have plenty of roasts.  The easiest way we have found to cook them is to throw them in the crock-pot.  Typically we can’t eat an entire roast in one meal, so I am getting pretty creative at making leftover meals with it.  Yesterday we shredded some of it and made tacos…tonight I made stroganoff…tomorrow, I’ll be sick of it whatever it is!  (Kind of a gross picture, but it sure beats having to buy beef all year.  Plus, after 6 years, I almost like it better than beef.  Free range meat!)

This is a project that I started probably 3 years ago but just recently finished.  It’s a small wall hanging of what I call my Modern Flowers.  I love the pop of the colors against the brown background.

I used bias tape for the blue spiral.  I used a decorative stitch on my sewing machine so that I was sure all the edges were tacked down.  I’ve learned that with spirals you can’t let the puckers bother you–they just add texture! 

Have a fabulous weekend!!!

Wool Whimsy

I’ve been craving a wool project where I can just “veg” out and do some hand stitching, so here is what I came up with.  My initial plan was to take these three mini pictures, 8×8 each, and hang them vertically together for a skinny wall…however, now I’m not so sure.  My favorite parts are the embroidery fireflies on the owl and the french knot sparks on the campfire.

Wool can be expensive, so a cheap way to get your hands on it is to go thrifty for 100% wool clothing items.  Suit jackets, sweaters…throw them in a cycle of hot water and a hot dryer and you have some nice felted wool.

Easy project steps:

-Draw a picture on fusible web. (remember your picture will be the reverse of whatever you draw for your final project)

-fuse onto wool following fusible web instructions.  Cut out pictures.

-fuse onto background wool.

-stitch around.  I just used a very primitive stitch to tack everything down.

Bitty Booties!

Bitty Booties are done!  They are so very cute and easy to make.  I think they probably took me a max of 1 hour from start to finish.  You can find the pattern at Heather Bailey under Bitty Booties.

 

 

 

I had a fun supper for Tony tonight.  I made his grandma’s corn fritters and loaded baked potato soup!  Wow, was it scrumptious!!

Here’s the fritter recipe from Grandma Max.

-mix 2 eggs, 3/4 c milk, 1 tbsp oil

-sift together 1 3/4 c flour, 1 tbsp sugar, 1 1/2 tsp. baking powder, 1/2 tsp. salt

-combine wet and dry ingredients and add one 12 oz can of whole kernal corn (I used some of my freezer corn…eye balled the amount)

Heat oil in a fry daddy, or whatever you have, and drop batter by the spoonful when the oil is good and hot.

Goes down really good with butter, syrup, or HONEY!

The soup recipe came from a magazine I just discovered called Cook’s Country.     

(I have not mastered beautiful pictures of food yet, but you get the point.)

Fabric Conundrum

So much beautiful fabric and I’m just not sure what to make with it.  I have to have the perfect project to use it in.  Oh, the pressure! 

Check out this cute tablerunner.  I have some of this fabric and I love what Kristina did with it. 

 

If you need a little inspiration check out Needle Little Inspiration. 

I’m thinking I might need to make a pair of these Bitty Booties by Heather Bailey soon!

Baby Barlow

We had a big ultrasound today at our 18 week mark.  We figured that if baby Barlow cooperated we would find out the sex.  First I thought it was a girl, then boy, then girl.  Of course after thinking about all the darling skirts and dresses I could make, I was sure it was a boy.  A boy it is!  We are thrilled and filled with anticipation for February to arrive.  I feel like I have that much more of a connection with the baby knowing the sex.  Maybe now I will start preparing for his arrival…or maybe I’ll just put it off a while longer. 

We are looking for a good Scandinavian name, so if you know one feel free to share!

A few days spent back home…

-a wedding

-MN state fair

-giant squash

-Swedish brownies

-a birthday boy

-dew covered mornings

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Collected apples at the grandparent’s house…

-Tony climbed

-we caught with bedsheet

-warm apple pie

-cinnamon apple sauce stored for the year

-pork with crannberries and apple relish

-fresh bread just because

A day of dreams…

I saw this link on another blog I check, Cold Anter Farm.  I love the story!  This is such a dream of mine.  I would love to have families and school kids come visit my own farm someday to experience all the sights and smells.   Click on the picture to check it out! 

 

I’m also relishing the beginnings of autumn today.  I just did another batch of tomato sauce last night and now I am thinking about apple pies and apple sauce.  I redecorated the house into fall since September comes tomorrow.  Burning a cinnamon candle and opening the windows to the cool breeze makes the whole house feel like it is anticipating the season.  My favorite time of year!

 

I love this time of year!  The weather is starting to turn cooler and fall is beginning to inch it’s way toward us.  Last week Tony’s grandparents brought me over a box of tomatoes from their garden so I got 9 cans of sauce in the freezer for future spaghetti and pizza meals.  We also dug all the potatoes up from our garden after church on Sunday.  (Fresh hash browns as soon as we got home!  Oh, the key to homemade hash browns…you can’t let your grated potatoes sit too long before they hit the pan and you need to squeeze as much of the moisture out of them as well.)  It was our first year doing potatoes and it was a lot of fun.  Some of the potatoes were really big and others were smaller—it was like digging for gold treasure!  I’m anxious to see how long they keep.  I also have been craving soup lately, so I made cream of cauliflower soup and sourdough bread.  Yum!  You can see I have a constant companion in the kitchen with me.  She is a tripping hazard but I rather enjoy having her around.  She is also a wonderful vacuum!    

 

 

I hope you are all enjoying the season! 

I love books!

A new book arrived on my doorstep yesterday!  Handmade Home by Amanda Blake Soule.  This is her second book and she is such an inspiration when it comes to simple homemaking.  She is very creative and does a fabulous job of feeding the imaginations of her 3 children.  She is also very resourceful when it comes to using what she has and making things work in a pinch.  A couple of my favorite projects in her book are The Family Heart and Cozy Wall Pockets. 

If you haven’t checked out her blog you totally should—http://www.soulemama.com/—it’s one of my daily visits!