The recipe for Chocolate Goop!

Chocolate Goop isn't difficult to make and requires ingredients you might have on hand. If you don't have chocolate pudding on hand then any pudding will do.

Assemble these items:

A 9 x 13 pan (mist with cooking spray)

1 cup butter
1/2 cup light brown sugar

1 cup angel flake coconut

2 cups flour

You will also need....Two packages pudding mix and 4 cups milk.

Soften butter (but not as much as I did) and then mix in brown sugar. Blend well and add the coconut. Add one cup flour and mix, then second cup of flour and blend til crumbly.

Place mixture in baking pan and press til flat. Bake in 400 degree oven for 15 minutes or until golden.

While the crust bakes, you can prepare the pudding mixture. Combine milk and pudding mix and follow package directions to prepare pudding. When pudding is done, set aside but stir frequently so that you do not get a hard layer on top of pudding.

Your crust should look like this when you remove it from the oven.

Let it cool a bit and then chop it up with a spoon and fill one cup of mixture in a measuring cup. You will use this mixture for top of pudding.

Next step is to press the crust back down in the pan and pour in the pudding.

Spread the pudding across the entire crust, then with your hands, sprinkle the cup of crust crumbs over the top of the pudding mixture.

Adding a dollop of whipped creme is highly recommended but I had no whipped creme on hand. Cool whip would do in a pinch. :-) I enjoy it just as it is!!

A Saturday morning cup of tea.......

I only really post once a month here on my tea blog but this morning I am sitting down with a cup of tea and thought I would share two things with you..........

one, is that I am reading that lovely book that my friend, Barb gave me titled "Time for Tea - Tea and Conversation with Thirteen English Women" - and I love it! It's such a relaxing "read" and it makes me wish I was in England. If you go to my stitchingblog you will see Barb and how she delivered this lovely little gift. :-)
Now, the very best cup of tea I ever had was in a little tea garden in the English countryside. I was a lucky girl. My husband's job took him overseas a great deal and as airline miles accumulated, I would get to go along about once a year. I have some lovely photos that I should share of those trips. That means unpacking photo boxes so it could be winter before I get anything posted. That will give you something to look forward to.

Second thing, is that I have had a link on my sidebar to "TheTeaGuy" ever since I started this blog. There are wonderful links there to other tea sites, too, and many things to check out while you are also sitting down with a favorite cup of tea. But what I really enjoyed over at the "TheTeaGuy" this morning was the videos he shares. I do not recall ever hearing Paul McCartney and the English Tea song. It was too cute! Check it out!

Now it's time to get back to relaxing with my morning "cuppa". Hope you are enjoying a lovely weekend wherever you are!

Sandi

Perfect summer day and a cold glass of iced tea!

I took time out for tea earlier today. However, I had a number of things to do and I'm only now sitting down to type. Yes, I am sitting down and I am not in too much pain!! Gotta take advantage of it!!
I went to the doctor early this morning and he was amazed at how well I was doing. And he was right as I am doing really well considering where I was a few days ago. But long story short, and if you want the details go here, I will be going for a cortisone shot next week and perhaps that really will give me complete relief from pain.
Actually, I was feeling almost no pain at all about 4:00 this afternoon when I took to the front porch and my favorite plastic lawn chair. Instead of hot tea, I chose iced tea today and I enjoyed it with cookies, not the "Chocolate Goop" that I promised. I'll share that concoction in August when I am sure I will be doing a lot better.

That cheap plastic lawn chair is so comfortable that I have thought of bringing it into the house! Instead, since it was a beautiful summer day, although pretty windy, I gathered up my basket of sewing, a glass of cold iced tea and some strawberries and a couple of cookies. They were yummy. The local grocery store carries this macaroon sandwich cookie that is really good and I dressed it up a bit like this.................

Warm left-over chocolate frosting in the microwave and dip macaroons in the frosting and place on waxed paper or parchment paper.

There was no leftover vanilla frosting in the fridge, so I opened a new container and put some in a bowl, warmed it up and drizzled it across the cookies. Let set until frosting hardens. Wash the strawberries while you wait. :-)
Soak up the sun while you enjoy the iced tea and every last bite of the cookies and strawberries!

Kaiser got a crumb or two and he enjoyed watching some guys working at the house "kitty-corner" from us. I wish he was always this mellow. Anyway, I'll keep some of the cookies and some are going across the street to my neighbor.

I started feeling pretty good yesterday and just had to do some sewing. Check out my recipe for a "Cinderella Tea Towel" that follows. Plus, you'll want to watch my pincushion blog for a little tutorial on that pincushion with attached needlecase that is shown in the photo with my iced tea and cookies. I'll get that posted shortly. When you're laying around in pain, sometimes the mind saves you by thinking up things you can do when you get better. :-)

Hope you all had a great day!

Sandi

Recipe for a "Cinderella Tea Towel"

The "Cinderella Tea Towel" starts with a bargain-priced fabric panel (with a flaw), that is combined with a bargain-priced dishtowel (from the dollar store, of course) and it becomes a cute and sassy dishtowel that adds class to your kitchen!! The fabric panel is shown on the right. There's a flaw in the printing on the other half of this panel and so it was only $1.00. :-) I loved the cherries. They made me think of Erma Bombeck as I think she's the one who authored the phrase...."if life is bowl of cherries, why am I in the pits". Correct me, if I am wrong. Either way, they seemed an appropriate theme for me as I have felt like my life is in the pits with this annoying leg and back pain.
This idea came to me pre-pain and so a few weeks ago, I picked up (yes, I paid for them) several dishtowels at the Dollar Tree store.

As some of you who may be reading this already know, I proposed a "Tea Towel" challenge on my SeasonsBOM Yahoo group. I wanted to make a sample to encourage members to make a tea towel and get their name in the drawing for a bag full of goodies. I didn't get a sample done but Anett from HouseOfMouse stepped up to the challenge and not only made tea towels to inspire members of the Seasons group, but she also made potholders to inspire members of my Wooly Buddies group (yep, there's a potholder challenge going on in that group). She saved the day, make that - the month - for me!! Many thanks to Anett! And also, to Pat, my Wooly Buddies moderator who keeps the "flock" connected! :-)

SO, to make a not-so-great towel into a cute and sassy towel, you'll need one dishtowel and one fabric panel (any will do), or any favorite fabric that might have borders on it. I forgot to take a picture of the step where I cut out the strip of unwanted vegetables you see in the photo above, so imagine now that you are seeing the towel minus that border. :-)

Cut two pieces of border print that are one inch wider than the width of the dishtowel. You'll use one on the front and one on the back.

In the photo above, I have pinned the two border strips to the larger section of the dishtowel. Stitch along this edge following any border line that is a straight edge and preferrably gives you at least a 1/4" seam. When stitching is complete, remove pins and fold fabric over for the front of the dishtowel and press.

In this photo, you will see that I have sewn the bottom section of the dishtowel to the border piece used on the front of the towel, plus I have pressed the back border piece down. Remove your pins and press.

Your towel should look like the one above except in different fabrics. On the back border piece, turn under the bottom edge and press. You will stitch this down later on.

Time to pin the side seams.........above is front view........and below is back view.

Handstitch the side seams on the dishtowel, then pin along the bottom edge. On the front of the dishtowel, topstitch along the border piece on the upper and

lower edges and you are done. Just press it up and hang it on your stove or a decorative towel rack and a plain old dishtowel is now fit for Cinderella's kitchen!
I realize that I missed taking a photo or two that might have made this easier to explain. I stitched this up yesterday and did it in a hurry while I was feeling good. Took me less than an hour to do. I want a pretty towel for each season or holiday so I will be sure to post what I do with the rest of those towels. :-)

A change in time for Tea

Due to my back and leg pain problems (I've had the MRI and await results), I am going to postpone my monthly Teatime to next Wednesday, July 15th. I have a special treat I want to share called "Chocolate Goop" and I don't have the energy yet to prepare it, my tea and a stitching project. It's summer, anyway, so iced tea is probably more the "drink of the day" than a cup of hot tea. Hope you are having a good day wherever you are!
Sandi

Memories of Tea Parties

Did you have tea parties when you were a kid? Or did you set the scene for them for your children? I loved tea parties and can remember little sets of dishes and tiny silverware, too. Somewhere in my photos, I have this really cute photo of my kids playing "tea party" and they are using the set of Little Lulu dishes that my mother made in her ceramic shop. When I come across it, I am going to post it her on Tea and Stitches. :-)

There were two kinds of tea parties that we played at when I was a kid..........there were "mud pie" tea parties and then there were tea parties where we actually had some tea and cookies. Thinking about that reminded me of a treat that I loved when I was young...........SUGAR sandwiches. Yes, that's right........soft white bread (Wonder Bread in the 50's), real butter and pure white sugar. Looks just like the half-sandwich you see in my photo. Only difference is that I went "light" on the sugar but I used real butter. And with that cup of English Breakfast tea, it was delicious. In fact, I had forgotten how good a SUGAR sandwich can taste!!! The other snack I liked was frosted soda crackers. When there were not "real" cookies in the cupboards, my mom would make up some vanilla icing and spread it on crackers. The combination of the sweet and salty is really tasty. When I grew and married and there were not cookies in the house, I, to0, made frosted crackers for a treat. I think they are even better than frosted graham crackers!

This was just a simple tea today. After all of yesterday's treats, I didn't need much of a snack. If you haven't tried a sugar sandwich or frosted crackers, take a chance and see if it might be just the thing for a snack tonight!

It is, oh, so nice.....to share!

That's all there is to it!! It is just nice to share. Life is so much more pleasant that way!! After celebrating my birthday yesterday, I can't help but think ...... good grief, has it been that many years since I was a little girl?!! Sure has!! And you know what.......I enjoyed being a kid so much that I am not sure I ever grew up!! LOL!!
Pleasant memories of how much fun it was to play in the rain and then follow that with making mud pies and it didn't get any better. Because we lived in a river town, there was one particular spot on our sidewalk where the soft silt collected and I remember how fun it was to feel the mud between your toes. And I remember little pans filled with mud pies that dried in the sun. I'm sure my mother did the same thing as a child and I know my kids did. With those thoughts in mind, I sketched this design a few years ago. It is, of course, reminiscent of Sunbonnet designs but I drew the sketch thinking of my daughter and her kindergarten friend. It's an 8 1/2" by 11" design and I have shown it in three needlework examples..........
First there is Redwork and I loved it when I finished it in Redwork on muslin.

And then I thought I'd try traditional embroidery on muslin like my mother did as a child.

And then I combined embroidery and colored pencils on muslin and I really like this one. To get the pattern, you can copy the Redwork design to your computer and then print it out. I will be posting the PDF file for this to my Seasons Yahoo Group later on this week.

And now it's time to fix a cup of tea. Back soon.....

Sandi