Fudgy Mocha Brownies

These brownies are incredibly delicious!!!! I love baking from scratch, It's just one of those things that I find relaxing, and these were no disappointment!!!!  I don't know how much you all will love this, but I know they were a hit here!!!!

Ingredients

1 and 1/4 cups unsifted flour devided

1/4 cup sugar

1/2 cup cold butter

1 (14 ounce) can sweetened condensed milk

1/2 cup unsweetened cocoa

1 egg

1 teaspoon instant coffee dissolved in 1 tablespoon hot water

1 teaspoon vanilla extract

1/2 teaspoon baking powder 3/4 cup chopped nuts

Directions

preheat oven to 350 F

In bowl, combine 1 cup flour and sugar, cut in butter until crumbly. Press mixture firmly in bottom of 13x9 inch baking pan.  Bake 15 minutes.

Meanwhile in large bowl, mix all other ingredients including 1/4 cup of flower, but leave out the nuts. Mix well, and then add the nuts after everything has been mixed. Pour mixture over crust after it comes out of oven, and then bake for 20 minutes until center is set. Cool, and then cut into 36 brownies. Store in an air tight container at room temperature.

This is very very tasty, however, it could use a little more coffee in it. I'm thinking that maybe one more tablespoon will make all the difference.

My DNA quilt

Hello everyone!!! Bet my post title got your attention!!! This is a quilt I made for us here at the couch, after it's been to show and tell at the quilting bee the weekend, It will go on the back of the couch, where we can pull it over on us should we get cold.  This was my first big scrap quilt, and I must say, I think it turned out fairly well!!! I have been jokingly calling it my DNA quilt, because of all of the injuries I managed to get while working on this bad boy!!! First there was the running the sewing machine needle through my finger, and after that, I went back into my sewing room Sunday night, and managed to snip my finger while snipping threads...to be honest, that hurt worse than the sewing machine needle, bled more too surprisingly. After I got through all that, and managed to get this whole thing quilted, I was removing the last safety pin from the quilt, and when it popped open, what happened??? Why the darn thing decided to give me a nice big scratch. Thank goodness, I managed to get the binding on without any incident. Although for you quilters, I want you to know, I was determined to use up all of that black fabric that I used as my sashing, and cut 2 inch strips for my binding. That was work getting that on there, and I did it by machine, because this girl doesn't do any hand sewing if it can be avoided.

Right now, I'm working on some t-shirt quilts. I started ironing on the stabilizer this morning, and thought there was something wrong with it at first...absolutely nothing wrong with it. It would seem I forgot to turn my iron on. I think my brain is broken!!!! I have 2 of them I'm making, and will post pictures once they are done. Hopefully I don't get any injuries while working on these.

If you are interested in how I made my quilt, I just did 12 inch Churndash squares using scrap fabric, and I did 3 inch sashing between everything. The white fabric going around the inside was a 2 inch strip, and then I think I did a 5 or 8 inch strip around with the green fabric. It was a lot of fun to put together, it was a great escape, and I found myself in a happier place while working on this quilt, because I wasn't thinking about Facebook, or any of the protests going on. It was just me, my fabric, my rulers, my rotary cutter, my thread, and my machine, and Bryan Adams in the CD player.

I'm currently playing around learning how to use my quilt designing program, and have many hopes of designing a few things for here. Stay tuned, as soon as I find what I did with it, there will be a new crochet pattern coming your way!!!

Stay warm!!!
Brandi

So Sorry

Hey everyone!!! I know I promised you guys recipes and some new crochet patterns this month, and I truly have a stack of recipes, and patterns I've written, and I swear I'm not coming up excuses for reasons why I didn't get them posted.  Both Frank and I spent most of this month sick. We got whatever that nasty gunk is that's been going around. I had it twice as long as Frank did unfortunately. My congestion was so bad, that when I would lay down because I was feeling so bad I had to lay down before I fell down, everything would drain to one side of my body, and then when I sat up, I had to stay in the upright sitting position for a good 5 minutes before I could stand up. I still have a little bit of congestion that gets me at the end of the day, and my nose holes are sore still from all the nose blowing I had been doing.

In other news, I had to break down and buy a new sewing machine a couple of weeks ago, thank goodness for an Amazon Prime membership. I would have to say it's the best investment we have ever made. It's already paid for itself, between the movies, the free shipping and the discount prices. I was working on quilting a scrap quilt that I made to get to know my new sewing machine, and for the first time in my sewing career, I actually ran my finger under the sewing machine needle!!! It went all the way through, the tip of the needle came out a good 1/4 inch of the other side of my finger. I don't know how I didn't panic, and how I kept calm enough to raise the needle out of my finger. Frank grounded me from my sewing room for a few days, and I haven't been up to finish my quilt. (Although I've decided that my finger doesn't hurt much anymore, and I can type with it with no problem, so that means I'm healed up.)

Our Neon is almost over the repair hump according to Frank. It's in the shop right now, there is another sensor that is being replaced, and the final engine mount is being repaired, and whatever is wrong with the break line is being fixed. (All I can say about the break issue is, thank goodness that it went while I was sitting in the driveway, and not when I was halfway to the grocery store, or while Frank was on his way to work) After about 3 months of research and saving for a down payment, we got a new car. I think I know more about vehicles than I ever wanted to know. We knew we were going to want something with all wheel drive, but something that got good gas mileage. I was comparing cars against each other, and reading reviews, and stats, and learning about problems, and longevity, and the list goes on. My list started out with 56 different vehicles. Who knew that I would have that much of a choice, it ticked off so slowly, and it came down to 2 different vehicles of the same make. It came down between the Outback Subaru, and the Subaru Forester. The winning car was (Insert drumroll here) The 2017 Outback Subaru. We got it this past Thursday, and I'm not going to lie, I absolutely love it!!!! Considering children are not off the table for us, no matter how we become parents weather it's natural, scientific, or adoption, we still want to be parents, and I like knowing that I have a vehicle that will be a great family vehicle, with safety ratings that are completely awesome.
   
So!!! Now you have been caught up, and I promise you guys, I do have recipe's and patterns coming your way. Once I figure out my electric quilt program, for quilt designing, I'm hoping to have some quilt patterns to share with you all as well!!! So then, this little farm blog will have a little bit more of everything!!!!

Happy New Year

Greetings my fellow readers!!!! I'm so happy that the new year is here, and that we can get a fresh start on things. Nobody can deny that 2016 was a rough year, it wasn't all bad, but it was indeed rough. It seemed like everything kept breaking, and going wrong. However, some of the breaks were for the better it would seem. Having to replace our Washer and Dryer, we got an HE, and monitoring my electric bill, it's actually using about $40 less worth of electricity a month.  So, even though it seemed tragic at the time, it was kind of a blessing in disguise. (I will admit though, it was really kind of sad, because Frank's parents bought us that set when we bought this house many moons ago)
We've managed to keep the Neon going, and are probably going to be putting it in the shop again here soon, and getting something else fixed. We're going to try and limp it along for as long as we can. Our plan is to get something with 4 wheel drive, that sits up higher than a car, but isn't huge. We've been looking at the crossovers. The plan is to have as big of a down payment as we possibly can, so that we can pay it off as fast as we can. We actually managed to pay off a bunch of stuff last year, and I really love not having a lot of payments.

I have been writing new patterns to share with you all, and I have them in many different drafts right now. I think you all will enjoy them. They are fun, and fast. I'm going to attempt to post a pattern a month for you all. The first one won't be posted this week, mostly because I have a bunch of stuff going on this week, but I will have it up before the month is out!!! I've also been trying new recipes, and I have a huge stack of them to share with you guys, and I'm going to try to share at least one a month with you guys as well. I know that last year my posting got rather minimal, but this year, I'm going to try to do better. This blog is a fun hobby for me. I love writing, and sharing, and I truly hope you all enjoy my rambles.

Well, that's it for today, Until my next post! Have a great week, and a Happy New Year!!!!

cleaning up

Well hello again!!!! I've had to do a major clean up of my sewing/craft room. It was so out of hand that when I went in there to get some yarn to work on a pattern I'd been writing to share with you guys, not only could I not find what I was after, but I realized when things came tumbling down that it was time to gut that room!!! Once I got started, I ended up throwing out 5 bags of stuff, and filling many bags and boxes of stuff to donate to the thrift store. I'm very close to being finished in there, and will be in there working on many things this weekend!!!! I have several sewing projects that need to be finished, and several more that need to be started. 

At this point, the way our year has gone, I'm thinking that I'm not going to be making any promises to have any new patterns, or recipes to share with you all before the year is out. I honestly wanted to have so many things for you all, but life just kept getting in the way!!! However!!! Once my workspace is clean, and workable, I am positive that I will hopefully have so very many things to share with you all!!!!

So, if I don't check in with you all before the end of the year, I hope you all have a very Merry Christmas, and a very Happy New Year!!! I hope 2017 is much better!!!!

What a year its been so far

I don't know about you all, but 2016 has been a rough year. Not like horribly the world is ending, we're losing the farm, the dog died kind of year, but a year where stuff just keeps happening. My poor Farm husband has had to have multiple gum surgeries, and it looks like he has one more in his future, and hopefully it will be the last one, and then he can be done with that.
My mother in law had gotten a bit of an infection and had to be on IV antibiotics, and we are almost done!!! We're so very close to being done!!!! But we are really far behind on the buildings and the farm stuff. So, we will be bringing in a little bit of help here in the next couple of weeks as soon as we get ourselves turned around and reorganized.
If our help is good, and we can get caught back up quickly, we will be able to finish butchering, and then get our replacement birds so that we can get things up and moving the way we want.

Anyways, I saw in the news this morning that Florence Henderson passed away!!!! That was rather sad...we have lost a lot of big named stars this year that were well known for their roles. I was really sad about David Bowie, and Alan Rickman. I'm hoping that we don't lose anyone else this year.

Well, I'd better pop off of here for now. I didn't mean to ramble, and honestly, I wasn't quite sure what exactly I had wanted to say, I guess I just wanted to pop in and say a little something so that you all knew I wasn't ignoring you all.

Time to go feed and water the critters before the sun goes down on me! Hope you all are well!!!!

Crochet Dishcloth

Hey there!!!! The day's not over yet!!! So if you have been waiting for that new pattern I promised, here it is at last!!!! This is actually part of a 3 piece set that I've written. I thought that I would start with the dishcloths, because they work up just so quick and easy!!! I loved making these once I got going with it. I'm probably going to have lots of these in my kitchen in the near future. Each one of these uses just over half a ball of cotton yarn. and an H hook.

Directions:

1. Chain 30, sc in second ch from hook. *dc in next st, sc in next* repeat across

2. Ch 2, dc in first sc *sc in next dc, dc in next sc* repeat across

Rows 4-25 Repeat rows 1 and 2 alternatively, finish off at end of row 25

Yes! It's just that simple. Sometimes, the simplest things turn out to be the prettiest. These truly are pretty in person!!!   Here in a few days, I'll have the next part of this set double tested, photographed and shared!!!!

Enjoy!!!! And I hope you and your families all have a wonderful Thanksgiving!!!!