Cold Weather Activities… for me

Baking seems to be my default activity when I’m stressed and this cold is stressing me out. Okay, really, I want to have nice baked goods in the house so I can keep up my caloric intake for the winter. Tough work.

What have I been cooking up? Hmm…soups like Bon Appetit’s spicy bean and wilted greens from this month’s issue… trust me their picture is better than the one I took.

Baking Cinnamon Rolls from (of course) smitten kitchen. 

I’m going to try the new version for cranberry-orange or apple cinnamon buns next.

Sewing is not my usual default activity (plus I didn’t want to go in the crawl space for my sewing machine) so I used Stitch Witchery (love!) to make a roller window shade out of unbleached muslin. Deciding if I want to go with a fun pattern or keep it simple with this. This was my trial run. Fabric weight is okay, I need to use more starch (yes, I made my own), and measure and cut with precision (also not a strength). Great tutorial here. I found plenty of sites that showed you how to cover exisiting shades with fabric but I wanted to have plain fabric (when we moved in I found a gorgeous old linen roller shade in our basement so that’s my inspiration).