hummingbird cake, quilting, hens & chicks

I tried out a new recipe from my quilt group's fund-raising cookbook.  It's called Hummingbird Cake.
Of course that leads to all kinds of jokes from my family about how many hummingbirds did I have to harvest to make the cake, ha ha.

I have no idea how it got this name but it's a good cake. It has crushed pineapple and bananas but the flavors blend together so neither is overwhelming.  Cream cheese frosting- which I think you could put on an old shoe and it would make it good enough to eat.

Here is the recipe...submitted by a lady from a different quilt group....

I have been doing some sewing and un-sewing.  I noticed this on my 9 patch quilt...two very similar blocks ended up next to each other ( the blue windowpane check) fortunately it was only sewn on two sides when I discovered it so not a big problem to re-work it.

I have made some good progress on the "America the Beautiful" quilt.  

Take a look at the top center (below). That's supposed to be "purple mountain majesties" up there.

 In the photo I've got some folded fabric stacked there to try out colors.

The instructions were to just cut a solid corner of fabric to represent mountains. I couldn't stop thinking that they looked more like pyramids so I decided to do mine a bit differently...using a quilt block pattern that is actually named "majestic mountains" (below). I think I will like this much better.

I have one more birthday present to tell you about...this one from my parents.  They gave me a strawberry pot planter and some big Hens & Chicks for it and even a bag of soil to fill it up.

They have some Hen & Chick planters like this and these are the Chicks they have removed from theirs. Just enough to fill up my planter with room to develop more Chicks.

Little Miss Deer is still hanging around the yard.

We have had trouble around the house with one thing working when it shouldn't ...the toilet, and another thing not working when it should...the wifi router.     Two of life's necessities!

The toilet problem was easily fixed with a new flapper...but even with a new router, something is still wrong with wifi...specifically streaming Netflix.  The next step is to contact Netflix and/or the TV maker, Vizio.

And, I've started separating more recyclables. I thought cardboard boxes were my main recyclable item but I have found we have a large amount of plastic items that have the recycle logo on them and also a surprising amount of junk mail and catalogs that also meet the criteria.

I am collecting the separated items in the basement so I have the added bonus of climbing stairs a couple more times each day when I take stuff down there...some extra exercise!

Since our garbage pick up doesn't offer recycling service all this stuff will have to be taken to the recycle center. If I dispose of these items there and divide food scraps between the compost pile and the crows...that leaves me with very little for the garbage company to pick up...leading me to wonder if we might be able to cancel with them completely. That would be a nice savings!

I'll need to try it like this for a while and see how it goes.