All Wrapped Up for You

I've had a lot of questions concerning the black and white quilt used in my title picture.  This is Sydie's quilt so named for our wonderful Newfoundland puppy Sydie.  She brought a lot of joy into our lives the short time she lived.  She was hit by a car one night.  Suddenly, all of our dogs were very excited and demanded to go outside, we had an electric fence around the perimeter of our property, so we opened the door and let them out, they all immediately ran to the road never slowing for the fence.  Fortunately, my daughter who tried to stop them wasn't hit by the truck speeding down our road as well.  Anyway, this quilt is in memory of her.  To find the quilt please follow the link.  If you have any problems please let me know.  If you create the quilt I would appreciate you sharing pictures with me here.  As always, this is for your own personal use.  If someone else wants it please send them here to get their own copy, please don't sell the pattern as well.

http://dl.dropbox.com/u/13796264/Sydies%20quilt%20block%20pattern.pdf

Sorry for not writing last week, but it was a week of lots of adventure and little computer time.  Our electricity kept going out (3 -4 times a day) making it very difficult to do anything on the computer, I would be typing away and boom we would lose power. (It happened so often it wrecked our battery back up). But you know, losing power was the least of it last week.  I lost a beloved uncle the last of my aunts and uncles.  The husband of a dear friend also passed away.  My older brother, a doctor who every year goes aboard with doctors without borders, let me know he is gravely ill, he is rapidly collecting fluid in his lungs (we'll know this week if it's cancer or TB from his travels). All of this occurred on the same day can you believe it??


 It looks as if I will be taking my 15 year old son to a boarding school in the United States soon, it will be so nice to be home! (Sometimes I am tempted to be like Dorothy in "The Wizard of Oz", "There's no place like home" There's no place like home!) The schools here in India just didn't meet his needs.  We are looking at the Wasatch Academy in Mt Pleasant Utah. It seems to have a good program but I won't know for sure until I see it.  The problem is I am enrolling him but haven't seen it.   Makes for a very tense weekend for the mom!

We don't have any prepared foods here in India (at least not any that we care to eat) so I spend my time trying new recipes, I found a great recipe for pumpkin bread this week on the Taste of Home website: http://www.tasteofhome.com/recipes/Pumpkin-Bread-2

I love this website, I always find just the right thing to make!

Pumpkin bread recipe.

3 cups sugar

1 can (15 oz) solid pack pumpkin

1 c vegetable oil

4 eggs

2/3 cup cold water

3 ½ cup flour

2 teaspoons baking soda

1 ½ teaspoons salt

1 ½ teaspoons ground cinnamon

1 teaspoon ground nutmeg

Stir sugar, pumpkin, oil, eggs and water until well mixed. Combine remaining ingredients: gradually add to pumpkin mixture and mix well. Pour into two greased loaf pans. Bake 325 degrees for 75-80 minutes until bread tests done. Cool on a wire rack.