Bind Off Tutorial - How to Finish Your Knitted Project

 As you can imagine, there are different ways to bind off (or cast off) when it comes to knitting. Everyone has their own preferred way of doing it. Like casting on, I believe that Binding off is affected by the type of project you are doing. It doesn't seem that there is a right or wrong way to do it in general. Again just depends on what project you are making and what effect you want. For example, if you are making a sleeve for a sweater and you want a loose cuff one way to bind off may work better than others.

This is the only video I could find from Yay for Yarn. So this is my go-to one. However, again you can find many videos on Youtube that may work better for you and your specific project.

 Today we are sharing our last "Standing" Graph. Today we are sharing Toad! This was the final character that you could play as in Super Mario Bros. 2. We only have one graph for him this week.

Next week, we are going to release graphs in the same order (Mario, Luigi, Princess Peach and Toad). So if you are waiting for a specific character that should give you a better idea of when to expect it.

This graph is 20 x 35 and includes the colours:

Blue (Light Navy Blue)

White

Skin Colour (Dark)

Background Colour (Of your choice)

Writing Challenge #4

 We are taking inspiration from last week's Writing Challenge (Character Development) and taking it to a whole new level. This week, I took that obituary I wrote and created a whole Newspaper page to go with it! Again, as I said last week, I am writing a Murder Mystery project and part of that is this newspaper.

So this week's challenge is to write the front page of a newspaper. It is very fun, you get to make up your own people and places, and to see it laid out in an actual newspaper setting is pretty cool! I used photos from Pixabay.com and I used MakeMyNewspaper.com to create it. Yours doesn't have to be as serious as mine, but keep in mind the time period you're writing about and what might have made the front page or the page you are writing.

All Rights Reserved by A.L. Keegan (2020)

Basic Theme #2 - Week 3 (Month Long Special)

 We are back with week three of our Salad themed Challenge! This week we are focusing on Vegetable salads. Yes, all salads have vegetables but we mean having one main vegetable being the star. These are salads like Lentil Salad, or Potato Salad (we shared our free Peppery Potato Salad recipe yesterday for Freebie Friday), something that really uses specific things to make the salad shine (not lettuce). One of the easiest Salads like this I have ever seen is simply Broccoli, Cauliflower, Carrots with Ranch Dressing. It is delicious and easy to make with so few parts and ingredients.

Today's challenge is to make a salad similar to the ones above. Something that uses one vegetable the star. To help with some inspiration we have shared our Lentil Salad Recipe Card below!

Freebie Friday - Peppery Potato Salad

 Potato Salad is a very hard thing to write about because everyone has their own taste when it comes to it (just like macaroni salad). Today we are sharing with you our Peppery Potato Salad, and hope you enjoy it!

Keep in mind you can add and subtract anything you do or don't like to make this recipe work for you!

What you'll need:

1 bag of Potatoes (we use the small potatoes you can find in most grocery stores)

1 pound of Pepper Bacon (or 1 pound of Bacon and Steak Spice)

1 bundle of Green Onions

Salt and Pepper (to taste)

Mayo (to taste)

AND/ OR

Sour Cream (to taste)

First you want to cook your potatoes (in a pot of boiling, salted water). We used the small ones so we used the whole bag, if you use regular potatoes you will want to use as much as you require. No matter what type of potatoes you use, we recommend to cut them into bite size so they cook faster and are easier to eat. (With the small potatoes we cut them in fourths.)

Next you want to get your bacon ready. We used pepper bacon and it was already cooked so all we had to do was chop it up. If you can not find pepper bacon, just cook a pound of regular bacon for now. Once the bacon is cooked, chop it cut.

Once the potatoes are fork tender, drain them and place them into a large mixing bowl (we recommend a metal bowl because it will cool faster). If you like your potato salad creamy, you can blend the potatoes now, if you like it chunky leave them as is, if you like somewhere in the middle (like us), we mash all the potatoes with a fork so that there are some chunks still but there is enough to mix well with the rest of the items we are adding. Once your potatoes are to your liking add a pinch of salt and pepper (now is the time to season, the potatoes will hold the flavour better hot).

Add to your potatoes, chopped green onions, and the chopped (or crumbled) bacon. If you are not using pepper bacon add 1 - 2 teaspoons of steak spice (depends on the amount of potatoes).

Now for the "dressing". Typically, potato salad has mayo in it, which is fine, this one works well with sour cream, which is also fine, we add a mix of both and like that but that is completely optional. (3 heaping tablespoons of mayo or sour cream - adding more if needed, or 2 tablespoons of each.)

Throwback Thursday - Paint by Numbers - Frogs (UPDATE - Blogger Post!)

This post had been in my drafts on Blogger for a while and I never published it for a few reasons. Mostly because by the time I came to publish it, the place I had bought the paint by numbers from wasn't selling it anymore. So here is the link, you can check it yourself. Even now as I write this it still wasn't back in stock. But you can get them to email you when it does come back (if it does come back) or you could possibly find it somewhere else (on Amazon or directly from the manufacturer). It turned out amazing if I do say so myself. I really liked it, it wasn't too hard to paint, and it took me the exact same number of days as the Lakeside Cabin did.

Review Wednesday - HelloFresh (Week 5)

 Today we are sharing week five of our HelloFresh Subscription order. You will see that we had a little trouble this week with some of the elements of certain dishes, but that's okay! They were all delicious anyways. You can find the intro for this week here.

Day one: Caramelized Onion Burger

Day two: Pan-Seared Steak au Jus

Day Three: Cajun-Spiced Chicken Burger