Using your sparklies

Sparkly fabrics used for a Christmas table topper.

Pretty backing!

Silk ties mixed with a sparkly gold fabric.

The backing is a gold finish eyelet.  Beautiful.  I used a black batting on this one so the eyelets didn't pop with a white dot.

Oh, Amazon.ca and Black Friday sales, I heart you.  :-)  Ordered on Tuesday, delivered on Wednesday.  I hope to take it for a test drive next week.  Must get to Canadian Tire and stock up on two-part lids for my canning jars.

Ever since I heard that tin cans are lined with BPA I have been trying to cut down on the food I buy in cans.  Most of the time now I cook beans and chick peas from dried, and it is surprisingly simple.  Soak them in a pot of water overnight.  In the morning: drain, add fresh water and cook for 45 - 60 minutes.  One cup of dried beans makes about the equivalent of a 19 oz. can.  If DH is cooking he still prefers the ease of canned beans so we have a bunch of cans in the fruit cellar.  Now, though, I can pressure can my own in glass jars.  For the past several years I've been making pretty much all of our soup from scratch, so I can also start to can my own soups.  Hah.  A new hobby.  I found a blog yesterday by some folks in Ontario's cottage country - the Turnbulls.  I was reading about their relationship with a pressure canner.  Good information for me, since I know NOTHING about pressure canning.  They also share several recipes, but you can be assured that any requirement for turnip (shudder) will be amended to some other vegetable.  DH is also a big fan of baked beans, so I will be making and canning a big batch of that, too.

I was up at 4 am today, lay in bed until 5 am then gave up on sleep.  Now that it's daylight I just looked out the window - yikes!!!  Snow on the ground!!!  It will make today's Caledonia Santa Clause parade a little more festive and a lot more froid.  (that's French for cold)  Brrr...