I leave for Florida today. I'm teaching in Boca Raton and I'm looking forward to warmer weather. In anticipation of that I want to share some photos I took the last time I was in California. These are girls on the beach. If I could ever find this outfit in my size I might wear it – good thing I'll never find it.

My toes are bad and I just don't run like this on sand anymore. I do wish I could!

I want to be this woman! She is probably in her 70s or 80s and still going strong. What a woman!

This is a treat from Linda. She's been telling me for a while now about this really easy, really tasty, 1 point dessert. For those of you who know nothing about Weight Watchers, they have a point system for foods that is related to calories. A 1 point dessert is really good.

UPDATE: A careful reader checked this on her point calculator and thinks that this dessert may be a 2 pointer. I don't have a point calculator but the cake mix calls for eggs and oil to make the cake. You don't add either of those to to this 1 point version. I'm guessing that that may be the problem. However, I did want to keep you informed…

Start with a very chocolatey cake mix. Put 3 tablespoons of the mix in a small bowl. Add 2 tablespoons of water. Mix it well with a fork. Cook it in the microwave for 45 seconds (give or take). 

Top the finished bowl of cake with a bit of hot Hershey's Syrup. I heat my chocolate syrup for 20 seconds. Eaten hot, this is like a volcano cake. Linda was right – this is really really good!

Those of you who have lived through the Blizzard of 10, please don't snicker. The weather service is predicting around 6" of snow for Sherman and there are already some travel advisories. After seeing the photos from Baltimore I'm having a hard time getting worked up about it. However, the snow is pretty so I thought I'd share some photos.

The flakes are big and wet and sitting on top of the branches, even the smallest twigs. That makes an interesting pattern when looked at from below. (Click the photo to see it bigger.)

This cardinal is waiting his turn to eat at my feeder…

The pool looks cold…

Many of you are snowed in and I hope you are warm and dry and sewing. I am not snowed in but my son, Jeff, is – in Baltimore. They have been sending us pictures and movies and I am getting a vicarious thrill – without the shoveling.

I am a bit envious that they are living through this significant weather event but I’m even more envious of the ‘found time’ they are getting. I often wish for a free day, don’t you? They are getting at least 7 free days! I’m sure there will be a cost for this later on but for now it sounds wonderful.

They went out for a walk yesterday and here is Jeff in front of someone’s snow fort…

It’s snowing there again as I write this. I’m hoping for more photos.

So, you ask, what about those sea turtles? Remember my Hawaii post showing a sea turtle on the black sand beach? Nowadays there are lots of warning signs around sea turtles on the beach telling people to leave them alone!!! This recent post from Weird Friends shows what the poor turtles have had to put up with in the past. I would not try to climb onto the back of something that looks like it could bite my arm off, but the water does look warm and inviting. I thought it was a nice counterpoint to the snow.

I've had two mis-matched office chairs in my studio for several years. One is tall for my drafting table, the other is the one I use at the sewing machine and computer. I finally found a perfect fabric (by Heather Bailey – Oops! I just found out is Anna Maria Horner's fabric. Both ladies do such great work I got confused) to recover them.

Last weekend, when my head was too sore to applique (due to a sinus infection) I decided to tackle the chairs. If this is something you've wondered about doing I want you to know that they were surprisingly easy to recover.

Both of the chairs' seats were screwed to their chair's base. Once off, it's pretty easy to remove the old fabric from the seat and put on new fabric. The chair backs are more cryptic.

There's an obvious join between the back and front of the chair back. To separate them put a small pry bar into the join and pry them apart. In both of my chairs the front and back had been nailed together with 1" finish nails. I recovered the individual parts. Nailing them back together is a trick. I snaked new 1" finish nails into the fabric in such a way as to be able to pop the fabric over the end of the nail once it was nailed in. I was careful not to mar the fabric. 

Aren't they cute! I sprayed them with Scotch Guard and I hope it works. I considered spray painting the metal parts of the chairs a color but the black looks OK and I just didn't want to fool with them any more. In the photo above I cleaned up the area around the chairs. Just so you know that my studio is not that pristine, here they are in their actual environment:

And a question… does anyone know what that plant in the background is? It was a gift and if I know what it is I'm less likely to kill it. I'm guessing it wants light and not much water – and a bigger pot than it is currently living in. Here's close-up:

I've done more with the Liquitex paints! I made 2 little quilts for C&T to use in their booth at trade shows. I had a half of a lemon in the refrigerator that I used as a stamp. I mixed the paint with Iridescent Medium and stamped on my fabric. Here is Red Lemonade:

I hand quilted this with big stitches in hand-dyed red pearl cotton. I finally found a use for my painted safety pins – they are holding bits of dyed wool felt in place through all the layers of the quilt.

I continued to use the same lemon. Here's Fuzzy Yellow Lemonade:

It's "fuzzy" because I stitched a silk hankie on top of the fabric. I also added a strip of sheer, ribbed polyester fabric. The metal rings are something from my grandfather's hardware store that we have carted around for 30+ years. There is some machine stitching with big-stitch hand quilting with hand-dyed pearl cotton.

Playing with paint could become addictive!