Am I a Baking Blogger?

Yes, but I don't have a baking blog (officially). I do talk about baking whenever I do it though. And I did lots of baking last month. It was great. I made mini churros, chai-spiced tea cakes, peppermint bark, sugar cookies with royal icing, and the capstone dessert: the gingerbread train. All of you who read this blog have already seen these, but, you have to do it for the blog so here we are.

I'm particularly pleased with how the gingerbread train turned out. I was skeptical about the support system and how the cars would stand on the wheels. It was a struggle to get the engine standing but I eventually got it with some extra hidden support (made of gingerbread of course). Unfortunately, the wheels started collapsing after two days, I imagine because of the humidity and heat in the house with all the people. I took it as a sign to start eating the gingerbread ;) The train had minimal candy on it compared to my previous gingerbread houses. This was because I was trying to go for a cleaner appearance overall. But I missed the candy, so I think next year's creation will feature more candy.

Christmas was great, if busy. We had 13 people at our house for Christmas dinner! Lots of good gifts, two of which are card games that I really like: Sushi Go and The Struggle for Catan.
The other thing I occupied my time with was a t-shirt quilt for a friend, which I got finished in time(!). She really likes it, which I'm glad of.
Having been inspired by finishing that t-shirt quilt, I decided I would start working on my own t-shirt quilt with my Forest Cliff Camp shirts (of which I have many). I started working on it just before New Years Eve, and almost completely finished the top of the quilt before I came back to Stratford yesterday. I've never moved through a quilt so quickly before. The main reason for that is because a lot of supplies I need to make quilts are at the church sewing group, so I was limited to 3hrs of sewing a week. But I recently received a cutting board and ruler which are the big things I needed. So now I can sew to my heart's desire at home! Now the only thing stopping me is not understanding a quilt pattern. Margaret often helps me a lot in guiding me through the steps of making a quilt.

I made up the pattern for the t-shirt quilts since you can't really fit the t-shirts to an existing pattern. I had been planning on bringing my sewing stuff to Stratford so that I could keep working on my quilt while at school but I ended up getting so much of it done that I didn't bother. I'll be able to finish the top within a couple hours the next time I go home. Then the first quilt of 2017 will be done!
The creativity continues in Stratford with a card for a friend's birthday later this week. We're hoping to go trampolining to celebrate :)
My new year's resolution is to make a new recipe each week. The hope is that I'll become more confident in trying new recipes, increase the number of go-to meals I can make, and learn how to pair foods better. This week is a chicken and spinach salad.