One More Cup of Coffee

My favorite crafty blog Sew We Quilt  asked me to be a guest blogger again. Madame Samm told me that the topic of the month for April would be What's Cooking?  - sewing things for the kitchen. I tried my best to come up with something cute that would not be duplicated all month. My brain wasn't working to come up with anything good. Many of you probably use my quilts for place mats and table mats already and did I really need another apron?

Originally, I was going to do a tutorial on some pet dish place mats using that cute puppy fabric. Many of us keep our pet food dishes in the kitchen, right? That sort of counts as a kitchen idea, I thought. Ingrid said it would bother me to see my cute little quilt slobbered on, though, and that made me think some more. Then, when my daughter was home for Spring Break, we stopped at a Starbucks and she suggested - a fabric Coffee Cozy and I really liked that idea better.

So, if you go to Sew We Quilt tomorrow, on Thursday, April 5, that's what you'll find there - a tutorial for a cute coffee cozy, plus one of my favorite coffee recipes. AND a giveaway of my book The Civil War Sewing Circle!  How good can it get?

Have you seen all the wonderful and creative tutorials on this blog?? Please go check it out. There's almost always a good giveaway too.

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For the past several months, I've been trying really hard to walk and work out and get myself back into some kind of shape and finally get rid of some of that "baby weight gain." Okay, okay, who am I kidding? Those of you who follow me regularly may remember that my baby is 18 and just went off to college last fall. LOL. So it's taken me awhile, so what. It's going very slowly and I have good days and bad days - days I don't want to but I do it anyway. I don't love it, I have to say, but so far I am sticking to it even if it's difficult. It has to get easier soon, right? Now that the weather is getting nicer it's a little easier. And any effort I make can only be good for me.

One of the things I've learned is that having a cup of coffee (and a few carbs too) before I work out really helps. And it's not just my imagination - studies show that drinking coffee before a workout increases your metabolism and boosts fat loss. That's what we all want to hear, right? Don't take it to the extreme, just a cup will do. And remember that coffee acts as a diuretic so you will need to drink water too.  I love coffee anyway so what have I got to lose? Except all this darn FAT . . .

You know I always have to tie the things I think about and write about into my quilting - hence the coffee cozy. You will love this - yes, they also drank coffee during the Civil War. More than one blogger suggests that coffee may have had a real impact on the outcome of the Civil War and that consumption of the drink during the war helped make it a national pastime after the war. According to CNN, "throughout the Civil War, coffee was as prevalent on the battlefields as it is in offices today. In fact, the Union army was fueled by the stuff to the point that, if there was no time to boil water, the Boys in Blue would chew on whole beans as they marched. And at night, Union campsites were dotted with tiny fires, each boiling a pot of coffee like a million miniature Starbucks. Beyond caffeine cravings, Union troops loved their coffee because it was, literally, the best thing on the menu."  I wonder if drinking coffee can help me win MY battle . . . 

Looks like she sure could have used a cup . . .

(Photo courtesy of The Library of Congress)

Stop by Madame Samm's blog on Thursday and leave me a comment for a chance to win a free copy of The Civil War Sewing Circle. The quilt we'll be working on for next month will be taken from that book. Don't drink too much coffee before you begin your quilting though - I don't want to hear about rotary cutters flying and everyone hurting themselves.