Musical Bookshelves

Here are my quilting and craft books and magazines on their new bookshelves. You know the dark brown bookshelves that were in the sewing room? Those are now in my bedroom with DVD's and such on them.

These shelves were in my bedroom, and now they are in the hallway. My quilting books were on a different set of bookshelves in the hallway, but that bookcase is shorter so it's going to be used in the sewing room closet.

It got even more complicated because this set of shelves wouldn't fit where the old ones were in the hallway, so I had to move yet a third set of shelves and swap their locations in the hall. That is all I got done today on the reorganizing, and I'm exhausted! Dusting everything on three sets of shelves got my allergies going, and it was a lot of stuff to go through. The real plus is I actually went through everything on all the shelves, and got rid of a bunch of stuff and organized things better. (I had more books on free motion quilting than I thought)

This was DH's project for me, and he's not quite finished. I decided to get a workbench to use as a cutting table. We went to Harbor Freight this morning, and I bought this workbench. I picked this one after looking at several places online. This one has a light under that top shelf, pegboard on the back, and extra outlets on the side. The best part- it was on sale for $99 which made it cheaper than almost everything else I looked at, including the tables made for cutting. DH says it's pretty sturdy, but as a warning, the directions were awful and he ran out nuts and bolts before it was finished. Tomorrow he'll make a trip to the hardware store and get it finished. All in all, it still looks like it will end up being a good buy.

While I was at Harbor Freight, I bought some rotary blades, called carpet cutting blades there. They are the equivalent of 45 mm blades, but they are only 2 blades for $1.49. On Stashbusters everyone has been raving about them, so I figured they were worth a try. I also got a pegboard hook assortment. The workbench came with some hooks, but I needed more hooks for the pegboard I already have up in my sewing room. I'm hoping with the different types of hooks, I can hang up some things I haven't been able to, like my Martelli rotary cutters.

Dinner for 7 tonight. I tried something new. I cooked a turkey in my Crock Pot (or slow cooker). After doing a bunch of internet research, I found directions for cooking a turkey on high in a Crock Pot. I read cooking a turkey on low is dangerous because the temperature doesn't get high enough to kill the bacteria, even though the meat will cook.

I had a 9.5 pound turkey, and a 7 qt. Crock Pot. The recipe I read said it would take about 5 hours for that size turkey on high, but my Crock Pot runs a bit hot, and it was done in 3 1/2 hours. I used a meat thermometer to make sure it was done. The skin did not brown, but the meat was moist and yummy. I just had DH discard the skin and carve it up before it made it to the table, so no one saw the pale skin but us.

I love using my Crock Pot when I'm busy, or anyday in the summer. It was well over 100 degrees today, and I cooked a turkey without heating up the house! How cool is that? Even cooler that that, tomorrow we're all going out to dinner to try a new restaurant so I won't have to cook dinner at all!