Valerie's Podcast Archives - Page 14 of 43

April 21, 2020January 29, 2021

Easiest Spring Pillow Cases & Give-A-Way! – e85s2

episode 85 season 2

Spring Finally, let’s refresh some pillows!

Todays show is all about CREATING – freshening up for Spring with a finished quilt top and matching pillow cases – this pattern I’m going to share with you today will be available on my blog and details here…if you’re not a sewer or a quilter, don’t fret just pass this episode onto those people and they will be forever indebted with this valuable information JK, just showing a little Spring in my step today for you to share with your friend or family member that is a crafty sewer. – and yours truly will give away a set or two to whoever tells me their favourite Spring Story – it could be about easter, gardening, spring cleaning, you tell me and I’ll make you a set of these pillow cases (in your favour colours and in the size of your favourite pillows – sound good?)

So..years ago I made this quilt, Truly Scrumptious by Cinderberry Stitches as part of my block of the month program when I ran Pastimes Online. This quilt was The date of this post was Oct 2010, yes so many years ago now. BUT when I made this quilt I was hoping to be pregnant this year and was secretly or openly hoping for a girl…

Well made the quilt, did get pregnant and then promptly tucked the top away for another day when I could finish it….well people this quilt is now finished with…matching pillow cases.

FIRST

Dig out that old quilt top that you haven’t finished 🙂 then prepare to sit down & listen to a good book, I listened to a new book by Joy Fielding, The Bad Daughter and go through your thread stash, find your favourite colours to match and bobbins wound and enjoy your time finishing this new quilt…well new because it’s been stashed for so long.

SECOND

Quilt until your hearts desire, and then bind, bind, bind…one of my favourite parts, I love this finishing touch, it’s so rewarding, tucking in that final raw edge and completion the border, smooth and crisp.. But when it comes to a label I always groan, now I have to write something up and add a separate piece of fabric to the back – where to put it and make sure you don’t stitch through to the front…

Here’s another one I did years ago 2013 for my niece and I just love the way it turned out…if you can do free motion, you can do this label on the front of your quilt, just find a good spot and measure out your words (first) then just have fun. I pull the bobbin three to the front, leave it long then tied it scrappy, make sure you date it and put your name…especially if you want to show off all of your hard work 😉

THIRD

The Spring Pillow Cases…

These just turned out so cute, and were actually very easy, I haven’t made pillow cases below, except some small ones with 1 fabric, but nothing scrappy and fun like these, London mentioned, since these were for her, that she would like ties 🙂 I have a set of sheets that I decorated with ties and London just loves how these look – so… no problem we added ties.

Here’s the Pattern

Measure your current pillow case – mine is 29″ x 19″ (one side)
Pick out your fabrics, they can be matching or not (one for you and one for him, maybe?)
If you are a quilter, you’ll have fat quarters kicking around which measure 18″ x 22″ – notice anything? The 22″ is basically the width you’ll need including seam allowance, yes they might be an inch or so larger per side but this works, trust me it’s perfect
As you can see in my example, I striped pieced these, you will need two of each strip to make this mirror on the front and back
Cut strips into 6″ sections or the same width of your ruler to make it easy (see a pattern here, easy)
Some of these sections are small just pick your fabrics and make sure they add up to approx 29″ (then make two, front and back)
The bottom strip is a single unit so the end of the pillow case, the part that is at the bottom, so only one piece is needed here.
So, in the below example I have 2 (red dots (cuff 2″), teal strip (3″x2), orange dot (4″ x2) pink model (6″x20, Strip (6″x2), teal stripe (3″x2), white (6″x2), dark teal (6″x1) = 32″
Red Dot Cuff – the first pillow case I just turned the edge and finished it, the second pillow case I cut the cuff 6″ and folded it to 3″ then stitched this on the pillow case so the cuff was thicker and nicer
if you want to have ties – which are super cute. Cut 3″ strip – will give you 4 ties (with the 2 pillow cases I used the red dot as the connecting fabric, so they sort-of looked like a set- when you are adding this cuff tuck the ties into place, make them secure by backstitching over top of the spot, lay their end buried inside the seam in the same direction – it’s a bit tricky to top stitch the seam allowance as in step 12 but just take your time and go over it – it looks so nice!
sew all of the strips together, same order on both sides (so they are a continuous stripe through the pillow case), press seams open (you want them as flat as possible), so now you have a 22″w x approx 64″ long rectangle.
to make this pillow case look ‘finished’ and ‘professionally completed, proceed to change your stitch length to a longer top stitch length, you can use a walking foot if you like ( I didn’t) just an open toe foot and I proceeded to first do a loose top stitch on both edges this will hold the pressed open seams in place, then top stitch each seam on either side, I did it about an 1/8″ away – to catch the seam at the back – this will reinforce all of these for longevity with the pillow case, years of love and washing.
Then press, press, press
Connect the two sides, I started with the bottom (un-open side) and then stitched to the cuff end, make sure to pin all of your seams so they match up exactly, the stripe will be continuous front to back…
Fold corners so they lay flat, then turn pillow case right side out – press, top stitch the two long sides (just do this as close to the edge as possible, I just used my open toe foot as the measurement) start at the bottom and work you way to the opening, back stitch both ends.
top stitch the cuff in two lines

U R Finished!

April 7, 2020January 29, 2021

What 2 Do – What 2 Do – e84s2

Podcast: Play in new window | Download

episode 84 season 2

One women’s view of her life

First, I hope everyone is safe and is looking forward to a little humour today….I’ve personally had quite the 2020 start off…folded ROE in a nice white envelope, coming upon my window looking like a spider web – SMASHED! And now like you Covidiot Syndrome. Oh yeah did I mention homeschooling and carpal tunnel – okay enough complains about my exciting life – NOT!

I’ve always been a home-body, grounded at home, love to cook and sew, and CREATE and READ – as in my new theme for 2020 this maybe my new theme forever who knows.

First up, this white envelope, I had a feeling over the last couple of months of 2019 that the projects were dwindling and the bids were not getting awarded. I worked for a Vancouver company being their representative here…yes people I’ve been packaged out. After 5 years I was handed the white envelope and walked out the door. I needed some time to reflect and think about this. I was assured it wasn’t anything I did and it was a company decision, but you still feel this sucker punch that you were chosen to be handed these – scripted beautifully papers – and asked to sign on the bottom line before 4 pm today. If you haven’t experienced this it’s a shock to say the least. Once I swallowed this huge lump in my throat and stomach I stated to tell a few people outside my main circle, and guess what I wasn’t alone – that so many people have gone through this. Two of my colleagues recently felt the same and so many people I reached out to were in the same place – and now so many people are in the same boat as me. I’m safe, I’m working on my side hustle, I’ll get EI – eventually (when I called EI their recording said that they couldn’t take anymore calls today), I can make my payments in life…but so many people are truly struggling now with this cover situation.

So I’m looking for work, but when I can take a job or get picked for a job – the jury is out – I need to be home now with my child, which by the way is coming up later in the show…

So it had been a couple of weeks since I was without employed, me and London were heading to karate and proceeded to park at the front doors at a handicap spot under the bright parking lot lights, in front of the church where we train. I hid my purse in the backseat on the floor. We proceed to our class. After our class commences there is a hockey team that arrives shortly after our class. In the meantime a guy, comes and checks out all of the vehicles with flashlight – under the watchful eye of the security cameras. This villain proceeded to come into the church and scope out what was going on then proceeded to smash my window and steel my purse. Yes I had credits cards and debit cards and my drivers licence and of course my health cards for both myself and London – as we just had an appointment so I had them on me. I recently took some cash out to head to my dads for the weekend. Within under an hour this culprit shopped and shopped. So, after cancelling all of my cards this day – and reporting everything etc. it was a gong show!

And totally triggered London from our last robbery instance. There was glass everywhere in the car..UGH nightmare.

Did you see the Jimmy Fallon video with his kids? there’s a link in my show notes but it basically goes like this, he’s sitting on the couch, his girls look to be 5 and 7 maybe, are hanging off him, while he’s trying to do an advertising monologues skit – he telling people to buy toilet paper from CVS – he asks his kids if they think his joke is funny (which it was) and they say ‘nope!’ – insert laugh

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rKDd38-EVCs

So my side hustle of producing audio books has exploded a) because I have time to take on more projects and b) people like my voice. One thing that is so funny is the people who hire me are from Italy – yes Italy – why I’m not sure but almost every contract I’ve received is from Italians men and women…weird and interesting right? My husband thinks this is so bizarre. I’ve sent an email to ACX to see if their’s some algorithm that is triggering this. When I ask the ‘Italians’ they just say that they like my voice from my samples. Strange tho right? So the genre I’m best suited for to date are – Self Help books like meditation, sleep, being mindful and also diet books, keto and intermittent fasting diet books. I’m enjoying this so much…Have you ventured into this as a side hustle? Reach out to me I’d love to be able to chat with someone else in this business. It’s a tricky thing to read, edit and produce to the quality standard required by ACX for Audible. But it’s making me learn and keeping me connected and going though this weird time in our world.

As a bit of a downside tho I’ve contracted – no I’ve acquired carpal tunnel through my hand and up my arm – it was brutal, I was icing this and taking breaks and as such being late on my contracts. My hubby went out and purchased a new mouse for me. This is a mouse that when held is in the position of a ‘handshake’ and it’s released my pains by like 80%. So if you’re experience any of pain in your hands, elbow and up into your neck I’d suggest testing out a new mouse. I bought the Logitech mx vertical mouse – check out my site for a link and picture. I would also love to have a treatment like massage and or osteopathy but I’m scared to head out and honestly I’m not even sure if they are working…if you have any ideas for stretching that have worked for you please send these to me.

So, I’ve been EATING – READING and of course CREATING during this time, I feel like I want to do everything to just keep me grounded and keep me from not freaking out. How are you feeling during this time? Did you buy all the groceries you think you need for a while, did you stock up on your favourite things? I did my big shop on the Friday before this gong show started. I went into the roasterie in Kensington on Sunday which was only allowing 6 people in the coffee shop at one time to get a hot chocolate to share with my little munchkin. I’m not comfortable going into a store – are you?

CREATING MEMORIES

So I’ve been busy CREATING – every once in a while we purge London room, toys and clothes and bring to the salvation army to donate. We have a batch of old books, and toys in the back of my car as I haven’t been down to deliver these yet – I wonder if they are even taking deliveries… Anyway I felt like CREATING so I dug out all of my scrapbooking stuff to start scrapbooking our trip to Cancun…I haven’t printed any photos (we went before Christmas) but I started putting pages together with recipts, brochures, paper etc that I gathered while we were away and this surged an intense feeling of scrapbooking so…here’s what I did.

I went out to my car and dug out one of the books that we were going to donate, The Berenstein Bears collection in hard cover, once of London’s favourites. It is signed by her cousin Jarvys who gave it to her for her 1st bday (she will be 9 this year) and I just loved that he signed it. So I dug out some random printed photos that I’ve had laying around and started to build this book into a scrapbook with random memories…there’s pics on my site and on Instagram but here’s some of the goodies that I saved hopefully this will inspire you to scrapbook those memories near and far.

Camp Scrapbook Pages, attached to pages out of the Berenstain Bears Book, DIY Project

. I have an old pencil case from when I was younger then London is now, inside this home-made case which is made with denim from an old pair of jeans and a green zipper – I have cabbage patch kid pencil crayons that I got for Christmas one year I think I was 6. Also in this case is badges from a camp I went to when I was 11 years old I’ve scrap-booked the badges, which bring back and awesome time in my childhood – do you have any badges that you’ve held onto from your childhood, make these into a page or a card or something to inspire you.

2. I knew I wanted to take the signed inside cover from Jarvys who is London’s 2nd cousin and make it into something worth looking at. His writing and all…so I put a frame around his signature, took out cardboard letters and wrote the word cousins and then I added a note card that read: Jarvys Dad is London’s Great Uncle

Jarvys signed this for London on her 1st Birthday…such a great memory!

3. There’s a picture from my stash of London in the tub when she was 3 months old

4. There’s a pic of me from 2010 holding my cat Tig, before she howled at the moon and I was 10 years younger

5. Then the last picture is one of my husband before we were married, it was taken in 1999. He came home to meet the parents. My dad and his wife. We met the year of 1999 when things were going to come to a STOP when the clocks and computers rolled over in 2000 – remember y2k? Then we got married on September 8th, 2001 – 3 days before 911 and now this…right around my 43 bday. This picture of my now hubby I carried around in my purse for years it’s all tattered and warn like a good book.

EAT – READ – CREATE

I’ve also been Eating and keeping grounded cooking at home, tonight I’m making pizza crust also from scratch – usually I buy the dough from Lina’s up the street from me but I’m not ready to step into a grocery store yet. I’ve made these little protein balls, for a quick low carb snack. I’m still making my bread every few days – this is definitely a staple in my house a -go-to- item that I’ve made for over 5 years now. What’s your favourite must make on a continually basis. Me, it’s bread and soup on Sundays…weather is my homemade soup or my Aunties soup – souptacular, there’s always a pot of soup at The Moss’ on Sundays…

Well if I can give you any takeaways from todays show…CREATE something a card, a letter, a story, read something even if it’s just a small little joke to give you a chuckle and EAT something that is your favourite that you’ve made…if you want the recipe for my soup and my protein balls let me know. You can text me to my email valerie@valeriemoss.ca

Until next time, take care of yourself and your favourite people. I’ll leave you with this clip of London, when we were in Kensington, we were trying to have fun avoiding people enjoying the sun and making memories…he’s the audio part of this video…she might be onto something here…as a reporter…

March 3, 2020January 29, 2021

Twenty Twenty: Eat-Read-Create – e83s2

Podcast: Play in new window | Download

episode 83 season 2

Happy New Year!

Welcome to SEASON TWO of Valerie’s Variety Podcast for 2020. I’m looking forward to hunkering down into a theme, if you’ve been listening this whole time – Thank you, if you new welcome! Previously, I’ve been a random show a variety show and I’m going to continue this BUT with a theme EAT – READ – CREATE to explore.

This year, I’d like to narrow my focus and stay true to me, my passions and loves. I hope you’ll stick around. One of my previous guests Valora Douglas said she has a theme each year so I’m kind of leaning on this thought.

Welcome back to Valerie’s Variety Podcast with your host me, Valerie Moss, this show is about Eating – Reading – Creating. How these 3 things influence us everyday and the people that make this happen – isn’t it you?

How these 3 things influence us everyday – they make us TIC and THINK and LOVE

We will review our favourite recipes & favourites places to EAT.
We will review our favourite books and what we love to READ.
We will review our passions and what we yearn to CREATE.

So think about the things you are passionate about, a good meal, a great love story and DIY project. I’m passionate and will aim to convince you to read, try the next thing and have passion in what you do. This show drops on Tuesdays Check it out and subscribe and ReVIEW below check out the website for details ValerieMoss.ca

She Shoots She Scored!

It’s funny as I thought about sharing my goals with you way earlier in the year I was sort of apprehensive because I wanted my goals to come true but I didn’t want to share them and not follow through with them so now that I accomplished my goals. I said to my hubby my goals came true that I set for this year and I showed him my hand drawn sketch of these, check it out:

Yellow Belt check
Orange Belt check
One big trip – check
Pay off MasterCard – check
100 episodes on the podcast – not checked but I didn’t miss an episode either and 100 episodes would have meant extra ones 😉
you can check out my doodle sketch soon at my blog for review..

You know what else? When you write your goals down – they come true! They remind you they push you – you want to impress yourself – it worked for me, make it work for you WRITE THEM DOWN!

Top 4 Goals for the Show in 2020

Passions Unfolded, I’m talking about hobbies that we love, quilting stitching, scrapbooking, CREATING, musicality, and the people who love them!
Reading a good book and also listening to audio books – more audio books in production now…What are you reading, what’s your favourite book? Your favourite author.
Making a good meal (salmon with a side of spaghetti and seafood) or trying a new restaurant (Point Sushi) I’ll still likely run my reviews altho there’s so many reviews out there – I might just do U must try this!

I’m dedicating this year to people like you who have a love for trying something new like me starting Karate at 40, or my friend Amber who started fly fishing or my husband who loves to capture an emotion in a photograph or my daughter who has to trace our hands with hers all the time to draw her picture. I’m talking about a hobby that keeps you up for days on a DIY project like beading a quilt project with 25,000 beads. This type of passion.

EAT – READ – CREATE

A new story PODCAST

I’m also going to tell a story, a true story about a house that was haunted and the legend it became. Each episode I’ll fill you in on another chapter, week by week, chapter by chapter. The story is set in the early 1940s – in Indiana, stay tuned for this it’s a side job for me and I’m in love with it – even my husband is interested and as you know he barely listens to this show! He may have a word or two on the show.

Are you interested? I’m looking for creative talent for my cover art, voices to add – I have an actor from Vancouver who will be part of this – this will be separate from my podcast BUT will be an original Valerie Moss production.

I’ll continue to update you on this, so stay tuned! It’s building and I’m so excited to share this progress with you. I’ve amalgamated almost 30 actors, podcasters and voice over producers for this work also…

Think – Bricks flying through windows that no only one person sees, sounds of scissors sheering – but do they really? A voodoo dolls that looks like someone – all this and more in this upcoming book – soon to be revealed.

What else? Did I hear you say?

Skeletons in my Closet, interviews with a Calgary detective turned Writter with his co-arthur – we delve into his book and his job
More Valerie InterViews, these amazing women keep connecting with me – and why our names are amazing & rare.
I’ll share my recipes if you share yours
I have a new mascot, she yips in the night, there’s many breeds across the world, she has heavy eyeliner & soon she will have colour and be watching me on my studio desk – who do you think she is?
Calgary Cold Case update – Patsy and Eva, comment left on my website but so far no response back – being added to case evidence.
Audio Book ReViews: Buddhism, Hypnotism, Bed Time Stories – I’ve been busy on this front, sometimes life has to be organic and adaptable, so my podcast voice is getting noticed, producing over a dozen books now for audible and a book deal to produce a collection of 6 book in a series – I’ll tell you all about this!

So, please stay subscribed, please keep in touch and share my show with your friends, family and colleagues. Follow me on Instagram and join my Facebook group – it’s growing and building.

Email or text me at Valerie@ValerieMoss.ca and share your goals for 2020…

My new Show Music is called GIRL and it’s by Text Me Records/Leviathe, Intro is recorded by London Moss, and cover art and production is by me, Valerie Moss.

Thanks for listening.