The Christmas Quilts

Wow — little cupcake bunny is sure feeling the love — Thank You!  I’m thinking maybe there will have to be a two-bunny giveaway.  Don’t forget, if you want a chance to win a bunny, leave a comment on my blogaversary post by tomorrow (Wednesday) night, midnight eastern standard time and I’ll throw your name in the hat.

I didn’t make very many Christmas gifts this year, but I did manage to make some Christmas quilts.

I’d been thinking about making Christmas quilts for my family for several years, so last year, when CrazyMom posted her Christmas quilt for a friend, I knew it was just the ticket.  I filed that idea away and this fall, I shamelessly copied her.  I made four quilt tops: 1) MeMum and BigDaddy, 2) MyDadLovesMeBestSister and CrazyBIL, 3) TheFirstChild and SweetiePie, and 4) one for us.  I only got three of them quilted and bound, so I’ll finish the one for us soon.  (Ha!  I’m getting quite a stack of UFOs from when I make a gift and make one for me at the same time — somehow I never have time to finish mine LOL!)

The pattern is the Happy Hour pattern from Atkinson Designs.  It’s a fairly quick pattern — especially if you’re only making one.  I’m kind of surprised that I like this pattern, as I’m a fairly traditional quilter.  But, I do love it — maybe my tastes are changing a little?

I don’t know if my giftees have noticed yet, but I sloppily quilted “Merry Christmas 2008″ into the quilting.  Have I ever told you that I really don’t like stippling?  Yeah, I really don’t like stippling.  Someday, maybe Santa will bring me a fancy longarm to put an end to my suffering.  In the meantime, I can’t really think of any quilting method that’s as quick as stippling when you need a bevy of gifts.

I backed all the quilts in flannel ’cause I love the weight and comfy factor that flannel adds to a quilt.  SweetiePie got the polka dot background ’cause she’s a polkie girl.  The other two got flannel with Christmas wishes on them.  Our quilt will be a combo of the two backings, and since I’m short on both of them, I’ll probably have to take the flannel shirt off of TheManoftheHouse’s back and throw that in too, ala Fons and Porter.

I would say, if you don’t know CrazyMom, you should run over and visit her.  But who am I kidding?  EVERYone knows CrazyMom!  She’s Crazy.  Her quilt output is A-MAZING!

And to you, dear CrazyMom (do you like how I talk about you as if you’re not in the room LOL?) — Thank you SO much for your daily inspiration!  You might have days when you wonder if all this quilting and blogging is worth it, but all you have to do is look around blogland and see your footprint.  Everybody loves you, CrazyMom…especially Me!

XOXO,
Anna

A New Year…

I’ve been having fun slowly catching up with all of your New Year’s posts. Lots of inspiring stuff out there with lots of resolution-making!  I gave up making New Year’s Resolutions a few years ago when I realized at the end of the year that I’d accomplished very little of what I’d set out to do. So, this year, I just hope to get a few UFOs done. Everything else is what I say every year, so I’ll say it to myself this year and save myself the embarrassment of failure.

I can’t believe the new year is here already, and sadly, the end of my two week break. Boy, that sure went by fast. The good: Lots of fun family gatherings with games and goofing off. (The cousins got a Wii Fit — what a hoot!)  The bad: Too much cleaning and cooking. The good about cleaning: The dungeon disaster from all the Christmas sewing has been conquered. The bad about cleaning: There’s a hefty pile of UFOs waiting for me on my tidy work table. And just so that good cleaning can outweigh bad:  I did the yearly thimble polishing which resulted in a new winter blog banner.  Yay!

One of the New Year’s posts that caught my eye is Nanette’s post to remember Christmas ideas for Christmas 2009. She and Cheryl are making lists of their ideas and plan to start in September to execute those ideas in order to be better prepared for Christmas next year. I think that’s a great idea — I never get everything done that I’d like to do for Christmas. One of the things that I did this year, that I’d like to remember for next year was to wrap presents with the receiver’s picture on the package.

It started out as an attempt to avoid having curling ribbon on the packages as TheEmptyNestChild eats curling ribbon (which, you may remember, results in very expensive surgeries to remove those ribbons). I printed everyone’s picture and ran them through my little sticker machine. I really wish I’d done this when the kids were little — we used to have the kids pass out the gifts when we opened them and having pictures there would have made it so much easier.  Anyway, go check out Nanette’s post — she’s listed some great ideas for next Christmas!

Do you remember the hats that I knit(ted?) before Christmas to send to Jean for donation to the homeless in NYC?  Well, Jean gave away a ton of prizes to those who participated and I won this beautiful shawl that she made!  It arrived during the mayhem of the holidays so I didn’t manage to get any pictures of it until today.  It’s absolutely beautiful!  I’ve never knit anything with such a fine yarn.

When SweetiePie was here this afternoon, she very kindly agreed to model the shawl so I could get some pictures.  You really should click on the second picture to see the beautiful detail and precision of the stitches.  Thank you SO much Jean — I just love it.  It’s just perfect — it will go with everything and while I would normally reserve it for something very dressy, just look how pretty that gray looks with the denim of SweetiePie’s jeans!  If you haven’t visited Jean’s blog, you should, especially if you’re a knitter or love beautiful pictures (she recently posted some gorgeous sheepy pics.)  Jean was one of the first blogs I found a few years ago and she’s still one of my favorites!

(Oh, and pardon SweetiePie’s goofy pose in that third picture.  She gave that pose some fancy European modeling name that I’ve forgotten — it looks more like an Arnold Schwartzenegger Girly Man pose to me!)

I hope you all have a good week!  I’m not looking forward to going back to work, but returning to the routine will probably be good.  (Yeah, if you believe that…)  And don’t forget, if you’re interested in a chance at a bunny, leave a comment on my blogaversary post!

XOXO,
Anna

A Busy Blogaversary

WooHoo!  It’s my Blogaversary!  Well, it was actually yesterday….hmm, since it’s past midnight, I guess it was actually two days ago on the 29th.  I meant to post yesterday, but there’s been lots of busywork around here.  It’s nice to have time off of work to be able to catch up on some of the things that need to be done around the house.  We were lucky this morning and managed to check off a big to-do without even trying.  Some young men from Colorado knocked on the door and offered to trim our poor broken paper bark birch tree that was damaged in the ice storm last week.  Here’s the before and during shots:

I didn’t think that poor tree would look normal again, as two big branches had been snapped off.  I think the tree trimmers did a great job.  They have a company in Denver but they said, in the wintertime, business dries up in Denver so they spend the season chasing ice storms.  We’d been talking about having that tree trimmed for the last year or two, so we felt like we got a two-for-one job.

After the tree-trimming, I spent the afternoon with TheManoftheHouse helping him to clean his office at work.  It was FIL-thy!   I think his paper hoarding could rival the fabric hoarding in my sewing room.  All the dust gave me a headache, but I’m glad that nasty job is over too.

When we returned from work, we tried a new recipe that TheManoftheHouse picked up a few weeks ago from a sample table at Sam’s Club.  Cranberry Turkey Crescent Pinwheels.

They’re a great way to use up Thanksgiving/Christmas leftovers and we really liked them.  Just take a can of Pillsbury Refrigerated Crescent Rolls, unroll the dough, and separate into rectangles (two triangles together).  Press the seam together to make a uniform rectangle.  You’ll have four rectangles.  Spread about 2 tbsp. of cream cheese on each rectangle.  Cover cream cheese with some thinly sliced turkey and then spread some cranberry sauce on top of the turkey.  (The original recipe called for dried cranberries, so if you don’t have leftover fresh cranberry sauce, you could use those.)  Roll up the rectangle from a short side and press the seam to seal.  Cut each roll into 5 or 6 slices and place cut side down on an ungreased cookie sheet.

Bake for 14 to 16 minutes or until light golden brown.  Serve Warm.  TheManoftheHouse gets tired of all of our usual leftover suspects, but he really enjoyed these!

Now for the blogaversary. Can you believe it’s been TWO years??? I can hardly believe it! This last year has been really amazing for me blog-wise, and it goes without saying that the absolute highlight was making the trip to Scotland and cat-sitting for Isabelle. Meeting the fabulous Life family was so exciting and it would never have happened without our blogs.  Like I mentioned to Isabelle the other day, every time I read her blog it’s like a gift that reminds me of our wonderful trip.

I’ve also had the fun of meeting Cami, Melly, Lucy, Gail, Abi, Sharon and Carol.  (And I certainly hope I didn’t forget anyone!)   All such clever, creative women.  And then there are all of you, my imaginary friends.  I’m terribly addicted to all of your blogs and everything that I learn from them.  There’s so much inspiration out there it’s just mind-boggling.

Thank you, thank you for all the time you take to visit my little blog and leave me such nice and thoughtful comments.  I can’t imagine blogging without the two-way conversation that comments provide.  Now, if you’ve been here for at least a year, you know that a blogaversary means a bunny giveaway.  If you’re interested in a chance to win Mr. Cupcake Bunny Pincushion, just leave a comment by, oh, let’s say, midnight (ThimbleannaLand time), Wednesday, January 7th and I’ll draw a winner on Thursday, January 8th.

In the meantime, my very best wishes to you for a Very Happy, Safe, and Healthy New Year!!!

XOXO,
Anna

Gingerbread Houses 2008

Christmas is over already?  It came and went so fast I practically missed it.  I hope you all had a wonderful Christmas!  Thank you so much for all your great comments over the last week.  I usually try to answer all of them, but I’m so far behind this year that I’m going to have to skip it.  I started to read a few blogs this morning, so hopefully I’ll catch up with all of you before New Year’s Eve.

As I mentioned last time, we had our family’s annual gingerbread competition on the 23rd.  Our houses this year reflected the kind of Christmas we had — chaotic!  I think MyCrazyBIL’s heart attack and the power outage that had everyone living here for three days sort of threw us all off this year.   Despite my best intentions, I didn’t have time to make the gingerbread until the day of the 23rd, so it didn’t have a lot of time to dry out.  That caused problems in the roof department for a few of the houses.  The houses weren’t as pretty as last year, but the males in the group lived up to their rowdy reputation.  Read on at your own risk!  (If you’re brave enough, you can click on each picture to make it bigger too.)

The team of MyCrazyBIL and my nephew were the first to have roof failure.  They tried to compensate by creating a pyramid type house, but it just wasn’t cooperating.  I think they should get an honorable mention for best use of candy wrappers in an attempt to cover up the crumble-age.  They also indicated that some sort of candy bomb went off in the backyard which critically injured the marshmallow snowman.

MyDadLovesMeBestSister and my youngest niece also had roof failure, so they compensated by building an open-air gingerbread house.  And if you have an open air house, it only makes sense to have a camp fire in your living room.  They get a BIG prize for creativity in the face of disaster!

Last year’s defending champions, the bride and groom, always build a house with a theme.  They got married last year, so it was a wedding chapel.  In honor of their med-school suffering this year, they built a hospital.  Complete with a helipad and an injured patient in a wheel chair.  They had good roof and gable pieces but they decided to cut them up for a non-traditional gingerbread house shape.

Last year, I was teamed with my oldest niece and TheManoftheHouse was with TheSecondChild. We swapped this year in an attempt to break up a rowdy all male team. Shockingly, it didn’t work, and my sweet and innocent niece was happy to create a strip bar with TheSecondChild. Rumor has it that it may have been her idea. Naughty, Naughty!  Even worse, they took third place in the voting.

Coming in in second place were MeMum and BigDaddy who had a cute little house.  They decided to have the main entrance be on the side of the house and they created a drive in house.  We weren’t sure exactly what sort of drive in it was though.  I love their gumdrop Christmas lights.

And the first place winners this year were TheManoftheHouse and me.  I decided that since the bride and groom always have a themed house, we should have one too, so naturally it had to be a quilt shop.  (’Cause I knew there was no way TheManoftheHouse was going to agree to have a Blog House LOL.)  In keeping with the mess that was this year, we petered out before we got the back of the house decorated.  We did, however, manage to get the all-important sale table of fabric strategically placed out front where all who passed by would notice!

Oh, and here’s a close-up of MeMum and BigDaddy’s star on top of their house.  They get kudos for best use of a Christmas cookie.

So, our houses were very messy this year, but we all had a great time.  There was a TON of laughing and joking around.  And it wasn’t long before someone’s fat little hand was pinching the goodies off of the houses!

Coming up next — a blogiversary!

XOXO,
Anna

Merry Christmas!

No. Time. For. Blogging! I’m so sad that I haven’t had time to read any blogs this week. I was keeping up with my e-mail, but finally lost control of that two days ago. I had several posts that I wanted to do, but there has just been no time. We had our family gingerbread contest tonight and I’ll post about that later — mostly because I like having a record of it here. It’s fun for us to look back and see what we did in the past.

In the meantime, I just wanted to hop on here so that my little angel and I could wish those of you who celebrate, a Very, Very Merry Christmas.   I hope your Christmas is the holiday of your dreams.  And don’t forget the milk and cookies for Santa!

XOXO,
Anna