A FUN Party

The middle of the week is here already!  I’ve been pretty lazy this week — just resting up after my niece’s big graduation party this past weekend.  We had the best time and MyDadLovesMeBestSister had a wonderful party for the newly minted graduate.

The weeks around graduations here in the states are just crazy.  Everyone has a party for their graduate and everyone party hops until they’ve turned into pumpkins.  Having to squish your party in among all the rest is a challenge, so MyDadLovesMeBestSister decided to have a party that didn’t include lunch or dinner, but was right in the middle — Cupcakes, Coffee and Ice Cream.  It was a BIG hit.  Huge!  Lots of my niece’s friends said it was their favorite party.  What’s not to love?

MyDadLovesMeBestSister had a barista there to make all sorts of coffee drinks — hot and iced.  My younger niece and her friend scooped ice cream for the guests to make their own sundaes.  And then there were all those cuppiecakes.  Sadly, I didn’t take pictures of the cupcake bar until there was a big dent in the pile, but you get the idea.  (I used Martha Stewart’s little cupcake flags and SweetiePie did most of the cupcake frosting.  Didn’t she do a great job?)  I thought it was pretty funny that the pink ones weren’t as fast to go as the other colors.  What’s wrong with pink???

Every detail of the party was stunning.  Absolutely gorgeous!  The flowers were breathtaking (check out those lime flowers — swoon!)  In addition to the florist bouquets, there were a bunch of canning jar centerpieces that held gerbera daisies and paint brushes.  My niece plans to study art in college — how cute is that?  And in a fun twist of events, the colors my sister chose matched the quilt I’d made my niece.  Look at all the pretty tablecloths she whipped up from quilter’s cottons.

Yum Yummy.  I want to go back and see it all again.  My sister sure knows how to throw a party!

Next Up — My BESTEST Auntie from Utah arrives tonight — I’m soooo excited!!!

XOXO,
Anna

Rain, Rain…

Hello…did you all have a good weekend?  Ours was rainy again, but very nice.  It’s like a baby who has it’s days and nights mixed up.  We’re in a weather cycle of beautiful, sunny weekdays and rainy weekends.  But, that’s ok, April Showers bring May Flowers you know.  

Anyway, we just hung around the house all weekend.  On Thursday night, I made baseball cupcakes for MyDadLovesMeBestSister.  It was her turn to make a treat for the boys on the baseball team.  My nephew plays on the same high school baseball team that our boys played on.  His teammates call him Little K (our last name), after TheFirstChild.  That cracks me up, since he’s not a Little K — he’s a Little L!

On Saturday, just after a rainstorm, we noticed the kitties on high alert in front of one of the windows.  We peeked out the window, and Look!  It’s Flopsy, Mopsy, and Cottontail. 

We watched them for awhile, and then I moved to another window to take pictures, and noticed this:

Bat Rastards!  Look what they’ve done to my hostas — there are hardly any leaves left.  And see all those little leaves next to the hostas?  Those are weeds.  Why can’t the bunnies eat the weeds and help me with my weed control issues?  So Rude.

I finished my backpack this weekend.  My candy backpack is worn out and I’ve loved it so much, I had to make another one.  Someone at work the other day looked at my candy backpack and asked, what could I possibly need to carry around, that I need to carry such a big backpack?  I didn’t think he’d understand yoyo and sock knitting needs, so I just smiled at him and shrugged my shoulders. 

This is my third black and white backpack (well, not for me — the other two were gifts) and the fabric is finally gone! ;-)

So, that was all the excitement for the weekend, but two other little things –

– I’ve been having a lot of trouble commenting on some blogspot blogs.  It happens on blogs that ask what account to use for my comment.  Blogger pops up a new window and makes me log in.  It takes my login and makes me think the comment registered.  It took me a few weeks (after checking on old posts) to realize that my comments were disappearing.  It makes me sad to think of all my comments that were lost.  So, if you’re a blogspot blog and I usually comment and suddenly I haven’t been, you now know why.  I’m thinking I’m not the only one with these problems?

– My April 20% sale for Bolts o’ Bella is over, but since there was so much interest in the Bella swatch cards, I’ve decided for May to send a free swatch card ($19.00 value) to anyone who buys a bolt.  It will be one swatch card per person, so please indicate in the comment box at checkout that you’d like the swatch card.  They’re really cool — I promise you’ll love them!

XOXO,
Anna

Cupcakes in a Hurry

So. I was happily minding my own business, having a very boring week (wondering what I could possibly blog about, I might add), and when I got to work this morning, there was an e-mail announcing that we’re going to have a potluck lunch tomorrow in honor of the Colts playing in the superbowl on Sunday. (In case you don’t know, we do live in Indiana.) Apparently the stars were all aligned because I just saw this post last night. I really don’t care much about football, but cupcakes…cupcakes are another story! I’ll go for any excuse to make cupcakes!

So, at lunchtime, I grabbed the little Petunia I work with (she’s TheFirstChild’s age - eek!) and we ran over to the local cake decorating store. They had all the goodies we needed (they even had cool stuff for Saints fans), including this cool new stuff I’d never worked with called Disco Dust. I was just going to use sprinkles, but little Petunia thought this stuff was so cool and convinced me to try it.

Can you see the sparkles? Sometimes you can’t see it in pictures, but I managed to get a highlight or two. It’s like superfine edible glitter and it’s really fun to work with.

Now, if you’ll excuse me, I have to finish making about 12 of those little Go Colts! flags.  And then eat a cupcake of course.  Never let a diet stand in the way of a cupcake!

Have a good weekend — and don’t forget to root for the Colts! ;-)
XOXO,
Anna

Happy July 4th!

For those of you in the US, Happy Independence Day! We’re off to our neighbor’s house for our annual cookout where we play games and eat, eat, eat. We’ll toss eggs (in the rain), play cornhole (in the rain), hula-hoop (in the rain) and I have a secret new game for the kids — I froze some t-shirts and the first one to get their frozen t-shirt on will win a movie ticket. (Have you ever tried to unpeel frozen fabric??? - the rain will be their friend!) There will be lots of food — we’re taking baked beans, spaghetti salad, and of course, cupcakes!

Happy, Happy Weekend!
XOXO,
Anna

Edited to add:  OHMYGOSH!  If you’ve never played the frozen t-shirt game you should try it.  Take some t-shirts (I found some at Menards for $1.99 each), get them wet, fold them like you’d put them in a dresser, and then freeze them.  Then, when you have a bunch of people together, hand them out and make it a race.  The first one to get that frozen shirt on wins a prize.  We had the best time.  Before I even had my instructions out, TheSecondChild was running into the house to throw his in the microwave.  My niece was right behind him, and ran to the sink to cover hers with hot water.  TheFirstChild ran out onto the wet grass and was on his hands and knees, rubbing that t-shirt back and forth in the grass trying to get it to thaw.  The other five participants were doing all sorts of other tricks like sitting on them, squeezing them and prying them apart.  They all said when they did get them on, it was freezing cold.  It was HYSTERICAL!  Highly recommended for a LOT of laughs!!!

Happy 4th of July!

When my aunt was here (sorry, you’re probably going to get tired of hearing that) we were having so much fun that I took an extra day off of work so that we could all sew together. I made some 4th of July table runners for my aunt, MeMum and me.

I backed the first runner with red fabric and after I quilted the center with the white thread, I decided that I didn’t like the white thread on the back of the table runner. So I used an old machine embroidery trick and colored all those white threads with a permanent red marker (brilliant idea #1.) SweetiePie came strolling by and we marveled at how great the back looked — you couldn’t even tell that thread had ever been white.

You know what comes next, right? We flipped the runner over, and AAACCCKKKKK — all that red ink bled onto the cute patriotic print! I rushed it to the washing machine, basting pins and all (brilliant idea #2.) After about three washings (and a noisy machine, ’cause now I’m sure there are a few pins stuck down in that machine somewhere — shhhh, don’t tell, honey, I have no idea why the machine is making so much noise…) much of the ink was still there so I decided the thread and batting were probably holding some of the ink in and therefore, it must be ripped out.

TheManoftheHouse and I spent all night Tuesday night unpicking all those stitches — while the runner was wet, I might add, ’cause I was afraid to let it dry out. As of now, that last runner is all unpicked, with a few pink tinges and waiting to be re-quilted. I’ve learned my lesson and I hope you can learn from my mistake too — although, I’m rather confident that YOU aren’t as dumb as I am!

We’re off to a multi-family cookout and fireworks now. We’re taking cupcakes — yummy. (Recipe here.)

Oh, and check out the spiffy new cupcake saver that SweetiePie gave me for Mother’s Day. She found it at Target. (Excuse me, Tar-jay.)

If you’re in the US, I hope you’re having a FUN and SAFE 4th of July!!!

XOXO,
Anna