Thimbleanna

Merry Christmas 2022

Merry Christmas!  It’s time for the annual Christmas Eve breakfast post — and a record for me of the Christmas cookies I made this year.  We’re having a low-key Christmas this year – just TheManoftheHouse, The SecondChild, MeMum and me.  Everyone else is with their in-laws this year.

Thimbleanna: Christmas

I made my traditional favorite three — sugar cookies (I’ve started using the recipe in Jenny Cookies sugar cookie book), Angel Slices, and Grandma Hill’s Browned Butter Cookies.  I also made my favorite salted caramels – yum, yum!  And then, I decided to try my hand at Peanut Brittle.  I Love peanut brittle – my mother-in-law used to send me a bag every year for Christmas and I hoarded it.  She used a microwave recipe and I tried it years ago to no avail — microwaves differ and I ended up burning the batch and never trying it again.  But recently, I was looking at recipes in a Southern Living Favorites Collection that I have and ran across a traditional recipe and decided to try it.  And, I’m soooo excited that it worked and it’s really good!  At some point I’ll try to get the recipe posted in my recipe section — it’s a keeper!

Thimbleanna: Christmas

I hope you’ve had a wonderful month of holiday preparation. Everything has gone smoothly here.  The advent calendars kept us busy — there are always a few activities with Grammy and Grandpa tucked into the pockets.  One of which is Christmas cookies with Grammy — we always have a great time.  And the kitchen always needs to be cleaned the next day — there were sprinkles and icing everywhere LOL!

Thimbleanna: Christmas

Anyway, enough for now – wishing you a Wonderful Christmas and holiday season!
XOXO,
Anna

Gingerbread Houses 2022

It’s that time of year again!  (Not sure exactly how that happened — we’ve blitzed through 12 months in 2 1/2 weeks as far as I can tell!)  We’ve had our annual gingerbread competition a little earlier than usual this year with an abbreviated crowd.  Of the five kids between MyDadLovesMeBestSister and I, only 1 could be here this year.  And lucky for us, that 1 was TheFirstChild, because he has SweetiePie and the FinallyGirls.  So, this years crew was The Finally Family, MyDadLovesMeBestSister, CrazyBIL, TheManoftheHouse and me.  Since we were such a small group this year, we decided to divide the three FinallyGirls between the three couples so that each girl would have a house.

Team One:  TheFirstChild, SweetiePie and FinallyAGirl (now 6 years old).  These guys came with a plan!  And for the first time in our gingerbread history, SweetiePie brought some fondant and it was such a success that I’m thinking we’ll be using it a lot more.  FinallyAGirl wanted to do a grinch house and it turned out so cute.  FinallyAGirl placed all the candy on one side of the house while SweetiePie drew the grinch on the other side.  (And TheFirstChild watched a lot of football LOL.)  I love the giant grinch on the roof and the fun Whoville tree in the front yard.  The fun hearts on the back of the house were an afterthought, but they work so perfectly with the theme!

Thimbleanna: Holidays

Team Two:  MyDadLovesMeBestSister, CrazyBIL and FinallyAnotherGirl (now 4 years old).  This team decided to make a fun Candy/Soft Serve Ice Cream shop.  CrazyBIL very cleverly fashioned a soft serve ice cream machine out of an ice cream cone and hung it from the front gable.  FinallyAnotherGirl had lots of fun putting candy all over the sides of the house.

Thimbleanna: Holidays

Team Three:  TheManoftheHouse, Me, and HurrayAThirdGirl (Just turned 3!) HurrayAThirdGirl LOVES CocoMelon, so we did a CocoMelon house.  This was HurrayAThirdGirl’s first big year working on houses and she seemed to really enjoy it.  She worked really hard on placing all the green M&M’s on the roof panels.  She licked the M&M’s a lot in the process and ate a lot of candy too LOL.  We made a little JJ with a blue suit, but, turns out it’s really hard to make a cute little baby out of gingerbread and they don’t look anything alike.

Thimbleanna: Holidays

After we were all done, we had a little voting.  It was so cute to watch the little girls decide if it was ok to vote for themselves.  TheFirstChild voted for all three ’cause, as he put on his note “I love all my girls!”  Anyway, The Grinch was the clear winner, so FinallyAGirl won for the third year in a row!  The houses have now been placed outside, in the cold, to feed the birds and squirrels.  Of which, there seem to be no takers LOL.

Thimbleanna: Holidays

So now, on to the big event — hope your plans go smoothly this week!
XOXO,
Anna

Little Pinky the Third

Well, hey — I made it back before spring LOL. All the usual excuses and a busy fall. And, boy, was it a beautiful fall here. It’s just barely getting cold now, and on a sunny day, it’s still pretty nice outside. I’ve been busy sewing and playing with the grandbabies — lots of fall school activities which have been really fun. Plus, I stayed with the girls while their parents had a week’s getaway in October. It almost killed me but it sure was fun and I loved every minute of it. And then I slept for two days when it was over LOL. Oh, and TheManoftheHouse had his right shoulder replaced in early October — that was NOT fun, poor guy. It’s a pretty painful recovery, but he’s doing well now. It creeps me out to even think about it.

Since I posted about FinallyAGirl’s birthday dress last time, I thought I should post the birthday dresses for the littlest two cherubs. (Excuse the poor cell-phone photos!)

Thimbleanna: Girls Dresses

FinallyAnotherGirl (on the left) turned 4 in September, so I made her a little fall dress. The pattern is the Back-to-School free dress pattern from Classic Sewing Magazine and the fabric is Belle and Boo’s Autumn Ditsy.  I worried about making a seasonal dress that wouldn’t get much wear, but she wore it a lot (Grandparents Day and Thanksgiving among them), so it was well worth it.  HurrayAThirdGirl turned 3 this past weekend, so I made her the Wiksten Baby + Child Smock Dress out of a cute little floral print by My Mind’s Eye.  The girls all love pockets and the smock pockets are big enough for her beloved little babies.  ;-D

But enough of the fall chit-chat, because …….. TA-DA:

Thimbleanna: Pink Quilt

I’ve finished HurrayAThirdGirl’s baby quilt! Better late than never!

I LOVED every minute of making this quilt.  This is the first lone star quilt I’ve ever made and I was a little worried that it would be really time consuming, but the star went together more quickly than I expected.  I used the method outlined in The Lone Star Quilt Handbook by Blanche and Helen Young.  It’s an old book that I’ve had in my stash for years, but surprisingly you can still get a copy on Amazon.  I got the Star pieced along with the background fabric behind the star, but I didn’t have enough of the little Le Creme Swiss Dot background for the borders, so I had to order some more and wait awhile until it got here.

Thimbleanna: Pink Quilt

When it arrived, I finished the borders and then, I took it outside to baste it on the driveway (because it was during the time when I forgot we have a basting frame {doh!}) and LOOK what the sunlight showed!  Can you see it?

Thimbleanna: Pink Quilt

Ohmygosh!  LOOK at the difference in the dye lots of the background fabrics.  The older Le Creme dot fabric was more yellow.  The astounding thing was that when the quilt was in the house, you couldn’t see the difference at all — the first picture was taken inside and the second picture was taken outside.  What a difference sunlight makes.  Or maybe it just doesn’t say much for the quality of the lighting in our house!  Anyway, I was having a cow and briefly thought I’d just go ahead and quilt it like that, but I just couldn’t do it.  I knew I’d never be happy with the quilt like that.  I suppose I could have told SweetiePie that the quilt could never see the light of day haha.  Anyway, I spent a few days, carefully unpicking each of those eight background sections by the star points and then replacing them with the new fabric, one section at a time so the whole thing didn’t fall apart.  Then, in the summer, I put the quilt on the quilt frame and spent most nights for the next 2-3 months quilting.  And just like the piecing, I loved every minute of quilting this quilt.  Here’s a picture of the ceremonial last stitch.

Thimbleanna: Pink Quilt

The fabrics in the quilt were all from the stash (well, except for the new dots LOL) and I used a little pink and white baby print from the stash for the backing.

Thimbleanna: Pink Quilt

I debated how to quilt the star points — most of the quilts I looked at online quilted through the middle of the points.  I briefly considered that, but then opted for quarter inch quilting around each diamond, which took a lot longer.  I’m so glad I did though, ’cause I love the result.

Thimbleanna: Pink Quilt

This is the third of my little pink baby quilts and I loved making each one of them.  I didn’t mean for the last quilt to be so much bigger than the other two — it just happened.  I guess, if you have to wait so long for your baby quilt, you get a little extra prize.  ;-D  SweetiePie noticed that the star quilt is bigger, with more quilting, and she thought maybe it was the difference between working and being retired.  But, I was retired when I finished the smallest quilt too.  I just picked what I wanted to make in each case, and this is how they turned out!  The family reunion shots:

Thimbleanna: Pink Quilt

Thimbleanna: Pink Quilt

And here’s our little sweetheart in the bright sun, noticing the flowers on her new quilt.

Thimbleanna: Pink Quilt

It’s such a nice feeling to have their baby quilts all finished!  Whatever will I do with all my time now haha?  I guess I should start thinking about their wedding quilts.

XOXO,
Anna

Summer Zipped By …

Well, here we are. Fall Already. I have NO idea what happened to summer. It came and it went. Life spins by exponentially as you get older, I’ve decided. I seem to remember it was a mostly fun summer and not too miserably hot. But what do I know … I stay inside and sew a lot LOL.

We have had a fun summer with our cutie patootie little granddaughters. We had cookie baking, tea parties, lots of coloring, ice cream, homemade funnel cakes, sleepovers, star gazing on quilts, and one afternoon we even had HurrayAThirdGirl all to ourselves.

Thimbleanna: HurrayAThirdGirl

What a joy they all are! I find myself wishing they could stay little forever, but then I get excited to see how their little personalities will develop.  I used to be so sad that I didn’t have any little girls of my own, but I think this is the way to do it — I’m loving these little girls SO much and I don’t think I would have had time to really enjoy them as a mother!

There’s been a fair bit of travel this summer. TheSecondChild decided to move to Florida in July, so I had several trips helping him with the move. I didn’t know much about Florida, having only been there for the standard Disney World trip when the boys were little, but I loved it. Even though it was hotter than hades, and moving is hard, we had a great time. One weekend, we snuck away to Key West for a little getaway. I’ve always wanted to go and see Ernest Hemingway’s home and it was the highlight of the visit. Here’s the famous author’s desk:

Thimbleanna: Hemingway's Desk

And, as expected, there were cats everywhere.

Thimbleanna: Cats

Thimbleanna: Cats

I had previously also been blissfully unaware of the iguana situation in Florida. I felt like I saw an iguana almost every day — they’re like squirrels. This was poolside at our hotel in Key West. Swim with a rooster and iguana anyone???

Thimbleanna: Iguana

Someone even told me that they climb trees and if/when the temps get below freezing, they temporarily freeze (because they’re cold blooded) and fall out of the trees. Maybe on your head if you’re walking by. Ewwwww! One day, back in the mainland, we were in the drive-thru line at Wendy’s and I looked over to see this:

Thimbleanna: Iguanas

Needless to say, I became a little iguana obsessed LOL.

There’s also been a lot of sewing over the summer. I made a little dress for FinallyAGirl’s birthday at the beginning of the summer.

Thimbleanna: Liberty Dress

The pattern is Ginger from The Children’s Corner store, and the fabric is the cute Children of Liberty print in my little shop.
I also FINALLY finished the hand piecing on my Trip Around the World quilt. I think I finished with 42 rounds and it should be a double size quilt when finished.  This is a picture of the back, right after I finished the last round.

Thimbleanna: Trippy Trip

It took me TWO weeks, working a few hours a day while watching tv, to get those seams ironed down in the right order. That was a job! I’ve also been steadily hand-quilting away on HurrayAThirdGirl’s baby quilt (it’s late haha) — I’m about half-way through at this point and hoping to be done by the end of November. There are also some Christmas quilt tops that are almost done, but they will have to wait for another post.

Which at this rate, may be in the spring LOL.

Happy Fall!
XOXO,
Anna

A Storm and A Wedding

Ahhh June. You’re almost gone {sigh}. But surprise, this will be my second post this month! I was thinking about why posting has taken such a back seat lately. I thought maybe I could pin it down to retirement — now that I’m retired, I feel like I have so much time but it makes it hard to actually do stuff (I work much better under pressure). Like, why is it so hard to write a blog post? While it’s true that posting has slowed down since I retired, it was already slowing a little before then. For some reason it’s just harder to take the time to write a post these days. Maybe because in the back of my mind I’m thinking … I have plenty of time, I’ll just do it tomorrow??? Oh well, chalk it up to just another mystery. I thought once I retired I’d get SO much more done. Haha.

We had a whopper of a storm last week. They called it a Derecho. Which, they say, if it had been over water, it would have been a hurricane. Our part of town was particularly hard hit and we had really REALLY high winds. They clocked them at 100 mph at the airport. We had trees and power poles down everywhere. We were without power for 2 days. Luckily, TheFirstChild and SweetiePie, who live 2 miles away, only lost power for about 5 hours so we were able to stay with them for a few days. We would have just camped out at home but the daytime temp the day after the storm reached 99F so, it was a little steamy. ;-D

Anyway, we were lucky and only lost one tree (which I attribute to the fact that we’ve lost so many other trees from storms and disease over the last 20 years that there aren’t that many left).  The wind uprooted a pine tree that was dying — we were going to have to have it removed anyway, so the storm actually saved us a little money.

Thimbleanna: Storm Damage

We were really lucky — the tree was exactly the height of the space that it fell into, so there was no damage to the house. Many others were not so lucky. Here’s a picture of a house a few streets over — the tree stump just to the left of the trailer used to be a huge tree that fell onto the middle of the house:

Thimbleanna: Storm Damage

They had another big tree fall on the back corner of the house, so there’s a lot more damage that you can’t see.  I’m so sad for these people — what a job to repair the mess.  MyDadLovesMeBestSister also had a huge tree fall on her back deck — it destroyed the deck and caused some roof damage. Thankfully, everyone is ok though!

Speaking of MyDadLovesMeBestSister, she just hosted her second wedding in a year a few weeks ago.  CuteNiece2 married her high school sweetheart in a beautiful beach ceremony on Daufuskie Island, South Carolina.

Thimbleanna: Wedding

The photographer did a great job — you can’t tell it, but it was actually raining.  In spite of the imperfectly timed rain, the wedding and everything about it was perfect — everything was SO beautiful and it was fun to gather as a family again.  And, where there’s a wedding, there’s a wedding quilt:

Thimbleanna: Wedding Quilt

CuteNiece2 sent me a picture of a quilt that she liked and I tried my best to reproduce it. It’s a scrappy quilt, made from lots of neutral fabrics from my stash — many of which were used in SweetiePie and TheFirstChild’s Wedding Quilt.

Thimbleanna: Wedding Quilt

The background fabric is a sweet little neutral designed by Brenda Riddle.

Thimbleanna: Wedding Quilt

And the backing is a Riley Blake wide back from a few years ago that I had in my stash.  I sent this quilt out locally (thanks for the quilter recommendation Ginny!) to have it machine-quilted — I don’t do it often, but I sort-of ran out of time.  It seems like such a luxury to have the quilts machine-quilted by someone else — I’m thinking I’m going to have to do it more often.

Thimbleanna: Wedding Quilt

I’m itching to start a new quilt (or 2 … or 3!) but I’m trying to resist the urge, as I have a lot of UFOs. Lots of Christmas fabrics have been arriving in the shop though, so I might lose the battle!

XOXO,
Anna