There’s a Mouse in the House

Hey there! Do you remember this cute little mouse that lives at MyDadLovesMeBestSister’s house?

Yeah?  Well, we’re not talking about that kind of mouse. Noosireee. A few days ago, PaulKitty started acting funny. We’d find him staring at the wall for no reason. I told TheManoftheHouse that there must be something in there. (Knowing full well exactly what “something” meant.) Then, TheManoftheHouse found Paul Kitty staring at the pantry door. It does look kind of funny.

So, he opened the door and he saw it. IT dashed from the potato bin to hide behind the crockpot. But he couldn’t find it and he had stuff to do, so he left PaulKitty in charge. And then we sort of forgot about it. The next morning, both kitties were staring at the washer and dryer.

Clearly, our kitties are useless housekitties. Cassie and Sirius, they’re not. It had been a few days and I even found teeny tiny crumbs at the cat food station. Did they make friends with little mousy and share their food with him? Slackers. I threw TheManoftheHouse and PaulKitty in the laundry room and told them not to come out empty-handed.  Twenty minutes and a lot of commotion later, TheManoftheHouse emerged victorious. PaulKitty was apparently hopeless. Wanna SEE???

Isn’t he cute???
Not.
He ruined the rest of my day. I had a nice relaxing day planned to read and sew a little bit. Instead, I had to clean out the pantry and laundry room. Very, very rude.
My week now is going much better. I hope yours it too!

XOXO,
Anna

A Button Board

Did you all have a nice weekend? It was dreary here, but still beautiful. Our trees are turning early this fall — makes me worry a bit about what winter might have in store for us. The view from my kitchen window was so pretty today. I’m really happy that I snapped this picture today as we’re expecting a freeze tonight and the zinnias probably won’t be so vibrant tomorrow.

Someone had a really nice post not too long ago about moments that take your breath away. (Aha!  It was Jody!!! ) She said that sometimes you see something so beautiful, it just grabs at your heart and you feel like it might burst. I felt that way today while I was out mowing the lawn. Even though the sun wasn’t shining, the trees and all the fall color were just so gorgeous. At one point, I mowed up to an area with a little thimble forest. If your blog is called Thimbleanna, you can’t pass up a thimble forest, so I ran inside and grabbed the camera. Thus, the new blog header.

It wasn’t all teary-eyed appreciation of Mother Nature around here this weekend. I did pick up a needle and thread. I sewed buttons to the new bulletin board that I made for my kitchen desk area.

These are so easy to make. Wrap foam core with batting and fabric and sprinkle a little hot glue here and there to hold it all down. Oops — I laid my hot glue gun down in the batting. I hate it when that happens.

I use a long doll-making needle and some pearl cotton and just stitch right through the foam core and fabric. Here’s the new board pressed into the desk area.

You can see the old board lying on the desk. It was from our previous house and it never really fit that wall very well, so I’m glad to have it replaced.

More stitching coming soon…. Have a great week!
XOXO,
Anna

P.S. The new Auriful block of the month is up and it’s adorable! It’s by Amanda Woodward-Jennings. Run over to the Aurifil blog to get this cute pattern and read Amanda’s interview. And don’t forget to load pictures of your finished blocks into the Flickr group for a chance to win some Aurifil thread!

The Weekend

Well…did you all have a good weekend?  We had a wonderful weekend — we headed south for three days to attend TheSecondChild’s MBA graduation.  As he says, now he’s a Master.  So, I should probably change his name to MasterSecondChild LOL.  It was a fairly small graduation ceremony (compared to his undergrad event)– mostly advanced degrees, since it’s out-of-cycle for undergrad degrees.

Thursday night was the “Hooding Ceremony”.  Each school held it’s own ceremony for the grads.  The hoods are all different colors too, depending on the area of study.  In MasterSecondChild’s case, the tan is for the business school and the red and blue are the university colors.  It was funny to see everyone after the hooding ceremony, ’cause no one knew how to arrange the colors.

They were all fixed by graduation though and everyone was properly folded.

So, it was a great weekend with lots of good food and fun.   We had fun fixing a few things that had to be fixed around his apartment and just being parents in general.   It’s always exciting to see your child’s hard work pay off too, and we’re very proud of our littlest Thimble.  Er, MasterThimble.  All good things come to an end though, and after I accidentally locked the young Master out of his apartment — oops! — I think he was probably ready to see us on our way LOL.

And this is what we saw upon our return … the thief has been discovered.  Caught in the Act!  He’s a brazen little Chippy — sat and ate that whole tomato right in front of me.  Luckily, we’re having a bumper crop of tomatoes, so there are plenty to go around!

Ooooh, before I go, I’ve been forgetting to mention the Aurifil block of the month!  Run on over to the Aurifil page and see the fabulous August block — embroidered by the famous Bari J.!  And don’t forget to check out the flickr group — there are lots of beautiful blocks being shared!

Ok, Peeps, have a great week!

XOXO,
Anna

B-o-o-o-ring

Holy Schmokes!  Another week has whizzed by.  Time’s flying and I’m not even having that much fun!  It scares me to think what it will be like when there is a lot of fun going on around here.

We did get some rain though. Woohoo!   They say it’s no impact on the drought, but my flowers sure seemed happy.  It seems like I’m wasting spending a lot of time watering this year.  At least the garden is happy.  If you remember, here it was a month ago…

And here it is now.  It’s getting crowded in there.

And look at my pretty zinnias!  I love zinnias, they’re SO happy and colorful!

It’s not all fun and games in the garden though.  SOMEthing is still lurking about, despite my ugly fence attempt.  This little bit of tomato evidence was on the retaining wall this morning.  They could at least clean up after themselves.  Pigs.

In other news, it’s festival time here in the Fort and we’ve made the trek to have the annual Funnel Cake.  YUM!  I think funnel cakes should be the next big breakfast fad.

Other than that, I spend my evenings in analysis paralysis.  I’ve been trying to plan a new quilt project, but instead, I just spend my time surfing all the fab quilts on the internet.  There are SO many quilts I want to make — (like this and this and this and this and….oh forget it, just everything on my quilt board on pinterest!) — where to start — it’s just so confusing!  In the meantime, I have a new basket for my bike, so I’m hoping to entertain myself this weekend by making a new liner.  Cause you know … if it can be lined, it must be lined!

Have a good weekend!
XOXO,
Anna

Wascally Wabbit

How’s your week coming along? Lots of running around here. I did drag out a more recent UFO and managed a little piecing time over the weekend.

It’s my Children at Play quilt top – I’m making good progress and hopefully there will be a finished top pretty soon. In the meantime, I played with the scraps too.

And contemplated what to do with all of these leftover triangles. Still undecided – any ideas?

Hey! Want to see my little garden? We finally have a little sunny space in our yard – created when the retaining wall was put in last fall. I love a little garden. I don’t have much hope for the beets and carrots – I really just planted them because they look so pretty.

Good thing I’m not really counting on them ’cause someone else has other ideas. See that teeny leaf on the left down there?

Those are the remains of a beet. Ramn Dabbit!!! I tried putting used cat litter around the edge of the garden. It worked for awhile, but Peee-Eeeew! It was smelly. Now we have a little wire fence. Hopefully it will work.

Off to dream of Wabbits in cages!
XOXO,
Anna