Anyway, I just wanted to pop in here and tell you about a fun little visit we had with Heather Ross. She’s Back! and she has a sweet new line called Briar Rose. Look at her cute booth.

Here’s a look at all the prints in her new line. (You can see individual shots of each print  Here).

This is my favorite print. Heather told us all about the little bees. She said she is the mama bee on the left and the bee on the right is her nanny with her little girl. Then, she laughed and said “I don’t even have a nanny!”.  I love bees anyway and knowing the story makes it even cuter.  Check out that stinger on Mama Bee — I forgot to ask Heather what THAT means LOL.

While we were at market, I grabbed several fat quarter bundles of Briar Rose to put in my little shop.  This line isn’t due to ship until July, so you can have these prints early!  There are 20 prints in the bundle and they retail for $70.00.  I’ve put them in the shop on sale for $60.00.  They’ll ship in a flat rate envelope for $5.90 postage in the continental U.S.  If you’re outside of the US and you’d like a bundle, shoot me an e-mail, I’ll figure out postage and then send you an invoice.

You can find the bundles Here.
SOLD OUT. Thank You!

I’ll be back soon with pictures from market!

XOXO,
Anna

(Photo from Integrated Fitness)

I’m a little Piggy off to market in the morning. I’ll try to post a few pictures to Instagram along the way.

Thanks for all the graduation love — you guys are fabulous. Market reports when I return.

Have a great weekend!
XOXO,
Anna

TheFirstChild is now Dr.FirstChild and it’s been a fun and emotional weekend.  We all gathered for the looong graduation ceremony and then SweetiePie treated us to a wonderful lunch back at their apartment.  She did such a great job preparing all the food and cute Dr./Graduation decorations.

She served Ham and Turkey Croissants, veggies and dip, ugly bean dip, a hot chicken dip, mini cinnamon rolls, oatmeal raisin cookies, and a decorated cake.

She thought of everything — right down to a champagne toast to celebrate the new graduate.  It was all delicious and hit the spot.

At the beginning of Med School, just after the white coat ceremony, I posted the picture below of SweetiePie and TheFirstChild.  It was the beginning of their journey and I love that picture because I’d inadvertently caught the construction sign in the photo.  It hardly seems possible that the construction phase is now over.  SweetiePie and TheFirstChild probably don’t share our disbelief — it was long and grueling and I’m sure they’re glad it’s over.  They’ve taught our little family a lot about hard work and perseverance and it’s been amazing (if not painful at times) to watch.  A few days ago, TheFirstChild posted on his facebook page and said “As of this very second, I AM DONE WITH MEDICAL SCHOOL! The first thing that comes to mind is that it was slightly more difficult than I first anticipated.”  He’s a funny guy.

I’m sure I don’t have to tell you how proud we are of our little chicks.  And, after last fall, how lucky we felt that all of our local family was together to celebrate the reward for all of their hard work. I sure do Love these boys.

I am One. Lucky. Mom.

Happy Mother’s Day!
XOXO,
Anna

1.  I’ve started working on a new quilt.  Blues, grays and red.  It should be fun if I can get a little more sewing time in.  (Oh, and can we please have a moment of silence for that DS gray fabric?  It was so hard for me to cut into it.  I might have to sacrifice and go find more of it.)

2.  I’m sure there must be a quicker way to make this block.  (I’ll bet Sherri knows — she makes it a lot!)  I couldn’t stand the thought of all the wasted fabric from the corner pieces, so I’m making half-square triangles at the same time.  Maybe I’ll use them on the back.  Maybe not.  I’m enjoying the process though.  And I sure do Love that sewline pencil!

3.  All the crabapple trees around here are in bloom this week.  It’s one of the prettiest weeks of the year (I love intense fall colors too.)  Here’s our pretty tree in the back.  The heavenly smell almost knocks you over when you step outside.  I love it!

4.  Here’s a picture of the same tree in 2010.  Can you tell me why there was so much more pink in 2010???  I felt like a pink tree then.  This year it feels like a white tree.  (And boy, look at the difference the light makes in a photo.  It was sprinkling and cloudy when I took this year’s picture.  The 2010 picture was taken on a sunny, early evening.  Such pretty light!)

5. I’m betting you’ve seen THIS commercial. I Loooove it. It’s easily in my top five commercials ever. I wonder if those guys who invented the camera phone even came close to imagining the impact it would have on our lives.

Have a great weekend!
XOXO,
Anna

All this yardwork means not much sewing. I’ve pre-washed a few fat quarter packs, but that’s about it. And the kids were briefly home to go to a wedding, so I made one of our favorite dips to have with tortilla chips.

I got this recipe years ago from one of the women who was in our now defunct quilt group.  It’s called Ugly Bean Dip and I didn’t know it, but SweetiePie said they love it and she makes it when they have friends over. So, you know it must be good! ;-D

Ugly Bean Dip

1/2 c. ranch dressing
1/4 c. Italian dressing
1 t. chili powder
1/2 to 3/4 t. black pepper
1/2 t. garlic salt
2 t. finely chopped cilantro
1 15-oz. can black beans (drained)
1 15-oz. can white peg corn (drained)
1/2 c. finely chopped green pepper
1 med.-large tomato, chopped
1/2 c. chopped purple onion

Mix all ingredients together. Cover tightly (or your fridge will smell awful!) Refrigerate.

(I like to sprinkle some extra cilantro over the top before serving.)

Enjoy!
XOXO,
Anna

I thought I’d catch you up on the story of Mother Goose.  If you follow my instagram account, you know that we’ve had a fun few days.   The internet was SO helpful to let us know what to expect with Mother Goose.  It said that the eggs will hatch anywhere from 24 – 30 days, so on day 24 (last Thursday) we kept an extra close watch over Mother Goose.  We even checked on her on the weekend.  And, right on schedule, Day 28 (this past Monday) we saw some action.  When we arrived at work, this was the scene at the nest.

What the heck!  Mother Goose kicked out two of the eggs.  She really confused us and we were guessing that maybe she could sense dud eggs or something?  Then, around 9:30 or so, our admin came running over to tell us that we had a baby.  We all flocked (ha — definitely obsessed) to the window and look looky — a baby indeed!

Awwww, isn’t he cute?  By 1 p.m. or so, there were three babies.   It was hard to tell what was going on as we didn’t happen to catch Mother Goose standing up very often.  (I know it’s hard to believe, but we didn’t stand at the window ALL day long!)  So, by the time we left work Monday, we thought maybe there were four little ones.  (And let me add here, Mother Goose and her babies picked the PERFECT days to hatch out — these past few days have been our prettiest spring days this year.)  After the first baby or two, Father Goose appeared on the scene.  (Finally!)  Every time someone would walk down the handicap ramp, he would hiss at them.  Finally, security put some orange cones up to keep people off of the ramp.

On Tuesday morning, Mother Goose was still on the nest but she stood up for just a minute as I was coming in to work, and I thought I counted 5 goslings. We compared notes and someone thought they saw 6. Very fun.  The internet said that the geese would leave the nest within 24 hours, so we waited. My desk is on the second floor and I have a friend who sits just below me on the first floor (people who sit on the first floor had a birds-eye view of the action), so she was on high-alert for a goose family exodus. Around 10 a.m, she texted and said “They’re here!”. (She sits around the corner from the nest.) So, us second floor girls zipped to the window, but we couldn’t see all the geese. Father Goose decided to head across the parking lot with four of the babies and Mother Goose was up under our windows where we couldn’t see her. (Sorry for the awful cell phone photo, but I want to remember what those little guys looked like trying to hop up on the curb. They all made it — so cute!)

My first floor friend texted to say that Mother Goose was headed back to the nesting area.  ???  We were worried about some sort of custody battle, but after Father Goose got all the way across the parking lot, he decided to turn around and come back.  Yay!   They went back to the nesting area, and we went downstairs for about 10 minutes to get a better view.  You know, break time and all LOL.   Here they are, very close to the original nest.  Sadly, this is the only picture I got of all seven of the little goslings together.  And it’s through a very dirty window (which is part of the reason that all of these pictures aren’t the greatest — our windows are filthy!).  If you look real closely, you can count seven — there’s one behind that tallest little peeper and one to the left of Mother Goose.

After our little break, we all went back to work.  And by lunchtime, when we went to check on them, they were gone.  Poof!  No trace of a little goose family of nine anywhere.  They apparently had a very stealthy walk across the parking lot.  We didn’t even get to say goodbye!   I did catch this little cutie below spreading his wings.  They were so sweet stumbling around in the grass.  It’s amazing that they can walk long distances and follow their parents.

So, that’s the story of our little goose family.  We’ll never really know if we see them again.  There’s another family of 8 in our industrial park, and a few more geese still on their nests, so it would be impossible to identify “our” geese.  I wish we could have put a spot on Mama’s head or something! ;-D   Here’s the scene on Tuesday afternoon.  Hard to believe those shells stayed intact as much as they did with that big Mother sitting on them.

Now, it’s a little depressing at work. We’re all suffering Empty Nest Syndrome. ;-(

XOXO,
Anna

It was a bright sunny day when we took pictures of the quilt and sadly, bright sunny days don’t always make for good picture taking. We hung the quilt on the outdoor quilt holder swingset at MeMum’s and I waited almost two hours for the sun to go down past the roofline of the house. I finally had to give up, snap the picture and get home to make dinner for TheManoftheHouse. Sorry for the shadow — pretend it’s not there.

While we were waiting on the sun, MeMum and I had fun taking pictures in her guest room, on her beautiful antique bed. She wanted to put some of her dolls and teddies on the quilt, so we had fun playing around.

I’ve mentioned before that Ms. Barefoot Daydreams was my total inspiration for this quilt.  It’s been almost 6 years since I saw her red yoyo quilt and then, a year later, she made her black yoyo quilt.   They’re just gorgeous and I knew I wanted to make one.

These quilts are a lot of work and I’m amazed that Ms. Barefoot made more than one. I could see making another one — but it will be awhile LOL.  There are 868 yoyos in my version.  I figured I could make 12 – 15 yoyos in an hour, so that’s about 60 hours making yoyos.  And then it took about an hour to sew down 10 yoyos, so that’s about 86 hours to sew down yoyos.  Add to that the time it took to sew borders, draw the big yoyo grid, pin baste, machine quilt and then bind the foundation quilt.

It was fun work though.  I really enjoyed watching movies and doing all the handwork.  I’m feeling a little lost now without a handwork project, I need to plan something soon.  It took about seven weeks to sew all the yoyos to the quilt.  After all that time and apparent kitty naps when I wasn’t home, the quilt required a bath.

I held my breath when I put the quilt in the wash on gentle cycle.  I was afraid those yoyos would fall apart but, happily, there were no thread incidents.  Unfortunately though, there was a bit of color running (in spite of fabric pre-washing and two color catchers in the wash).  The color running is faint though, so it’s nothing I can’t live with.  The yoyo fabric on the left, in the picture below, was the culprit.  And the fabric on the right is my favorite fabric.  It’s hard to tell all scrunched up in a yoyo, but it has pretty little calligraphic letters on it.

And just to prove that spring has finally arrived here, we took a picture of the quilt with MeMum’s pretty daffodils. Luckily, spring has been late in arriving this year because now, there is a LOT of yardwork to be done.

So, I’m a happy camper — I finished the yoyos just in time.
Have a wonderful weekend!

XOXO,
Anna

In the meantime, Guess What Guess What???? The Yoyos have been conquered!  Hopefully I can rustle up a few pictures and get back here later this week.  While I was sewing the yoyos with reckless abandon, I was thinking about my next project. Which made me start thinking about charm packs. When charm packs first came out, I just didn’t get the attraction. Why would anyone buy little packs of squares when you can buy bigger pieces? Fortunately, the internet is full of people who “got it” and now I’m seeing the light. I decided to make a mosaic of some of my favorite types of quilts that can be made with charm packs. Even though some of the quilts in my picture were made with scraps, they could easily be adapted to charm packs.

1.  Cute Pinwheel Quilt by A Quilting Life
2.  Baby Coin Quilt by Tall Grass Prarie Studio
3.  Sheets and Shirts HST by Creative Chicks at Play
4.  Scrappy Hour Glass by Pink Penguin
5.  Patchwork Triangles by Freda’s Hive
6.  Baby Spring Triangle by Film in the Fridge
7.  Pink Hourglass by Red Pepper Quilts
8.  Christmas Quilt by Diary of a Quilter
9.  Strawberry Hearts by Helen Philipps
10.  Tumblers by Making More with Less
11.  Scrappy Squares Baby Quilt by Teaginny Designs
12.  Stacked Coins by Hamburger Liebe
13. Hexagons by  Nana Company
14.  Kansas Dugout by Red Pepper Quilts
15.  Slanted Star by Camille Rosekelley (the only picture I could find was with her cute baby!)
16.  Triangle Quilt by Blue Elephant Stitches
17.  Reverse Hopscotch by V & Co.
18.  Simple Nine Patch by Penelope Waits
19.  Baby Lattice by Amy Smart
20.  Isabelle’s Quilt by Me

I know there are LOTS more quilts out there that could be made with charm pack squares.   As I noted in my EPP stars post, I’m going to be making some stars out of charm squares. They’re definitely not as limited at they seem at first glance.

XOXO,
Anna

She built her nest right in front of our building and right next to the handicap ramp. At first we thought she was crazy — that nest seems to be totally unprotected. But, in doing a little research, it seems that Canada Geese prefer to have their nests completely out in the open. It gives them a clear view of any pending danger.  (Awww, look, she’s resting her head on the wall.)

Talk about being a devoted mother.  I see her several times a day when I’m in the stairwell and she’s never off of that nest.  The gestation period for goose eggs is between 24 and 30 days, depending on which source you read.  We’re going on week three and she’s faithfully tended that nest through all kinds of crappy weather.  I read somewhere that the mother will frequently turn the eggs so that they will properly develop.  And sure enough, I hung around by the window one day and caught her turning the eggs.  She’s ever so gentle while she turns her head completely upside down to carefully roll the egg.  It’s really fun to watch.  I zoomed in on one of my pictures and it looks like there might be eight eggs in the nest.  Eight!  Supposedly they leave the nest within the first 24 hours — I so hope we’ll be able to see them before they’re gone.

Life is precarious for those little goslings though.  The first week Mother Goose was on the nest, we saw a hawk flying in circles above her.  Probably scoping out a future meal.  When her nest was first discovered, rumor had it that the DNR had been called to move her.  I think it was just a rumor though, as it’s illegal to disturb nesting migratory birds.  Her biggest threat might be those pesky engineers.  They’re all too lazy to take the stairs — everyone uses the handicap ramp.  She seems to be used to them by now, although, it’s been said that if you stop to look at her she’ll hiss at you.  You don’t want to mess with a mother goose.  (There goes a smart engineer now — look down, don’t make eye contact.)

And where, you might ask, is the father?  We rarely see him.  I’m guessing (well, hoping) he might spend a lot of time on the roof (where we can’t see him) watching over her.  Occasionally, we spot him patrolling the parking lot.  We’ve never seen him up on the grass next to her.  Slacker. I always wonder how she eats or goes to the bathroom.  It’s really pretty amazing.  (Did you notice Father Goose in the parking lot picture?  Here, I’ll point him out.)

So, that’s the excitement around here.  I know I’ve been fairly absent, but I’ve been plugging away at the Yoyos. Yoyo Count: Yoyos: 135 Me: 733.  Netflix, as always, is my yoyo companion.  When Upstairs Downstairs ended, I watched Daniel Deronda (fun to see Downton’s Hugh Bonneville in a different role) and then decided I’ll take a BBC break.  There seemed to be some blog excitement over the return of Don Draper, so I checked it out and I’m now officially hooked.

Yum-Yum!  Off to yoyo now –Yipee — it’s almost the weekend!

XOXO,
Anna

In the meantime, how do you take your Chocolate Chip Cookies? Cake-y or Chewy? Regular or Jumbo? I’m not a huge Chocolate Chip Cookie fan (Oatmeal Raisin any day baby!), but I try to do my part to keep the Chocolate Chip Cookie lovers in the family happy. For years I’ve made a recipe that a friend gave me when the boys were in high school. She kept the sports teams happily supplied with after practice snacks. When she moved away I begged her to give me the recipe, you know, for the boys. She’s a sweetheart, and very kindly obliged. They’re tender and cake-y and almost everyone loves them.

But, a few people prefer chewy Chocolate Chip Cookies and recently, I found a recipe that fit the chewy bill. Last time I made them, I made them regular size, but today, I made them jumbo sized. They’re a little more cakey in their jumbo form, but they’re still really good. (In other words, if you prefer them even more chewy, make the jumbo sized recipe, but scoop them into smaller cookies.)

In the event you’d like to experiment, here are the two Chocolate Chip Cookie recipes that we love. You’ll notice they’re almost the same recipe. A big difference in the cakey vs. chewy technique appears to be oven temperature.

Regular Chocolate Chip Cookies

3 cups flour
1 teaspoon baking soda
1 teaspoon salt
1/2 pound (2 sticks) butter
3/4 cup granulated sugar
3/4 cup brown sugar
2 eggs
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
2 cups semisweet chocolate chips

Preheat oven to 375 degrees. Combine flour, baking soda and salt in a small bowl and set aside. Using an electric mixer, cream butter, sugars and vanilla together. Add eggs, one at a time. Add flour mixture to the butter mixture in thirds. Stir in chocolate chips.

Line 4 large baking sheets with parchment paper. Scoop the cookie dough onto cookie sheets. Bake until cookies start to brown, 8 – 10 minutes. Makes 24 cookies.

Jumbo Chocolate Chip Cookies

1/2 pound (2 sticks) butter, softened
1 cup granulated sugar
3/4 cup brown sugar
2 eggs
1 1/4 teaspoons vanilla extract
3 cups all purpose flour
1 teaspoon baking soda
1 teaspoon salt
1 cup semisweet chocolate chips

Preheat oven to 325 degrees. In a large bowl, using an electric mixer, cream the butter, sugar and brown sugar until light and fluffy. Add the eggs and vanilla. Mix well and scrape the sides and bottom of the bowl. Sift together the flour, baking soda and salt. Mix into the creamed butter, scraping again. Stir in the chocolate chips.

Line 2 large baking sheets with parchment paper. Scoop the cookie dough into 12 large (1/3 cup) mounds. Bake until cookies are flat and very light golden brown 15 – 20 minutes. Makes 12 jumbo cookies.

And here’s another bonus to the Jumbo cookie recipe:

It’s fun to stack them in the cookie jar!

XOXO,
Anna