Family – Page 9 – Thimbleanna

Teddy Rose

54 Comments / December 28, 2009 February 22, 2011 / Family, Holidays

Whew! Can you believe it’s all over for another year? Did all you Christmas peeps have a good holiday? It went too fast — it’s all a blur. If you’re really sad that it’s over, have no fear! Angel Jem has you covered with a countdown to next Christmas in her sidebar. (That cracked me up when I read it!)

As promised, Santa was very, very good to our family this year. And my young nephew cashed in big with this little beauty (being prepped for his big debut):

Isn’t he adorable? We all had so much fun playing with the new puppy on Christmas Day. After much debate, he’s been named Teddy Rose. It happened after someone suggested Theodore Roosevelt. He’s eight weeks of soft and cuddly and even has puppy breath. Too cute!

There’s just one little kink in the whole happy affair though — his big sisters, The Yappers.

The Yappers are none too happy about this new development. MyDadLovesMeBestSister thinks they’re afraid of him. There was lots of growling, yapping and shaking. Teddy is oblivious to the whole fear thing — he just wants some playmates!

It cracks me up that they’re afraid of him — he’s really not much bigger than they are. Good thing they’re meeting him now though — he’s a Goldendoodle, so he’s going to be big enough to sit on them if they get too yappy!

It briefly looked like there might be some sharing of toys, but it didn’t really last. Yapper 1 was just sniffing them for a minute, then she retreated. Hopefully, they’ll soon be fast friends.

This is my favorite picture of the day. Teddy was so funny — he’d play pretty hard and every hour or two, he’d just drop wherever he was and have a little snooze. This picture was taken by my cute niece – Santa was very, very good to her this year too.

We’re going to have lots of fun playing with cameras. We started by taking pictures of each other, taking pictures of each other (in very poor light!)

I hope you all had a good, happy Christmas like we did. And hopefully I’ll be back soon with gingerbread competition pictures (it was a tough voting year) — there’s new computing power in the house, and once TheManoftheHouse starts changing things over…well, hopefully we won’t be off-line for long! ;-)

XOXO,
Anna

The Sugar Cookie Bake-Off

59 Comments / December 4, 2009 February 22, 2011 / Family, Holidays

Boy, thanks for all the Advent Calendar Love! I love this time of year — it’s so fun seeing what everyone is working on. There have been a ton of advent calendars online and it’s been very inspiring to see them all. I’m ready to make a new one!

This is also the time of year when all the Christmas goodies come out. We had so much fun in October when we had our Chili Cook-Off that we decided we should continue the tradition. This time, with Christmas so close, I thought it would be fun to try different cut-out sugar cookie recipes. MeMum has had a wonderful recipe that we’ve made every year since I’ve been a little girl, but I’ve seen so many other recipes out there and I’ve always wondered how they stack up.

The instructions were to come to the party with the dough already prepared. Then we would cut-out, bake and decorate all together. We had six different “teams”, therefore, six “recipes”.

Team 1: Moi. I tried the recipe from Cookie Craft with their royal icing recipe because their cookies are so pretty. Their recipe had no baking powder or baking soda which helped these cookies do the best job of maintaining their shape. With the royal icing, I suspected these cookies wouldn’t taste very good and I was right — cardboard has more flavor. Blech.

Team 2: MeMum. She used our tried and true recipe. It has a hint of lemon. She had a little trouble with the dough this year though.

Team 3: MyDadLovesMeBestSister. Her recipe contained cream cheese. I love cream cheese and I’ve always figured if a sugar cookie had cream cheese in it, you couldn’t go wrong.

Team 4: My nephew and TheFirstChild. They totally cheated and brought a roll of Pillsbury Sugar Cookies and canned frosting. Boys. Men!

Team 5: CrazyBIL. I think he got his recipe from his mom — it was for a soft sugar cookie. He had a little mishap, in that he added a little too much lemon to his frosting. I personally loved it, but it was too tart for most everyone else.

Team 6: My two nieces and SweetiePie. They tried a recipe containing buttermilk. Aren’t their cookies cute?

After the cookies were all made, I convinced everyone to have a blind taste test. They weren’t so sure, but I reasoned that you also taste with your eyes, so it was the only fair way. This part was lots of fun — you should have seen the faces when that sour lemon cookie hit their tongues!

So, who won? Well, in theory:

Gag Me.

I have two words: Chemical. Aftertaste. I think this cookie won because of the frosting. The rest of us pretty much fell down in the frosting department because we were concentrating on the cookie dough so much. MeMum’s cookie and the buttermilk cookie came screaming into second place. They both have great potential. I thought the cream cheese recipe was pretty disappointing. And way at the back of the pack were the lemon and cardboard cookies. Cardboard was dead last. Let that be a lesson to you — don’t judge a cookie by it’s cover.

Of course, now that the contest is over, I’ve seen several new recipes that I want to try, so there will be more experimenting. It’s just too bad they can’t all be tried at once! Oh, and we’ll be looking for more bake/cook-off ideas after the new year — any suggestions?

XOXO,
Anna

A Birthday Week

50 Comments / August 22, 2009 February 22, 2011 / Family, Knitting

It’s been a big birthday week here in ThimbleannaLand. First off, today is TheFirstChild’s 25th (Eeek!) birthday — Happy Birthday Big Boy! I know I’m his mom, but isn’t he a cutie?

When he was little, people used to stop us and tell us what a pretty baby he was. One time, when he was out having a sandwich with TheManoftheHouse, a man stopped to say “I’ve heard of looking like your father, but that’s ridiculous!” I’m happy to say that’s no longer the case (Yay! He has my eyes!), ’cause don’t you think after all that childbirth and labor that your baby should look just a little bit like you???

And then we have MeMum, whose birthday was on Tuesday. She was a cute baby too — naked and all! Look at those curly little yellow locks. We all love this picture documenting her early days into stripperdom.

MeMum collects beaded purses, so for her birthday, I made her this little blue beaded purse.

Thanks to Marsha’s kindness — I won a beautiful little white beaded purse from her a year or so ago, and knew right then that I’d want to make one for MeMum. Marsha was more than willing to share all the info on how to get started in beaded purse knitting. I ordered a beginner’s kit from Purse Paradise and thoroughly enjoyed knitting this little purse. Super fun, and I’ll definitely be doing beaded purse knitting again.

Marsha makes beautiful purses and she shows some of them on her sidebar (I love the gorgeous white wedding purse and the black purse!) AND she sells them — you should go and check them out! THANK YOU so much Marsha for all your help — you’re a peach!

Well, I’m off to spend the day with MeMum for a belated birthday get-together. I hope you all have a fabulous weekend!

XOXO,
Anna

The Weekend Report

53 Comments / May 18, 2009 February 22, 2011 / Family, Recipes

Thanks for all your happy wishes for our moving weekend. The newlyweds are all settled into their cute new apartment. They’ve managed to accumulate quite a bit during their first year, so there was plenty of work for all of the volunteer movers. We had a great time though — many hands make light work.

I packed a picnic lunch for all of us. I even tucked my panini grill into my picnic basket because I knew their kitchen goods would still be packed. We worked right through lunch and didn’t manage to eat our sandwiches until dinner time. Hunger made them taste pretty darn good though! We also had chips (have you tried Lays Kettle Cooked Salt and Cracked Pepper chips yet? (I tried to find a picture for you, but they’re not even on their website yet) — they’re my new addiction!), pasta salad, grapes, bananas, and cookies. I made two kinds of cookies — oatmeal raisin and these lemon cookies.

(Hello Moda Butter Polka Dots and Happy Zombie!) The lemon cookies were really good, but it was a very humid, rainy day, so they got a bit sticky. They’re also a heavy cake-like cookie — very dense because of the ricotta cheese in them. Very lemony and yummy though.

So, now, on to a new week. We’re finally promised some pretty weather — unbelievably, we had frost last night. I’ll be spending my week making plans for the upcoming 4-day weekend — yipee. I hope you have a good week planned too!

XOXO,
Anna

One Weekend in May

68 Comments / May 11, 2009 February 22, 2011 / Family

Happy Belated Mother’s Day to those of you in countries that celebrated yesterday. I picked some flowers for you — aren’t they beautiful? We spent our weekend at the college graduation of TheSecondChild. These flowers were in big patches all over an absolutely gorgeous campus.

Most of our weekend was insane. Traffic was insane. The crowds were insane. The ceremony was insane. Three hours long. It was moved indoors at the last minute — into a stadium that hadn’t reached cool temperature yet (at 9 a.m.) so it was hot. We were stuck in the upper deck. Here’s a peek at our view. In. Sane.

Thank goodness for modern technology. TheSecondChild was able to text us and tell us where he was in that pinheadsized crowd. See all those kids in caps and gowns on the floor? They all walked. Just crazy. Knowing where he was in the crowd helped, ’cause when it came time for him to get in line, we were able to spot him. A little yelp from his cousin and help from my zoom lens and we managed to get this, the closest picture to anything recognizable.

Still, we all had a good time. We were high enough up that we could wander around and talk and visit without disturbing anyone around us. And when it was finally all over, the school hosted a very nice champagne and strawberry reception. I was amazed that they pulled that off with so many people. It was fun to see the tables full of mounded strawberries with big bowls of powdered sugar. A very cool idea and a chance to toast our new grad.

Our guy threw his hat in the big hat toss, so he lost the little year charm on his tassle. But that’s ok, we all know the year. Those four years disappeared in a blink. He graduates with a degree in chemistry and now he’ll jump into the big abyss. It’s not a terribly fun time to be a new college grad.

So, if you’ll excuse me, I’m going to go find a comfy chair and a cozy quilt, and try to figure out where the $#*$ the last 22 years went.

XOXO,
Anna