Holidays – Page 15 – Thimbleanna

Gingerbread Houses 2008

49 Comments / December 29, 2008 December 29, 2011 / Gingerbread Houses, Holidays

Christmas is over already? It came and went so fast I practically missed it. I hope you all had a wonderful Christmas! Thank you so much for all your great comments over the last week. I usually try to answer all of them, but I’m so far behind this year that I’m going to have to skip it. I started to read a few blogs this morning, so hopefully I’ll catch up with all of you before New Year’s Eve.

As I mentioned last time, we had our family’s annual gingerbread competition on the 23rd. Our houses this year reflected the kind of Christmas we had — chaotic! I think MyCrazyBIL’s heart attack and the power outage that had everyone living here for three days sort of threw us all off this year. Despite my best intentions, I didn’t have time to make the gingerbread until the day of the 23rd, so it didn’t have a lot of time to dry out. That caused problems in the roof department for a few of the houses. The houses weren’t as pretty as last year, but the males in the group lived up to their rowdy reputation. Read on at your own risk! (If you’re brave enough, you can click on each picture to make it bigger too.)

The team of MyCrazyBIL and my nephew were the first to have roof failure. They tried to compensate by creating a pyramid type house, but it just wasn’t cooperating. I think they should get an honorable mention for best use of candy wrappers in an attempt to cover up the crumble-age. They also indicated that some sort of candy bomb went off in the backyard which critically injured the marshmallow snowman.

MyDadLovesMeBestSister and my youngest niece also had roof failure, so they compensated by building an open-air gingerbread house. And if you have an open air house, it only makes sense to have a camp fire in your living room. They get a BIG prize for creativity in the face of disaster!

Last year’s defending champions, the bride and groom, always build a house with a theme. They got married last year, so it was a wedding chapel. In honor of their med-school suffering this year, they built a hospital. Complete with a helipad and an injured patient in a wheel chair. They had good roof and gable pieces but they decided to cut them up for a non-traditional gingerbread house shape.

Last year, I was teamed with my oldest niece and TheManoftheHouse was with TheSecondChild. We swapped this year in an attempt to break up a rowdy all male team. Shockingly, it didn’t work, and my sweet and innocent niece was happy to create a strip bar with TheSecondChild. Rumor has it that it may have been her idea. Naughty, Naughty! Even worse, they took third place in the voting.

Coming in in second place were MeMum and BigDaddy who had a cute little house. They decided to have the main entrance be on the side of the house and they created a drive in house. We weren’t sure exactly what sort of drive in it was though. I love their gumdrop Christmas lights.

And the first place winners this year were TheManoftheHouse and me. I decided that since the bride and groom always have a themed house, we should have one too, so naturally it had to be a quilt shop. (‘Cause I knew there was no way TheManoftheHouse was going to agree to have a Blog House LOL.) In keeping with the mess that was this year, we petered out before we got the back of the house decorated. We did, however, manage to get the all-important sale table of fabric strategically placed out front where all who passed by would notice!

Oh, and here’s a close-up of MeMum and BigDaddy’s star on top of their house. They get kudos for best use of a Christmas cookie.

So, our houses were very messy this year, but we all had a great time. There was a TON of laughing and joking around. And it wasn’t long before someone’s fat little hand was pinching the goodies off of the houses!

Coming up next — a blogiversary!

XOXO,
Anna

Merry Christmas!

35 Comments / December 24, 2008 February 18, 2011 / Holidays

No. Time. For. Blogging! I’m so sad that I haven’t had time to read any blogs this week. I was keeping up with my e-mail, but finally lost control of that two days ago. I had several posts that I wanted to do, but there has just been no time. We had our family gingerbread contest tonight and I’ll post about that later — mostly because I like having a record of it here. It’s fun for us to look back and see what we did in the past.

In the meantime, I just wanted to hop on here so that my little angel and I could wish those of you who celebrate, a Very, Very Merry Christmas. I hope your Christmas is the holiday of your dreams. And don’t forget the milk and cookies for Santa!

XOXO,
Anna

Need a Scarf?

36 Comments / December 14, 2008 February 18, 2011 / Holidays, Knitting

Well, how’s it going out there? Are you all busy working on holiday projects this weekend? I’ve been sewing all day and plan to do more tomorrow. I would normally put up our real Christmas tree this weekend, but I have too much sewing to do and didn’t think I could afford to lose the weekend to decorating. I’ll work on the tree this week after work.

A few weeks ago, when I posted the knitted hats pattern, I mentioned to a few of you in e-mail that I have a scarf pattern that can be knit to match the hat. Just like the hat pattern, our now-out-of-business yarn shop provided this pattern when I purchased yarn from them. It’s a great scarf — it’s knit in the round, so it’s effectively a two layer scarf and it’s nice and cozy and warm!

I made this hat and scarf a few years ago for TheFirstChild. I knit it in his school colors and before I put the fringe on the end of the scarf, I used my embroidery machine to add an “E” (he went to Earlham College) to one end before I closed the end with the fringe. It’s a fairly quick knit — the year I made it I started about 10 days before Christmas and had it finished in time for a Christmas present. (This pattern can also be used to create a Harry Potter type of scarf without a letter.)

The “E” is from Husqvarna Viking’s baseball font set. I loved this font when the kids were in high school. One year I made our family baseball sweatshirts with our last name across the back of the shirts. Very Dorky, but everyone knew who we were there to support!

Collegiate Scarf

Sizes: Children’s (Adult’s)
Measurements: approx 6.5″ x 60″ (8″ x 84″) excluding fringe
Materials: 2 skeins each gray wool (Cascade 220, Encore, etc. — I used Cascade 220) and burgundy wool, 16″ #8 circular needle, piece of cardboard 4″ x 7″, size F or G crochet hook and yarn needle.

Note: Cut fringe before beginning scarf — with gray, wind 48 (56) times around the 7″ length of the cardboard. Cut one end and set aside. With the burgundy wind around the cardboard 56(64) times.

Scarf: With burgundy yarn, cast on 60 (72) stitches and join being careful not to twist cast on edge. Knit 20 (25) rounds. Change to gray and knit 20 (25) rounds. Repeat this color sequence for 17 (21) stripes, ending with burgundy. Bind off all stitches loosely. Using an overcast stitch, sew the ends of the scarf closed.

Fringe: Beginning with burgundy and alternating colors, attach fringe with crochet hook using 4 strands per fringe for a total of 13 (15) times. Trim edges of fringe even.

My front door Santa seemed very happy to have a little warmth — it’s cold out there. He’s not alone, even TheEmptyNestChild loves this scarf!

And for the non-knitters among you, primarily Isabelle (who I’m sure is only temporarily a non-knitter), I offer my front door Christmas lights. Isabelle posted her front door (make that beautiful front door with the gorgeous stained glass window!) with a description of how it will look after Mr. Life puts some lights on her little tree. Rather than wait on TheManoftheHouse to put lights on our trees, I’ve resorted to two little fake trees and a garland that get put into the attic with lights in tact every year. That way I can just pull them out of the attic and plug them in. The Christmas tree in the window is fake too (although it gets taken apart, so it’s more work) and it’s inside where it can be decorated in warmth. The red bells in the window were my grandparents and they’re one of my most treasured Christmas ornaments. They’re not valuable (SweetiePie just bought some on e-bay for $3.00) but very sentimental.

Oh! And I had a really weird thing happen last night. I was commenting on someone’s blogspot blog and the verification word that popped up was our last name! Has anyone else ever had that happen? Your own last name??? Maybe blogspot is stalking me LOL!

XOXO,
Anna

Breakity, Break, Break

61 Comments / October 16, 2008 February 18, 2011 / Holidays, Quilting

Thanks for all the Bunny Love! Every now and then, we have to get a little silly around here. You know … it keeps TheManoftheHouse rolling his eyes. (And speaking of TMOTH, have you guys seen these funny Scottish Toyota commercials, here and here? Not sure why I thought of that … maybe it’s the man-car relationship? Then again, if that runner were TMOTH…LOL)

Anyway, while I was busy sewing this weekend, I made a table topper for MeMum. We were shopping this summer and she bought this vintage looking border fabric and gave it to me to make a table runner. ‘Cause we all know MeMum can’t quilt LOL!

I usually put the vintage-y print in the center and piece in the borders, but I thought I’d switch it up a little this time. I think I’d like it better this way if I had one more dark border around the outside. I’ll know for next time. All of the little prints in the middle are from a fat quarter pack that I bought at Judy Rothermel’s booth at the Chicago Quilt Show in April.

I love the little black bat fabric and the tiny pumpkin print on the right edge of the picture. Each of those patchwork blocks is a 2 inch square. I’ll give this to MeMum tomorrow — Don’t Look MeMum!

And while I was in the Halloween mood, I made up a few quick candy corn gift bags using this Halloween Clip Art from Martha Stewart.

Now, Boys and Girls, I’m going to take a little bloggy break. I’m going to turn off ye old computer and hopefully when I return I’ll have some fun stuff to show you. In the meantime, if any of you want to take a break, now would be a good time and then I won’t have so much to catch up on when I return. Really, it’s the least you could do — I’m taking this little break out of consideration for all of you. If I’m out of the picture, you’ll all have a better chance at winning the giveaways that occur in the next few weeks! So, go forth, win, and behave yourselves!

XOXO,
Anna

Happy 4th of July!

48 Comments / July 4, 2008 February 18, 2011 / Cupcakes, Holidays, Quilting

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