Peep Days – Page 2 – Thimbleanna

Peep Day

39 Comments / September 27, 2009 February 12, 2012 / Peep Days, Quilting, Recipes

Happy Sunday! Are you all having a good weekend? I’m having a Fabulous Fall weekend! I spent all day yesterday at a fun sewing day with my quilty peeps. We have such a hard time getting together this year and it was wonderful to be able to spend some time with my BFFs.

Junie outdid herself by playing hostess. She waited on us hand and foot! We always have a potluck of sorts for lunch (there is a little planning — we each choose what “course” we’ll bring.) She made this deeeee-licious Potato Bacon Torte. You should try it — the recipe is HERE, and I promise, if you like those ingredients, you won’t be disappointed.

Gurney brought our salad — it was fantastic too. I conned Gurney out of the recipe because I loved it so much. (In a large bowl, mix together: 1 lb. cabbage that has been shredded (or you can buy the preshredded cabbage mix that has carrots too), 2 pkgs. chicken ramen noodles, 3 chopped green onions, 3/4 c. slivered almonds, 5 Tbsp sesame seeds. Add to that a dressing that you’ve made ahead of time and chilled: 3/4 c. oil, seasoning packets from the 2 ramen noodle pkgs., 5 Tbsp vinegar, and three Tbsp sugar. After you’ve thoroughly tossed the salad and dressing, top with 1 c. shoestring potatoes.) It was yummy too and made the perfect side to the potato torte.

Jewels made her fantastic Lemon Dessert which we practically begged her to bring (ok, we did beg her to bring). I posted this recipe HERE several months ago, so this is a recycled picture. The dessert definitely wasn’t recycled though and it was even better than the first time!

I managed to be the big slacker in the group — I picked up donut holes for our breakfast and brought some fresh sliced fruit. Hey peeps, I think that’s a tradition we should keep — the previous hostess gets a slacker day — Junie, you’re up next!

As for projects, we were all busy all day. Gurney finished up this ADORABLE little pumpkin quilt as a gift for a friend. Her embroidery is perfect and we all loved this piece. Gurney gets the prize for cutest and most creative project! (And because I know some of you will ask, hopefully maybe Gurney will read this and leave her pattern source in the comments.)

Junie worked on folding her fabric stash — when she wasn’t meeting her hostess duties. Fabric folding is a huge project, so she’ll be at this for several more days!

Jewels worked on these adorable mini-dresden pieces. Jewels does beautiful hand paper-piecing and I can’t wait to see this project unfold. (Aren’t those fabrics pretty?)

I kept plugging away at my yoyos and also did a bit of handwork on a backpack that I’ve been working on. The backpack will be just like the black and white backpack in this post, without the little bride tag, of course!

So, as you can see, we had a wonderful day. Gurney has had a grandbaby explosion in the last few years (with another one on the way!) and since she lives two hours away, it’s made it really hard for us to all find a free weekend. Thank you quilty peeps for an awesome day — let’s not make it so long until the next one!

XOXO,
Anna

A Good Weekend

62 Comments / March 2, 2009 February 12, 2012 / Peep Days, Recipes

Well Hello! Did all you invisible friends have a good weekend? Mine was pretty busy with activities that ranged from some cleaning, knitting and then ripping out that which was knitted, and stripping wallpaper. Good clean fun! In the middle of it all I had a wonderful day with my quilty peeps (we missed you Gurney!) We like to get together every now and then for a sewing day, and Saturday was the day.

We started the day off by teaching the peeps how to make soldered pendants. I’m paying forward the skills that Beckie taught me just over a year ago. I sure wish Beckie had been here though — I think I’m not quite up to Beckie’s standards. The pendants I made at Beckie’s are still my best ones. Anyway, Junie and Jewels did a great job — I hope they’ll try them again.

Shortly before lunchtime, MeMum joined us which added to the fun. We stopped soldering so that we could make an appetizer (more on that later). Then I made lunch while Junie finished up her pendants, Jewels started sewing and MeMum got her project unpacked.

After lunch, it was back to work. Junie worked on an Amy Butler bag. This is the lining. I forgot to get a shot of the rest of the fabric — I think it was Amy Butler fabric and I loved it. The handles were big blue/gray polkadots.

Jewels worked on a bunny pincushion. She’s a HUGE I Love Lucy fan and she decided to use some of the cute new Lucy fabric in her bunny. This is going to be one adorable bunny!

And MeMum worked on binding her flying geese quilt. She hand quilted this quilt, which as you know, takes a long time, so it will be fun to see this quilt finally finished.

And I worked on….puttering. Didn’t get much done. I had a hard time deciding what to do and finally just ended up cutting out some blocks. Not much exciting to show there.

So … back to that appetizer. MyDadLovesMeBestSister is the queen of fabulous Brie recipes and she made some last year for SweetiePie’s wedding shower. I liked one of them so much I made it for my book group in December and it was a big hit. Junie hosted a wedding shower last weekend and she used it too. Since she had some extra ingredients, we decided to make it for our sewing day and take pictures for all of you invisible friends — you know, just in case you need a great appetizer recipe to add to your repertoire.

You will need:
1 package frozen puff pastry, thawed
1 Small wheel Brie Cheese (the one pictured here was perfect for the four of us, but I used a bigger size for my book group)
1 small jar apricot preserves
1 bag slivered almonds

We debated about whether to trim the crust off of the Brie or not. MyDadLovesMeBestSister and I didn’t trim it and it was fine. But Junie did trim it, so she showed me how she did it. I’ll probably trim the crust from now on — I think it makes the finished brie easier to cut into and it’s good to make things easy on your guests.

The package of pastry should have two sheets in it. Place one sheet on top of the other one and roll them out into a 14 inch square.

Take the cover of the Brie and press it lightly onto the puff pastry. This will give you a guide for placing your ingredients.

Sprinkle a layer of almonds onto the puff pastry.

Spoon some apricot preserves onto the almonds. We made the layer about 1/4 inch thick.

Place the Brie wheel on top of the apricot preserves.

Pull the corners of the puff pastry up around the Brie. Trim off excess dough and then put a bit of water on your fingers and then onto the dough to help seal the seams.

Flip the brie pastry over and place seam side down onto a piece of parchment paper on a cookie sheet. Brush the top of the pastry with an egg wash (one egg whisked with a tablespoon or two of water) and place some decorative cutouts (from the leftover puff pastry) onto the brie.

Finish by brushing the entire puff pastry with the egg wash. Bake at 350 degrees for approximately 25 minutes. To keep from browning too much, we tented aluminum foil over the Brie for the first 15 minutes. After 25 minutes, I thought it could use a little more time, so I bumped the temperature up to 400 degrees and kept an eye on it for another 5 to 10 minutes. I really don’t think 25 minutes is quite long enough to get the brie nice and soft.

Remove from oven and Voila! Serve with crackers while still warm. This is YUMMY, Yummy!!! I promise, your guests will love it.

Thank you, Thank you Junie, Jewels and MeMum for spending a fabulous day together (and for being the hand models in my pictures LOL.) A day spent with the quilty peeps and MeMum is the BEST! I hope we can do it again soon.

XOXO,
Anna

A Day with the Girls

39 Comments / September 15, 2008 February 12, 2012 / Chat, Peep Days

Did you all have a good weekend? We got lots of sorely needed rain — yipee! Our rain came from the leftovers of Hurricane Ike and it was gray and perfect for a day inside sewing with the blogless quilty peeps.

Jewels was our hostess and she went all out. She had her house all decorated for fall and I had to take a picture of her adorable china closet. How cute are these dishes? They look like they just walked off of the Martha Stewart set!

Jewels greeted us each with a fantastic Halloween gifty bag. She had them all tied so pretty with a little Halloween ornament — I hated to open mine up. But I had to, ’cause just look at all the wonderful goodies. (I LOVE candy corn season!) Look at the Halloween fabrics — I love them!!!

We had enough food for the four of us AND all of you, and I’m not kidding. By my count (and I’m sure I’ve forgotten something) we had two appetizers (fresh veggie dip and pumpkin cracker dip), two soups (Pumpkin and Maritatta — YUMMY for both!), 5 (yes FIVE) salads (Bruschetta, Broccoli, Apple Taffy, Seven Layer, and Hot Chicken), and umpteen desserts (Martha’s S’More’s Cupcakes (YUM and they looked just like Martha’s!), Apple Cake, Iced Sugar Cookies, Karen’s Awesome White Chocolate Cranberry Oatmeal Cookies, and HolyCrapTheseAreAmazing Cookies (Holy Crap, the other stuff was more amazing!)) Oh, and a wonderful variety of drinks which included hot apple cider — perfect for our stormy weather. Ok, so we got carried away. But it was all fantastic, and I don’t know about the other girls but TheManoftheHouse and I had leftovers all weekend.

In between all the eating, we sewed. Jewels worked on her fantastic Grandmother’s Flower Garden.

Gurney worked on these super-cute embroidered squares for a baby quilt for her granddaughter.

Junie made these adorable pillowcases for her daughter. I wanted to take them home!

And I worked on my little blue wren project which STILL isn’t done. I was hoping to get it done this weekend, but I’m getting slow in my old age.

There were no Princess and the Pea beds or alcholic beverages harmed in the making of our day (like at SOME wild parties), but we did have a lot of fun and I can’t wait to do it again SOON! Thanks for all your hard work and for hosting us Jewels — and Big, Big Smoochies to the best quilty peeps ever!!!

XOXO,
Anna

The Busy Weekend

31 Comments / April 14, 2008 February 12, 2012 / Chat, Peep Days, Travel

Whew! What a fun, happy weekend I’ve had! The whole thing was a big giant whirlwind — it all happened so fast. I had a great time with the quilty peeps. It’s so wonderful to have a girlfriend getaway — we really should do it more often.

We left early Friday morning for the Chicago Quilt Show. As soon as we got there, we made a bee-line for the vendors. I pretty much go to the quilt shows for the vendors these days — the quilts just haven’t seemed to be classic quilt show fare in a long time. I used to love to go to Paducah and I wonder if it’s still the same high quality show that it used to be. Maybe I was just spoiled by attending that show for several years? But, I digress (which isn’t hard to do…I think I’m still tired from my weekend!)

I looked for Sharon and Carol on and off all day but didn’t see them. Once it was time to check in to our hotel room, we left the show for awhile, and when we were re-entering the show, we ran into S & C as they were leaving. What a fun surprise! (We spared Sharon the “mask” greeting this time — but I still have them LOL) We split up again, but then met for dinner in the hotel. After dinner, we got together for some fun in our hotel room.

What a crack-up those two are. Can you spot the bloggers in the crowd???

This is some very serious business! As is our tradition, they’re taking pics of all the booty. It was totally by accident, but can you tell which bed contains the blogger booty and which bed contains the non-blogger booty???

And look again — that picture is too funny. Look how hap-hazzard the bed on the left is and how neat and tidy the bed on the right is — I didn’t even notice that before! What’s up with that??? You’ve probably guessed, the slovenly stuff belongs to the bloggy peeps! What the heck does that say about us bloggers LOL! Sharon claims the territory on the upper left of the blogger bed, Carol has the upper right and my stuff is toward the bottom. What was I thinking? I don’t need all that stuff! I couldn’t help it though — our closest quilt shop is 45 minutes away, so when I see all that fantastic quilty goodness in one place, I go weak in the knees. And, I blame a fair amount of it on Nanette too — seeing all those cute tumbling block quilts that she makes made me buy a tumbling block kit and I RARELY buy kits! Junie gets the prize for the non-blogger bed — look at all those neat rows of fat quarters. Don’t you just want to reach into that picture and rustle that stuff around a little? C’mon Junie — admit it, even YOU want to LOL!!! Jewels bought all the goodies on the left and Gurney claims that little pile up top. Gurney — I admire your strength. I’m blaming it on the fact that you have a brand-spanking new granddaughter and you had your mind elsewhere!

After we got done making a mess of our room, we cleaned things up a bit, broke out the diet pepsi, cupcakes and lemon bars (’cause we party hard LOL) and got down to some crochet business.

We worked on a little circular birthday tag (sorry, I forgot to take a picture — I think Sharon did though) and everyone did a great job. I was very proud of lil’ early bird Jewels — we were up WAY past her bedtime — it was well after midnight when everyone finished. Here they are in a serious moment of concentration — which was rare, most of the time Sharon or Jewels were cracking us up!

We met again in the morning for a leisurely breakfast. (For some reason we were plagued with sad-sack waiters for both meals — S & C are very unfairly blaming it on us quilty peeps LOL.) Then we went back to the quilt show for a few hours. Here’s Jewels and Junie with PamKittyMorning‘s Celebrity.

They’re having a very serious conversation about how much they miss Simply Quilts. The message was “Get Over It and Move On!” OkeyDoke! The two days were WAY too short and we had a fabulous time. Thanks for our cool new tote bags Sharon — we love them! And Jewels was a sweetheart and brought us some goodies too — Thanks Jewels!!!

So, that was Friday and Saturday. On Sunday morning, SweetiePie, TheFirstChild, MeMum and I got up bright and early to drive to Dayton for SweetiePie’s last bridal shower. SweetiePie had her final dress fitting just before the shower (when you live so far away, you have to squeeze in all these activities where you can.) There’s no dress peeking (wouldn’t want TheFirstChild to catch a glimpse, now would we?) but here’s a shot of her pretty shoes.

We had a fun, fun time all the way there and all the way back. We laughed a ton. Let’s just say that there was a lot of “She Said That”* going on. And “Grandma” was the worst offender!
So, I’m a very lucky girl and I’ve had a wonderful weekend to carry me through this next month of fun work until the big day. Thank you, thank you Quilty Peeps, Sharon, Carol, and my little fambly for all the fun memories that will keep a smile on my face for a long, long time!

I hope you all had a great weekend as well — I have lots of blogs to catch up on and I’ve had lots of e-mail — if I’ve missed replying to you, please excuse me — rest assured that I have read everything though!

XOXO,
Anna

*The Quilty Peeps taught me a new game that we called “She Said That.” I’m pretty dense, so it took me a long time to catch on and it would take me even longer to explain it. But, if you watch The Office, you’ll know the dumb game!

Jason Meets Sharon!

23 Comments / November 11, 2007 February 12, 2012 / Peep Days, Travel

Oh My Gosh! The quilty peeps, MeMum and I had a great shopping trip today and the absolute highlight of the day was meeting Sharon. We met at 10 a.m. at The Back Door and we had a plan. We decided to go in one at a time — if we went in all together, it would be too obvious who we were! Jewels and MeMum went in first. Then I came in. The shop was fairly crowded, but I spotted Sharon right away — she was standing near the door and next to Jewels. I dashed behind a barrier and waited for Junie to enter. When she did, I waved her over by me. I couldn’t get Jewel’s attention, so Junie and I donned our Sharon masks and headed her way. POOR Sharon!!! I was worried that perhaps she thought this might be some sort of Jason re-enactment!*

L to R: Jewels, Me, Sharon, and Junie, or
Sharon, Sharon, Sharon, and Sharon LOL!

Really, I think I was laughing too hard to figure out what she was doing (not to mention the fact that those masks were pretty hard to see out of.) We had to take a picture — isn’t Sharon just the CUTEST??? She’s every bit as adorable as you think she is from reading her blog. (And what the heck — look how tall she is — I totally didn’t notice that when we were there!) We stood there by the door and visited for an hour. An HOUR!!! It seemed like 5 minutes. I’ve read about other blog meets and sometimes they say there are awkward silent moments. Ha! There was NO chance of that happening here. Poor Sharon — I hope she didn’t think we were putting her through the Spanish Inquisition. We kept asking her questions — and Sharon, I didn’t even get them all out! I really want to know about you and flying with your sewing machine!

After awhile, I started to feel guilty that poor little Boo was outside waiting in the car. I’d given Sharon her PIF** and she was going to run it out to the car so she could shop without having to carry that package around. (She probably just wanted to let Boo know that she was still alive.) I convinced her to let me run out there. I put my Sharon Mask on and ran out to the car. I couldn’t really see his reaction, but I do remember him saying “That’s hysterical.” I mean, after all, his giant-faced mother is running toward him! Anyway, he’s a cutie — and a real sweetheart to sit and wait on his mom!

When I came back in the store, we decided we better get some shopping done. So, we all split up. Yeah, like that lasted very long. Pretty soon, I was standing next to Sharon, yacking again. (Sorry it took so long Boo — I just couldn’t help myself. You get to know people through blogs and it’s like getting together with an old friend!) We found a bolt of Holly‘s fabric and posed for a picture.

Look, Holly Look! It’s your daisies. (Sorry for the Wilson pose — I have work issues. Hoping not to be found out, if you know what I mean! And what the hey — someone has waited a little too long for the dye bottle!) After that, I seriously began to feel guilty about poor little Boo, so we really did split up. (And there’s another question — Sharon, did you outshop me? I didn’t get much, so you must have!) I think it was close to noon when we got out of there — it went so fast. Sharon is such a cutie — she gave everyone a hug and then left. She probably ran to the car and pleaded with Boo to get her out of there — Fast! LOL.

We spent all of our time allocated to the south side of town at The Back Door, so when we left, we headed to the north side of town. We went to our old favorites, Quilts Plus and The Knit Stop. And we ended up at a fun little restaurant for Linner — by then it was three o’clock — a little late for lunch and a little early for dinner. Then we barely made it to a new shop, Always in Stitches, just before they closed.

We had a great afternoon, but somehow, it just didn’t compare to our exciting morning. Thanks so much you quilty peeps and MeMum for going along — it just wouldn’t have been the same without you! Sharon and Boo — you two are the best! I hope you’re having a fabulous time together and Thank You Thank You Thank You for sharing some of that precious time with us!!! I’m telling you — I’ll be on cloud 9 all week — I still have a smile on my face just thinking about our fun morning. And to all the rest of you — I sure wish we could all have a big ‘ol fun Meet ‘n Greet!

XOXO,
Anna

P.S. HEL-LO! Sha-ron!!! You forgot to take your souvenir mask along! Not to worry — I have your address!!! ROFLMAO!!!!

* Do you recognize the mask? That’s Sharon when she made her pie. You really should go check it out — her original picture is much more flattering — enlarging the picture sort of dorked it up a bit!
**In case you’re new here, PIF = Pay It Forward. Read about my PIF here.