Wedding – Thimbleanna

A Storm and A Wedding

10 Comments / June 25, 2022 June 25, 2022 / Around the House, Quilting, Wedding

Ahhh June. You’re almost gone {sigh}. But surprise, this will be my second post this month! I was thinking about why posting has taken such a back seat lately. I thought maybe I could pin it down to retirement — now that I’m retired, I feel like I have so much time but it makes it hard to actually do stuff (I work much better under pressure). Like, why is it so hard to write a blog post? While it’s true that posting has slowed down since I retired, it was already slowing a little before then. For some reason it’s just harder to take the time to write a post these days. Maybe because in the back of my mind I’m thinking … I have plenty of time, I’ll just do it tomorrow??? Oh well, chalk it up to just another mystery. I thought once I retired I’d get SO much more done. Haha.

We had a whopper of a storm last week. They called it a Derecho. Which, they say, if it had been over water, it would have been a hurricane. Our part of town was particularly hard hit and we had really REALLY high winds. They clocked them at 100 mph at the airport. We had trees and power poles down everywhere. We were without power for 2 days. Luckily, TheFirstChild and SweetiePie, who live 2 miles away, only lost power for about 5 hours so we were able to stay with them for a few days. We would have just camped out at home but the daytime temp the day after the storm reached 99F so, it was a little steamy. ;-D

Anyway, we were lucky and only lost one tree (which I attribute to the fact that we’ve lost so many other trees from storms and disease over the last 20 years that there aren’t that many left). The wind uprooted a pine tree that was dying — we were going to have to have it removed anyway, so the storm actually saved us a little money.

We were really lucky — the tree was exactly the height of the space that it fell into, so there was no damage to the house. Many others were not so lucky. Here’s a picture of a house a few streets over — the tree stump just to the left of the trailer used to be a huge tree that fell onto the middle of the house:

They had another big tree fall on the back corner of the house, so there’s a lot more damage that you can’t see. I’m so sad for these people — what a job to repair the mess. MyDadLovesMeBestSister also had a huge tree fall on her back deck — it destroyed the deck and caused some roof damage. Thankfully, everyone is ok though!

Speaking of MyDadLovesMeBestSister, she just hosted her second wedding in a year a few weeks ago. CuteNiece2 married her high school sweetheart in a beautiful beach ceremony on Daufuskie Island, South Carolina.

The photographer did a great job — you can’t tell it, but it was actually raining. In spite of the imperfectly timed rain, the wedding and everything about it was perfect — everything was SO beautiful and it was fun to gather as a family again. And, where there’s a wedding, there’s a wedding quilt:

CuteNiece2 sent me a picture of a quilt that she liked and I tried my best to reproduce it. It’s a scrappy quilt, made from lots of neutral fabrics from my stash — many of which were used in SweetiePie and TheFirstChild’s Wedding Quilt.

The background fabric is a sweet little neutral designed by Brenda Riddle.

And the backing is a Riley Blake wide back from a few years ago that I had in my stash. I sent this quilt out locally (thanks for the quilter recommendation Ginny!) to have it machine-quilted — I don’t do it often, but I sort-of ran out of time. It seems like such a luxury to have the quilts machine-quilted by someone else — I’m thinking I’m going to have to do it more often.

I’m itching to start a new quilt (or 2 … or 3!) but I’m trying to resist the urge, as I have a lot of UFOs. Lots of Christmas fabrics have been arriving in the shop though, so I might lose the battle!

XOXO,
Anna

May You Be Blessed With Love and Happiness

20 Comments / August 27, 2021 August 27, 2021 / Family, Quilting, Wedding

Yipee! The summer is almost over and we’ve had our long-anticipated little family wedding. MyDadLovesMeBestSister’s oldest daughter was married in a gorgeous wedding ceremony in Maine. The groom’s family owns a little cabin in the woods and they were married next to the cabin, overlooking a beautiful lake. Everything was was absolutely perfect (well, not everything — something always goes wrong — but if you weren’t in the family you wouldn’t have know about the little glitches.) We were asked not to take pictures during the ceremony (so that the pro photos wouldn’t show everyone with their phones in the air LOL) so there’s not much to show now, but I can’t wait to see the official photos. Our three little granddaughters were the flower girls and they were cute as can be. SweetiePie did a fantastic job of finding the most gorgeous dresses with some amazing beadwork on them. We need to have another occasion so they can be worn again! I LOVE this cute photo that SweetiePie shot of the girls as they were getting their pep talk from Daddy before the ceremony. Everyone is paying attention! ;-D

We’re back home now after our 16-hour each way drive (MeMum was a champ!) and I can finally share the wedding quilt that I gave the bride and groom. Unfortunately, the only place I could find to take a picture where the quilt wouldn’t drag on the ground, was in mottled sunlight. So, use your imagination and pretend those bright light spots aren’t there LOL.

CuteNiece1 is a flower farmer, so this quilt was mostly about flowers. I appliqued a vase of flowers with a man and wife, initials and year of marriage for the center panel. Then, I surrounded the center panel with a Rifle Paper Co. print that turned out to be the perfect size.

My favorite thing about the quilt is the Always and Always print by Bonnie Christine that I used for the background of the center panel and the sashing around the star blocks. The quote says “I must have flowers … always & always — Claude Monet”. When that print first came out, I knew I would have to use it for the quilt — because I imagine CuteNiece1 says that daily. The 2021 in the center block used to say 2020 — the wedding was originally scheduled for last year, but Covid delayed it a year. Fortunately, I wasn’t to the quilting stage yet when plans changed, so it was an easy fix.

I really struggled with what to put around the center panel, but finally decided to just use traditional star blocks after I saw a picture of a quilt with a big applique center, surrounded by similar stars. I machine quilted the quilt on my domestic machine and I think it took about 6 weeks working in the afternoons to finish it. This quilt is queen sized and finished about 90″ x 99″ which was a lot of wrangling under a domestic machine. The center applique is outline stitched and stippled, the Rifle Paper Co. border has a cable, and the outside border just has straight lines spaced about 2″ apart. The stars and sashing are all stitched in the ditch and I did a little free form flower in the center of each star — those were really fun to do after the tedium of all that stitching in the ditch.

I had to take a picture of my favorite star block below. For some reason I LOVE that fun fabric — I’ve used bits and pieces of it on several recent quilts and I’ll be so sad when it’s gone someday. This might be why I hoard fabric — I love so many of them and I’m afraid I’ll run out! ;-8

For the back I used a Cathe Holden Flea Market Mix floral and CuteNiece1 loved it. It was the first thing she saw when she opened the quilt and she said “Dahlias!”. She had the most beautiful dahlias in her wedding — when a flower farmer gets married, you know she’s going to have beautiful flowers! The binding is an American Jane polka dot — it doesn’t really “go” with the quilt, but I ended up loving it — it just adds to the quirkiness of a traditional star quilt with a funky flea market-ish back. I also added a little tag to the back of the quilt. I don’t usually name quilts, but if I were to name this one, I think it would be the sentiment I put on the tag – “May you be blessed with Love and Happiness”.

So, all done with this one! The newlyweds are honeymooning in Canada and will return to Ashville, North Carolina to start their new life. (If you need fresh flower bouquets, CuteNiece1 can hook you up!) Rumor has it CuteNiece2 will soon be heading down the aisle, so I need to start planning a quilt for her. It’s going to be tougher to nail down a “theme” for her — wedding quilt suggestions gladly welcomed!

Have a great weekend!

XOXO,
Anna

At Last, The Final Wedding Post

46 Comments / June 25, 2008 February 18, 2011 / Wedding

Well, we’re having a slow start to the week here. My weekend consisted of cleaning and trying to get back to normal after my trip last week. I also finally had some time to play around with some wedding pictures. There are tons and tons of them to look at and it’s hard to decide which ones we’ll want to put in albums or frame or whatever.

I love the first picture in this little grouping — can you see the groom getting used to the feel of that brand new ring on his finger?

So, lots of picture decisions to make in the days ahead!

Also, achtung (LOL):

Do you love cupcakes? Sharon is having a cupcake swap. You better run over there and sign up.
Cassie is giving away an adorable pincushion that just happens to match my blog wallpaper. It’s a sign LOL! It has some perfect embroidery on it — hurry and go sign up for that too.

It’s a busy week ahead here in ThimbleannaLand, so I have no idea when I’ll be able to check on you all. My best-ever aunt from Utah is coming tomorrow and we’ll be attending some local quilt show activities. And then, unbelievably, TheSecondChild will come home from his semester abroad on Thursday night (that was a fast 5 months.) I spoke with him this morning and I’m very pleased to report that he has survived, as he puts it, leaping into a gorge with a rubber band tied around his ankles in New Zealand. Yuck! He sure doesn’t get that sense of adventure from his mother — I can barely leap off of a bed!

I hope your week is cruising along on SUPER!

XOXO,
Anna

The Cupcake Scoop

23 Comments / May 23, 2008 February 18, 2011 / Cupcakes, Wedding

Boy. All you sweet readers sure do make a girl feel good! Thanks for all your wonderful wedding wishes. As promised, and because several of you have asked, I thought I’d give you the low-down on the rehearsal dinner cupcakes. (And before we begin, can I just say how awesome blogland is? I had LOTS of wonderful tips and hints from many of you during the wedding planning process. Miss Jean, Nanette, and several of you had invaluable advice for me, a first-time MOG. And if it hadn’t been for an e-mail early on from Ms. Farmhouse detailing all the things she did for her son’s rehearsal dinner, it would have never occurred to me to have flowers and favors. I thought you just arranged for a place to eat and you were done with it. So, thanks to all of you who provided such great advice!)

For 6 or 8 months now, I’ve been using the Magnolia recipe for cupcakes. But the last two times I made them they were terribly dry — and the last time, when the quilty peeps and I met Sharon and Carol in Chicago, I almost had to choke those dry ol’ cupcakes down (sorry girls!) So, I decided that recipe would never do for TheFirstChild — everything must be perfect, right? For three weeks, I experimented with different recipes. I tried an old staple from my childhood, but it had 1/4 t. of lemon extract and the first thing SweetiePie said when she tasted it was “Does that have lemon in it?” (How the heck could she tell with only 1/4 t.???) The Cake Bible by Rose Levy Beranbaum had a nice white cake recipe, but there just seemed to be a little something missing.

I was ready to try a white cake mix and call it good but then an awesome comment appeared from Brigitte Noblog. I’d mentioned cupcakes in my post and she got all excited and spent a lot of time typing out the Magnolia Vanilla Cupcake recipe, not realizing that I’d used that recipe before. So I e-mailed Brigitte and told her, yes, but they’re so dry. And she replied, yes backatcha, but there’s no matching that Magnolia vanilla flavor. Well, that got me thinking and I knew she was right (thank you Brigette!), so I decided to bite the bullet and use the Magnolia recipe anyway. I watched those babies like a hawk and yanked them from the oven the minute they looked done. Then I frosted them, packaged them and crossed my fingers all the way to Dayton that day. Eureka! They were moist and just right! They were even decent the next day. I must have baked them too long in my previous efforts.

So — the details and why you’re here (sorry for the recycled picture!):

The Cake: Magnolia Vanilla Cupcake Recipe

The Icing: Magnolia Vanilla Icing. I used a giant Wilton cake tip. I’m not at home to look up the tip size, but The Happy Valley Quilter mentioned to me that she uses tip #1B. It’s a similar tip and I think I like her tip even more than mine.

The Pick: I printed a pictures of the newlyweds, ran them through my little xyron sticker machine and then punched them out with a 2″ punch. I also punched 2″ circles out of the black and white paper that you see in the bottom of the cupcake box. Then I stuck the picture circle to the black and white circle with a toothpick between them.

The Clear Plastic Box: A 4x4x4 acetate box purchased from Papermart.com. These come in packs of 50, which was just right for what I needed.

The Cupcake Insert: I knew if I was going to transport those cupcakes, there must be something to hold them in place in those boxes. Several people (I think maybe Kairle and Kim?) sent me a link to these inserts. They come 100 to a box, in white. I used a spray adhesive and attached SweetiePie’s chosen black and white paper to the inserts. The down side of the inserts is that you can’t see the bottom of the cupcake, but it’s worth it for the frosting to not be smashed all over the side of your box when you reach your destination.

The Ties: 3/4″ wide black satin ribbon, which I ran out of and ended up using two strands of 1/8″ wide black satin ribbon on some of the boxes. I also printed out the little wedding logos and punched them out with the 2″ punch and attached them with the ribbon.

Making cupcakes is addictive and these were SO fun. They were a HUGE hit too — people just whipped out their forks and ate them straight out of the box. I had a bunch of compliments (especially from those rowdy groomsmen) and I heard at least two people at the end of the night say, “Hey, someone took my cupcake”. Now, that’s a compliment!

XOXO,
Anna

The Wedding Weekend

56 Comments / May 19, 2008 February 18, 2011 / Wedding

{Warning: Long post ahead — if you’re not wedding inclined, you’ll want to skip it!}

We’re Back — Thanks for ALL your FABULOUS comments! You guys are THE BEST! I’ve read and loved them all. I hope you’ll give me a pass on responding to them all this time — I’m headed to New Jersey in the morning and I’m planning to spend my nights this week in my hotel room catching up with all of you.

The wedding was AWESOME! More than any of us could have hoped for — I think I’ll be using the word awesome too much in this post. Friday, rehearsal day, was just perfect (might be using perfect too much too.) I got up bright and early and made the cupcakes, posted a quick blog entry, picked up flowers and we hit the road — arriving in Dayton with just enough time to pick up tuxes and drop stuff off at the rehearsal dinner restaurant. The flowers were unbelievably beautiful (peek below) considering their price and the fact that they came from a grocery store florist (Fresh Market for you local peeps.) I had 5 centerpieces made and we sat with the tables in an “E” formation with the bridal party on the spine of the “E”, the groom’s family on the top leg, bride’s family on the bottom leg and parents and extra bridal party members on the middle leg. I placed a cupcake at each place setting and they were a HUGE hit (and for those of you who’ve asked, I’ll explain them later this week.) The rehearsal and dinner were lots of fun — I felt SO lucky to be surrounded by such wonderful family and friends!

On Saturday morning TheManoftheHouse and I moseyed on over to the country club to help one of the bridesmaids put candles in the candelabras. We arrived to find a bit of a panic happening — the bridal bouquets (pink and white roses) had arrived with refrigerator burn on the edges and the strawberries (similar to these, but much cuter with some berry showing) weren’t ready to be picked up yet. The bridesmaid rushed out to the store and bought more roses and we re-made the bouquets. We left shortly after noon and the bridesmaid went to pick up the strawberries. She was an absolute peach and SweetiePie owes her bigtime! I thought all the tables looked so pretty in the pink and black — I snapped a quick picture, which was a good thing because when it came time for the real event, I decided to put the camera down and just enjoy myself. There were two photographers there and I know it was the right decision — it all went by so fast and I can’t imagine how much I would have missed if I’d been trying to take pictures.

In the end, all the problems were pretty insignificant and everything worked out. I did learn one important lesson though, for those of you who are soon to have a wedding (and I know there are several of you out there.) SweetiePie had a wonderful vision for the placecard table. As you entered the country club, there was a big round table and she wanted the placecards lined up in rows with fresh rose petals sprinkled in lines between the rows. How pretty! A family friend was lined up to set the table up in the afternoon. By the time we arrived after the wedding, most of the placecards were gone and I was SO disappointed to see that whoever had set up the placecards, hadn’t bothered to place a pretty white or black tablecloth on the table (they were readily available — one only needed to ask — if I’d only known, I would have put one there myself.) The cards had just been set up on that UGLY brown tabletop. ICK! So…my lesson learned is, have a trusted friend (not someone in the wedding party — they’re too busy) who knows just how you want everything and can be at the reception location to make sure everything is just how you want it!

Anyhoo…after the set-up, I rushed over to take pics of the girls having their hair done. Lots of curls and pretty dos!

Then back to the hotel to get ready and then to the church. At the church, I went to the bride’s room to quickly sew a label in SweetiePie’s dress — this was the first time that I had access to the dress since the label was made.

After the dress, I went downstairs to the groom’s room to fix TheManoftheHouse’s tie — it was too small and the rental place said they couldn’t do anything about it since it was the day of the event. (Thank goodness for those cupcake box ribbons that were almost the same width — when I got done sewing a ribbon on, you couldn’t even tell!) While I was sewing the ribbon onto the tie, the cute little wedding coordinator from the church came down to say that The Bride wanted me back in her room (I assumed with my sewing kit) — and by the way, could I please go with her to check the flowers in the chapel first (there weren’t any flowers in the church, so we brought the flowers from the rehearsal dinner the night before.) We hustled upstairs, adjusted the flowers, and I quickly went to the bride’s room. {Kleenex Alert!} Once in the room, SweetiePie gave me a big smile and said that now they could start. She’d waited for me to be there before her bridesmaids dressed her. Of course, when I realized that, I started crying (the official start of the waterworks for the afternoon.) I just can’t tell you how incredibly touched I was — and still am. Now you know why she’s SweetiePie! Watching her dress just took our breath away — she was a beautiful bride. The photographers whisked everyone into a room that had a big, pretty picture window (their hearts must have skipped a beat when they found that room — so perfect for pictures.) They turned out the lights in the room and put SweetiePie in front of the window with all the natural light streaming in. For some of the pictures they gave her a pink umbrella. Oh. My. Gosh. I cannot wait to see the pictures!

So…on to the ceremony. It was wonderful! The highlight for me was when MyDadLovesMeBestSister spoke for a few minutes to the Bride and Groom. Such a touching heartfelt speech — she had us all laughing — and in tears. The night before there had been joking about all the goodies I’d made and she claimed she couldn’t do stuff like that — but she has talents I can’t fathom — there’s no way I could have given a speech like she did. It was another awesome event — thanks MDLMBS!!! Anyway…here’s a pic of the big event (I wish you could see her beautiful dress better (tee-hee):

After the wedding, we had a great time with pictures. The photographers were awesome — they put everyone at the wedding on the steps of the church and we did some fun poses. Then they sent everyone except wedding party and family on their way to the reception. Lots of family pictures. Lots of fun. Then off to the reception. Where it’s all a blur. We had a fantastic time visiting with people we hadn’t seen in a long time and just being with family. There was lots of dancing — even the grandparents were all out there cuttin’ the rug! I was so busy I didn’t even get a close look at the beautiful cake — I ate it though LOL! At some point, a limo picked up the Bride and Groom and whisked them off to a hotel where they spent a few hours before they had to get up too early to catch a plane to San Juan to embark upon a southern Caribbean cruise. The party went on and all their friends had a fantastic time into the wee hours of the morning. Have I mentioned it was awesome? It was awesome! I was just amazed at all the love and laughter from so many friends and family who care about two very special people.

Sunday morning was hysterical. The groomsmen were in a severe state of disarray — they all slept late and were in different rooms with different combos of tuxedo parts. They had to check out of their rooms, so I finally had them all bring their stuff down to the parking lot to sort things out. There were a lot of “I have an extra tie!” and “Hey, I’ve been looking for that” sort of remarks — too, too funny! Then we returned the tuxes and went to breakfast at 2:00 p.m. It was a quick meal for TheManoftheHouse and me though, as we had to whisk TheSecondChild off to the airport so he could return to Sydney.

So, it’s all over now. What a fabulous weekend. We spoke to the newlyweds briefly after they boarded their ship — so excited — it’s a first cruise for SweetiePie and she was beyond thrilled! I noticed a full moon last night and thought of them — cruising along on a ship deck in each others arms, staring up at the full moon. Such a perfect ending to a perfect wedding. What lucky, lucky kids. The best thing is that they both said it was the wedding they had hoped for — that’s what’s most important. No tears. No tense moments. Just perfect!

I hope they’ll always remember this wonderful start to their lives. Especially when things aren’t so perfect. I hope they’ll remember how much they love each other. And how much we all love them. And most of all, like my father told me on my wedding day, I hope they’ll always be good to each other.

Back soon to our regularly scheduled programming — thanks for making it this far!
XOXO,
Anna