Thimbleanna – Page 141 – My little online diary.

A Shower Gift

41 Comments / June 14, 2008 February 18, 2011 / Crafting

About a year ago I saw a fun idea for some personalized casserole dishes while I was blog hopping. I wrote the idea down in my trusty little notebook, knowing that I would want to make some this spring for our bride and a few other kids who I knew were getting married. Then I promptly forgot about it.

Fortunately, in March, Kairle came along and saved the day. Just two weeks before we had our first bridal shower for SweetiePie, Kairle posted a great tutorial for how to make these casserole dishes. Thank You Kairle — I love this idea! I made one for SweetiePie and one for a shower that SweetiePie and I attended last weekend.

I was very surprised at what a big hit this dish was! This was a really crowded shower and everyone was talking, so you really couldn’t hear much about the gifts when the bride opened them. But when she held up the casserole dish everyone noticed and there were lots of questions about how to get that name etched into the glass. We also got the bride a few other things from her registry at Williams Sonoma — one of which were these dish towels that I personalized for her (I put the “K” in the corner, rather than the middle of the towel, in case she wants to display them without the “K” showing.)

I love going to bridal showers. They’re so happy and fun. I picked up another cute idea — the hostesses put fresh flowers in their gift to the bride — a blender. These flowers were on the food table and they were so pretty, I didn’t even notice that they were in a blender until the hostesses presented them to the bride.

Now, if you’ll excuse me, I have windows to clean. I spent about 6 hours yesterday cleaning windows inside the house ( I’m blessed with lots of windows LOL.) I still have a few more inside windows (they’re double paned — about every 5 years I clean between the panes and this is the year so it takes longer than non-in-between-panes cleanings) and then I’ll move outside.

I love doing windows outside, especially on a beautiful day like today. (Although, I’m not looking forward to all the mosquito repellent involved — we’ve had so much rain this year, the mosquitoes have run amok.) If you never hear from me again, you’ll know that climb up the ladder wasn’t successful!

Have a great weekend!

XOXO,
Anna

P.S. Oh And happy Father’s Day to all those Papas out there.Â We’ll be having pies with the men in our family — by request, there will be lemon meringue and I’m trying out a new Strawberry Pie recipe that looks great!

Beehives

36 Comments / June 11, 2008 February 18, 2011 / Chat

Oh, thank you so much for all the wonderful comments on my friendship quilt! I had such fun reading through them all. You do know that all the credit goes to the quilty peeps don’t you? Jewels, Junie and Gurney are the best quilty peeps ever. (Well, there’s that little noblog flaw, but we’ll let that slip.) I’m especially excited that a few of you have e-mailed me to say that you’ve already talked to your quilty peeps and you’re going to do a similar block exchange. You won’t regret it — it’s SO fun! Among the comments was one from Sarah — when she saw the beehive block she asked if I’d seen the June Martha Stewart Living magazine with the beehive on the cover. (Photo from Martha’s site where you can find the recipe for this cake.)

Yes, indeedy I did — I love that beehive cake! In my true Martha wannabe fashion, I made a beehive cake and blogged about it last year on my old blog. Now that I see the two pictures together, I’m noticing that my pan isn’t exactly the same as Martha’s.

And drat. Her pan is cuter. And my cake’s not professionally photographed. But it’s ok, ’cause she got the idea from me. ‘Cause I blogged about it first. Right? She read my blog and decided to put a beehive cake on her cover. Right? Sure. Let’s go with that story ’cause it’s way more fun LOL! Also, Sarah mentioned that Martha didn’t say where to get the pan and I told her Williams Sonoma, but I noticed the web site says the pan is from nordicware.com. I think Martha’s cheating a bit on her source, ’cause the beehive pan at the Nordicware site is the same pan as mine, not the cute pan that Martha used with the ropey coils. Oh well.

Hey, one more quick thing … there’s a new blog on the block (with a few more to be outed soon!) A reader from way back is finally blogging. I always called her MSN Judy, but I had the name wrong, she’s Brocante and Etc. And she’s such a devoted reader, she even named her cat after me LOL!!! (Ok, just kidding, but like the Martha story it sounds good!) So, run over there and welcome sweet Judy to blogland.

Yipee — it’s humpday — bring on the weekend!

XOXO,
Anna

A Finished Quilt

58 Comments / June 8, 2008 February 18, 2011 / Quilting

Wow. I have no idea where the weekend went. It whizzed by and I didn’t get much done, unless you count socializing. So, I’ll have to fall back on work done last week!

TheFirstChild invited me to go with him to look for apartments last weekend, while SweetiePie was working. The drive was 1 1/2 hours each way, so I took along a quilt that’s been in the binding pile for a few years.

Pretty sad, huh? Usually I manage to get my quilts done if I get them that close to binding, but for some reason this quilt and one other one have been waiting for awhile. I finished the binding on our trip with time to spare and now the quilt is being skillfully modeled (well, except for that left side that she’s let flap around) by my pine tree model.

This quilt is from a friendship block exchange that the quilty peeps and I did in the 90’s. Every two months we would each make 4 copies of two blocks and meet to exchange them. Each block is a 4 inch square.

When we were exchanging our blocks, there was a group of women in Indianapolis that did the same thing, and my setting is similar to one that was done by a lady from that other group.

For the most part, the four of us quilty peeps all have the same blocks. I think I threw an extra “tester” block or two into my quilt. For example, I don’t think the other quilty peeps have this little beehive block that I tested. I think I’ve mentioned before that I’m partial to beehives, having been born in the beehive state.

But they do have the covered wagon block that I did as a nod to my pioneer g-g-grandparents. I think I’m the first quilty peep to finish my quilt, but in their defense, I sent my quilt out to be hand quilted. Because, I’m realistic, and I knew that if I were to quilt this, I’d be lucky to ever finish it.

Didn’t the quilter do a great job? I love how she quilted each block individually, to echo the pattern of the block.

I love this quilt — every time I look at it, I’m reminded how much fun I had with the quilty peeps when we would get together and exchange our blocks. Quilty Peeps — we need to do this again!

There’s so much work to do around here that finishing up old projects is the closest I can get to actually getting something done. I’ve seen so many beautiful quilts while reading all your blogs — it makes me hungry to start something new!

XOXO,
Anna

German Potato Salad

23 Comments / June 5, 2008 February 18, 2011 / Recipes

Once again, it’s the first Thursday of the month so that means it’s time for another recipe box swap. Randi over at I Have to Say is hosting and this time there is no theme, so I can post any recipe that I want. Thanks for hosting again, Randi!

Since summer is in full swing around here (apparently we just skipped spring altogether) I thought I’d post one of our summer favorites: German Potato Salad. We love to throw some bratwurst on the grill, cook up some corn on the cob and make a batch of German potato salad. I found this recipe many years ago, shortly after we returned from living in Germany. One bite and I’m instantly reminded of evenings spent at a favorite gasthaus dining on fabulous German food. I hope you like it as much as we do!

German Potato Salad

12 medium potatoes
2 teaspoons salt
pepper to taste
2 onions, chopped
12 slices bacon
2 tablespoons flour
1 cup water
1 cup vinegar
2 tablespoons sugar

Cook potatoes in skins. When tender, drain, peel and cube. Season with salt, pepper and onion. Set aside. Dice bacon and fry until crisp. Reserve 3 tablespoons drippings, pour off rest. Stir flour into reserved drippings, stirring constantly for 1-2 minutes. Add water, vinegar and sugar. Cook until mixture bubbles. Pour over potatoes and toss gently. Serve immediately (while still warm). Serves 10.

Have a great weekend — if you’re in the northern hemisphere, I hope you make it out to your grill!

XOXO,
Anna

Could This Be An Apparition?

28 Comments / June 4, 2008 February 18, 2011 / Chat

Ho. Lee. Cow. Could this be a new post here? I’m holding my breath!

It’s been about a week since my webhost moved my account to a new server. Can you spell GIANT HASSLE? It was one problem after another and night after night of fun with tech support. And can I say those guys need better manuals? Half the time I figured the problem out myself. That whole backwards listing of my posts problem was solved thanks to other bloggers who go to forums and post when they’re having problems. I took their suggestions back to my webhost and then they had an aha moment. So. Enough said…hopefully this will be it until they decide to do another upgrade. Which will hopefully be never.

Anyhoo, Scruff is a little miffed that his letter to Sirius and Cassie got lost in the shuffle.

It’s gone. Poof. Nowhere to be found. Along with all of the comments left by some of you lovelies. During that phase, my comments weren’t being forwarded to my e-mail so there’s no record of them there either. I managed to catch a few of your comments while they were still up, but I know that I missed some of them, ’cause I could see that the comment count was up, but it wouldn’t let me click on them. So…sorry for all the hassle! I’ve also managed to read some of your posts but I haven’t been commenting in the last day or two because of those of you who typically reply to your comments — since my e-mail was down, I didn’t want you to have to deal with bounced messages.

In the meantime, other things have been happening here at Thimbleannaland, but I’ll keep it short tonight — it’s way past my bedtime. Look what appeared in our backyard yesterday:

We’ve been here for 9 years, and I’ve never seen deer in our back yard. Poor little thing, I think he’s an orphan. He came running through looking for his mama. He’s a tiny little thing, certainly not any bigger than the German Shepherds that we used to have. At the time, we thought maybe mowers in the neighborhood had separated him from mama, but I’m thinking he’s probably been orphaned. I sure hope some deer mama adopted him last night.

Well…off to bed. Hopefully this post will still be here tomorrow. Thanks for all your patience!!!

XOXO,
Anna