Sister's Choice Quilts

Wrapping and Ribbon

I was hoping for more interesting content for you all in my effort to post every week day before Christmas, but I swear all I did over the weekend was wrap packages, take Eva to see The Grinch, and wrap more packages.  The Grinch was adorable, and I enjoyed it as much as she did.  Benedict Cumberbatch does an incredible job as the voice of the Grinch.

I have piles of presents all over the house.  It looks like a lot, but we have a huge extended family, and everybody gets a present.  The end is in sight with the whole wrapping thing, thank goodness.  One gift is going to have to go out to the garage though, as it smells to high heaven.  I bought Sara's husband a pound of bulk garlic powder (he is starting up a restaurant), and boy oh boy, can you ever smell it.  When it was delivered to the front porch and I picked it up I wondered if one of the neighbors was doing some heavy fertilizing.  Um no, that would just be one of the gifts I am giving to a family member.

I mentioned in a previous post that I got a tip for decorating the tree with ribbon, that was super successful.  Here is a close up of my ribbon.  Next year I am going to use red for a bigger impact, now that I am so confident in my ribbon festooning abilities.  The trick is to cut the lengths of ribbon into three or four foot lengths.  Don't try to work with the entire spool.  You start at the top and secure a length of ribbon to the tree.  Pull it out a bit and tuck it in right below, making a kind of puff.  Just do this all the way straight down the tree.  Puff, tuck in, puff, tuck, puff, tuck, puff etc.  You get a great effect.  The mistake most people make with ribbon on the tree is that they try to go round and round like it's a garland.  No no no.  Take shorter lengths of ribbon straight down the tree, or maybe at a slight diagonal.  The effect is lovely.  I used five 10 yard long spools of 2 1/2" wide ribbon for a nine foot tree.

So, what I want to share with you in upcoming posts, when I get my act together. is a Gingerbread Bundt Cake with Rum Cream Cheese Icing, and Eva's Christmas gifts to her parents.  We are going to fill Mason jars with the dried ingredients to make batches of homemade Ranch dressing.  Decorating the jars will be fun. And Ahren is arriving from Ireland on Wednesday!  I won't see him until Saturday as he is visiting friends and exploring San Francisco until then.  After that I will have him to myself up here in the boonies.

Hope your week got off to a great start!

Christmas Stockings for Your Dog

Do you hang a Christmas stocking for your dog?  Yeah, we do too.  The cute ones shown above can be ordered from PetCo, but you better hurry for delivery by Christmas.

You could also make your own, which I did about a hundred years ago.  I still have the stocking:

It is pretty sad looking, and hasn't been in rotation for many years, but making the bone shaped pattern was easy, and done up in more current fabric, it would be adorable.  And my gosh, if you had one of those embroidery features on your machine you could even personalize it.

What kind of stocking stuffers would one give to a dog?  Here are my favorites for this year.

This is Marvin the Moose, a Kong chew toy.  Only $6.07 on Amazon.

This is the Benebone bacon flavored wish bone shaped chew toy.  Wow, that was a mouthful.  It is designed so that dogs can get a good grip on it and have a "satisfying chew".  It comes in several sizes and is under $10.

This is the OurPets IQ treat ball.  It dispenses treats or kibble if your dog manipulates the ball properly.  I am hoping it will keep Ozzie occupied for awhile so he doesn't bug me.

The dogs in our family love these Nutrish Savory Dog Treats by Rachael Ray.  You can pick these up at the grocery store, and you can be sure there will be a flavor your dog will enjoy.

Ok, I have to admit, I did not purchase this item, because I thought it was gross.  Ozzie would be over the moon to have it though.  It is the Perfect Curve Lick Lick pad.  You stick it to the wall, slap some peanut butter on it, and it is guaranteed to distract your dog while you give him a bath or do other grooming.  Innovative, right?  Still not buying it.  Although I wonder how long it would keep him out of my hair....

So, do you give your pets Christmas stockings?  What sorts of treats do you put in them?

Shop From Home

The photo doesn't really do it justice, but this little kitchen vignette is one of my favorites this year.  I bought a tiny fake tree at my local hardware store of all places, and it is just the right size for my little quilt from last year.  I strung some of those battery powered mini lights around the tree, and it is just darling, I think.

I did something completely insane on Saturday.  I knew that Bath and Body Works was having their annual sale on their candles, which I love.  The regularly priced $24.99 candles were reduced to $8.99 for one day only.  I live an hour and a quarter from the nearest Bath and Body works and it was pouring rain, but that did not stop me.  What nearly did me in was the huge crowd of people I had not anticipated.  It was so crowded you could not stand in the store without touching another person next to you.  But I got my eight candles and then stood in line for 45 minutes to pay.  Seriously.  It was so crazy.  Then I drove home for another hour in the rain.  And then found out the sale was online also.  I could have ordered on line.  Let's pause for a moment and reflect on that.  

Well, I certainly will not be doing that again.  But here are two of my favorite holiday candles.  Crushed Candy Cane and Spiced Ginger Bread.  I also got a couple of more wintery scents for January (Winter and Fresh Sparkling Snow).

I try to make it a policy to shop from home.  I do try to shop locally when I can, but living miles from everything foils that plan for the most part.  Particularly during the holidays when the crowds and traffic are so bad I find it much nicer to order from home and have things delivered.  So many places are offering free shipping right now that it just doesn't make sense to pay for gas and go through the frustration of doing holiday shopping. 

Hope you all had a splendid weekend.  I am going to try to post every week day in December, so we will see how that goes!

 

Holiday Preparations

You haven't heard much from me this week, because I am up to my eyeballs in holiday preparations.  The house is all decorated, the Christmas collections (snowmen, Santas, fairies) all displayed.  The decorating is just about complete.

My week has been spent on Shutterfly projects.  Have you heard of Shutterfly?  They are a company you can use to make holiday calendars or photo memoir travel books.  You can also use your photos to be printed on mugs or other gifts.  I highly recommend them for holiday gifts that are super personal.  Since Eva was about two years old, each Christmas I have made a Shutterfly wall calendar featuring photos of her from the previous year.  They are totally adorable and both sets of grandparents, her mom and dad and uncle all look forward to receiving them.  They do take time to put together, but relatively easy, and the results are so worth it.

See how cute the calendars are?  If you are at a loss for what to get those hard to shop for people, something like this might fit the bill.  The projects are fun to do, and everyone always seems to love them.

This year I did a 2019 Eva calendar and an entire photo book from our trip to Ireland this summer.  My husband will love the photo book, and it will be a forever momento of the trip we can access any time.

Tea Anyone?

The tea party was such a smashing success we have decided we must make it a yearly tradition!

My favorite thing was the cucumber sandwiches.  Super easy.  I mixed Philadelphia Chive and Onion cream cheese with a touch of mayonnaise and spread it on little rounds of dark rye bread I cut in circles with a cookie cutter.  I topped the cream cheese with a thin slice of English cucumber and sprinkled a bit of chopped dill over all.

It was so lovely to get together with friends and launch the holiday season.

Happy Thanksgiving to all of you who celebrate it.  Thinking of and sending prayers to all those in Paradise and Chico who have been displaced and suffered great loss this holiday season.  A quilting friend shared that of the 100 members of her Chico Quilt Guild, 98 have completely lost their homes.  This devastation is unfathomable.  Please consider making a donation to one of the many organizations that are helping out the victims of the Camp Fire in Butte County.

Centerpiece

I found the perfect red and yellow roses for my Royal Albert Old Roses inspired centerpiece.

Doesn't it go great?  So excited for my little party this afternoon.  I made scones and my taste tester Miss Eva tells me they are wonderful.

I used a Pioneer Woman recipe called Vanilla Chocolate Chip Mini Scones.  They were easy to make and look just like the picture on the recipe.  Ree says that with the glaze, they will keep a couple days.  I am always happy to find a make ahead recipe I can use when I entertain.

I've been playing Christmas music and watching Hallmark Channel Christmas movies.  I am such a nerd, but I am really going to enjoy the holidays this year.  Hope you all will too. I am starting early, so let's hope I don't lose steam by mid-December!

 

And So It Begins...

Well, this is a first.  We have our Christmas tree up and it isn't even Thanksgiving.  My husband bought a new faux tree this year, and since the boxes were sitting right in front of our front door where the UPS man left them, my husband decided to go ahead and set it up.  And it is beautiful.  I probably would have gone with colored lights, but he wanted white, so there we are.  We won't get the ornaments on until Thanksgiving weekend, so for now I will just enjoy the blazing splendor of all those 1000 lights!

I got these two fun little table toppers off to my quilter in North Carolina on Friday.  I will be so excited to get them into my holiday decor!  I love the fabric collections I used (Sweetwater's Cookie Exchange and Hometown Christmas).  I don't think it is even that obvious that I used the same fabrics in both little quilts.  They are crisp and modern and cheerful, just what I wanted.

Busy week this week.  And that is an understatement.  I somehow thought it would be a good idea to invite a friend and her daughter and twin grand daughters over for a tea party on Tuesday!  And it is a good idea, but I just wasn't thinking about the volume of cooking I'd be doing in this week, with Thanksgiving on Thursday.  Guess no sewing is going to happen, but I will let you know how my tea party fixings go.  I plan to make Madeleines, scones and little tea sandwiches.  Oh, and my famous pound cake.  Sara is coming early from work along with Eva, so there will be seven of us.

I plan to dust off the Royal Albert Old Country Roses and bring out my best lace table cloth.

I am going to try to make a centerpiece that has these reds and golds in it.  And of course use it for Thanksgiving too.  I will let you know how that goes!  I wish I could find a white pumpkin to hollow out and arrange red and gold mums and roses in, but I doubt I will be able to find any such thing at this point.  I'll let you know on Wednesday if I pulled it off!

I know you all must be busy this week too, with cooking and planning and list making.  Make it a good one!

Really Ozzie?

Really Ozzie?  What is it with dogs wanting to lie down on anything you place on the floor to take a closer look at?  As you can see, I am well on the way to having my red and white quilt finished and off my design wall.  As I type this, I have the top all put together and just have one final outer border to put on.  Next post will be my reveal.  I cannot tell you how glad I am to get this quilt into the "finished" category.  I have been seriously stalled out with it for months.  It will be a marvelous addition to my holiday quilts line up.

Thanks to all of you who participated in my little pattern giveaway.  The three winners are Laura Valdez, Sharon Amburn and Molly Hinchcliffe.  Please let me know your addresses ladies, and the packets of patterns will be on their way to you!  I am so glad to send them on to places where they have a chance of being used and enjoyed.

Where Does the Day Go?

Lately I have been wondering where on earth my day goes.  It goes, that is for sure, and I have been feeling I don't have much to show for it.  I was struggling with finding a topic to blog about, since I have not been sewing, when it occurred to me that I should just track my activities for a day and see what I came up with.

I have made a new friend who I have been walking with three times a week.  I clip my little Fitbit Zip to my waistband and it is incredible how quickly those steps add up.  We walk for just under an hour and the time passes so rapidly as we (mostly me) are yakking the entire time.

And it is a very good thing I have been doing some exercise, because I have also been doing some fall baking.  Nothing like cooler temperatures to put me in the mood to make home made bread or a nice pound cake.  I have been giving big wedges of that cake to friends, I swear.  Here is a link to the pound cake recipe.  It is really really delicious.  It is Taste of Home's Sour Cream Pound Cake.

Another thing I get an urge to do in the fall is to make slow cooker meals.  I wish you could smell my house as I write this.  I made a Stacked Enchilada Casserole from a recipe by Chunguh of Damn Delicious.  I have mentioned her recipes in the past, as they are reliably wonderful.  Chunguh is an adorable girl who grew up in a traditional Korean household, but who developed not only a knack for cooking American food, but who has a fantastic blog and a cookbook too. You have not lived until you have made her recipe for Shrimp and Grits.  Just saying.  It is worth visiting her blog just to see pictures of her dog "Butters", who may the cutest Corgi on the planet.

  

I have also been cleaning out the guest room closet in an effort to make more room for guests' clothing and less room for my bins of fabric and project boxes.  Those are going out to the shelves in the garage.  This has not been a particularly enjoyable project, but it needed to be done.

I am really going to have to get back to sewing because I find myself actually doing housework, like washing the kitchen floors.  No, no, no.  My time could be much better spent, I am sure of it.  

If things keep up like this now that my husband isn't under foot around the house all day, I am going to run out of things to do and end up getting back to the sewing room out of sheer boredom!

 

 

Bad Blogger

Sorry I have been such a bad blogger lately.  Life is just getting in my way I tell you.  Here are a few things we have been up to.

Eva and I made unicorn pumpkin cookies this weekend.  Now that is a concept isn't it?  We had the candy corn and while we were decorating the cookies, she got a brain wave that suggested the candy corn would make the perfect unicorn horn on our pumpkins.  I guess it works.

I mentioned in passing that I wished I could find a couple of lighted branches to stick in a fall floral arrangement, and the next thing I know, is my husband is presenting me four strands of lighted fall leaf garlands.  Well.  Thank you.  I think.  I am not sure how he jumped from lighted branches to four lighted leaf garlands, but more is more right?  So I have been trying to figure out where to put his contribution to our fall decor.  I have some pumpkins outside the front door, so that seemed like a good place for one of the garlands.  Three to go.

It's pretty lame, but I kind of threw the remaining three garlands out on the porch railing.  Actually, if we sit out there with our wine in the early evening, it is sort of festive and fun.

I have passed the half way mark with my scarf and am now decreasing stitches to form the triangle!

And this book, which I was honestly not enjoying much has finally picked up the pace and gotten good after 150 pages.  Not cool, but I have determined to stick with it.  Honestly, I don't know what happened to Kate Morton with this one.  There are too many characters, the story line is super confusing, and there is a ghost who is trying to tie it all together for the reader.  Not her best work.

Not much sewing, but I am probably going to get back to my red and white Christmas quilt any minute.  My husband has had a job offer that seems to be drawing him out of his retirement, so I will be my own boss in the upcoming months, as he will be living closer to San Francisco where the job is, and coming home just on weekends.  This is so funny.  He knows these people who are offering him the job.  The position comes up and they ask him to come in to interview for it on Thursday, and can he please start the next day?  All this before they interview him.  Ok, he's on board.

Hope your week is going well, and I hope to be posting more regularly!