September 2013 – Thimbleanna

Shrimp Fettuccini

24 Comments / September 26, 2013 October 8, 2013 / Recipes

Hello, Hello. Have you had a good week? . There’s been some Steampunk progress here — I’m putting the blocks together now. Here’s a picture of the first complete corner.

I’m going slowly and taking my time — putting one row a day together. I’ve had so much fun choosing fabrics, I’ll almost be sorry to see it all put together. Hopefully I’ll be basting the quilt together this weekend.

Gosh, this weekend. The last one in September. Wow. It scares me to think how little time is left in 2013. The days are getting shorter and the fall nesting instinct is edging it’s way into my days. Meals seem a little heartier than the lighter, summer fare. I thought I’d give you the recipe for one of our current favorites — Shrimp Fettuccini. MeMum found this recipe a few years ago in a cookbook that I brought to her after a trip to Salem Massachusetts and we love it. I don’t normally like very spicy food, but the jalapeno cheese in this recipe gives it just the perfect little bit of zing!

Shrimp Fettuccini

1 large onion, chopped
1 green bell pepper, chopped
1 clove of garlic, chopped
1/2 cup butter
4 teaspoons parsley flakes
1 pound shrimp, peeled and deveined **
4 teaspoons flour
2/3 cup half-and-half
8 ounces shredded jalapeno Monterey Jack cheese
12 ounces fettuccini
1 cup shredded jalapeno Monterey Jack cheese

Preheat the oven to 350 degrees.

Saute the onion, green pepper and garlic in the butter in a large saucepan until tender. Add the parsley flakes and the shrimp. Saute just until the shrimp turn pink. Mix in the flour.

Stir in the half-and-half gradually and cook until thickened, stirring constantly. Add the 8 ounces cheese gradually, stirring until the cheese melts; set aside.

Cook the pasta al dente using the package directions, rinse with hot water and drain well. (Note from me: Or, save time and cook the pasta while you’re making the sauce ;-D ) Add the pasta to the shrimp mixture and mix gently.

Pour the mixture into a lightly greased baking dish and sprinkle with the remaining 1 cup cheese.

Bake at 350 degrees for 20 minutes.

**The recipe calls for raw shrimp, but I buy the pre-cooked stuff ’cause I’m l-a-a-zy. Just put them into the mix after the flour and half-and-half have been added.

Serve with some fresh, homemade crusty bread (not pictured haha) and you have a yummy, quick meal.

Have a great weekend!
XOXO,
Anna

The End of Summer

29 Comments / September 21, 2013 October 8, 2013 / Peep Days

Well, tomorrow is the big day — the official end of summer and therefore the day when I’m officially done with my 10 Things this Summer List. Just in the nick of time, I managed to get two more items completed.

1. Get Together with the Quilty Peeps. Finally! It took us over a year to find time in our schedules when we could all get together and we did the deed yesterday. I love getting together with my long-time BFFs and I love that they’ll let me take pictures of their projects. Our collective memories have gaps (ha!) so it’s nice to be able to look back on the blog and see when we got together and what we were working on. So, for future reference, here’s what we worked on yesterday:

Jewels came with enough projects to share LOL. We wanted to see all the fun stuff she’s working on and she kindly obliged. Here’s her newest project — a quilt she found in a magazine this summer. Aren’t those colors gorgeous?

Then she had a ton of blocks completed for another quilt she’s making. She showed us the flyer for the pattern and of course, I forgot to take notes. (Maybe she’ll tell us in the comments. ;-D ) I LOVE this star block and Jewel’s work is perfect.

And then we teased Jewels that she’s still working on her dresden plate project, which she was working on when we got together almost three years ago. We were laughing with her, not at here ’cause I’m pretty sure this would be a 20-year project for me.

Oh, and look at the darling little snack mix bags Jewels made for each of us — she’s a sweetheart!

Gurney was finishing the hand work on the binding for a Cat in the Hat quilt for her grandson. It’s SO cute! I LOVE this fabric and I’m hoarding some of my own.

Look at the cute back too. Gurney took all the fabrics that she had left over from piecing the front and used them on the back. So fun!

Junie was our hostess with the mostess and in addition to waiting on us hand and foot, she was cutting fabric for a baby quilt. Isn’t this fabric cute? I’d never seen it before. The line is Backyard Baby by Patty Sloniger for Michael Miller.

Did you see that beehive??? I need some of that fabric just for the beehive. Here it is in the gray colorway too.

Thank you Ladies for such a fun day and for all the good food. It’s always great to catch up – hopefully we won’t have such a long gap before our next get-together!

And lastly, during our Quilty Peep Fun Day, I worked on stitching down the centers of my Steampunk blocks.

Which brings me to,

8. Make Enough Blocks for a Quilt Top. All done. 48 blocks. Turns out I only needed 41 whole blocks and 7 partial blocks. I thought I needed 48 whole blocks and I’d decided not to use the partial blocks in my version of the quilt. But now I have extra blocks to cut up for the partial blocks. It’s going to be hard to cut them through the middle!

So, that’s the end of my summer list. I completed 9 out of 10 of the items. Can you regular readers remember which item didn’t make the cut? Ok, I’ll tell you. It’s that *&*&#@# 10-year sweater! It’s sitting out nagging me and winter is on the way, so hopefully I’ll work on it this winter. For now though, 90% is good enough for me. Making a list has been fun and making it public actually made me work on it. If you made a summer list, how did you do?

XOXO,
Anna

Checking Off THE List

20 Comments / September 18, 2013 October 8, 2013 / Chat

Wow — I have a crowd of smart gardening readers going on here! Thanks for all the information about our black tomatoes. The general consensus is that they are some sort of heirloom tomato. They taste ok, and I didn’t keel over with stomach cramps — it’s just that they don’t really look like tomatoes. Thanks for all the info though — you guys are great!

Only 4 more days until the autumnal equinox, which means that summer will officially be over. I’m cramming to get the last five items completed on my 10 Things this Summer List. I ticked off two last weekend:

7. Clean Up the Sewing Room. I didn’t remove everything from the shelves and go through it all, but I did get all horizontal surfaces cleaned off and I have a knee-high pile of old counted cross-stitch and painting magazines and books to dispatch. Where to send? Goodwill? Do they take stuff like that? A black hole??? I do occasionally send old junk to unsuspecting victims just for the fun of it — maybe I should save the pile for all the special people in my life LOL.

Anyway, no pictures of the cleaned up room, ’cause…you know. It’s a dungeon. I will show you the picture of my trusty helper though. While I was cleaning things up, PaulKitty thought he’d make himself comfy in my fabric. BAD Kitty!

9. Go On a Picnic. Hmmm. This one was a little challenging. I couldn’t convince MeMum and BigDaddy to go to a park or a cornfield or something like that for a picnic. So, I decided to bring the picnic to them. I really wanted to spread quilts on their trampoline and have a picnic there, but I decided the food would probably bounce all over while we tried to keep ourselves upright. So, we spread MeMum’s garage-sale cheater quilt on their little patio table and I brought them some Kentucky Fried Chicken in my picnic basket. A cheater picnic on a cheater quilt. Perfect!

Must run — I’m busily trying to complete my last three items on the list. At least one of them isn’t going to get done. So sad.

Oh! Speaking of sad, can we please have a moment of silence for my beloved?

My long-time do-it-all lens is in the sickly lens hospital. I’m pretty hard on my camera stuff and my lens is feeling poorly. Hopefully whatever she has isn’t fatal and she’ll be home soon — I miss her terribly!

Happy Hump Day!
XOXO,
Anna

Five on Friday

37 Comments / September 13, 2013 October 8, 2013 / Chat, Store

1. The teeny tiny garden was a bust this year. {Sigh} Apparently the hail storm that ate the zinnias wasn’t enough. Something’s up with the tomatoes. They’re refusing to turn red. They go from green to something close to black. Is there some new black tomato that I don’t know about? I’m afraid to eat them.

2. Look at this fun skeleton fabric I picked up in New York City last week. I thought it would be perfect for the Dr. Child, but I don’t have a clue what to do with it. I’ll happily take suggestions if you have any!

3. I’ve been pouring through quilt books, thinking about what I want to work on next. I know the Steampunks aren’t done yet, but they’re getting close. Only 6 more blocks. I think I have an idea what I want to do, but, as always, selecting the colors is a big problem for me. I love them all. What to do. What to do.

4. When I saw the Le Creme Swiss Dots from Riley Blake, I fell in fabric love. I think they’re perfect for applique backgrounds and light values in blocks. I had to have them. And then I bought too much. So, I’ve put some in my little etsy shop. (Speaking of which, thank you for all the Adventure Girls love — the kits are gone now, but there are a few panels left.)

5. Thank you to Brigette for sending me a funny on Black Tomato Day.

May your weekend be full of RED tomatoes!
XOXO,
Anna

A Mad Dash

20 Comments / September 9, 2013 October 8, 2013 / Travel

Whew! I can’t believe it’s been over a week since I’ve posted! And here we are, knee-deep in September already — my VERY favorite month. ;-D

I do have an excuse. On Thursday of last week I zipped off to New York City for the weekend. It was a last minute trip (well, 2 weeks in the planning) and I went for a very good reason. To see Kellie, (Ms. Don’t Look Now) and her cute little family. When she first told me she was coming to the east coast and would I please come to visit, I just didn’t think I could swing it. But, the more I thought about it, the more I realized I really WANTED to go and I’m SO glad I did. I had THE. BEST. TIME. ever! When I got back home, I was appalled to look at my camera and find just how few pictures I had taken. IMHO, that’s the true sign of enjoying all the little moments and not worrying about taking lots of pictures. (So, these are just a few random shots.)

Kellie hasn’t been to the last few quilt markets and I’ve really missed her. It was so nice to be able to catch up and visit. Kellie’s children are at such fun ages and we had a great time. I’m glad that I got to meet them when I did — who knows when we’ll have the opportunity to see each other again.

We only had two days together. One day for Kellie and I to do some crafty/fabric shopping. And one day with the family. We walked, went to Times Square, talked, played in Central Park, walked, visited the Guggenheim Museum, talked, ate, took cabs, ate more, shopped more, walked more, talked more and saw Matilda. Which is fantastic, by the way, and I highly recommend it — especially if you have children. And then stayed up most of the night talking some more ’cause there just wasn’t enough time.

My words really can’t do justice to how I feel about the weekend. I could gush and get all teary-eyed, but I’ll keep it short. I feel so honored to have been included in a bit of their trip and to catch a glimpse into life with such a sweet little family. What a lucky, lucky girl am I!

I’ve been pooped today, but it was worth every little nod-off. Hopefully a little rest this week and then we’ll get back to some regularly scheduled programming. I have a Top 10 list to finish in just two weeks. Eeek!
XOXO,
Anna

P.S. I’ve really been enjoying the Camp the Pigeon Instagram feed. (@campthepigeon) I told you about him awhile ago, shortly after camp hatched from his little egg. He’s big and flying now and they’re letting him go outside. And he returns to his home! It’s really an amazing story and I thought you might enjoy it if you haven’t been following along.

Month: September 2013

Shrimp Fettuccini