December 2007 – Page 2

Gingerbread Houses, Part 1

19 Comments / December 17, 2007 December 29, 2011 / Gingerbread Houses, Holidays, Recipes

I’m quickly being sucked up by the red and green vortex that is Christmas. Things are spinning faster as the bottom of the drain approaches, and I’m realizing that everything’s not going to get done. I’ve put the good enough stamp on the decorating, the baking will be this weekend and I suspect there will be some late nights wrapping and sewing. I’m in New Jersey tonight for work — until Thursday. Santa gave me an early gift this morning — my flight from O’Hare to Newark was canceled, so I was stuck (oh boohoo!) in O’Hare, with no interruptions, sewing for several hours. I told MeMum yesterday I was hoping for a little delay, and I got my wish! Did you know there are times when you can be happy about airport delays???

Anyway, back to the subject. In our family we like to have a little gingerbread house competition at Christmastime. When I was 14, I found a gingerbread recipe and pattern in a Better Homes & Garden magazine and I’ve made gingerbread houses off and on since then. We don’t make them every year, but the kids seem to really enjoy it. Last year was the best yet — everyone took their time and put some thought into their houses.

It usually takes me a day to bake the gingerbread. Knowing that I would be out-of-town this week, I baked the houses yesterday so that they’ll be ready for our 2007 competition on friday night. Sweetie Pie was a huge help — we had a little assembly line going and she saved me several hours worth of work. Plus, it’s more fun to work together — we even enlisted the help of TheManoftheHouse to roll the balls of dough around and soften them while he watched tv.

People sometimes ask me why I don’t just buy the gingerbread house kits and save all the work. The cost would probably be about the same when you consider that the kits include the candy for the decorations. I think the size of the house is what keeps me making them from scratch. These houses are a bit bigger than the kits. They’re even bigger than the original pattern — I doubled the size. If you’re interested in trying to make your own, I’ve put the recipe for the gingerbread (along with some crude pictures of my templates so that you can make your own pattern), on a page in my recipe section. This really is a fun activity to do with kids. Heck, even the grown ups like it — I think BigDaddy was one of the biggest kids last year — his house came complete with a fire escape!

This is a picture of last year’s winning house, made by the champion team of TheManoftheHouse and TheSecondChild. They built a frat house. I’m not quite sure how they won — I personally preferred the house built by my nephew and MyCrazyBIL. I think maybe the anatomically correct frat people who were partying on the balcony may have clinched the deal for the winning team!

XOXO,
Anna

Comparison Shopping

26 Comments / December 14, 2007 February 18, 2011 / Holidays

Exhibit A: Martha Stewart Baker’s Twine from Michael’s. I can’t remember how much this costs — we’ll give them the benefit of the doubt — $4.99. So, that’s $4.99 for 72 yards, or roughly 6 cents a yard.

Exhibit B: Bernat Holidays “Twists” yarn from JoAnn’s. $7.99 for 603 yards, or a little over a penny a yard.

Here’s the side-by-side comparison — Martha’s twine is much thinner, but the yarn (and it’s a cotton yarn, so it doesn’t really seem like a yarn) is more colorful.

I’m going to have to go with the yarn. I know it’s not Martha, but I can live with that! I’m having great fun using it to tie packages. (The handles on these bags are a thicker cording — the yarn has been used to tie the handles together and attach the little bell to the package. The bells, btw are from Martha’s Macy’s line — $1.99 each on sale.)

And look Sharon, I made pretzels last night. That’s some fun stuff!

Finally, I have the day off tomorrow and I’m hoping to get the big tree done. We’ll see, I might opt for a nap instead, ’cause just thinking about how far behind I am makes me really tired!
XOXO,
Anna

The All Points Bulletin

23 Comments / December 11, 2007 February 18, 2011 / Family

On Thursday last week, my 15 yr. old niece asked MyDadLovesMeBestSister if she could make dinner for her and 10 of her friends on Saturday night for the Christmas semi-formal. Of course, MyDadLovesMeBestSister said yes, but she was in a panic because she didn’t have any Christmas decorations up, she works full time and she was attending The Nutcracker on friday night. So, I didn’t say it, but I was thinking “Good Luck with that!”.

On Saturday morning, as TheManoftheHouse puts it, the APB for help went out, LOL. MyDadLovesMeBestSister didn’t really ask for help, but things weren’t going particularly well, so TheManoftheHouse, MeMum and I all went over to help with the preparations. When we got there, my first assignment was to finish the table, in particular the napkins. She gave me the napkins and candy canes and told me to do something with them. I thought “Where is that napkin folding book (that I don’t own) when you need it?” But wait. We have the internet. And the internet has everything on it. (I love you internet.) I told my 10-year old niece to google “napkin folding techniques.” We needed ideas. She was back by my side before I even got the word “techniques” out of my mouth. She found this fun site and we used the “candle” napkin idea.

We all had a great time and decided we should help each other clean and decorate more often. After a break to go Christmas tree shopping (can you say “picked-over”? — it was only the 8th, what’s up with that??? –I know nowadays that’s late, but back in the day (and I AM still back in the day) that was early) I went back to take pictures of my niece and her friends. Her date brought her a pretty little corsage for the evening.

I had a fun time watching the kids. And especially watching from the girls’ family perspective. I told MyDadLoveMeBestSister, in spite of all the work and panic, how lucky she was. I’d always wanted to make dinner for the groups my boys went with, but that seemed to be something that the girls arranged. The boys did the asking, the girls did the arranging. This group was pretty cute. The original plan was for my niece and her girlfriends to go to the dance together. Then this boy asked her. What to do with her friends? She just invited them and a few other boys along. My niece had the only official date — there were 7 girls and 4 boys. And what really cracked me up was when it was time to sit at the table they lined up — all 4 boys sat along one side and the girls were at each end and down the other side. So funny!

So, anyway, not much decorating got done around here. But it got done somewhere! Here’s a cute set of ornaments from MyDadLovesMeBestSister’s tree.

She has two little poodles. We call them TheYappers. Put them together (8 lbs. each) and they don’t even weigh as much as TheEmptyNestChild (17 lbs.) I’d love to see the three of them together. A family portrait: TheEmptyNestChild with a Yapper sitting on each side of him.
Sharon suggested that I’m so late decorating, that maybe I should just bag it this year. Sharon! I’m appalled! I’m working on it. Really, I am!
XOXO,
Anna

Checking In.

27 Comments / December 7, 2007 February 18, 2011 / Chat

Just a quick note to check in. I’ve had lots of piddly little things to do this week, but I don’t seem to have accomplished much. I’m even afraid to look at my bloglines — I haven’t had time to check it since Tuesday. I hate it when I get behind on reading all of your blogs. I did get the formatting for my blurb book done and got the order shipped off last night. Yay! And I found out that MyDadLovesMeBestSister is making a book for her hubby too. She’s using Shutterfly or Snapfish so it will be a fun experiment to compare her service with blurb.com’s service.

I’m finally going to get some time at home tomorrow. Hopefully I’ll get some sewing done. I really need to do a little Christmas decorating. What you see to the right is the sum total of my decorating so far. Pretty pitiful, huh? I couldn’t help myself though. I was shopping in Williams Sonoma last week and decided I should treat myself to festive dish and hand soaps. I thought maybe the peppermint smell would take the drudgery out of doing the dishes for the next month.

Am I the only selfish little shopper out there? Have you had a little extravagant purchase while you’ve been Christmas shopping?

XOXO,
Anna

Happy Birthday Gurney!!!

19 Comments / December 4, 2007 February 18, 2011 / Chat

Happy, Happy Birthday to my old friend/quilty peep Gurney! And you know, that’s “old” as in we’ve known each other for a long time, not “old” as in advanced in age LOL. Poor Gurney, I have the hardest time remembering her birthday — it being the holiday time of year and all. We used to always have our friendship quilt group Christmas get-together (say that 5 times quickly!) right around her birthday and that would help me remember. But now, we don’t have that anymore and since I am getting old (as in advanced in age) it’s really hard for me to remember. Anyway, Gurney, I hope you’ve had the BEST of days!!! A special birthday for you this year — your first as a Grandma (marrying at 10 years of age makes you a very young grandma LOL) and with a second new grandchild on the way, what an exciting year you have ahead. My birthday wish for you is that you and hubby will come to your senses and move back to our fair city — this “see each other twice a year” state of affairs is for the birds. I miss you! My other birthday wish is that I hope you have a headache (in the best way), no matter how you got it LOL!!!

There’s been pitifully little crafting or holiday merry making going on around here. I feel like I’m in things-that-must-be-accomplished limbo and I can’t get on to the fun of holiday prep until they’re done. We spent ALL day on Saturday in leaf hell. We raked and mowed until we were half frozen. About 30 minutes before we would have been done, mother nature decided it would be fun to have a little snow storm. We tried to work our way through it for about 15 minutes, but once the snow started to accumulate, we abandoned ship. Have you ever mowed your lawn in the snow? Yeah, I’m sure you’re smarter than we are. Anyway, we got close enough to being done and now the leaves are just waiting to be picked up. In the meantime, I fully expect the wind to come along and blow them back all over the yard again. I figure abundant and troublesome leaves are mother nature’s way of making you thrilled that winter is here. It works for me — I do love winter!

And then on Sunday, I worked on a blurb book for a gift. What a lot of work that’s turning out to be. Their tools are fantastic, I’m just having a hard time figuring how I want the book laid out. Anyway, since there’s no real fun stuff to post about (not counting Gurney’s birthday), I’ll recommend some fun stuff of others:

The Scottish Lamb has found a really fun knitter’s advent calendar.
Like many of you, we’ve had the tradition of giving the children an ornament each year with the intention of sending them of into their adult lives with a collection of Christmas ornaments. I LOVE this fabulous ornament box and may have to think about making some after the holidays. This is the year I’ll separate TheFirstChild’s ornaments from ours so that he and SweetiePie can take them off into their new life together and they’ll need a fun container to accompany them. {Sniff}{Sniff}
How cute is this hat??? I love it! Stay tuned, he promises to post a pattern when he gets time.

Nighty-Night!
XOXO,
Anna

Month: December 2007