Out with the old, in with the new

You might remember a year and a half ago now, my brother and I gifted our sister with a brand new laundry pair. You can refresh your memory here if you forgot it or missed it. My brother and I discussed what we could do for our sister, who selflessly tended to our Dad for a long time. My brother thought a trip south would be nice to give them. But I had just spent a couple of weeks at my sisters place and I knew by the fading home made sharpie marks on her washer's start dial, that her 30 year old laundry pair would soon need to be replaced. My brother and I ordered up a nice energy efficient front load pair from Sears and never said a word to my sister. We just let the Sears handle the surprise end of it. You can read how the surprise unfolded here.


Well ever since, my hubby has had washer envy. Every couple of weeks when the newspaper ads would come, he'd bring all the good deals to my attention. When we would make a trip to my sisters place, somehow, he'd take a peek at her laundry pair, still all new and sparkly. The topic always came up on the drive home from her place.


Well, the advance notice of boxing day sales on laundry pairs came out before Christmas. Once we started doing a bit of research there was no going back and we placed our order on Christmas Eve. In the midst of a winter blizzard, our Christmas present to ourselves arrived today.

They are grey. Such a manly color don't you think? Everyone says that they just love to watch the washer when it's new. We are no different. We each took turns sitting on the stool watching it go through the different cycles and how the digital readouts give you the declining time and the advancing progress of the load.

It's a very cool laundry day today.

Happy New Year - A New Decade

Last evening, as we ate a fun New Years Eve Chinese supper with wine, we talked about what the next 10 years will bring us. We talked about how old the kids will be, and all the graduations that will be top of mind. We talked about our travel wish list and strategies to stay healthy.



I love remembering things that happens when a new decade comes around. In the past 30 years, here's a few things I remember about the decade years.

1980 - Baby P and I move to New Brunswick and started a new life.
1990 - We built our new dream house and we still live in it.
2000 - I left a job for a new job that lead to another job that was very successful.
2010 - Will be my first full year of official retirement

Happy New Year and Happy New Decade

Wii Weight

The threat of snow for the next 4 days had us packing up and heading home from Nova Scotia early. Even though our trip to the Annapolis Valley was short, we had a blast. My sister and hubby got a Wii and Wiifit Plus and we had the Wii analyze us for fitness and wii tried all kinds of fun fitness games/exercises. After only 1 day, the Wii reported that I lost .4 of a kg. The Wii did advise me not to get to excited since my initial weigh in was at night, and they recommended that weighing in at the same time every day would be the best way to gauge weight loss. So I had to wait another 10 hours. Hmm...

That reminds me, it's New Years Eve. I wonder if I should be thinking of making a New Years resolution or something. I hadn't given it too much thought until just now!!

While in the valley, my sister took us to her super secret discount store where she gets some amazing stuff. It was soooo fun. It's Bargain Harley's discount store in Berwick. Even my hubby had a fun time loading up on lots of items that were real bargains. We got golf balls, plastic Ziploc style snack bags, hair bands, Christmas wrap, a nightie, a golf club, a foil turkey roaster, knee pads, drill bits, clamps, a casserole dish, coffee candies, crayons, towels, birthday candles, barrettes and other things.

I thought about it, but we didn't bring home a bike, jewelery, lamps, sheet a bissel spotbot, hammers, trailer hitch balls, camouflage wear, Christmas ornaments, giftware and decorations too numerous to even remember. Bargain Harley's might be something like Mardens in Maine. Although, I'm mostly only familiar with Marden's fabric section.

I was looking forward to stopping into Avonport Discount that has name brand fabrics and tons of notions and books, but they were closed for the holidays. You know, I probably didn't need any fabric anyway!

Have a great and Happy New Year Everyone!

Visiting

We had fun with Baby Aurora this Christmas. She was excited for all the presents and loved the new toys.

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She also loved dancing to the Christmas music with the tutu that Jessica had made earlier in the week.

She and her mama went home on the weekend with all their Christmas loot.
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I rushed up to Fabricville on Sunday to get the boxing day fabric specials on curtain fabric that Carrie had pre-picked out. I spend the afternoon making curtains for Carrie and Kenny. See their Christmas gift from us, was curtains for their living room, bedroom and bathrooms.

So on Monday, with all the curtains made, we hit the road and make a quick visit with Patience in Saint John, then went to Moncton where we did final hemming measurements and I finished sewing the curtains. The boys hung the rods and all the drapes were hung by the end of the evening. They all look really really nice.
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Today we drove to Nova Scotia and we'll visit with my sister for a couple of days. We had snow overnight but the driving wasn't bad. My sister had a really nice supper for us and then we played WII fit for the evening.


So, the rest of the week will just be hanging out in the valley then heading home on Friday.

On Saturday, we get our Christmas gift to ourselves delivered. Watch for post and a picture about what that is on Saturday.

Merry Christmas!

It's evening on Christmas Eve and everything is quiet.

The kiddies are all on their way home now, to await the arrival of Santa. Jessica and Emily have new Christmas Socks to hang before they go to bed tonite. Do you suppose Santa will be impressed with these Crazy Quilted socks? I've been working on them since last winter and looking forward to them being used tonite.


I wonder what Santa will leave in them.



Merry Chrstmas Everyone.



(Many thanks to my friend Linda H. for taking photos of these socks this afternoon) More detailed photos will be in my album on my sidebar)

I need your help - the Blue Quilt needs a name!

I was about to start making the quilt label for the St. Dunstan's blue quilt and I discovered that this quilt doesn't have a name. I'm sure it has a name, but I can't seem to find any name that goes with it. So I talked to Rose, who is my head quilter contact for the St. Dunstan's quilters and she asked me and my friends to come up with a lovely name, but it does not necessarily have to have the word blue in the name. Is that pressure or what? Will you help me by giving me some suggestions.

Here are my 3 suggestions to help get you thinking.

1. Square Dance

2. Stepping stones

3. Diamond Path or patch

Many thanks for your brain power.

Jessica and Emily at Grammie's Day 2 - continued

We invited the triplets over for hot chocolate and a snack after skating. So Jessica and Emily worked really hard to make a nice snack for them in these cool bento-like boxes that I got from the Asian store.



So in the top layer of the bento box was the Christmas napkin, a small package of Oreo cookies, a pretzel turtle which they made earlier in the day and a marshmallow for the hot chocolate. In this picture, do you see how the top of the box has handles that flip up for easy carrying. Just tooo cute.


In the lower layer was nacho chips and a spoon.

Nobody could figure out what the spoon was for. Of course it was to stir up the hot chocolate with. They all said "Oh Yeah".



Jess and Em set the table and hand made place cards for each of the kids. They set out hot chocolate cups. We didn't tell the triplets about their special snack until they were in the house and half way up the stairs to the kitchen. They loved their special snack after a hard hour of skating.



Then after the triplets went home, we all vegged around the living room for about an hour then it was time to get supper.



After supper, we went up to the sewing room, where Emily practiced her letters using my super fun doodling books. They are the same ones that I use to make quilting labels sometimes. Emily is so good at doodling that I let her use my secret set of colored zig markers.



Jessica helped me make a tutu for Aurora. I found a fun pattern on the Martha Stewart website that had a video tutorial and I just had to make it. So since I had lots of help this week, the time was right. I expect that you'll see pictures of Aurora later this week dancing in her tutu.


Then, as we were winding down for the night, a nice bowl of ice cream hit the spot. Scottsburn Udderdly Delight was the type of ice cream. Emily was very impressed with this flavor. Actually we all were.


Tomorrow we all travel half way to Saint John to pick up baby Aurora. Jessica and Emily are going to teach Aurora how to play I Spy with her new quilt. Then in the afternoon Jessica and Emily are off to make visits on the other side of the family and deliver their home made gifts . Then they will spend the night with the triplets.


Then can you believe it, that brings us up to Christmas Eve!!! We'll have all 6 grandchildren here and their parents for a lovely Christmas Eve brunch.

I love Christmas Eve.

Jessica and Emily at Grammie's - Day 2

We had a lovely breakfast that Jessica prepared. Pilsbury croissants are so easy to make.

Emily sat with me while we checked emails. Then the timer dinged and Jessica and Grampie called us for breakfast. Mmmmm Croissants are so yummy. We really need to have these more often.

Next we made turtles. This was a super fun recipe that was easy to do.

First you put the pretzels on the baking sheet. Then put the rolo candies on them. Bake them in the oven for a few minutes, then press a pecan half into them and let them cool.

Icing them takes a skilled hand but Jess and Emmie each decorated 15 turtles very nicely. They did squiggles, stars, and criss cross lines.

Next, we packaged everything up nicely with tags and ribbon. So, our gifts are all made for when they go to visit on Thursday. Won't the other grandparents love these handmade gifts. (PS: the Pretzel turtles recipe is here,)

We tried making fancy paper snowflakes and stars. We did a few of these and they were tooooo hard to do. Maybe next year!!!

This afternoon Jess and Emily and the triplets all went to the Willie skating rink for an hour of fun. Special thanks to my friend Linda who loaned me skates for Jessica. The kids all had a good time and no major injuries. Well one little injury, but we won't talk about that, right Emily!!!

Watch for part 2 of this blog tomorrow for the after skate party that we hosted for the triplets.

Dry Hands! Try this homemade Quilter's Handcream

I don't know what it is, but my hands are rough and dry dry dry. I'm sure it's a combination of the cold weather, the wood stove being on constantly. That coupled with the constant hand-washing to avoid those H1N1 bugs, and then that coupled with doing so much sewing, my hands are so rough, they're picky against the fabric. I've been using just regular hand cream but the effect of that lasts about 5 minutes.

I didn't think of it until last night, but I have a recipe that I got from the 1999 Spring CQA Newsletter, to make a quilters hand cream. I'm going out to Shoppers Drug Mart to get all the stuff and I think I'll make a batch. If you don't have a Shoppers, just buy your local drugstore brand.

Here is the recipe. It's best to get a few of your quilter friends to go in on a batch with you and then everyone will have some.

1 jar (400 ml) of Life Brand (Shoppers Drug Mart) Vitamin A cream (14 oz)
1 jar (400 ml) of Life Brand Vitamin E cream (14 oz)
1 bottle (60ml) of baby oil (just over 2 oz)
1 50 gram jar of Vaseline (just under 2 oz)
Whisk all together and put into decorative jars.

Jessica and Emily at Grammie's - Day 1

This is going to be a power packed two days for all four of us, Grammie, Grampie, Jessica and Emily. It's not often that the kids can visit exclusively for two days in a row so we're cramming in as much as we can.

Our day started out by Jess and Em making Grammies breakfast. While I was having morning coffee, they made me bran muffins. They are old enough to read the instructions on the muffin package so it was pretty straight forward. The bran muffins were yummy.

After breakfast, we decided to make our geocache. We searched the house for trinkets to put in the cache. We made a log for the cache finders to sign, and we sharpened a pencil as the final things to put in the cache. It's all ready to be camo'd a bit (that means camouflaged for you muggles) and ready to hide. It has a fabulous "First to find" gift in it, which is a pewter tree ornament on it. We'll go out to look for a great hiding place for the cache later this afternoon.

Where were you at 12:47 on December 21st. That's the exact time that winter started. We were on our way to Mactaquac. See the time, and how warm it is in the picture that was is inset in blue. It was all the way up to -2 degrees which is a great temperature for a winter day.

Then when we got home, we are making old fashioned poppycock using this recipe. We packaged this up into gift bags and Emily put the tags on them. They look really nice and they will take them as gifts to their other grandmothers and great grand mother when they go for visits on Thursday.

Here are the girls tast testing the poppycock. Jessica wants this recipe to take home... She loves it. She'll be making sure that she asks her grandmothers to try it, so she can have another taste test too.


On the way back from Mactaquac, we stopped at Zellers and we found this sponge toffee. I used to eat this when I was a kid. I'm surprised they still have it for sale. So we bought one for Jess and Emily to try. Emily wasn't so sure she liked it, but Jessica thought it was soooooo awesome.

It's time to hide the geocache. We found a great spot that has a parking lot nearby. And the trekking through the snow won't be too bad. Our clues will be inspired by the surroundings of the trees. We'll register this brand new cache this evening on geocache.com. It'll be interesting to see how quick somebody finds it after it is registered. I predict that somebody will find it before Christmas for sure.

We've had a busy day and we're settling down to a quiet of evening of watching Survivor.

Stay tuned for tomorrow, when we'll be doing more projects.

Favorite Ornaments 2009

I just have to give you a glimpse of my tree this year. At our final Friday Girls coffee break of the year, we did a little Christmas ornament exchange. I randomly chose a small light package in a pretty organza fabric reusable giftbag. Inside were two beautiful quilty polymer clay tree ornaments. They came from Lee who bought them at the annual Christmas in the Village event which is held in nearby Gagetown. Can you spot them? They are the yellow star and the blue 4-patch block. I love them. Thanks Lee.


For a few years now, I make and decorate gingerbread with the kids and somehow I always forget to keep a few for my tree. So earlier this week, I made and decorated a dozen cookies for my tree. They give a nice gingerbread smell to the tree.

Sunday Syncro Show

What a treat today. We went to see Caitlin's very first Syncro Water show. She's the one in the red bathing suit on the very left end. Great job Caitlin. It was a great show and all the swimmers did an awsome job.