A Week Before Christmas

Every year, I seem to have one elusive gift to find. This year, the gift is a heavy flannel shirt. I went to Kohl's, WalMart and Target. No one had them. I kept thinking, geez louise! it is the middle of Winter! Finally, I tried the Sears store and there it was. The holy grail of flannel shirts! Ha, ha, ha! With the exception of wrapping my gifts, which Scott will help me do on Sunday, my work for this Christmas is done!

This morning, I put my cookie trays together for my neighbors, ran to the Post Office to mail my last Christmas package and stopped at the Dollar Tree for some pastel colored tissue paper. I would have looked around there longer but quite honestly, there was a little kid in there screaming her bloody lungs out and I just couldn't take it. You know, my mother never tolerated that from my sister and I. We were either good and quiet or mom hauled our butts out of the store and took us home. She didn't let us annoy anyone else.

Well, I don't want to bore anyone with my whining about the behavior of today's children. I thought I'd share with you my final goody of the Christmas season. Fudge!



Homemade Fudge with white chocolate icing and colored sprinkles! They look like they're right out of the Fannie May store! I included these in with my cookie trays for my neighbors and have enough left to take over to mom's on Christmas Eve.

So now, I'm pretty much free to do what I want to do. I started on stitching on Block #3 of my Garden Quilt:



If you want to see larger versions of any of my photos, please feel free to click on them. That will take you over to Flickr where you can see them enlarged. I post the small photos for my readers who like me, are still on dial-up.

Anyway, our little garden is growing quite quickly! It's certainly beginning to look like Spring. At least here at Kitty & Me it does. Outside is a grey, dreary, ugly mess! But Spring will come again and in the meantime, we have this quilt to tend to!

A Slight Change

I was looking at Block #2 yesterday afternoon and it was bothering me. I was feeling like the sequins on the Irises were covering up the pretty embroidery. After all, I bought the hankies because I liked the embroidery! When Scott got home from work, I asked his opinion and he said, "Girl, take them off!" So off they came:



Much better, don't you think? So now I'm ready to start on Block #3!

So many of my readers have emailed me to ask how I'm doing. I think it's starting to recede now. I can't say I'm out of the black hole yet but I think I'm starting to see a small ray of light. I'm still tired most of the time and I still take my shower or bath and go to bed between 6 & 7 pm. I'm just spent by then. I've slept better the last 2 nights as well. So, I'm getting there. Thank you everyone for asking!

Before I head off to stitch, I wanted to share the links to a few blogs that I think you might enjoy.
First is The Little Pink Studio. I'm quite intrigued and inspired by Cerri's romantic-vintage style. And it seems apparent to me that Cerri likes pink!

Next is Contemporary Embroidery. Mary Ann pointed me in the direction of this blog and I'm fascinated with Karen's creativity and the style of her work. She works mostly in white with only hints of other colors but the effects are stunning!

Finally, do check out Cathys Crazy By Design blog. Cathy's stitching & sewing is wonderful but she also shares photos of her vintage treasures! Lovely things to look at here!

Happiness

My mom always says, "if everyone would stop chasing happiness and start finding someone to give it to, everyone would have it!"

We went to the retirement center yesterday with my mom's therapy dog Chooch, and a huge basket full of cookie bags. I can't begin to tell you what Chooch and those cookies do for the residents. Some are quite perky and cheerful but many are withdrawn, lonely and sad. What a boost to their spirit when they see Chooch and we hand them a bag of homemade cookies. We could actually see a little light return to their faces. That's what happiness is!

Chooch had her little Santa hat on and she leaves it on the whole time! She's such a wonderful dog. Unfortunately, brainless me forgot to bring my camera over to mom's so I don't have photos of Chooch with her Santa hat or photos of the little cookie bags that mom and I made. I am planning on taking my camera over to mom's on Christmas and we'll get a photo of Santa Chooch then.

In the meantime, I finished up the stitching on Block #2 of my Garden Quilt:



The Spiderweb is a vintage pin that I bought at a Flea Market not too long ago. The tiny rose is from a pair of vintage earrings that I also found at a flea market. They're the old fashioned screwback earrings so I just took my wire cutters and cut that off then sewed it on. The companion will find it's way to another block on this quilt.

With Block #2 completed, I'll be starting on Block #3 shortly:



This quilt will be quite Springy! I mentioned when I started it that it will hang in my living room. I have my Lucky quilt there now but I'm wanting to look at something new:



I do plan to put this together as soon as I have all 9 blocks completed. I'm also planning on putting my Button Quilt together and hanging that over my husband's dresser in our bedroom. We rearranged the furniture in there a few weeks back and over his dresser is the perfect spot for it! Well, he doesn't think so, but I do. If he had his way, there would be a huge vintage Vargas girl hanging over his dresser. I think not. It doesn't go with my decorating style!

Garden Quilt Block #2 Update

It's a cloudy, dreary day here in Northern Illinois. Thankfully, it's above freezing so the snow we got earlier this week is melting. I love it when the snow melts!

I don't have anything too exciting to talk about today so I'll just post an update on Block #2 of my Garden Quilt:



I'm going to head into my Living Room and add some more do-dads & foo-foo's to this. I made a batch of Chex Mix a little while ago so before I stitch, I'm going to put together another batch.

Gingerbread Cookies & Chocolate Shortbread Cookies

Well, I think I'm just about done making Christmas cookies. I may do a pan of Peanut Butter bars over the weekend but then I think that'll be it. I plan to spend some extra time just stitching and playing with my stash.

I thought I would share 2 more recipes with you today. Gingerbread Cookies & Chocolate Shortbread Cookies:



I drizzled melted white almond bark on both, added red & green sprinkles to the Gingerbread and pink coconut to the Chocolate Shortbread.

Gingerbread

1 cup White Sugar
1/2 teaspoon ground Ginger
1 teaspoon ground Nutmeg
1 1/2 teaspoon ground Cinnamon
1/4 teaspoon ground Cloves
1/2 teaspoon salt
1 1/2 teaspoons Baking Soda
1 cup Butter, melted
1/2 cup Evaporated Milk
1 cup unsulfured Molasses
1 teaspoon Vanilla extract
1 teaspoon Lemon extract
5 cups unbleached all-purpose Flour

Preheat oven to 375 degrees. Combine sugar, ginger, nutmeg, cinnamon, salt and baking soda. Stir in the melted butter, evaporated milk, molasses, vanilla and lemon extracts. Mix well.
Add the flour, 1 cup at a time. The dough should be stiff enough to handle without it sticking to fingers. An extra 1/2 cup flour can be added if dough is too sticky.
Roll dough 1/4 inch think and cut with cookie cutters. Bake for 10 - 12 minutes.

As you can see in the photo, I made bars out of these. I rolled the dough onto a parchment paper lined cookie sheet and baked for about 25 - 30 minutes. You'll have to watch them because baking time differs from oven to oven. The dough should spring back in the center when you touch it. That's how you'll know when they're done. You should only need a single recipe of this dough to make bar cookies.

Usually, I make Gingerbread Kitties. I use a kitty cookie cutter and then decorate them. I didn't feel up to that this year but the bar cookies came out quite well!

Chocolate Shortbread

1 cup Butter
1 1/2 cups all-purpose Flour
2/3 cup Powdered Sugar
1/3 cup Baking Cocoa
Dash Salt

Cream butter & powdered sugar. Add salt and Cocoa. Mix well then add flour. Oven temp: 350 degrees.

I did the bar cookies with these as well but needed a double recipe to fill the pan. Baking time again for bars is about 25 minutes.

I'm not feeling well at the moment. I think I need to move around some. I'll leave you with an update on Block #2 of my Garden Crazy Quilt:



Oh, one last thing for today. If you'd like to see some real vintage Glitter Houses, hip-hop over to Freda's blog and take a peek! She has a lovely new Glitter House in today's post but be sure to scroll down a bit to see her vintage houses.