Needles and Pens

Thanks to our church's annual cookie sale, which always gives me a jumpstart on the holiday baking, I baked my first batch of Christmas cookies yesterday. I decided on Spritz cookies, because they're my favorite, but also because I had all the ingredients on hand and we're flat broke this week. Cookie sale is Saturday, but I made enough to keep half for ourselves (and Santa). Twenty dozen in all! I use the Spritz recipe from the BH&G cookbook, with a couple of my own alterations, and they are just melt-in-your-mouth yummy! 3/4 c. butter 3/4 c. shortening 1 c. sugar 1 egg 1 t. baking powder 1 t. almond extract 1/2 t. vanilla extract Beat butter and shortening on medium to high speed for 30 seconds. Add 1 cup of the flour, the sugar, the egg, baking powder, almond and vanilla. Beat until thoroughly combined. Beat in remaining flour. Divide dough and color as desired. Force unchilled dough through a cookie press onto an ungreased cookie sheet. Bake in 375 degree oven for...

Wishing you a grateful heart and many blessings to be counted! (Photo clip art courtesy of Microsoft Office Online )

Or, "How do you eat an elephant? One bite at a time." Spent a good part of the past week rotary cutting a huge pile of fabric samples into a gazillion 4-1/2" squares and rectangles. These will eventually go into quilt tops for Quilts with Love , for our troops serving in Iraq and Afghanistan. But first, time to get ready for Thanksgiving, and give my aching wrist and elbow a little rest. Who'da thought that cooking and cleaning could be considered "rest?" lol

Last week, my daughter performed in her high school musical production of "Little Women." The talent in this group of young people is amazing! That's Kaitlin, at the very top, in the black and white peasant top and red skirt. She played "Clarissa," the heroine in one of Jo's stories. And here are the characters in Kaitlin's scene: The endless rehearsals and pre-show stress are now history, and things have calmed down considerably around here. One more senior-year memory on the road to graduation...

The past few days have been a regular quilt block party around here, as I get caught up on some of my Blocks-of-the-Month and other projects with my online quilting groups. Here are the blocks I finished this week. All of these patterns can be found at The Quilter's Cache , an amazing source for free quilting patterns: Nine-inch blocks-of-the-month, Quatrefoils , Double Necktie , and Double Friendship Star . Twelve-inch blue and yellow blocks-of-the-month, Patch as Patch Can , Mrs. Morgan's Choice , and Leaves and Diamonds . And finally, these 14-inch Granny's Flower Garden blocks for a quilt block lottery. Is is any wonder that I never run out of quilting projects? lol

The baby quilt is finished! Yummm...

Bridge to Terabithia By Katherine Paterson © 1977 Published by HarperCollins 1978 Newbery Medal winner As one of the few who had never read the book OR seen the movie, reading Bridge to Terabithia , by Katherine Paterson, was not what I had expected. I had seen the movie trailers with the fantasy monsters and the children in historical garb, so I assumed it was a fantasy story. Actually, it’s a real-life story about two kids with fantastic imaginations. Jess Aarons has a hard time fitting in. He’s the only boy in his family, stuck between four sisters. He desperately wants his parents’ acceptance, but never quite seems to measure up. He has a talent for art, which is considered a waste of time by his rural farm family. Deep down, he’d really like to make his father proud, and as the story begins, Jess has big plans to be the fastest runner in the fifth grade. He spends his whole summer training for the race on that first day back at school, imagining all the while how it would feel whe...

These ice cream cone blocks originated from an online Fat Quarter/Block Swap. Each swapper sent one fat quarter of our focus fabric to a friend, who then made blocks from our fabric and sent the finished blocks back. My friend, Sandy, made three ice cream cones and two ball blocks from my fabric, which gave me a great start on this baby quilt top. This weekend I made eight more ice cream cones and set the top together. I still need to add borders and get it quilted before our new little niece is born. And that could be any day...

The other day I was blogging about how I plan to start marketing my children's writing, once the new year rolls around. Well... Recently I had a call from my parents, telling me of a news story they had seen about a local publisher of a glossy, regional magazine, branching out into publishing children's books. Why didn't I submit "our book?" "Our book" is One to Ten and Home Again: A Counting Book of Sounds , a children's picture book that I wrote, my mother illustrated, and we published as an e-book in 2002. I marketed the e-book for some time through my own website, but that eventually became cost prohibitive. And, well... I guess I got discouraged. Since the closing of the site, the book has basically languished in the file cabinet. Likewise, I filed this new publishing opportunity in the back of my mind, where it likely would have languished -- until a few days ago, when my dad called again. He had spoken with the publisher and told them about ...