Sunday Stash #65

Black and white, sewing machines, and olives. These are a few of my favorite things. I had four bleu cheese stuffed olives yesterday and can't wear shoes today.

More Halloween fabric, because you can never have enough. Plus it was really cute and on sale. Here lies Skully and Spooky.

The tiny red checks I found in my bag. I think it was part of some donated fabric we received at a guild meeting months ago. That orange print with the spots was designed by someone I know! Love that she made her selvage dots little mushrooms. It's called Photochrome Petals by Julie Creus for La Todera.

Always a sucker for gingham and 60 yards of sale ribbon to play with. I'll probably use it to wrap presents.

 I forgot to show the adorable sewing caddy owl Beth made for our gift exchange.

He holds sewing tools and thread. Cute, huh? And to continue my lucky streak, I won two great giveaways from Sew Mama Sew's Giveaway Day. Yeehaw!

Yum

Our yummy spread from our holiday guild meeting. We had a small group for December, but as you can see there was plenty to eat. Everyone exchanged handmade gifts too. So thankful Rene' started our guild and that it continues to flourish. We have a lot of fun.

I brought these Hot Wing Mini Cakes which were spicy but zingy if you like spicy stuff. And butter!

This pretty drunkard's path quilt hangs in the workroom we use for our meetings. I love all those Kaffe Fassett fabrics.

Merry Christmas to me. I got suckered into joining a book club again. Picked up all my favorites for just $10 plus free shipping. I just have to buy one more book to get out of my commitment. I can't wait to sit down with a cup of something and look at the pretty pictures and drool over the wonderful recipes.

Is It Time To Panic?

Okay, I just realized Christmas is only 20 days away. That's less than three weeks. That's scary if you prefer ordering stuff online more than trampling through a mall or shopping center. And what to buy people? I miss the Lego sets and Barbie days. What do you buy an 18 and 20 year old? How about a Roth IRA they can contribute to? Apple stock? Savings bonds? Driving helmets? Underwear? I'm such a cool mom. Inspector Gadget is funny. He picks out and buys his gifts and gives them to me to wrap and put under the tree. Makes it easy for me and the kids. Ha!

I made this knock-off Olive Garden Zuppa Toscana last night. Really easy. I omitted the bacon and sugar and used 1% milk as the cream. It's all I had. Whole milk would have been nicer, but half and half (as the recipe is written) might be too much. I'm not a huge cream soup fan. It was really good. And any time I can get the boys to eat kale, I'm happy.

At the last minute I threw together this Cheese, Olive and Buttermilk Herb bread. Nice. My buttermilk was about to expire so it was a necessity. Plus I thought it would be good with soup.

But I really want to toast it and put a runny egg on it. It's going to be better than that store bought marble rye, although that was pretty good if I remember correctly.

And just so you don't think I eat 24/7, I did make our guild's BOM sample. It's called Modern Strings.

Go Win Something

I forgot to mention the Sew, Mama, Sew! big giveaway. It's the whole reason I got into blogging. I've even won a few giveaways. The best part is finding new blogs to read. There are some talented people out there. Go forth and win something! That laundry can wait.

Bones, the angry dachshund was not handling Monday very well. He perked up when the mailman and UPS guy showed up. And by perked up, I mean barked his full head off. Even a half an hour after they left. My kids are big online shoppers, so it should be an interesting holiday season for Mr. Bones.

I spent a lot of my spare time yesterday reading new blogs and entering giveaways, but I did sneak in some time to make our guild's block of the month (BOM). January is my month to pick a block, so I need to figure that out today. If you know of any fun modern quilt blocks, let me know.

Congratulations to Prince William and Duchess Kate! I hope the poor girl's morning sickness goes away quickly. I will continue my anglophile ways and crush on those Royals. Obviously I'm not the only one.

Eek, It's December!

Step two of the Easy Street mystery. There are all kinds of participants playing along. It's fun to see what fabrics everyone uses. I'm still kind of bummed mine isn't scrappier and I would have loved to use my collection of black and white prints like most of the quilters did. But I shall press on. Excuse the pun.

Here are my pieces/parts so far. The next step won't be posted until Friday so I have a whole week to work on other projects. Yay! I might even catch up on laundry. Oh who am I kidding?

Should I save the little dog ears from the flying geese? Ha! No. These are trash.

Or perhaps they could be used in a quilt for this little guy. I found him in the Lego box. We're getting a new bed delivered today. Apparently after eight years a mattress gets "disgustingly filled with skin cells and dust mite fecal matter." How's that for a marketing gimmick? Ever hear of a mattress cover? Exfoliating?

Our mattress is 20 years old and replaced Inspector Gadget's waterbed. Yes, he was quite the bachelor. I refused to go through my second pregnancy in a waterbed (you can't get out), so we bought a real bed (and real bedroom furniture) before Hollywood was born.

My mom gifted us a new bed for Christmas, so we picked one out yesterday. Like getting rid of that silly waterbed, someone wasn't real thrilled about getting a new bed. I'm just happy to get rid of 600 pounds of dust mite poo. Heck, I might even vacuum under the bed to celebrate. Ha!

Linking to Made by you Monday too!

Sunday Stash #64

And I bet you thought I'd never buy fabric again after two Sundays with no stash. Ha! I more than made up for it with Fabric.com's big sale and Cherrywood's two-for-one scrap bag deal. I just love these novelty prints. The little foxes are really cute. And the big fish eating the little fish cracks me up.

Kaffe Fassett and Brandon Mably love. Those two dudes have the coolest fabrics.

More fun prints. I really love that yellow in the center. I always need yellows.

Six inch strips by Kaffe Fassett. It's called "Smolder," which I thought was funny. Smoky colors?

Squares and spots, because who can resist geometrics?

My first look and feel at Cherrywood solids. These hand dyed fabrics have a suede-like texture. The colors are rich and wonderful. Grab bags were buy one get one free. I cannot wait to play with these. Merry Christmas to me!

Free Fabric!

Is there anything better than free fabric? Yeah, probably lots of things, but work with me. The folks at Michael Miller Fabrics offered the Modern Quilt Guilds this pretty collection called "Madrona Road" by Violet Craft. Our guild president is going to chop the seven designs into fat eighths so everyone can play with the whole collection. I'm not sure what we're doing with it yet, but I'm eager to find out. Our last free fabric challenge was a lot of fun.

Even the selvages are adorable on this collection. I hope some land in my pile.

This is what you buy at Jo-Ann's when you have a coupon and you've run out of things to buy. I saw some cute paper and fabric covered letters on Pinterest. I may have to try covering my Q.

I made gingerbread waffles this morning. Unless you have a huge crowd to feed, half the recipe. I've got gingerbread waffles coming out of my ears. They should freeze okay.