Quilts

So nice to see you posted a picture Jackie. I am perplexed as blogger seems to have improved (changed) the menu bar. Lots of fancy options now, but I can't seem to find the spell check - which it what I use the most......

Thought those who quilt might appreciate a look at my neighbor Judy's quilt. Her first needle-turned hand appliqued quilt. It won first prize at the Oshkosh Guilds EAA show last summer (forgot the category). Most of Judy's quilts have houses on them.

A Learning Experience!

Amanda is teaching me how to post pictures on the blog, and I really liked this one! Such beautiful nieces we have!

It's Snowing!

Good morning, everyone!

It's snowing here - very pretty, and falling determinedly. We were going to go to a new yoga class this morning...but I think we'll just stay home. It's cozy here, and the driveway isn't plowed yet.

We had an incredibly productive Saturday. Laundry, grocery store, made and canned applesauce, baked a giant squash for soup, dried apples, and Christmas movie. Today, we have to finish wrapping some gifts and write those darned Christmas cards.

Have a nice day, everyone! See you on Friday!

One Little Event After Another

OK, so it is the most amazing thing...the guys are here putting in the new furnace and before the main event of installation, they are now cleaning out 60+ years of dirt and dust from my hot air ducts. My house already smells better! And to think I was skeptical of having this done! I had read somewhere that it really didn't do anything. Well it certainly seems to make a difference in my house. The poor workers keep sneezing!

So, Emily flew into Madison last Friday and we enjoyed a nice time shopping on State Street. At Thanksgiving, Emily brought along her outfit for the December 12th wedding she was attending. It was a nice dress but the FDL family all felt she needed something just a little more glitzy. After all, this was her old boyfriend Tom who was getting married and she is also friends with the bride, Rachael and she was attending it with Shaun, so we wanted her to look extra nice.

We found this great dress at a little shop on State Street. Rachel and I knew it was perfect before Emily even tried it on. In real life it as not as shiny as it looks in the photos.

Emily with her friends Emily and Tracy

Back of dress

Shaun looked nice also!

And, I forgot to tell you what else we did in Madison on Friday. We had a really nice dinner at a Spanish Tapas restaurant. Our first time for Tapas (well not for Emily, when she visited her Barcelona friends, she went to real Spanish tapas bars-DUH) Anyway, the waitress told us most people order 2 or 3 plates. We started with 2 each, so we had 8 things to share. YUM!

My creamy mushroom soup contained 4 kinds of mushrooms and was so delicious---Wish I had some for lunch today. I also had tilapia encrusted with noodles - good but a little spicy for me. It was interesting- looked like a fillet in prison ( noodles being the bars) Somewhere in that noodle confinement were jalapeno peppers. Emily ordered baked goat cheese floating in a tomato sauce with garlic toast points, not only delicious but pretty. I think my favorite thing was what Rachel ordered... chicken croquettes with horseradish sauce or maybe it was the manchego cheese, red wine, onion flatbread... or maybe the almond pear tart with citrus sorbet I had for dessert. Jeff enjoyed fried bananas with peanut butter ice cream. Rachel loved her flan and Emily had some kind of chocolate mousse. Eating new things I don't have to prepare myself is certainly appreciated.

And, the reason for our trip, we saw the musical Grease. I love live music. The orchestra was so good not to mention all that singing and dancing. What ruined the whole night was Taylor Hicks. He plays Teen Angel. I guess he was ok as that role but looked kind of stiff against all those bouncy, dancing, young kids from Rydell High. What ruined it was after the short encore, which was a medley of the shows famous tunes, we were all humming and tapping our toes to "Born to Hand Jive" and "We Go Together" and then Taylor Hicks comes out and sings and plays his guitar to some County/Rock song on his new album. It was so loud I couldn't understand the words (yes, I am old) and then he whipped out and played that harmonica too. The feeling in the theater just stopped. Everyone was all peppy and happy and the mood changed like we had all been yelled at by the principal. Anyway the musical was nice.

Well, I guess fun was had by all last weekend until Monday morning when Emily missed her flight back to Maine. We had snow and Appleton's airline website said the flight was delayed over an hour. So Emily took her time getting to the airport, arriving a little over an hour before the flight said it was going to leave (usually an hour is plenty of time in Appleton's little airport to check in, get through security and find your gate. I think there only are 6 gates!). When she checked in, the board still said the flight was delayed one more hour, but in fact the plane had just left --- without her. Whoops.

No Tudor Dinner for Us

Usually I am the one that worries about driving on slippery and snow covered roads but today Jeff and Bob decided snowstorm "Allison" was too much for us to drive to Madison for the Tudor Dinner. We had tickets last year and were snowed out. The Union was kind enough to allow us to use the tickets this year. I doubt if they will do that again. I bought a new Christmas pin and planned to wear my fancy sweater set and everything for the event.

This is what I would have been eating and doing tonight if it wasn't going to snow 12-15":

5:45 pm, Main Lounge
Wassail bowl and hors d’oeuvres

6:45 pm, Great Hall
Presentation of the Boar’s Head
The Grand Processional and caroling

Tudor Feast

Chopped romaine with Kalamata olives, Feta and balsamic vinaigrette
Jeff was having Cornish game hen with raspberry puree
Darleen was having Curried vegetable paella with asparagus
Roasted baby red potatoes
Herb garden vegetables
Flaming Figgy Pudding with hard sauce Ceremonial

Banquet Ceremonials
Strolling minstrels
The Figgy Pudding Ceremonial
A Yuletide Toast
A Celebration of Song from the
Philharmonic Chorus of Madison
Carols for singing by all

There are rooms at the Union available, we could stay overnight but it is expected to snow all the way through midnight on Wednesday. So instead of a night of old English Pageantry in the Grand Ballroom I guess I will make tuna noodle casserole with potato chips on top and do some knitting while I watch the flakes fall. I hope the "King and Queen" don't get angry that we are not there.

Jeff is trying to get the snow blower ready right now. Good thing I always have a backlog of projects to finish, I don't think we will be going anywhere for awhile.

Thanksgiving

Pictures? Anyone? Joe and I would love to see.

Awful Library Books

One of the blogs I try to read occasionally is from two librarians in Michigan. The librarians feature books that are still on library shelves that should have been weeded years ago. HERE is the link.


So this book explains why my teenage years were so terrible, I never had access to Betty Betz Party Book, copyright 1947. But there is still time to save Rachel. Look at the advice Betty hands out: ( my favorite is the dead butterfly party)




- What to wear. “Always be sure that your dresses are at least an inch or so below the knee, because it’s always embarrassing to have a few cards wisecracking about your peekaboo knees.” In the late '60's and early '70's dresses were so short we hard to worry about other parts of our anatomy being peekaboo.

- Who to invite. “If you have singles, be sure that they can be paired off suitably. And don’t forget to consider such things as height, looks and IQ.” IQ? It has been a long time, but I don't recall that being a criteria for "pairing off".

- What food to serve. “Exotic foods are fine if your friends are making a point of going to an East Indian tea room or a Pizzeria, but if you’re dishing it up, it’s best to be strictly homespun.” Pizza? Exotic? Yes, Rachel, lets have a party and serve meatloaf!

- What songs to sing. “Nothing lets the hair down faster in a mixed group than a few peppy songs.” Such as “Shoo Fly,” “Buffalo Gals,” “Johnny Get Your Hoe-Cake Done,” and “Good-Night Ladies.” No song gets me up on the dance floor faster than "Good-Night Ladies".

- What games to play. “Each girl…takes off her right shoe, and puts it in a bag. All the bags are collected and put in a laundry basket. Each boy selects one of the packages. The girls are all seated in a line against the wall, and it’s up to the men to find the owners of the shoes. When this is done, they are all off in a swirl of swoony music, and woe unto the ‘dolly with the hole in her stockin’!'”

Miss Betz also has some suggestions for theme parties, such as a butterfly chase party. Each couple gets a butterfly net and small bottle of gasoline to “to chloroform the insects” and then sets off into the woods to “bag booty.” When it’s over, you have plenty of beautiful dead butterflies to mount for your rumpus room! What parents would think it a good idea to send their teens off into the woods, coupled by height, looks and IQ with a bottle of gasoline?

Genetics

Just a note to let you all know we're still here! We've been busy.

On Saturday, we went to Wellesley, in torrential rain, for a hand-papermaking workshop. It was fun, we made a ton of paper. (Darleen, Faith Marilynn Madzar was there and asked me to say hello to you.)

We've also been gradually cleaning the house, getting ready for Bruce and Judy Fink to come for Thanksgiving. (They arrive on Saturday.) This always takes longer than I expect it will. I am blaming my genes for expecting my house to be as clean as my mother's, even though it has non-square corners, strange nooks and crannies, old windows, and layers of dust going back more than 200 years. But still, I strive for the sparkly, clean, and tidy. The battle continues.

I am also blaming genetics for the fact that I've volunteered to serve a continental breakfast and a soup and sandwich lunch to twenty people tomorrow. I made the mistake of reading ingredient labels on items at BJ's (the wholesale club that camp belongs to). I know it will all taste fine, but I think that the ingredients in sliced turkey should be "turkey, water, salt" with maybe a few spices. I was, sadly, mistaken. To make myself feel better, I splurged on good coffee.

And, it is also your fault that I'm packing a basket full of tablecloths, napkins, pretty plates and bowls, etc., and will be decanting everything from its convenient plastic packaging. Really, would we want it any other way?

Okay, off to wash and cut grapes into serving-sized bunches.

Love you!
Amanda

Two Tiny Baskets

I just finished two little baskets of walnut and ash and since they are a gift I thought you might like to see them before I give them away later today. The market was just fun to make, the bushel basket, from it's waxed linen twined base, to tucking in such a small space to the 1/8" round oval ash rim was just miserable to weave. I must have soaked the rim for 6 hours and it still wouldn't bend easily. But overall I love weaving with real wood.



The nickel is in there to help you judge the size. The market is about 1 1/2" by 2" by 2" high. The bushel basket is about 2" in diameter and almost 2" high. Too bad no one plays with Barbie in this household anymore, Barbie and Ken could go on a picnic.

Feeling Old and Stupid

Sometimes, no matter how much I concentrate I just do not understand. It is not like the problem is something new... I am sure some of you know what I am talking about. The situations occur when you can't figure out how to turn something on and your daughter looks at you like you are really dumb and says "Mom, it's the universal symbol for ON & OFF ". Who knew there was a universal symbol for such a thing?

OR no matter what buttons you push on the tv remote you can't figure out how to get the tv back to being a tv - it is stuck in Guitar Hero mode. ( I am getting pretty good a playing "Slow Ride" but that is another story) And when you ask your other daughter to help you, she looks at you with pity in her eyes, pushes a couple buttons and in less than a second "poof" the tv is fixed.

There is one area I usually understand with no problem and that has been sewing. So, you can understand my distress today as I found an article on a craft blog titled Sewing with Deployable Structures . What? The only "deployable" thing I could think of was sending out the troops. My College Edition of the American Heritage Dictionary said "deploy was to spread out your troops to form an extended front". When I was teaching, some days I would have liked troops to cover my front but I still didn't understand how it related to sewing.

So I had to Google. It took a while as I filtered through articles about bridges and buildings until I found an article about structures that can folded small and then be opened. Ah Ha, Deployable Clothing. It sounds like a good idea to me. Nice for travel. I think they had clothing like this on The Jetson's. Jane and Geroge pushed buttons and the clothing got larger. The article focused mainly on hats. I don't think McCalls and Simplicity have patterns for this yet but at least I know what they are talking about now, not quite so old and stupid as I felt earlier in the day.