New Year's Eve Partying :-)

My church is having its annual Watchnight service on Thursday. It includes a potluck meal - every family is suppose to bring a dish to share. It usually works out that enough people bring main dishes, side dishes, and desserts. This year, I'm bringing two desserts.

First up: Chocolate Pretzel Buttons from the Pioneer Woman's Tasty Kitchen site. They're easy to make.

Second up: More brownies! Instead of making them with peppermint, I'm going for a cookie flavor. I'm using Hershey's cookies 'n' cream candy bars for the frosting and chopped oreo cookies in place of the chopped peppermint candies. For ease of serving, I'll go ahead and put them in muffin cups like before.

Have a safe New Year's Eve and see you next year!

~QB29

Some Goals for 2010

An email group I'm on has been discussing setting resolutions or goals for the coming year. I've been thinking about them ever since I read the first email regarding the subject. Some of them are quilty, but the ones I've been thinking about today are not quilt related. So here goes ....

1. Lose 10 percent of my body weight.
2. Exercise at least 3 times a week.
3. Eat a balanced diet, with less fast food then I've been eating now.

I'm trying to keep my goals simple so that I actually have a chance of doing them without getting frustrated with one and solving that frustration by doing none :-).

I'll have more later this week, some quilty and some non-quilty.

~QB29

My newest design!

For Christmas I received fabric from 3 different people! My Aunt sent backing fabric plus three different focus fabrics. My mom gave me a charm pack, and my sister gave me a honey bun roll. I've dug into the honey bun roll and here's the design I've come up with:

The 16-patches are made up of 1" squares. The white border to each of the 16 patches are actually the white print that was in the honey bun. The sashing is also 1" wide. The cornerstones will be one of the "lighter" prints in the honey bun. The white inner border will probably have to be a white solid or tone on tone, as there is not enough in the honeybun to do a white inner border. The pink will be one of the prints, but I am ordering a couple yards for the border and binding. The quilt will finish at 39" - 43", depending on how wide I make the outer border. The minimum I'll make it is 4", but I may make it 6", depending on how it looks.

The honey bun was Mary Engelbreit's "Baskets of Flowers" for Moda.

I'll post a pic when I'm done sewing the top. I hope to finish it this weekend. I'm getting the boys tomorrow afternoon and keeping them through supper on Monday to help my sister out. Her daycare is closed all week, but she can't take the whole week off work.

My mom gave me the Critters Charm Pack from Studio E Fabrics.

I'm not sure what pattern I'll use yet.

~QB29

peppermint brownies - another view

I cut them into small rectangles and placed each in a cupcake liner for easy serving. Plus cutting them up meant know one noticed the giant hole left from taste testing one or two or four or 12 (okay, maybe it was just 2).

~QB29

Look what I made ....

Not quilty, but yummy! Peppermint Brownies :-). Bake a box mix of brownies (or your own homemade recipe) as directed. As soon as you pull it out of the oven, top with about 15 Ghiradelli dark chocolate mint filled squares. Pop back into oven about 1 minute. Spread melted chocolate over brownies. Immediately top with chopped peppermint candies (the star light mints or candy canes). Let cool and enjoy!

I'm having them for dessert tonight, but I may have to have a test taste this afternoon. I'll let you know how they are. The recipe is from the Ghiradelli site, but I substituted a box mix for the homemade mix they had.

QB29

win a $20 gift card

Rhonda over at ravelly1 is giving away a $20 gift card to her favorite store, Common Threads. If you would like to win, follow her instructions here.

~QB29

love tracking numbers....

I'm waiting on a package from Fedex. They have excellent tracking info.
At 6:06 PM on Sunday the company electronically sent the info to fedex.
The package arrived at Fedex at 6:00 AM the next morning.
That night at 10:24 PM it left the origin facility heading to another Fedex locatin.
It arrived there at 10:25 am the next morning.
At 6:12 PM it departed for the sort facility that services my area, arriving there at 8:38 PM
It arrived in my city at the local Fedex at 7:42 AM this morning and ....
at 8:36 AM was scanned while being loaded onto the "fedex vehicle for delivery"

Now if I could just GPS the truck to see where it is in my fine city, lol.

Woo hoo, it will be here today :-D.

~QB29