Let the merriment begin!

Truly, my favorite part of Christmas.

I splurged and bought the KAF mini pans, they are so nice and heavy! I think the fruit cakes baked up nicer in the smaller loaf pans.

I know many of you have tried my recipe for these and I say to brush on the brandy after baking… but I will just go ahead and confess that I pour it on.  LOL  You notice how much of the bottle I used, and not a drop dripped through, they can obviously take some more!  Also, my fruit has been marinating in brandy since summer this year.  These are very special cakes this year!

I spent the morning re-organizing the folders in my IntelliQuilter by type instead of designer, which is how it shipped.  I’ve put everything into blocks, borders, corners, setting triangles, motifs, feathers and pantos.  I may tweak that more, but it seemed prudent to deal with it before I purchase a gazillion more patterns.

Both machines were humming away by quarter to five this morning, one with more snowflakes, the other with more bookmarks.

All this embroidery has been a nice break from quilting, I’m enjoying it!  I’m going through a serious amount of white thread though!

I have to take a break for a little while though, and go make some more fruitcakes.  My fruit has been soaking in brandy for several weeks now, I’ve never let it go that long, so it could be interesting!

The new KitchenAid mixer arrives today, so tomorrow I’ll start baking cookies so I can test it out and see how it compares to my old one.  I was going to do the fruitcakes tomorrow and use it, but Jim decided it would be better put to use on cookies.  Imagine that.  LOL

Somewhere once I read that you could save all your scraps of water soluble stabilizer, chop them up and put them into a jar, and put some water in it to dissolve the pieces.  Then you can use this solution to brush onto fabric for say, decorative stitches in lieu of using more stabilizer. 

So there’s my half gallon mason jar, getting full quickly!  I have no idea of how much water to add though, if anyone has any experience in doing this, please share details!

Less sewing, more cooking, I love this time of year!

Jim will hopefully only work a half day today, since he has to leave for New Orleans again on Sunday, and won’t be back until Thanksgiving day, so I don’t have any sewing planned for the day.

I just put a couple of loaves of whole wheat bread in the oven, and I’m getting ready to make the batter for more fruitcakes, having had my fruit marinating in brandy for a few days now.  I just can’t get enough of these!  I’m going to make them in miniature loaf pans this time… do you think this batch might make it until Christmas?

Last night, I made my Cajun Salmon in Cream Sauce, and with the leftover sauce and salmon, I’m going to make pasta tonight for dinner, with asparagus and tomatoes.  I’m also going to try a different Clafouti recipe.  I adore Clafouti, and have always used Julia Child’s recipe, but I found a different recipe over on the King Arthur Flour website this morning.  I believe I am going to make mine with pears for dessert tonight.

I do need Jim’s help today squaring up the backing fabric for the log cabin quilt.  It’s huge and I need four hands!  I want to get it on the frame this weekend and finished, as I plan to hand bind it and that will take me some time. 

The new bumper for the Magster is on order, they will paint it when it comes in, and if there’s no other damage when the remove the bumper, I’ll have the car back in a day.  We were lucky and the guy that hit us and took off did have valid insurance.  Makes you wonder why he’d flee the scene doesn’t it?  Clueless!

I’m still playing phone tag with the Sheriff back home in Missouri over our stolen trailer.  I don’t expect any results from that, but I do want a written report so I can claim the loss on our taxes!

I hope everyone is getting lots of sewing done!

This that and the other

I have finally made fruitcake that I absolutely adore.  I’ve experimented with several recipes and variations of them in the past, and at last I’ve settled on a perfect cake for me!  My recipe was inspired by one from King Authur flour, tweaked and modified to suit my tastes better.  I’ve posted it in the recipe section, enjoy!

I did finish my scrappy star quilt and was going to load it on the longarm this weekend, but I have a customer quilt coming today that I need to do first.

I haven’t had time to look at it and decide how it should be quilted yet… and I still need to finish the Pirate Monkey Quilt too… yep I missed the fair.  I think it was this weekend.

Jim and I (and the dogs) spent yesterday in Little Rock car shopping.  It’s funny, we went down already knowing exactly what we wanted and exactly what we were willing to pay for it… and it still took all day!  Well, let me rephrase that.  I knew exactly what I wanted… right down to the exterior color, the interior color, the automatic transmission, the electronic hard top (convertible).  Jim needed convincing on the automatic transmission and the hard top versus the soft top… which is what took so long.  We had to drive cars with and without each so he could compare. Fortunately, that’s all it took to make him see the light of day.  /grin

My days with a stick shift are over.  For years, a Jeep Wrangler was my vehicle of choice, and even with a 6 cylinder manual, they were still a bit on the gutless side when it came to steep hills or passing power.  And I’m a cautious, slow driver for the most part, as I have limited depth perception… I’m legally blind in one eye.  The Mazda Miata, which is the car I chose after researching vehicles to find the right fit for my needs, is only a 4 cylinder (fuel economy), and has tons of power, even in the automatic version!  But it’s not just an automatic, it’s a paddle shifter, meaning you can also put it in manual mode, and do the shifting yourself.  The “paddles” are thumb controlled and mounted on the steering wheel.  What a great alternative when a little more control is needed, and your hands still remain on the steering wheel.  Well… it made Jim happy anyway. /wink

As for the soft top, I had one Jeep with a soft top, and one with a hard top, and while I loved the soft top for ease of removal, road noise was awful on the highway, and I was always worried about theft when I was out shopping… and they’re hard to heat and cool.  The Miata’s hard top is electronic, and takes all of twelve seconds to open or close. 

The car is tiny!  I should be able to go shopping in downtown Little Rock now with no problem, something I’ve had to avoid unless I went with someone else, because there’s no way you can park a truck with a crewcab, extended bed, and duallys downtown.

Because the car is so low to the ground, I can’t judge the distance before I would run into or back into something simply by looking, because of my lack of depth perception.  I can however, learn the distances.  Jim will take me to a parking lot and set up two pilons, and by bumping into them, I can cement to memory what the distance should be, even if I can’t actually see it.  I’ve learned to do this with many things over the years.  Walking is a different story!  I have always run into things, and probably always will!  Our truck has a camera on the rear bumper which is a wonderful thing for me, and it sits so high I can actually see over the bumper, but the Miata didn’t have that option.

The dealer had to hunt down a car with the colors and options that I wanted, so I wasn’t able to drive it home yesterday.  It should arrive sometime next week.  I could have ordered it new, but having done my research, I knew that if there was one specced out the way I wanted on a lot somewhere, I could pretty much count on knocking about $5k off the price since it’s the end of the 2010 model year.

Now to convince Jim a convertible is just as much fun as a motorcycle, and sell all the bikes!