Spooky Halloween Cookies

Every year I say to myself that I'm going to take the time to make and decorate cookies for Halloween.  I do it for Christmas but time always seems to get away from me on Halloween.  What got me motivated to actually follow through this year is my niece.  She's been deployed and will be away for the next 6 months.  Yes, even through Christmas.  So I planned on doing several things for her to keep her spirits up during this time.  I send at least 4 letters a month to start.  For me, that is a feat in it's self.  I also found out she loves antique dollies so I went to some local shops and found a few small enough to stuff in an envelope with a letter.  I also planned on sending her a small Christmas tree with lights and ornaments.  You just can't go through Christmas without a tree!  Anyway I also wanted to be sure to send care packages and one of the care (or two or three) I told her I'd send her cookies.  So thus the reason I actually got in gear this year.

I found this video on how to make the cutest pumpkin cookies ever!  I often watch Sweetambs videos, she is so over the top talented!  She posted this video and information for Halloween for free.  She does sell videos on several technique at a low price so you should go check her out if you want to learn how to decorate cookies.  Here is the link to the pumpkin cookies I made :  https://www.sweetambs.com/tutorial/halloween-cookies/

Here are the cookies I made after watching the video, I also made some ghosts and bats just for more fun, now mind you cookie decorating isn't in my real house but I did enjoy it anyway and I don't think they look too bad.  So if I can do it so can you!

Had to share this...beautiful

Post by Interesting Things.

Bird House for Quilt Show raffle

I was racking my brain about what the boutique could donate towards the Tri-County Quilt Show raffle. I considered making another light box but they are pretty expensive to make so....I was wandering about some garden shops, I love all the great things you can find for your garden at these specialty garden centers.  I was looking at the bird houses, I love bird houses.  I've made a few very primitive ones and have been meaning to make something more special.  I even looked for patterns but there are none to be found except for very simple ones that really no one needs a pattern for.  Anyway as I was looking at these bird houses I noticed the price tag on them..WOW is all I can say.  This one here was $295.00, of course my mouth fell open when I seen the tag.  I loved it but didn't love the price tag since there wasn't more than $30.00 invested in it at most.

After spending the day visiting my favorite garden centers and looking at all the awesome bird houses I decided that a bird house might be a good auction item.  Since they are so expensive to purchase surely we could get people to by tickets to try to win one of these beauty's.

So here is a picture of my bird house creation, When the glue is completely dry I'll try to remember to put up better photos.  This is a fairly large bird house, it cost me about $70.00 to make because of all the doll house items and gingerbread and shingles.  I had lots of scrap wood so I didn't have to purchase any wood.  I added close up's of the window on the front.  If you look inside you will see a quilt shop.  That is my favorite feature of this bird house.  I painted barn quilts on the front and back and named the quilt shop "Ole Bird Quilt Shop". I am happy about how she turned out and I hope someone will love her!  I may have to make one for myself!

Glue isn't all the way dry on the little group of spools.  I'm holding them up with a drill bit..:)

Quilt Works Kindness is amazing!

As I've told you before I'm part of a wonderful quilt guild full of great people that love the art of quilting and this year I've been chair of the quilt show boutique along with Mary.  We are in charge of making sure the boutique has lots of great stuff for people who visit the quilt show will want or can't resist purchasing.  We have a workshop each month (at Quilt Works, they donate their workshop for us to use)where members of the guild attend and help us make the items we've decided to sell at the quilt show.  As you can imagine it is expensive to make items to sell and the guild covers the cost of this.  However we wanted to earn some money to help save the guild a few dollars on our supplies.  We decided on light boxes.  We had planned to raffle them off then later found that this wasn't an option because of the guilds tax status.  So.... when Quilt Works in Cypress found out our predicament they offered to sell the light box for us in their shop...isn't that awesome!  The first one sold then a lady came into Quilt Works and said she wanted to purchase that light box!  So they asked me if I wanted to make another...and of course I did!  Quilt Works is one of my favorite quilt shops (actually my favorite) because of their large variety of fabrics and notions and their huge work room. .....and they are so awesome.  For them to take time out of their busy days to answer questions about the light box sitting on the counter and then to sell another one is over the top.  Not too many business would want to be bothered, and this light box isn't any small item either.  It took up lots of room on their counter, it's 27x20 inches.  If you are ever in Cypress Texas and want to visit a quilt shop that has everything in fabric that you'd want and that has these kind of generous people that go out of their way to help people, I promise you will not be disappointed!  They have hearts of gold.

Yard Long Beans OH YEAH

We love to garden and we garden all year round.  We are starting to really get the hang of it and we no longer plant just to watch stuff grow!  We now only plant vegetables we love and we love our new found vegetable "Yard Long Beans".  A lovely woman who purchase a couple of my counter height gardens brought me a little baggy of pods full of seeds for these beauties.  I didn't plant them the first year, I just added them to my ever growing seed collection.  Well this year actually only about a month ago I finally started 3 plants from these seeds.  They came up in about 2 days and after about 1 week I planted them into my bean garden.  Well in a very short time we had beans!  When I say beans I mean BEANS.  These things actually grow a yard long or longer and they taste like a cross between green beans and asparagus if you can imagine.
Well, we absolutely love these beans and can't believe I've lived this entire time and never have had these tasty little beauties.  So being that we love them so much, 3 plants will never do so...I set off to build another bean garden.  Bean gardens can't really be counter height, they need to be on the ground because they are climbers.  My new bean garden is complete except ten 40 pound bags of soil wasn't enough, I need at least two more.  Here are pictures of my yard long beans and my new bean garden.  Hope you like it, if you want to know how to build it...just ask and I'll give you instructions.

Those above grew this long in a day...no joke.  By the time I picked these they were more than a yard long and thicker.

Our Quilt giveaway project

Do you remember a post I did a few months ago.  I showed you one row of the quilt the chairs of the boutique and a couple helpers were making.  Well everyone got theirs rows in and I got the top all sewn together so I can show you just how adorable it is.  You can enter to win this quilt just by making a purchase at the quilt show boutique.
I don't know if any of you have ever assembled a quilt that several people helped to sew the blocks but I must tell you it is not as easy as you would think.  And actually it would be much easier for one person to make the quilt.  The reason....well somehow the people who design and manufacture sewing machines (my guess is they are men) can't seem to figure out the quarter inch.  I mean really isn't a quarter inch the same always or does it fluctuate or something....<laughing>  well because of this "fluctuation" everyone's blocks, rows and finished quilts will all be varied in size.  So putting a quilt together where many people have so graciously helped you can be a challenge.  I knew this before I decided to get together and make a quilt for the quilt show...but you know what, it makes it special and well, it still turned out beautiful and because we all made it we can ALL be proud of it.  I sure hope people are inspired to visit the boutique for a chance to win this beauty.  Guild quilt shows support many wonderful charities so please plan to attend any in your area.  The ladies of the guilds work hard all year to help those in need.
Anyway here is our quilt top, and it was fun to make. Now we need to find someone that will donate time to do a beautiful job quilting it.