Whew!

They did it!  We did it!  The school Christmas play was tonight and the students did an amazing job.  They knew their lines.  They transitioned and changed sets smoothly.  There were 17 students, many with multiple parts.  They always exceed anything they’ve done in rehearsal when we get to the actual play.  Thanks to Carol and Sam for the pictures.  I didn’t have a chance to take any since I was the prompter and had to follow along closely. 

Here are a few pictures to document the event.  

Three Missionaries

 

Young Scrooge and his sister Fan

 

Scrooge & Marley

 

 The bed was made from a broken table top, bolted to scooters.  PVC pipe poles and the curtain was fabric I had on hand.  It was attached to string with shower curtain rings and safety pins.  Carol, Sam and Chad built the bed and I added the textiles.  

Get up on the wrong side of the bed, Scrooge?

 

Christmas Past and Scrooge during rehearsal

 

Fezziwig’s Warehouse

Belle's House

I’m not sure why I made Fred a vest since he covered it up the whole play with that jacket.  He didn’t have the jacket in any rehearsals.  

Fred’s House

Cratchit House — Tiny Tim is doing a good job of hiding behind Bob

You can tell by the look on Jesse’s face he hated this line.  He is talking about the Christmas pudding and says to his wife “Like it! Why my dear, next to our children it is the best thing you’ve ever produced!”  

Ah, There’s Tiny Tim

Christmas Present, Ignorance and Want

 

Scrooge and Christmas Yet to Come

 

A Portion of the Cast

 

Carol, Sam and Chad put together the backdrops.  I worked on costumes.  If I’m counting correctly I made 10 vests two of which were reversible, 12 skirts (I went simple with these one seam, a hem, a casing with ribbon pulled through for an adjustable waist), 2 capes, 2 mob caps, 1 night cap, 1 clock, 1 apron and I started a bonnet that just didn’t get finished.   All the fabric except the gray for the capes and the off-white for the mob caps and apron (that fabric came from Walmart for $1.50/yd) was upholstery fabric remnants that was donated to the school years ago.  It doesn’t sound like so much here, but when I was working on my ceiling at the same time and cooked dinner for the play it seemed a little overwhelming.   

It is finished, so now I can move on to a few decorations and a little Christmas preparation in my own house.

Gift Exchange?

Today is an annual gift exchange party.  So of course, being Princess Procrastinator I worked on my gift last night.  The gift doesn’t have to be handmade, but those are the type gifts I like so they are what I take.

I made this snowman table runner from the Art ♥ to Heart book Easy Does It for Winter.  Everything but the buttons came from my stash.

This morning when I woke up the snow was piling up.  A lot of times when it snows in town we don’t get much at our house, but that is not the case today.  I kept watching and finally at noon decided I probably wouldn’t be going to the party after all.  I’m sure I can get there.  However, I have a long list of things still to accomplish today, and if I get stuck in snow on the way home it won’t happen.  Oh well, I either have a gift for next year or I have a new table runner.

Christmas Pudding Prop

In our school play Mrs. Cratchit gives Bob Cratchit (aka Jesse)  a Christmas Pudding and they talk about it.  I needed a Christmas Pudding apparently also known as Plum Pudding.  I have never actually tasted Christmas Pudding.  However, I had purchased this magazine for some of the patterns it contains.

Low and behold it has a pattern for a wool felt Christmas Pudding ornament.   So voilá, today I finished my pudding prop.

Jesse my poor picky eater, won’t eat pudding of any kind.  He is not impressed with this either.

More Uses for Renae’s Rays

The little whole cloth quilt I posted a couple of days ago was marked with Renae’s Rays and one stencil.  Renae’s Rays isn’t just for quilts.  I’ve been using it for slightly different projects as I work on items for the school play.

First a 6 foot clock for the back drop.  It is felt and I just marked it with Sharpies. 

Then how about mob caps for some of the girls to wear?  I looked at the width of the fabric and then chose a circle size that would allow two caps per width.  I used the rolled hem foot on my sewing machine to finish the edge.  My initial plan was to sew elastic two inches from the edge.  I did it on one cap using a zig zag and stretching the elastic as I went.  It didn’t work quite the way I wanted.  It was a little too big, but we still used it. We are on too short a deadline for me to worry about ripping things out.  (This picture is Mrs. Cratchit — for her costume I made the cap, skirt and apron.)

Since the elastic wasn’t ideal, on the next cap I used a wide zig zag over 1/8″ ribbon.  This meant I could pull the ribbon up to tighten.  That worked much better and it would be possible to adjust for different sized heads.  This picture is Mrs. Fezziwig. 

I’ll be doing one more post with more of the students and costumes.

Night Cap/Elf Hat

(I’ve had posts piling up in my head, so you may notice some of the new ones showing up here are back dated to coincide with when the even actually took place.)

In addition to scrapping texture off the ceiling, any spare minutes are consumed making costumes for the school play.  We are doing “A Christmas Carol” and I am pretty much the costume department.  This is short turn around, so no, the costumes are not historically correct.  This is down and dirty sewing!

This morning before taking off for school one of the things I worked on was Scrooge’s night cap.  I didn’t have a pattern so I thought I’d show you what I did.

First I measured the circumference of Scrooge’s (aka Nolan’s) head.  This became the base of an isosceles triangle (for those that slept through math class this is a triangle with two equal sides and two equal angles).  I then marked the middle of that line and drew a line perpendicular to the line the length I wanted the hat.  In my case it was about a yard.  I connected the point of that line with each end of the base and added a half-inch seam allowance.  This is what my paper pattern looked like.

I cut the pattern from one layer of fabric.  In my case I used a single knit — a) because I had it on hand and b) because it was very forgiving for the hat.  It could be made out of a woven, it would just be important to be sure the head measurement was accurate.

I pinned the long sides of the triangle together and because it was knit fabric I stitched the 1/2″  seam with a narrow zig zag.

Then I turned up the bottom edge 1/2″ and once again used a narrow zig zag to stitch it down.  I did say this was down and dirty sewing — I’m not looking for pretty just fast. 

Turn the hat right side out.  You could stop right here, but the hat of course needed a tassel.  I had some navy blue yarn on hand and again quick and easy.  You could make a template to wrap the yarn around.  I just wrapped it around my fingers until it was the density I wanted.

I removed the yarn from my fingers and then used a knot from macrame days at the top. I can’t remember the name of it.   You start with a loop like this.

The loop will go at the top of the tassel and the tail will hang below the start of the bottom wrap.  Leaving the tail hanging wrap the other end of the  yarn around the tassel yarn keeping the wraps tight together, but not overlapping.

When you have gone as high as you want with the wraps cut the yarn leaving another tail.  This tail goes through the loop you have at the top of the tassel.

Now pull the first tail to bring the loop and the second tail down under the wraps.  Don’t pull it all the way through just far enough to bury the loop and the part of the second tail.

Once the loop is pulled down into the wraps the excess from both tails can be cut off close to the wraps.  Then trim the ends of the tassel even and it is ready to stitch onto the tip of the cap.

The directions for the tassel are probably clear as mud.  But I think that is the best I can do with just pictures.

Here is Scrooge/Nolan at practice wearing the cap.

His night-shirt is the robe I made for myself for VBS two summers ago.  The Ghost of Christmas Present is wearing a cape I made from old upholstery remnants that were donated to the school many years ago.  Almost all the costumes I made were from the remnants.  I will hopefully have more pictures soon.

While the cap I made was meant to be a night cap it would make a cute elf cap.  It was very quick to make.

Are We Finished?

 

I started these guys last Saturday night, too. ( It should be obvious by now I have a short attention span.)  I worked on them a little bit each night until early Thursday morning when I put what might be the finishing touches on them. 

The pattern is from Sweet Dreams Patterns.  I picked it up at some quilt show over the last few years.  I realized when I was pulling up the link I have several of the patterns and have already made a few.  I also found another one I “need!”  I followed the pattern for the most part, but improvised if I didn’t have the correct supplies.  The pattern said to sew the buttons on after stuffing the snowmen.  I maybe crazy, but I’m not going to that much trouble.  I tied bits of pearl cotton through the button holes and glued them on.  Also the wire for the ear muffs was just supposed to be a black 16 gauge wire.  I didn’t have that, but I did have silver wire and instead of one strand, I wrapped it around the handle of a wooden spoon to make the ear muffs.  I thought I was going to have mutiny on my hands when I went to put the second snowman on top of it.  All three males in the house were opposed and thought the snowmen should stay separate to save the spring.  I vetoed the vote.  I bought the pattern because I LIKED the stack!  The snowmen are supposed to have twig arms, but I think I like them without.  Finally there was supposed to be a rusty tin star on the top hat.  Apparently, rusty tin is no longer in.  I couldn’t find any anywhere I looked in town.  That’s alright, he looks fine without it.  So are they finished, probably because I’ll be moving on to something else  to fit my attention span.

Does the Proboscis Matter?

I’m going to an ornament/gift exchange on Sunday.  I could have purchased something, but I always prefer handmade items so out came the embroidery machine again.

The designs for these fellows came from the Machine Embroidery Snowmen set by The Stitch Connection.  They are made from scraps of batting.  Is it possible a longarm quilter has batting scraps?  I couldn’t find exactly the buttons I wanted and settled on these for the noses.  They are a little large and my boys have told me they look more like penguins than snowmen.  So in this case the proboscis does matter, and I made snow penguins.  Both boys also asked why I gave them a crown of thorns.  They aren’t buying that they are holly and fir halos or wreaths.   I guess that is what comes from living with a house full of males!

Christmas has come and gone …(almost)

We celebrated Christmas last night (Christmas Eve) which has been the tradition in both my family and my husband’s family our whole lives.  Santa has never been a big part of our celebrations.  He is just a guy that dresses in red, is used for decorative purposes and is a nice story. I won’t tell you what my FIL says about Santa.

When I was a child we always opened presents at my grandparents house.  We always had before opening presents.  My uncle’s (He is 12 years older than I am) birthday is on Christmas so he usually chose the meal.  I think most of the time we had homemade pizza.  Once everyone finally finished eating and things were cleaned up we got to go into the living room (the living & dining room were usually closed off except for special occasions and Sabbath) and open presents.

Based on that background, I make the boys wait until after we eat and it is at least dark outside before opening presents.  I have been accused by my children of continually coming up with more things that have to happen before they can open presents.  Jesse was practically twitching on the 23rd waiting to open presents and tried to talk us into opening them that day.  I finally gave him  a time he could use for countdown  — 5pm.  We had a simple dinner at 4pm and were actually ready to get started at about 4:50 pm.  The cameras were even charged and ready to go.  The boys made out like bandits as usual.  Have I mentioned they are the only grandchildren on either side? My sister and brother-in-law are also very good to them.  Every year Guy says there is too much, but every year he is just as guilty of spoiling them as anyone else.

I was in line behind someone at Sam’s Club at the beginning of the month and the cashier was telling the lady it was much cheaper to buy for boys than for girls.  I almost laughed out loud!  That may be the case when they are little, but when they get older they tend to have a long list of electronic wants.

 Both boys recieved digital cameras and accessories and have spent today running around taking pictures of some very odd things.  They also each received a game for their Nintendo DS, a lego set (Nolan a market street set and Jesse a train set), pajamas, classic game controllers for the Wii, money and small Swiss Army Knives.  Jesse also got Sonic & Mario at the Olympics for the Wii, slippers, a Cutest Kitten Wars book, and Nintendo Monopoly.  Nolan got Fox Trot books, a Gerber Multi-tool, and Stop Motion software. 

Nolan had played with the demo version of the stop motion software, but it put the words demo version through the middle of the screen.  Once he loaded the software today he went back and reprocessed his early video.  He and Jesse can get very creative with this.  Here is one of their early videos — someday you might be able to say you saw their work here first

It’s too bad the quality is so much worse once something is loaded on YouTube.

We had a nice dinner today with  family and a friend.  It wasn’t a traditional Christmas dinner, but everyone here seemed to be fine with that.  Dinner consisted of Homemade Lasagna, various breads,  salad and Apple berry crisp and Ice Cream for dessert.

I have to admit I have a feeling of let down every year once Christmas is over.  I have fun getting ready for it and once it is over, just the clean up remains.  However, I do have something to look forward to tomorrow.  Ruth’s Stitchery one of my favorite quilt shops is having her after Christmas sale tomorrow!  She always had hundreds of bolts of fabric (usually anything over a year old) in the back room for 40% off and 50% if you finish the bolt.  Plus many other things on sale.  This is when I buy my backings, but I will be there when the doors open tomorrow with my color wheel and 3 in 1 color tool in hand looking for fabric for my next color class project.

Christmas Sweets

Today was the first full day of vacation for my boys and we finally got around to make goodies for Christmas.  [I had intended to do it earlier, but am fighting another nasty cold.  It is the third so far this school year and puts me ahead of where I usually am for the whole school year.  Not sure what is going on, Guy suggested stress.]  My weakness is sweets — forget the salt give me the sugar.  I tend to overdo it with making sweets for Christmas. So in an attempt to restrain myself I’ve started making just one choice per family member.  The boys each helped to make their pick.  I think the number one sweet for Christmas in this household is Chocolate Scotcheroos.  We can count on Guy to pick that one so everyone else can come up with another option.  I’ve decided to include recipes for each pick here.  There appears to be a theme to our choices — the majority contain commercial cereal and the other equally used ingredients are peanut butter and chocolate. 

Guy’s Choice — Chocolate Scotcheroos

1 c. sugar
1 c. light corn syrup
1 c. peanut butter
6 c. Rice Krispies
6 oz. semi-sweet chocolate morsels
6 oz. butterscotch morsels

Combine sugar and corn syrup in microwave safe bowl and microwave until the mixture bubbles, stirring about every minute. Remove from microwave and stir in the peanut butter. Mix in the Rice Krispies. Press into a 9 x 12 pan which has been sprayed with cooking spray. Using waxed paper to press the mixture into the pan and avoid burning your fingers.

Combine the chocolate morsels and the butterscotch morsels in a microwave safe bowl and microwave at half power until the mixture melts. Stir once every minute. Spread the melted mixture over the Rice Krispies and allow to set up. You can chill to speed the process. Cut into bars. These are very rich so smaller bars are better than larger ones.

Nolan’s Choice — White Trash

2 lb. white chocolate (white morsels work)
2 T. vegetable oil
3 c. wheat chex
3 c. rice chex
3 c. corn chex
½ lb small pretzels
½ lb. pretzel nubs
3 c. Crispix
1 can mixed nuts

Combine the last seven ingredients in a large bowl.

Combine white chocolate and vegetable oil in a microwave safe bowl. Microwave at half power until the chocolate is melted stirring every minute. Pour the white chocolate over the other ingredients and stir gently to coat. Spread on waxed paper to cool. Break into pieces and store in covered container.

Jesse’s Choice — Peanut-Butter & Chocolate Kisses

½ c. margarine, room temperature

½ c. peanut butter

¾ c. packed brown sugar

¼ c. granulated sugar

1 egg

1 t. vanilla extract

¼ t. salt

1-3/4 cup all-purpose flour

1 t. baking soda

3T. granulated sugar

48 milk-chocolate candy kisses, unwrapped

Preheat oven to 375F.  In medium bowl, beat together margarine, peanut butter, brown sugar, ¼ cup granulated sugar, egg, vanilla and salt until light and fluffy.  Add flour and baking soda, beating until thoroughly blended.  Shape dough into 48 balls, using a rounded teaspoon for each.  Roll balls in the 3 tablespoons granulated sugar.  Place 2 inches apart on ungreased baking sheets.  Bake 8 – 10 minutes or until light golden.  Immediately top each cookie with a candy kiss, carefully pressing down firmly.  Remove cookies from baking sheets; cool on racks.  Makes about 48 cookies.

My Choice?  I’d have picked the Chocolate Scotcheroos, so I let the boys sort of pick the fourth — Muddy Buddies
9 c. Chex cereal (any variety)
1 c. semisweet chocolate chips
½ c. peanut butter
¼ c. margarine
1 t. vanilla
1-1/2 cups powdered sugar
In a large bowl, measure cereal; set aside.
In a microwave safe bowl, stir together chocolate chips, peanut butter and margarine. Microwave uncovered on High 1 minute; stir. Microwave about 30 seconds longer or until the mixture can be stirred smooth. Stir in vanilla. Pour mixture over cereal, stirring until evenly coated. Pour into a 2-gallon resealable food storage plastic bag.

Add powdered sugar. Seal bag; shake until well coated. Spread on waxed paper to cool. Store in airtight container in refrigerator.
So that and a long nap pretty much took up my day.  There are enough sugary treats in the house to make me even sicker, unless I can find will power somewhere.  Anyone know where I can buy some?

He Came, He Saw, He conquered

This is a picture of my oven.  “Big Deal,” you say?  Actually it is.  On Sunday this space was filled with a single wall oven, a microwave and another drawer.  The display went out on my old oven and after check prices on parts it would have been around $250 just for the part.   I had been wishing for a double oven, so rather than spending the money to repair the old we put it toward the new.  That is where the “adventure” began.  We received the call saying the oven was in on Saturday.  Guy and Nolan took my Element on Sunday and managed to just fit the oven into the back.  Monday night after work Guy started tearing apart the cabinets and lowered the shelf to hold the oven.  Tuesday Guy went and bought the outlet to attach to the pigtail on the oven.  He was talking to me on the phone about it having 4 prongs and I commented that the old one had only 3.  So then we were wondering if the wiring is wrong.  I crawled back in the hole and started taking digital pictures and emailing them to him.  I finally ended up taking the cover off the receptacle and pulling it out of the wall so I could get a picture of the actual wiring.  Come to find out when they wired the receptacle they just skipped the ground wire, it was there.  So Guy replaced the receptacle.  Now there is a lovely hole all wired and ready to go.  How are we going to get that oven into the space.  Thankfully I borrowed a dolly from the school yesterday and we brought the ovens into the house on that.  (Guy had used one of the boys’ skateboards to take the old oven out.)  We still had a problem.  That oven is in the corner of the kitchen so once it was in front of the hole there wasn’t a lot of room to work.  Also we couldn’t lift it.  We finally leveraged a board under the oven on the dolly.  That brought it to the right height and we could now slide it into the hole.  It is installed and ready for it’s maiden baking.  Bless Guy’s heart, he just kept plugging away until it worked.  I’m seeing all kinds of possibilities here.  Now I can bake a whole batch of granola at one time instead of in two sessions.  We can bake two Papa Murphy’s pizzas at once rather than doing the kids’ first and then ours.  I won’t have to stack food on top of other  dishes if I’m trying to do a big dinner.  I can bake two things at once that take separate temperatures.  Oh yes, this is good!

Yesterday morning we had a two hour delay for school because of weather, so I started working on more samples for Embroidery Club today.  The theme this month was embroidery on paper.  Before taking the boys to school, I managed to embroider this toilet paper.  (The image is clickable if you want to see it bigger.)  Why did I want to embroider on toilet paper?  Because I can.

Last night I managed to finish one more sample — a candle wrap.  I used one of the blackwork run designs in my Bernina software and just digitized a straight line.  I then enlarged the design and embroidered it on Mulberry paper using metallic thread.  Yes, I know paper burns.  So rather than a regular candle I purchased one of those battery operated tea lights.  It fooled my husband last night he thought there was a candle burning in it. 

Because of the delayed start at school yesterday, I had to take the boys rather than Guy.  (The school is on the other side of town from where we live.)  Rather than coming home and working on customer quilts like I should have, I finished my Christmas shopping and met Guy for lunch.  That means I now need to wrap all that stuff.  I saw that Suzanne wrote on one of her journal pages that she doesn’t go all out on wrapping presents any more.  I think I am even worse than her.  About all I do anymore is put the paper on them (Paper I bought after Christmas the year before for $1 a roll).  I don’t usually bother with bows  and sometimes not even names.  That way the boys have to wait to find out which gifts belong to them.  Suzanne said her boys wouldn’t mind if the gifts were just in plastic bags.  I will admit that we have actually done that for birthdays the last couple of years.  Nolan and Jesse just don’t care.  Enough confessions about what a pitiful gift wrapper I have become.  I’m off to quilt until I need to pick the boys up from school.