The new one...

Each year I try to make a new recipe - just so the boxes are not 'exactly' the same every year. I remember Mom making these bar cookies but I never had a recipe for them. I found this one online the other day and made 'em last night. Of course, I had to triple it ! ...and changed the raspberry jam to strawberry. That's what I had on hand. I ended up with about 15 dozen.

...and that's a wrap for cookie baking this year...I hope.

All cookied out !

oh boy, another round of baking this weekend. The cookies for the diabetic houses are done - ribbon, candy cane, red spritz and green spritz. The candy cane and spritz were all done today as well as a cheesecake.

Can't believe they all made it to the freezer before I realized I hadn't taken pictures. 'course, at this point, you've all seen them before :-)

I still need/want to do the almond cookies and possibly cherry loaves. Maybe I can get some done in the evenings this coming week.

The list is slowly getting checked off.

How was your weekend ?
Later.

'tis the season & I'm tired !

It was a busy, wonderful weekend ! My birthday was yesterday and it all started Thursday night - had to cook for our department breakfast on Friday morning. Completely forgot pictures but I made 2 pans of Egg Bread Pudding - This one from food52.com. So, Friday morning was the breaky, Friday afternoon, 3 girls from work and I went for lunch and to see Breaking Dawn, part 2. After we went for a coffee and a gabfest. Saturday, hubby & I went out in the morning - regular errands, the afternoon was spent with a girlfriend and hubby took me out for supper. A new Chinese buffet we've been wanting to try. Today, it was back in the kitchen for more Christmas baking. Another girlfriend came over and I put her to work chopping and sprinkling. We had a great time.

I lost a lot of Christmas baking time in Sep/Oct while I was sick so I've had to make up time !
The to-do lists are underway and I noticed there are a lot of items that get done at the last minute but could be done in advance. This year I'm going to try to get more done ahead of time. So far the ribbon (20 doz), candy cane (12 doz) and spritz (13 doz of each color) are started. Started because I've got a few boxes that need cookies using Splenda instead of sugar - I'll do those batches last to keep them separate. Ribbon and candy cane were done in the last couple weekends. Spritz today, as well as the ice cream, French Vanilla and Eggnog. I'll process the ice cream tomorrow and they'll go into the freezer all done. I may do the cheesecake early too and freeze it.

Here are the cookies so far...

The bowls in the back are the ice cream

Whew, I'm done for today !
How was YOUR weekend ?

Sewing could happen

...it didn't today, but it 'could' soon !

If my blog is to be believed, I haven't done any sewing (hardly, anyway) since I last worked on pants in May/June last year. After a couple muslins and lots of tweaking I ended up with 2 wearable pairs of pants from Burda 04-2009-119 and a non-wearable muslin from the Hot Patterns Plain & Simple pattern. The last tweak on the HP pants was to take a vertical tuck in the front at the crotch to try to get rid of the fold at the inner leg. I never got around to cutting out a wearable version with all my adjustments.

Now, I need to start again because I lost weight all last year and the pants I spent so much time on last year DO NOT fit ! For the past week or so, the front fold and the underbutt wrinkles were on my mind. Apparently I'm in good company as I see the pants fitting threads have sprung to life again on PatternReview recently.

So, more reading, more thinking and yet still no sewing. I've been trying to see in my mind if a vertical fold would work better than all of these horizontal folds and tucks to eliminate the underbutt wrinkles. During all of this thinking, I came across a book I got about 12 years ago from Angelina Di Bello. She taught in Montreal for years and had quite an impressive working history. She trained in Italy and Montreal. Taught in Montreal for like 40 years or so and she also taught on tv on TV Ontario `Pins & Needles` as well as a couple of French tv shows. This spanned 35 years or more if I remember correctly.

Anyway, I own 2 of her books, one being, 'all about pants'. I've read through them but they are pretty hard to read. They are textbooks after all. On this pass through, I picked up that her fix for a flat butt is a vertical fix not a horizontal tuck, or wedge.

Today, I pulled out my last pattern version of 04-2009-119 and took a vertical tuck from the crotch to the knee. I also managed to lay out the legs and trace 1-1/2 pieces. My back had enough by then.

Here I am now...

This is 'the fix'...


...in other productivity notes...I baked today - hubby asked for cookies last week and I made 'em today - soft, raisin cookies - I don't imagine they'll last long !

4 and counting...

Red Spritz - done
Ribbon cookies - done
Candy Canes - done

...and, as of yesterday, Almond Balls - done

When I start this madness next year, would one of you PLEASE remind me to NOT make a quadruple batch of these ?! Please ?

For one, it took 6 hours from start to finish.
For two, there are 433 cookies in those boxes ! That's 36 dozen ! Actually that's not so bad - they'll all get eaten.

But even my 6qt KitchenAid had a hard time holding all that cookie dough LOL - you can't imagine the picture I must've made. One hand holding the plastic spill cover on and the other making sure no batter grew out of the bowl at the opening. Are you counting ? I've run out of available hands - had to call hubby to turn the mixer off :-)

What's next - green christmas tree spritz or eggnog cookies ? Decisions, decisions.

Next Round

Christmas baking is my one guarantee of posting regularly !

Yesterday I made a double batch of Candy Cane cookies and refrigerated the dough.

Tonight, this (one plain, one pink)

made 162 little balls...which became

162 little ropes...which became

6 full cookie sheets, and voila ! ...



Oh yeah, and that's only half !

The other half in the fridge should make another 6 dozen and I guess I'm going to need to make another batch since 12 dozen won't go far. We added 2 more people (& 2 more dogs) to the dinner party (Toronto's coming !) so that's another can of cookies and one more can which was in the back of my mind but I will definitely do as another gift.

I'm done - off to bed.

Weekend Update

For all I was pretty useless for the first 4 days of the week, I managed a fair bit since Thursday. It was my birthday weekend after all - it was all about the entertainment :-)

Thursday started with our department breakfast at work - ah we stuffed ourselves with bagels, cream cheese, bacon, bruschetta & crusty bread and mini cupcakes - 3 contributors makes for a pretty filling amount of food even if it all 'doesn't' go together !
This link is not exactly the recipe used but the pic is spot on - ours tasted as good as this one looks ! bruschetta

Friday afternoon, a friend and I went to see Breaking Dawn, pt 1 - lunch, movie, popcorn, all good. We both enjoyed the movie. Can't wait for pt 2 now.

I signed up for the Friday Night Sew In and did spend the evening in my sewing room. I decided to take a look at my coat. You know, the coat I started for the Coat Sewalong in 2008 ! So, I'd left it with one front and lapel padstitched, but hadn't done the other side. For quite some time I tried to figure out exactly HOW the padstitching was done. For the life of me, I couldn't see what I'd done on the first side. Checked out all the sites, blogs and links I'd used before and found a few new youtube videos that helped some. There was no sewing Friday night (it was all reading) but I did learn a lot. For one thing, the lapel was not padstitched well on the side I already did - it didn't curl hardly at all - I need to take it out and redo it, I think. This is the second side which I did this weekend - the main body front but not the lapel yet.


Next up - another batch of Christmas cookies are chilling in the fridge - they will become Candy Cane cookies in the next couple of evenings.


And my finished UFO for this weekend - I finished my Hermione's Everyday Socks on Aug 6 (yikes !) and they've been waiting for me to weave in the ends since then - jeez, it only took me 15 minutes - what the heck was I waiting for ?!


Oh and there was a break Saturday night for hubby to take me out for a birthday dinner. All in all a really good few days.

Hope you've all had a good weekend.

My evening in pictures...

'nuff said ? :-)

...and so it begins again

LOL - to answer Ann - Yup, 'already' :-)
and for everyone who may think I'm batty - I booked my Christmas dinner date this past week and let everyone know. Then I checked the calendar - I've only got 7 weekends to get all these cookies made. Oh, and there's another couple coming so I have to make up 1 more cookie box than usual. Let the baking commence, er continue...

First up...spritz

PR Wardrobe - Assembly Line Sewing

I was hoping to get much more done this weekend but life intervened and, well, sewing took a backseat after Saturday noon.

I started a pair of pants for my wardrobe - BWOF 04-2009-119.



Once the fabric was traced & cut, I measured what was left (just under 1m). Rather than fold up that bit and deal with it later, I decided to use it all up by cutting out my 'almost' TNT skirt M3341.

Question - How many time do you make something before it's a TNT ?

This pattern has been tweaked each time (4 so far) I've made it. This could be the first time to just cut & sew it. If all goes smoothly and it fits, I'll call it TNT.


At the end of Friday - both pants and skirt were cut out. Interfacings were fused to facings.

End of day Saturday -
More ravelly fabric - all pieces serged
Interfaced pants fly extensions
Inserted zipper in pants - using SB video

I think it turned out pretty well - the fabric is black, but with this grey, you can see the checked texture in the fabric


And the underlap (this particular piece of cotton got a lot of mileage - I also used it for the facings of the skirt as well as the skirt finished last week - not bad for a buck !)



End of day Sunday -
Insert zipper in skirt
Lay out and cut lining pieces, skirt will definitely be lined (decision - to line pants or not...)

Sunday - no sewing done. I was hoping to have the skirt done, or almost done.
Instead, my BFF came over and spent most of the day. I put her to work helping with part of her Christmas present - yes, more cookies ! LOL

on the right - Almond Balls - on the left - Christmas tree spritz (when he didn't see any of these in the spritz last week DH informed me 'we MUST have Christmas Trees' - so - we have Christmas trees ! :-)


I'll probably not get much chance to sew or post this coming week (although I WILL try) - my MIL passed away last week and the funeral is Wednesday. We just found out that we are having DBIL and 2 of his adult kids staying with us from Monday to Thursday. We're the only ones with enough space. I'm looking forward to having them but that meant that instead of puttering around in the sewing room, we did laundry & cleaned & stripped beds & did laundry & & & &....

I would love to have a house fit for company without a major cleaning but that would take much more effort than I put into it LOL !

Have a great week everybody :-)

The end of the cookies

This morning's baking...I made the dough for these yesterday and baked them this morning. Should I post the recipes ?

Candy Cane cookies & Almond balls

Cookie tins will have Ribbon cookies, Candy Cane cookies, Almond balls, Spritz, & Shortbread cookies - that oughta keep all the men happy !

The balance of the afternoon was spent on the knitting projects, finished the 2 on the needles and started 2 more, hopefully to be finished or almost finished tonight.

Tomorrow during the shopping trip I'll pick up the fabric I need to continue/complete one of the sewing projects.

More Baking

1 more batch of cookies done, that is, if you consider 16 dozen 1 batch, LOL ... Spritz won out since they are the quickest to do, especially on a weekday evening. I made these Tuesday evening.

1st tray just going into the oven:


All done and cooling.


Now this year, after making the same mistake 2 years in a row, I wrote the 'correct' baking time on my recipe. It say 10-12 minutes at 375° - well that amount of time produces the dark cookies you see at the top right corner of the 2nd picture ! Spritz cookies are NOT supposed to be dark - although they taste just fine - trust me ! LOL

In my oven, 8 minutes produces the desired result, next year I won't mess up the first tray.


Spritz Cookies

2 cups butter (MUST use butter !)
1 cup granulated sugar
1 egg, well beaten
1 tsp vanilla extract (or 1 tsp almond extract)
4 cups sifted all-purpose flour

Method:

Preheat oven to 375°F. Refrigerate UNGREASED cookie sheets until ready to use.
Note - pressing the dough out onto cool, ungreased sheets makes it possible for each application to stick on contact.

In a large bowl, mix butter until creamy.
Gradually add sugar; cream until light and fluffy.
Add egg and beat well.
Stir in vanilla extract.
Gradually add flour to mixture beating well after each addition.

If the dough is too soft to go thru the cookie press cleanly, chill the dough for 15 minutes or so.
If the dough is too firm, add 1 or 2 tsp of milk.

Pack the dough into up your cookie press fitted with your desired shape. Press cookies onto ungreased baking sheets about 1-inch apart.

Bake at 375° F, 10-12 minutes

Let cool on the sheet for a couple of minutes and use a very thin spatula to remove them to the cooling racks- they're quite fragile and will break easily !

Makes approximately 6 dozen.