This past weekend, the temperature dropped below freezing in Houston. This is a rare thing here in Texas, but still, we were surprised at how people were freaking out.

Our neighbors were one of those people. This is a picture of their house.

This past Sunday, our stake held its annual Christmas Concert. It featured 3 choirs: a children’s choir, a youth choir, and an adult choir. Overall, the music was pretty enjoyable; there were only a couple of songs that didn’t really fit very well. I hear the “Follow the Star” program back in California was a success.

While in Santa Barbara, we took a day trip to a Dutch town called Solvang. The town reminded me of Leavenworth Washington. It was basically a touristy town with Dutch architecture and shops that sold things like nutcrackers, collectibles, and Christmas decorations. There were also several bakeries, Belgian waffle houses, and fudge shops.

A clog

Apple crepe

We went to a pancake house that featured several crepes on their menu, so Fernando got an apple crepe and I got a crepe suzette filled with cheese. For some strange reason they topped mine off with about a cup of sour cream and didn’t taste so well, but Fernando’s was pretty good.

Ebelskivers

Right after leaving the pancake house, I noticed a sign for a place that sold Ebelskiver. I first stumbled upon Ebelskiver when online shopping at Williams Sonoma. They are pancake balls which sometimes have a filling inside of them.  Ours were topped with lingonberry sauce.

Street view of Solvang

On the last weekend of Fernando’s five week business trip, I took off a couple of days of work and met him in Santa Barbara.  Neither of us had been to Santa Barbara, but Fernando had already been offshore on an oil rig for two weeks before I got there. We stayed off of main street in a cute hotel that was walkable to all of the shops and the beach.  Santa Barbara is a really cute town with a Mediterranean style of architecture.  The city has strict codes which assures that all buildings are stucco with red tile roofs.

We rented surrey and rode along the boardwalk.

We saw this amazing tree right next to a busy street, called the Moreton Bay Fig Tree (largest in North America). The roots of the tree were at my shoulder, this picture hardly does it justice.

Where’s the ladder?

Pretty clever homeless person

This pelican had its eye on us

Beautiful boardwalk

View from Santa Barbara Courthouse

A rare picture together

Beautiful homes in the hills

Borders bookstore — tribute to George Castanza

There were some amazing restaurants

Santa Barbara mission

Courtyard in the mission

And the best part of this trip was that Exxon payed for our hotel and half of all our meals!

In early October, I left to Alaska for a 2-week business trip. I had the weekend off, but was headed for Santa Barbara, CA the following Monday. Therefore, since I would be missing out on Halloween this year, Diane and I decided to carve some pumpkins before I left. Sadly, they only last about 4 days before the humidity got to them.

Diane’s pumpkin

Fernando’s pumpkin

I have been so excited for this year’s quilt festival, so I could stock up on fabric, since good fabric stores are hard to come by in Houston. For some reason I was thinking last years festival was in February. Anyway, with Fernando gone, I decided to head out to Jo-Ann’s and bumped into my visiting teachee. I found some okay fabric to start a Halloween banner with, and stood in line for a least 30 minutes since the lady two people in front of me literally bought 60 yards of fabric. (I counted, then asked the clerk to verify). Ridiculous right? Then the store manager screams into the intercom, “I need two people on the cash registers up front…NOW!” Just as I was thinking about how I love shopping at Jo-Anns, I see a customer with a bag advertising that this year’s quilt festival is today! I jumped in my car and made a mad dash downtown, completely cutting off a really old grandma who gave me one heck of an evil eye. I’m proud to say I parallel parked our new car for the first time (I only had to start over once) right in front of the convention center. I dashed through all of the beautiful way-too-complicated award winning quilts to the red carpet, where everything was for sale.

A handful of cherries quilt

red carpet land where everything is for sale

a quilt that I am inspired to make

The best discovery of all was this booth called Sheree’s Alchemy. I fell in love with every piece of fabric she sold. Most of it was Moda but she also had some beautiful Japanese fabric which is so rare! She takes custom orders of what ever you want: layer cakes, charm packs, jelly rolls, etc. If you contact her through her online store. And shipping is free if you live in Texas, because guess what? She’s a local. She live in Katy and is opening up a shop in Houston (in the loop)! And she has a pretty cool blog too.

The end result: 4 new quilts to start. Sorry hun, they sold Moda.

Look dad, you can advertise at quilt expo’s too!

Forget you High Fashion Fabrics, your fabric in your booth was at least $3.25 higher than any other booth. I’ll only shop with you if I have to.

Um…how come nobody told us what a ridiculously neat store High Fashion is? Its on the corner of Travis and Elgin, like a mile from our house. It is four floors filled with home decor, furniture, canvas wall art, fabrics, accessories for the office, home, or bathroom. They have the most unique decor I’ve seen, which makes me want a bigger house just so I can have more rooms to decorate. They also have fun little nick-nacks which reminded Ferd and I of a store called Archie McPhee in Washington but with more class. All of their canvas wall art is 50% off right now too. Here are some fun things we found while we explored the store for an hour:

You can customize anything in this store, with bolts and bolts of fabric of any kind, ranging from pillows, to bedspreads, to curtains, and sofas. Even huge bolts of Amy Butler and baby cuddle velour. Directly across the street is High Fashion Fabrics, with a whole room just for quilting and designer fabrics! If you come to Houston and are into sewing, I would say this store is a must see! (disclaimer: the prices however are slightly above average for the fabric).

This is the slow time of year for dental offices, so lucky me, I got the day off! So far my day has consisted of doing the laundry, cooking, shopping at Hobby Lobby, and sewing!

Thank you Dana for the wonderful idea and great tutorial! This also turned out to be a great young womens activity a couple of weeks ago.

I was blog hopping and stumbled upon a couple of fun sewing projects that I could do with some of my scraps. I’ve never made a crayon roll before, so I tried it, and it was fun. So I made five. Most crayon rolls are tied up with a ribbon, but I figure that most kids don’t know how to tie things so I added a button with an elastic loop instead. (if anyone knows how to sew on an elastic cord without breaking the elastic, I would love a tip.)  The tutorial can be found at Chocolate on my Cranium.

These are mini crayon rolls which hold the bare necessities

These rolls hold up to 16 crayons

Hopefully my nieces will enjoy these. I made a quick little pair of kimono baby shoes so their little brother wouldn’t feel left out.

The kimono shoe pattern is found at homespun-threads.  I discovered a new love recently…linen and corduroy fabric! Oh the endless possibilities!

Taking advantage of some cool weather last night, we headed over to Miller Outdoor Theatre to see the 13th Annual Grand Taiko Concert. It reminded us another performance we saw last year. In the middle of the performance, there was a 900-year old dance, which wasn’t very good. Fortunately, the rest of the program consisted of fun drum beats and silk dancers. The Taiko group also has one of the largest drums in North America (5′ x 7′).

To top it off, we headed over to Amy’s Ice Cream and were pleasantly surprised. Great atmosphere, fun hangout and good ice cream.