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ONE thing I did this weekend:

Went to a hockey game. The Aeros played the Texas Stars on Friday night so Jose and I joined Jason and Debbie for the game. You were supposed to bring toys and/or teddy bears to donate to Toys for Tots. After the Aeros scored their first goal, everyone got to throw teddy bears onto the ice which was pretty darn fun. The game was stopped for 5 minutes or so as they swept up the teddy bears. We also brought toys, which got us free tickets to a future game. Unfortunately that future game was January 1 when we’ll be out of town, but oh well.

TWO things I’ve cooked:

Mocha Coconut Fudge. This looked too good to pass up, so I made it for my division’s holiday lunch last week. The lunch was supposed to be on Thursday but got pushed to Friday after JSC was unexpectedly closed from Wednesday afternoon through lunchtime Thursday after a car ran into a large power transmission tower just outside the fence. The power company had to shut down power to all of JSC while they put up a new tower, so we got a free afternoon and morning off work! Good thing fudge keeps for a while. I brought it for our lunch on Friday and left with an empty plate, so I guess it was a hit!

Beet & Goat Cheese Salad. Our book club book this month talked a lot about beets (it was a strange book) and it occurred to me that I wasn’t sure if I’d ever actually EATEN beets before. So I made this salad for book club and even though only four people showed up (myself included) the beet salad was a hit with everyone. Turns out that beets taste very earthy. I liked them all right. I should warn you though, if you, like me, have never eaten beets — they are really, really dark red. Almost a purple. When I was peeling them to make the salad, the juice stained my hands. And apparently when you eat them, the juice stains your bladder and your intestines too! ‘Nuff said.

THREE things I’ve made:

Quilted placemat with pieced binding. I took a quilting class at Joann on Saturday. It was the “102” class and I never took the “101” class but I decided that I’d just figure it out as I went along. We were supposed to bring a 13″x18″ quilted piece so I made the middle part on Saturday morning. It’s the first time I’ve ever quilted anything, so overall I was pretty pleased with how it turned out. My lines aren’t always exactly straight, but close enough.

In the class, I learned how to make this pieced binding. It’s hard to tell, because I chose three very similar fabrics, but the binding is made of those three different patterns. I had to cut strips, sew the strips together, THEN cut bias strips and sew them onto the quilted piece. It was the make-binding-tape and sew-binding-onto-quilt that I really wanted to learn, but the piecing part was good to learn too. All in all it was another good class there, and since they have 50% off classes coupons all the time, they’re never very expensive!

Another fat quarter purse for my sister. She knows I’m making one for her; it’s part of her Christmas present. But I’m not posting photos of it right now because she doesn’t know what fabrics I chose. Hope she likes it!

Christmas tree skirt. This is what it looked like a week ago (apologies for the crappy out of focus iPhone photo), and now that I know how to make and attach binding from my class, I can finish it this week!