Baking Contest - The Results are in!

Drum roll please!

3rd Place - Uche's Banana Bread.... 

2nd Place - Grace's Chocolate Covered Strawberry Cheesecake.... 

1st Place - Neals's Carrot Cake.  

WHAT?!?  I didn't even make the top 3!?  I got beat by CARROT CAKE?  Who in their right mind puts vegetables in their cake?  Seriously!  And besides, it says 'moist' on top.  Moist!  Moist...  moist...  moist...  No matter how  you say it, it is the English language's worst word.  It's my personal most hated word ever.

Here are my loser cookies:

I even had a pretty name tag and laid them out so nicely on my fancy plate!  When all the points were tallied, I ended up coming in 5th place.  Down 3 spots from last year!  I do think there's something fishy going on, though.  Neal has won the past 3 baking contests, and no matter what anyone does, we can't seem to dethrone him.  It's a conspiracy, I'm sure of it!

Last year I was disappointed, but now I'm just mad.  I'm going to do everything in my power to knock Neal out of 1st place.  I've already started planning, and have even ordered some special supplies from Ebay.  They should be here any day now....

Neal had better watch out, because next year I'm coming full force with both barrels blazing!

My First Attempt at Quilting!

I found this placemat at a craft sale:

I thought it was cute and figured it couldn't be that hard to make.  But the thing is, I've never quilted before.  I called up my good pal Jessy Roos who is an expert quilter, and she agreed to help me out with it.  We went shopping one night to Fabricland to check out what they had to offer.  We started looking around at the blue Christmas fabrics, and had such a hard time finding any fabrics that I liked that looked good together.

I had seen some adorable red and green fabric that I loved, so we decided it would be best to switch the color from blue to red and green.  That opened up a lot more options, and we found some really cute fabrics!  Check out what we got:

My task before Sunday is to wash and iron the fabric.  Check back to see my progress!