Another Firestorm

As day breaks here in Southern California we once again see what destruction can come from the dry winds. Our hearts go out to the people who have lost so much in this very exclusive area of California. For those who are unfamiliar with the area, I must tell you that it is gorgeous. News that I just received from my daughter's godmother, who lives near there, advises me that she believes it will be much worse than what we are hearing with possibly two hundred homes involved. She said that the speed at which it came upon them was unbelievable with walls of fire reigning down. The roads are narrow and trying to evacuate an area like that is a major undertaking. We all pray that the winds will die down enough for our firefighters, our heroes, to get a handle on the fire.

Our niece is a student at the college where the fire started, but she happened to be at Disneyland with her family yesterday. Word is that several of the buildings on the campus were burned with one dorm completely destroyed. It will make for an interesting rest of the school year for those students involved.

I haven't had much of a chance to post lately because I have been busy. So....what else is new?

With two new grandbabies this year I have been working on Christmas stockings. I am doing these two with felt kits with lots of embroidery and sewing on of sequins. It is not an easy project to pack up and take with you on the go, but they are fun to construct, none the less. The majority of the stockings that I have done in the past have been in counted cross stitch.

Work in progress....

Some of the cross stitched ones.

Our quilt guild meeting this week featured Sandi Cummings as our guest speaker. She had some wonderful slides to show of her work as well as photos of other quilter's work from gals in her quilt group. It is always interesting to see what others are working on. Sandi's works were quite contemporary and her eye for color is amazing.










We've also been busy with helping out with some of the little ones. It is always nice to be close enough that the parents can drop the kids off or we can run over for a few hours of "Grandma/Grandpa time."

I must say that Grandpa is always a good sport.

Is everyone else out there being bombarded with catalogs this year? It definitely gets worse each year. I think that I must have several trees worth of paper stuffed in my mailbox so far and it isn't even December yet. I cannot imagine what my house would look like if I kept all of them. THAT would be a fire hazard. My recycle bin is filled each week.



The advantage is that I have been doing a lot of my Christmas shopping through the catalogs this year. The little ones love to look through the toy catalogs when they are here and I get some great ideas from them. With twenty grandchildren it is nice to get a head start on the shopping.



Did everyone in the world (except me) know that Mother's Cookies went out of business at the beginning of October? Where am I ever going to be able to buy those delicious Taffy cookies again????? Now, I must admit, I love to bake cookies, but I cannot duplicate that recipe. There are very few cookies that I would actually BUY; Taffy cookies are one of those. I guess that we will be seeing more and more of this happening to companies that we have loved all these years.



Friday is finally here and the weekend is busy with plans of gardening and finishing some more sewing projects. I hope that each of you will be enjoying your weekend as well.