Sharing Christmas

Christmas came so quickly and now is stored into our memories.  It is hard to believe that we are closing out on 2012 and getting ready to ring in the new year.

I managed to finish up my projects before they needed to be unwrapped.  Isn't that always a great feeling? 

This was such a fun and fast knitted project that I made three of them.

A closer look at the yarn - so lacy and pretty.

We had such a wonderful Christmas at our house.  The anticipation (and noise level) peaked early in the evening with all of the children here.  Our home is definitely NOT the place to be if you like a quiet Christmas. 

Wall to wall bodies!

Hmm...Your head feels as bald as mine!!!

Why do little girls always want to dress up little boys?

Baby Frosty.

  It's nice to have little believers here on Christmas morning.

One tradition we do each year is to drive through the neighborhood and look at all of the lights with the little ones.  I let them use my "special" glasses this year and they were thrilled to see the snowmen and wreaths when they looked at the lights.

Our house guests left yesterday morning and then it was a nose to the grindstone cleaning, laundry and sorting out day.  Today was errands and, hopefully, a little time reacquainting myself with my sewing machine.  I am looking forward to it.

I've have several lovely packages arrive in the mail in the last few days.   The first to arrive was this fabulous messenger bag from a Blog Hop win from Polly at Polly's Porch.  I love the size of this and the fabrics are wonderful.  Her work on it is so well done.   Thanks so much, Polly.  I will get a lot of use out of it.  Polly also has a wonderful tutorial featured today at Moda Bake Shop.

Another Blog Hop win was from Frieda from Walks in the Woods - Art Quilts.  Her work is AMAZING and I was thrilled to have won a few of her patterns, some hand dyed fabrics and threads.  I am looking forward to trying the heavenly looking Peace quilt.  If you have not visited her blog before I recommend you checking out her eye candy.

Today the mailman stopped and left me some terrific Gutermann threads from Debuko - all the way from Poland - at Quilts My Way.  These are terrific neutral colors and I KNOW they will be put to great use.

I am hoping to keep up with my Easy Street Mystery quilt now that I have a bit more time.  These are the blocks for this week - turquoise with purple.  I can hardly wait to start on the lime greens.  While I am trying to keep up with one Easy Street, Connie at FreeMotion By the River is doing two, one in orange, red and yellows.  It looks gorgeous too.

All in all, it has been a wonderfully busy week around our house to finish off a good 2012.  I wish for a healthy and blessed 2013 to all of you.

 

The Stockings Were Hung

Of course not being a blogger when I started making Christmas stockings for the grandchildren, I did not photograph them as I completed them.  WHY would I have done such a thing???  The other day when we were at one of our son's homes I decided to photograph some of the stockings that I have made in my pre-blogging years.  I will try to photograph some of the others this year as we visit the homes over Christmas.

I am linking these stockings up with Pat at Quilting Lines.  Please check it out and add any of your stockings as well.  It is always fun to see what others have created.

Again, the week has been a busy one.  We were home for dinner just one night.  At this rate I will forget how to cook!!  It has been so much fun to celebrate the season with family events. 

The newest little one was baptized over the weekend.  It is always a joyous occasion.

I love the look on her face in this one.

We were thrilled to go visit with Santa this week.  He was pretty harmless when he came out of his little house to sing Christmas carols with us, but it was a different story when we entered his house and sat on his lap.  This was an amazing Santa, if I do say so myself.  He knew the REAL meaning of CHRISTmas.  Even his hair and beard were the real thing!

I've had a couple of really fun wins lately.  I received some lovely Christmas fabrics from Peach Patch Quilts.  These will be such fun to use in future projects.  After seeing some of the cute patchwork stockings, I am thinking that these might come in very handy.

As well, look at this adorable little hedgehog and mini quilt that I received from Susan.  Is this not the cutest little guy ever with his little scarf?   I just love it and was so thrilled to have been chosen as her winner.  Thanks so much, Susan.  I don't know how many of you follow her, but she does such beautiful work and I have followed her almost since I started blogging. 

This week I have been working on some Christmas gifts in my sewing room.  I really can't show them yet, but it has been fun to slip away into the studio and forget the messiness of the house.  I also had a bit of time to work on Easy Street.  The best part was the cutting of the lime green squares.  Since lime green is one of my all time favorite colors, I have a TON of fabrics in that color.  I could have probably cut 145 squares and not have one match!!!!!  I am ready for step five on Friday.

Since I doubt that I will be blogging in the next week as we will be having houseguests for Christmas, I would like to wish all of you a wonderful and joyous Christmas. 

Two Weeks and Counting

Can you believe that we now have less than two weeks until Christmas?  Who's counting...right?

The week has been busy with lots of Christmas events.  It seems like we are always on the go here.  We are actually looking forward to an dinner at home tonight.  We are so blessed to be so busy, but it is not getting my Christmas cards written ;)

Last evening we tagged along as our grandchildren played Christmas carols at a local nursing home.  It was a thrill to see the delight in the residents faces as they enjoyed the music.  Each of the children played a few songs and we enjoyed the music as well.  It was also fun to visit with some of the residents, including a set of 94 year old twins who both worked as makeup and hair designers in the early Hollywood days.  They shared photos of the many big stars that they had the privilege to work on for their camera shoots.  Both were so sharp and shared so many wonderful stories with us. 

Tuesday was our biannual quilt guild Christmas show and giveaway.  There were over 250 quilts donated to ten different local charities this year.  We even made the front page of the paper.  We have amazing, talented and caring guild members. 

In my spare time I have tried to work a bit on some Christmas sewing.  I made a raincoat for another one of the granddaughters.  This time I used the PUL laminated fabric.  It has a more silky feeling and drapes much nicer, but was not as easy to sew on as the laminates I used last year.  I tried the teflon foot, but found the walking foot worked much better.  I still need to hem the sleeves and put the buttons on, but I'll share a picture of it for now.

Easy Street remains on my back burner.  I did get a handful of this weeks blocks done, but I do have the remainder cut out.  I doubt that sewing them together will take long once I get to them. 

The progress on the stocking was minimal this week too - a little backstitching is all I got done on it.  Again....we just haven't been home much.  It's a good thing that I wasn't figuring it would be done this year. 

In talking with my niece this week, I found out that she has started a blog.  She is a beautiful writer and her blog is about the joys of parenting.  I love the name of it - Early Bird and Night Owl.  Doesn't that just speak of parenting?

I hope you are all enjoying the peace of the season.

Christmas Decorating

Thanks to a lot of help from my granddaughter, I have gotten most of my Christmas decorations up.  It is amazing how much is involved in digging everything out each year, but the kids so love to see the house festive for the month.  It is worth it. 

 

Of course the favorite is always the train under the tree.  I try to have several of the little ones over alone to play with it.  When everyone is here at the same time the space near the train is over populated!!!  That and the fact that there are many derailments makes it not as much fun.

I got a little more work done on my stocking this week.  My snowman is making some headway.  I hope to get to it more seriously next week after our big dinner party for 24 people this coming Saturday night. 

One of the grandsons called last night to ask if I could make three brown beards for the Christmas play at school.  He needed them by Friday.  ;)



You didn't expect me to model it....did you?????

I haven't had much time to work on my Easy Street blocks this week, but I am trying to make myself take 15 minutes a day to just kick back and do a little sewing.  Hopefully they will come along faster after the weekend as well. 

Now I must get back to setting tables and cooking.



Even the Christmas cactus is blooming.

Goodbye November, Hello December

Wow!  Has this year flown past or what?  It seems hard to imagine we are already into December. 

Our Thanksgiving was wonderful with lots of great memories being made and waaaay too much delicious food to eat.  The only downside to it this year was that my mom was unable to join us as she had an infection.  She so loves being around all the activity and enjoys seeing the little ones.  Each year we attempt to get a photo of the family together and this year was no exception.  We were missing one grandson who is away at college in Florida.

First Thanksgiving for three of them

There has not been a lot of sewing time, but I am attempting to join in on the Easy Street Mystery quilt with Bonnie Hunter.  This is the beginning and I will get to it as time permits.  I do have my almost 400 sub cuts of pairs finished.  They just need to be sewn into four patches.

They really are not pink!!!  They are grays, blacks and whites.

I have worked a little more on my Christmas stockings in the evenings.  It doesn't seem as though I make much progress until I compare it to the previous week's photo. 

This year I am going to enter my little red Christmas Tree into the 2012 Christmas Quilt show.  If you have made a Christmas quilt, you should put yours in as well.  They are accepting links through Nov. 30th.  There are prizes to be won even if you did not submit a quilt for the show so be sure to go and visit.

The house is slowly turning from fall decor into Christmas.  I am going to have some of the granddaughters come over to help me transform it the rest of the way.  They love doing it and I LOVE the extra help. 

Have you seen the Holiday Lane Blog Hop pillows?  Oh my goodness....they are fabulous.  That is on my to-do list for next year.  It is a free pattern by Jill Finley.  You can check them out at www.sewwequilt.com and follow the link to the pattern. 

Thanksgiving Week

I know many of you are either deep into Thanksgiving preparations or getting ready to travel for Thanksgiving tomorrow, but I would like to wish all of my U.S. followers a very happy Thanksgiving. 

In between trying to get organized for Thanksgiving here, which we celebrate on Saturday, I have managed to find a little time to slip in some sewing.  I'm trying to keep up with my Just Takes 2 blocks - especially with the holiday entertaining sneaking up on us.  These are blocks 98-95.

   

I met my mom, sister and SIL for lunch and I wanted to make them a few of those cute little coin purses.  I told you that they were addicting!

During the UR Priceless I won a giveaway hosted by Sue at http://suebeesworld.blogspot.com and it arrived in the mail this week.  Look at all of the wonderful goodies - lots of great Christmas fabrics, adorable Santa panel blocks and some fantastic gift bags that Sue made.  I can tell that I am going to have to make a few more of these.  They will really dress up the Christmas gifts this year.  Thanks so much, Sue. 

The mail also brought my swap mini quilt from the ALQS7.  My mini came all the way from Alaska and I just love the wonderful job that Natalie did on it.  I love the bright colors and her application of beads and little "eyes" on the swirls.  Brilliant idea!! 

In the evenings I am working away on my cross stitch stocking for the newest granddaughter.  I'm not sure it will be finished by Christmas of 2012, but I doubt that she will care this year.

Our son, DIL and three little ones will be down for the weekend so there will be no sewing.  Instead we will be enjoying family time with them.  The weather is forecast to be around 80* which is perfect when there are a lot of little ones who want to play outside. 

Have a great Thanksgiving!