Christmas Decorating

I've been seeing so many blogs with such beautiful Christmas decorating. I think this means I'm way way behind with my decorating, so yesterday I spent the day playing with all my Christmas treasures. Here are two snowmen I made a very long time ago. The taller snowman is made of muslin and the smaller one is made using quilt batting.
A small tree wallhanging I made a few years ago.
This little tree is filled with crocheted snowflakes made by my dear grandma. She's been gone for almost a year now, so I wanted to decorate this little tree in her memory.
I love snowmen. These are made of wood and not made my me.
We had our traditional French dinner at our regular monthly stitching group. Andree made us the meal her mother would make when she was a kid. There was roast pork with pototoes and veggies. The dessert was fresh pineapple grilled and hot chocolates sauce drizzled on top. Sorry I didn't get a picture of that...it was delicious.

Here are the "Thank You" gift we surprised our host with. As we were all bringing out our blocks Andree was puzzled why she wasn't included in making these blocks. Then we told her the blocks were for her. You should have heard her laughing and so very surprised that we would do this for her. I think the blocks really turned out well and coordinate well, that was another pleasant surprise.

Season's Greetings to everyone.

Care and Feeding

Hanging baskets are beautiful this time of year. These are hanging on my front porch. They take much care and feeding to keep them looking so lovely. I water them everyday with 15-30-15 fertilizer and they bloom all summer. I've learned to not let the baskets dry out because the tender plants don't recover well after that. I'm showing these because I just love them.

The Shoofly Potpie doll quilt from Kim Diehl's book (Simple Traditions) is all done, well the top is complete at any rate. It looks especially nice draped over my DH antique radio from the 1920's(I think). When you turn it on, the radio lights up (dial is hiding under the lovely quilt) and a really nice humming comes out of it. DH might fix it up "one day", the original tubes are still in the back. Could you imagine the excitement for a family to be sitting around one of these and listening to the evenings programs. This radio is fairly fancy so was probably a big purchase for that time period. My how things have changed.

Thanks for visiting!

What's This???

I started making scrappy nine patches for a quilt that won't be done for a very long time...planning ahead LOL.... I'll do some each month until I have enough for a quilt. How many is a quilt you say??? Haven't even decided what the layout will be or what size it will be yet (did I say planning?) These are cut 1 1/2" strips for a finished size of 3"....sooo cute aren't they? Now see the yellow nine patch that's slightly bigger....I had a light bulb moment that went dim really fast...lol. I thought since I was cutting 1 1/2" strips why not make blocks for 2 other quilts (Acorn Quilt and Simple Traditions Doll Quilt).....hmmm not such a good idea. My thought was that I could make blocks for 3 quilts at once (ambitious huh...LOL, I think I'll need a bigger room for such a feat), they all use 1 1/2" strips....why can't I. It seems much more organization is needed then I was prepared to do (quilting is fun right?), besides the bigger one has a couple of different cuts. The shoofly block is 1 1/2" strips with the half square triangle being 2" and cut on the diagonal, I found this one being a smaller quilt much more manageable to track while making 9 patches. The blocks are all done for the shoofly, now I'm ready to assemble the top. So the end of the story is that the Acorn Quilt didn't get off the ground. That's it for now, from my scrambled thoughts...I hope you could follow.
More to come...