Santa’s on his way

The little ones are getting ready for Santa.  Amelia is 3-1/2 and she’s been sick for the last few weeks.  She finally was well enough to visit Santa.  She looks pretty happy.

Then there’s Violet, who is 1-1/2.  She visited Santa a few weeks ago.  She was all smiles watching Santa for a while with other kids on his lap.  Until she got up close and personal.  She and Santa did not bond very well.  

Is it just me or does Santa have extra large hands these days?  (sorry, I couldn’t resist)

The cookies have been made, and there is plenty of milk in the house for Santa.

The decorations are up.   This is my niece Amanda, the mother of the two cuties.

Ahhh, the excitement of children.

I love this picture.

   

C’mon Santa, hurry on over to my house, and please bring Rudolph.

 He sprang to his sleigh, to his team gave a whistle,

And away they all flew like the down of a thistle.

But I heard him exclaim, ere he drove out of sight,

Happy Christmas to all, and to all a good-night.

Update

This guy is all better.

Yeah, I know, doesn’t he look pathetic?  He’s moved into a new mobile home.  Nothing fancy, but plenty of windows and a good storm door.

For two days, he ate very little.  We opened up can after can of food and he turned up his nose at it.  He would only eat kitty treats.  Boy, did he have us snowed.  Yesterday, after turning his nose up at his food dish again, he didn’t get any treats.  An hour later when we weren’t looking , he decided the food dish was ok.  By the end of the day, the food dish was empty.

He is, ahem, regular again (ewww).  He’s like a teenager with a hollow leg.  Coming up and kneading his paws on you at 3:30 am, wanting his breakfast.  Yes, all is normal again. . .

Christmas Recipe!!

• Take one dumb cat who thinks it’s ok to chew on fake Christmas garland. 
• Said dumb cat then vomits on the carpet.
• Dumb cat then hides all day sleeping in odd places, not wanting to socialize.
• Dumb cat won’t eat or drink, even after stupid humans open several packages of food and treats to entice him.
• Stupid humans go out and buy a thermometer and actually manage to get a "normal" temperature reading (you don’t want to know how). 
• Worry a lot about your sick fur baby.
• Wake up to stupid cat chewing on the garland again.
• Take down Christmas garland at 4:00 am
• Head for 24 hour vet clinic at 5:30 am on Sunday
• Vet’s office first words “you realize we are on emergency hours”
• Translation:  We are going to charge you ridiculous prices to look at your cat.  We know you are desperately worried at this hour and will pay any price.
• Go wake up the vet who sleeps at said office just for “emergencies”.
• X-Rays, office visit, antibiotics for a slightly elevated temperature, anti-nausea medicine, hydrate cat with fluids $275.  But the follow up vet visit is free (I know, it just warms the heart)
• Thank God there was no obstructions or surgery needed.  Stupid cat!
• Cute cat picture:  Priceless

I guess that’s my Christmas present. . .

Pinwheel quilt

It’s been a while since I’ve sewed.  My sewing room was such a mess and I couldn’t think about sewing until I cleaned some of it up.  It is amazing how much better I felt with everything organized.  So, I started to sew.  I got the top border done on my pinwheel quilt.  Here are some pictures.  I set some buttons on the flowers, but I’m going to wait to sew them on until the quilting is done.



The red flower on top of the blue is loose, and will be held on by just the button.  I made the the smaller flowers, like the red one, out of actual 30's prints.  I took a dresden plate block that was partially done and cut it up.  The blue and green flowers are repros.

 

Red didn’t want me to show you the border yet…


When I was cleaning, I found this piece of smocking that I did in a sewing class, playing with the fancy stitches on a Janome machine. 

With the blue and yellow colors, It would be cute in a little girl’s Easter dress.  I love the veriegated thread.  It is about 7” wide and 5-1/2” tall.  I don’t think I’ll ever do anything with it, though.  If anyone out there thinks they’d like to have this and would make something of it, send me an email.

I’d better get busy again tonight.  I’ve pledged to myself to finish this quilt for the New Year’s UFO Challenge on Finn’s blog.  Not much time left til then, eh?

Rambling…

I’m sooo thankful that we managed to dodge most of the big storm moving throughout most of the country.  We got a few inches of snow that promptly went away with warmer temps and rain.  We are getting the really high winds, though.  I asked DH if he has the generator all ready to go in case we lose power and he said we’re all set.

Of course, this would be nice too, with a good book…

Checking the blogs, I can’t believe how many giveaways are going on in blogland.   Click here for a link to one I just had to enter (on 5 different blogs) to win a new HP computer.  It’s a touch screen computer and it really looks neat.

I found the cutest baby quilt called Hugs and Kisses from Quilt Patterns from Seattle   She has a download for a free pattern on her website.  She has a lot of free quilt patterns.  I love the scrappy maple leaf quilt and the autumn in the southwest quilt.

DH sent me this email yesterday. 
Elvis, When he was really "The King" - Martina McBride was digitally dropped in to this track in 2008.
Amazing, simply amazing how good this is, I hope you enjoy this as much as I did.  It’s a pretty cool video…Click on link below.
http://release.theplatform.com/content.select?pid=5mCzgDf_lCZ3uKBDkKLY2_dqmD4_S0yF&UserName=Unknown
Elvis - Born January 08, 1935. Died August 16, 1977
Martina - Born July29, 1966 -

Well, it’s off to bed, or as my father used to say, it’s time to go to the blanket show. 

Not much quilting lately…

I seem to go in streaks when it comes to quilting.  Last year, I started making jewelry.  It is very similar to quilting in that the more “stash” you have, the easier it is to make pretty jewelry.  It "requires" hours of stalking the bead section at Joann’s, Hobby Lobby, and Michaels, fondling the baubles and beads.  The good news is that it is not quite as expensive as quilting (as long as you stay away from Swarovski crystals…then it can get more expensive).  It costs less than $50 to get started in this craft.

I found a little bead store not too far away that had Sunday classes.  I decided to check them out one day.  While it was  a nice little store, I was disappointed to hear that their instructor listed in their online class schedule had recently moved, so there were no classes.  And, the store was very warm that day with no air conditioning.  I got discouraged and visited Joann’s where I bought a little cheapo, how-to make jewelry kit and taught myself how to do it.  It really is very easy.  I made several necklaces, bracelets, and earrings over the past year. 

As I was growing up, I would receive charms for my charm bracelet for special occasions.  But over the years, the charm bracelet had become old and tarnished.  Charm bracelets seem to have come back into fashion recently.  While I think charm bracelets are cute, they aren’t very practical for wearing to work when you are working on a computer most of the day.  So recently, I decided to dump the ugly, tarnished bracelet and put my charms on a necklace.

First, I had to find a sturdy chain that would hold the charms and not break.  Hobby Lobby helped with that one.  Then, I simply used my pliers to open some new, shiny sterling silver rings to attach the charms to the necklace.  I felt it needed some updating, so I added some colorful, handmade bead charms.

There’s the bible I received for my confirmation, and the Christmas angel charm.  If you look inside the bible charm, you can see the Lord’s Prayer…

The high school banner, the graduation cap, the violin (that I played for several years), and the charm from the trip to the Grand Ole Opry

Here’s the entire necklace.  You can see the heart charm with my December birthstone at the bottom of the necklace.

I still did not use all of my charms on this necklace, so I could easily make another one.  All of the colors you see are the bead charms I made.  I'm pleased with how it turned out.  I love being able to wear these charms again after all these years.

Thanks for stopping by.

It’s beginning to look like Christmas…

It’s been a while since I’ve posted.  Work has been busy, thank goodness.  I’d rather be busy than bored, and we are going into our slow season where we do all the things we tend to procrastinate about (read..don’t really want to do) during the busy season.

Well, I got into the Christmas mood this weekend and got the house decorated.  It’s always fun to pull out old favorites from the Christmas boxes.  With the 2 cats and no kids, I don’t put up a tree.  Mr. Red loves to climb to high places, and a tree would not last very long in this household.  Now Buster, on the other hand, didn’t really care what what going on.  He’d rather sleep and look cute…

We’ll have to see what Red does to the mantle that was just decorated with my village houses

Once upon a time, when I had better eyes and more patience, I was very much into needlework with embellishment.  I made several felt wall hangings with lots of beads and sequins.  I guess you could say these were my early appliqué quilts that I made when I was in my teens and early 20’s.  I still have a UFO from those days, LOL.  Wonder if I’ll ever finish it?

I gave this one to my grandparents over 30 years ago, and got it back after they passed away.  It’s getting a little frayed around the edges, but I still love it anyway.

I made this one not long after I got married and kept it as one of our first Christmas decorations.  It’s my favorite one.

And I made this Christmas card holder as well.

I’m pretty sure I made a few others and gave them away to family as Christmas gifts, but I don’t have any pictures.  As you can see, I’ve been having a little fun tonight playing with making collages in Picasa.


How’s your holiday decorating coming along?

Take care,