A very happy Christmas to all

 

Today...I wish you a day of ordinary miracles- 

A fresh pot of coffee you didn't have to make yourself.

An unexpected phone call from an old friend.

Green stoplights on your way to work or shop.

I wish you a day of little things to rejoice in...

The fastest line at the grocery store.

A good sing along song on the radio.


Your keys right where you look.

I wish you a day of happiness and perfection-little bite-size pieces of perfection that gives you the funny feeling that the Lord is smiling on you, holding you so gently because you are someone special and rare. 
(source unknown - but thank you)

Take the time to enjoy the day.
Wishing you a Merry Christmas for 2013 and a Happy, Healthy 2014

December FNSI

Last night I joined in the final FNSI for the year. Thank you so much Wendy for  organising us for our Friday night stitching.

I worked on some Christmas gifts, finishing off 2 "Dear Diaries" to give to my sisters.  I like making Joy's (JoyPatch) Dear Diary pattern.

 The books on the right in each of them are from Rebound Books.  I like to support this small business when I can - such a unique idea.  With every order I make I usually add something from their fundraising sale section which supports the Indigenous Literacy Foundation. The delivery of the books was very quick also.

High Tea

This year the customer Christmas celebration at Sew This and That was a High Tea, held on Sunday afternoon a week ago.  We were to take our own cup, saucer and plate.  I knew straight away that I wanted to use this beautiful set which had belonged to my mother, and which I had always admired.  But it had no saucer - so what was a stitchy girl to do but make one.

 

I photocopied the plate and then reduced the size to 80%, traced that onto a piece of cream fabric (which I had to use bleach to lighten to get a closer colour).  I then embroidered the flowers, stitched the gold trim and it was ready to use.  It served its purpose very well.  

One of the competitions on the day was taken from our November Sewing Club project, which was a gift bag with an angel or Santa appliqued on - and with dangly legs.  We could use those or our own applique, and embellish as we would like.  I made the small size bag as given to us and then - thanks to Fiona giving me an idea (she made some of these last Christmas and I had seen them on her blog - you can check them out here) I used the pattern of the gingerbread man, enlarged it and embellished it, then appliqued it onto the bag.

 I was very surprised that mine was voted the winner as there were some beautifully embellished Santas on some of the bags.
(The pattern and tutorial for the gingerbread man ornaments is here).

Other competitions voted on by all of us, was for the messiest sewing room and the best sewing room.  We had to take in a photo beforehand.  Now mine would have done well for the messiest, but I needed to clear off my cutting table and also my sewing desk so as to make some curtains.  So I actually took a photo of a clean sewing room.

And again I won the prize for the best sewing room.  My half garage comes up rather well when tidied up. Mind you if they could have seen what was behind the camera it may have reverted to messiest.  

 I was very chuffed with my wins - 2 class vouchers.  It made up for the fact that my shoe parted company with its sole part way through the afternoon and I spent the rest of the time barefooted - not a good look when frocked up, but a good laugh just the same. 

It is a fantastic store and Danielle and the Girls run excellent classes, give good customer service, and have amazing fabrics.

Our December sewing club project was a Christmas wall hanging.

 He is a jolly little fellow and is hanging beside the door to the bathroom.  He has a pompom on his hat but it is lost in the background in the photo.

special 1 Christmas Item Show and Tell

I have been so thrilled to be able to be part of 1 Christmas Item a Month, this year, and have been impressed with being able to make something "Christmas" every month of the year.  Today our chief Elf, Narelle, is hosting an extra show and tell for December.  Thank you so much Narelle - it is so much fun checking out all the blogs each month, and there have been some beautiful decorations, gifts and other Christmas items made throughout the year.

My contributions this month are hot off the press  sewing machine.

My two daughters and their families are going to be spending their Christmas Day together "down on the Farm".  2 of their children have Santa Sacks that I made earlier in the year, but the other two dont.  To save any squabbles or feelings of favouritism (no not really - they are a bit young to feel that), I have made  Santa Sacks for the other two..

To save confusion of whose bag is whose (because I didnt remember to put names on them), I decided I had better make tags so they can identify them.

  

They are now ready to be filled up with some goodies, for some very excited children to check out on Christmas morning.

Happy Mail - and fun with the Grandies

Earlier this week I received some lovely mail - firstly a parcel from Kerrie for the 6 Items swap organised by Maree.

 

 One parcel is under the tree, and removing the wrapping from the other five revealed the most beautiful  gifts.

something to read - a cookie recipe book (Yummy)

something to eat - choc coated shortbread (also Yummy)

something that smells nice - a lavender heat pack (very useful)

 Something for the tree - look at this beautiful beaded stocking. (love it)

 Something for the sewing room - the fatquarter and buttons (bottom left in above photo) as well as these absolutely amazing pin cushion and tape measure cover.   They are so finely crocheted.  (So beautiful)

Here is what I sent to my swap partner (no blog).  I havent heard yet if she has received it - but I put my details inside the gift to be opened on Christmas Day so she wont know till then, who it is from.  I hope she will be happy with them.

More happy mail I received this week was a parcel from Sandi (Forevermoore).  Sandi had a very generous Giveaway with 4 chances to win a gift from her.  I received a lovely parcel of the book I had chosen as well as a Christmas brooch,  and a beautifully embroidered (Marg Low designed) little wallet/pouch thingy containing gorgeous buttons.

Thank you Sandi for such a generous giveaway parcel.

This week I had one of those occasions when Granny duties were in great demand.  On one night I had 4 Grandies (2 families) come for a sleepover, and on the following day they were joined by 2 more.

 

 I have to say I had forgotten just how much of the day revolves around food when there are 6 young ones in the house.  By the time the food was prepared, eaten and cleaning up done, it was time to start over again.

They all had a wonderful time playing together, the older two were very helpful.  What's more, the parents were amazed to see that all toys had been cleaned up and the place reasonably tidy when they came to pick up their children - again thanks to the example of Kai and Charlie which encouraged the next 2, Sammy and Harry, to help pack up.

 Henry enjoyed the attention he received.

 But was not so happy when they left him on his own.  Its not fair being the only one not mobile.

 

Vicki's favourite activity was to play in the dog's drinking water. She washed quite a few toys in there.

 Fortunately the dog is not too concerned - she would rather sleep.   She is too old and arthritic to want to join in their play time.

I wonder why my DH chose those particular 2 days to go  on a sudden business trip.  Do you think he had reasons other than work involved in that decision?

This month's UFOs

In amongst all the other stitching activity I have been pushing myself to work on, I have been chipping away at my UFOs again this month. Though they are all small finishes, they are all finished and out of the UFO box, so worthy of mention.

Once upon a time, nearly 40 years ago) when I was going through a crochet stage, my Mum showed me an old picture of a doiley with pansies around the outside, and said she had always wanted to have a doiley like that.  Well I found a pattern for pansies and did my best to find pansy coloured cottons to use - no small feat in our little country town where we lived at the time.  I crocheted away and produced a number of pansies, but alas they were not quite as my Mum envisioned her doiley to be. I didnt have the right colours to be able to do multi coloured pansies as in her picture.  So I put my pansies into a jar and left them there.

Recently I saw this pic on the internet, and immediately thought of my pansies.  Just the right project for my pansies.  (I am still searching for where I found this pic so I can link to it.)

And here are mine, along with my little lot of pansies still to be used.

So far, I have used 5 of my pansies, and have another 8.  I may use some for matching needlebooks.  Or.......

Most of these will go into my birthday love stash box.

My other UFO finishes for this month are a Christmas heart which I embroidered last year, so just needed to assemble.

This little coin purse needed a suitable frame for it, and I finally found one I could use at the recent Craft and Quilting Fair.

1 Month to go.....

till Christmas Day.  I have been working away on some things that I cant share, but also I have one that I can show for my 1 Christmas Item for November.  It is not finished yet, but it will be before long.

I bought this kit at the Mad Quilters Gathering, earlier this year.  I liked the old Christmas Card style of the panel.

I will be back soon to show it finished off.

Secret Santa time

It is so lovely to make bloggy friends, and the people in this group - Stitchers Inc in Brisbane - are very special friends.  So it was great to meet up again yesterday, after not being able to meet for a while. (room unavailability).
We had a lovely afternoon - such yummy food, lots of chatting and catching up, a teeny tiny bit of stitching, and our Secret Santa swap, which was amazing.  What a wonderfully talented bunch we are.  :o)

I was thrilled to be able to make for Maria.   I searched through her blog rather thoroughly.  I discovered that she loves purple (well I did already know that).  I also found that her Christmas decorations appeared to be in traditional reds and greens.  Yes, Maria I did look that far back.

So to satisfy both those facts, this is what I made for her -

 a celtic table runner in Christmas fabrics.  I love making this pattern, as it always turns out so pretty.

 And a needle book in purples.(above is the front, and below is the inside of it.  The heart is in a mauve coloured doctors flannel)

 Here is Maria holding her gifts.

The "M" on the front of the needlebook is from Michelle's Stitchers Alphabet pattern - one of my favourites for stitchery gifts, and one I will use over and over again.  Debbie also used the "M" for her person, so we had to compare them.

Very different colours, but both looked good.

I was thrilled to receive a gift from Cheryl.  She gave me a gorgeous market bag in some of her favourite fabrics, which was so lovely.  Arent they cute - love those chookies and their eggs.  The lining is black with apples on it.

 This lovely plum pudding decoration is made in felt.

 And I love this most beautiful embroidered handkerchief with crocheted edging.

Oops, we do look like such a messy lot dont we?  But we had all that tidied away in minutes once it was time to leave.

  

I will be waiting to catch up with you all in February, in our exciting new venue.  (Thanks to Maree for finding and organising it for us).  In the meantime, I will catch you online.

A little progress for FNSI

The Grandies finally settled down on Friday night, to enable me to work on some stitchery for FNSI.

This is for a secret project, so cant show any more of it for some time now.

You can head over here, and scroll to the end of the post  to see what the other 47 people have been working on for their FNSI.

I will be back before long to show some photos of our Stitchers Inc get together and Christmas secret Santa swap.    

FNSI

I will be back over the weekend to show which of the many projects I decided to work on tonight.

Hope you all of you who have signed up have a great stitchy night.  It will be good to see what you worked on.

Grandies visits and birthday

I do love Grandie's birthdays.  Kai had his 8th birthday yesterday.  Such a gorgeous age.

As soon as he was home from school he dived into making his new lego models - a Batman one, and 2 boats.  Such concentration as he worked through the instructions and completed them.

 Charlie offered a bit of overseeing advice.

 These boys love the cakes their Mum makes for their birthdays.  Kai chose a castle.  We found a silicone form in the shape of a castle at KMart, so that solved the shape rather well.  Once it was iced they had fun directing the decoration with all forms of sweets.  It was a delicious cake.

It had blue jelly for the water in the moat.  Love those giant's footsteps leading to the drawbridge.

But the absolute highlight for them was finding these little creatures waiting outside for them when they woke up.

We have these 2 Grandies - Sammy and Henry, staying for a few days.

They are leaving tomorrow for Sydney, so it will be back to a quiet house for a few weeks.

I do love our Grandies!!!!  Did I tell you all that before?  Probably, but that's ok.