Busy Busy December

First up, we took a trip to Disneyland.  This is my daughter Ashley and my granddaughter, Emily.  Living just a few miles from Disneyland, it seems we have several friends who work there and lucky us, we sometimes get into the park for free.  Woohoo.  This was Emily's first trip to the Happiest Place on Earth so Aunty Stephanie bought her a Minnie hoody to wear that day.  It was chilly for us sissy Californians.  :)

 

 

Everything is SO beautiful at Disneyland at Christmas time.  I have been lucky and have gotten to go the last few years.  I love Christmas anyway but add twinkly lights to the already amazing rides and castles...it just doesn't get any better than that.

 

 
I didn't think I'd get any holiday baking done this year with my little "distraction" but my daughter (and Emily) went to her in-laws for a week before Christmas.  That freed me up to do some baking.  There is something about a toddler grabbing your pant legs and "oohing" to be picked up while you're trying to work in the kitchen.  I can't say no and I know this time will be short lived so I cave.  Heck, this time next year, she'll be wanting to play with the dough so I guess I'll have a helper from here on out.

I bought a book from Current when my kids were little about some "gingerbears" who are like the shoemakers elves and help a couple prepare for Christmas by baking for the wife, putting a toy together for the husband, doing the baking and the dishes, etc.  I love that story (probably because I WISH I had gingerbears help me at Christmas!!) and I like to cut my gingerbread into little bears.  :o)
 

 

There's a lot of Emily in this post but tis the season to enjoy a 13 month old at Christmas.  We took her to see Santa even though she is being raised Jewish and celebrates Hanukkah, I wanted a photo for me so off we went to the mall.  She didn't cry which surprised us.  (We did bribe her with a candy cane.)

 
This is our tree this year.  I was a little worried about how dry our tree was last year so this year we bought a live tree from a tree lot where they cut it down after you chose it.  Five days after Christmas and it still feels good and it's still drinking water, thank goodness.  It was hard to switch from a Noble Fir to this Douglas but once all the decorations were on it, it looked good and to not be all dried up...totally worth it!

 

I made Emily's stocking when I went to visit my sister last month.  I made this one for her and my sister made two for her twin grandbabies using the same pattern. 

 

I hope you had a wonderful Christmas.  Have a safe New Year and let's finish some quilts this year!!  :o)



Poor neglected bloggy...

Maybe I should start a holiday blog.  Just stopping in to say Happy Thanksgiving and Merry Christmas!!!  I loaded these pictures about a week and a half ago but never got on to edit and write up a post.  So sorry friends.  Things should be looking up though with Christmas behind us now, I hope to be a little more blog-post-friendly.  :o)  Even though Christmas was yesterday, I'll still finish this post and then move on. 

Here's a picture of my Christmas tree with my many strings of lights.  It takes me a long time to put the lights on because I wrap them around each branch like the artificial trees are done.  I just love the way it looks so much better than just looping them around the outer branches of the tree.

 

Here is the outside of my little house.  I always joke about it looking like a 'runway'.  I got those big Christmas bulbs/lights from Michael's and I line the walkway with them.  I think it would be so cute to string them from the roof but I can't afford to buy that many.  

 

There was an itty-bitty bit of crafting done before Christmas.  I made this tulle Monster wreath for my friend's sons birthday party.  It's a Monsters Inc. theme and my oldest daughter saw this on Pinterest so I copied it.  It came out pretty good even though my glue gun melted the bottom of the eyeballs.  lol  I had to use tacky glue instead.

My son-in-law's sister bought our little Emily her first Christmas ornament.  Kind of funny because they are Jewish but she knows I celebrate Christmas and that we would have a tree.  Speaking of which, it is SO dry, I need to take it down already.  I want to be sewing but that has to take priority.  I think I'll sew a little, take down the tree, sew a little, take off the lights, sew a little....you get the idea.  hehe

 

Speaking of little Emily, here she is at about 5 weeks old.  She started to smile on cue.  My goodness, this girl has us all wrapped around her little finger.  This is the reason there were no handmade ornaments this year and a lot less baking for the neighbors.  lol

 

 

I "finally" started the Celtic Solstice Mystery by Bonnie Hunter.  I'll share some of that tomorrow.  I hope you had a wonderful Christmas!

Merry Christmas

From my house to yours. Our Christmas tree this year.

My sweet friend Angela sent me this adorable Raggedy so I hung her on the the extra dining room chair so I could look at it every time I walk by.  :o)

Neena sent this adorable Kiss tree.  It used to have Hershey's Nuggets as the trunk but my husband already ate them.  lol

And this was what the goodie plates looked like that I took to my neighbors.  Everything turned out really tasty this year.  Yay!

 

My sister came to bake with me and we took a little break to see Christmas lights in Fullerton.  One person made these hanging ornaments filled with lights and now all the houses have them hanging from the trees.  It's quite a site.

December Fun

I hostessed our Bunco Christmas party last Wednesday.  There have been a few times when I wasn't the hostess but for the most part, December is at my house.  I actually like doing it in December because it gets me "moving" to decorate the house and get the tree up.  As our girls got older, finding the motivation to do it has been tough.  This helps nudge me.  :o)

We do a gift exchange/Dirty Santa game with a $20 limit.  I stole this adorable little sugar/creamer snowman.  His hat is a bowl, his head is a bowl and I guess you could use the body as a cup but I think I will put Equal or sugar packets in there.  He even has a spoon!  Adorable, right?

My daughter Kelley and I did two craft shows in December.  This is her with all her cute 'stuff'.  That is behind us and we've moved onto Christmas shopping.  The money we made has come in handy but we didn't get rich.  It's a tough way to make money, that's for sure.  Kelley does sell her stuff on a website if you like adorable art.  www.kellsworthink.com.   

 

I went to a yard sale in my neighborhood a few Friday's ago.  I saw a box if rustic picture frames and called Kelley to see if she wanted them to frame her artwork.  The lady was selling them in a 'lot' for $10.00.  That included about 8 frames that were 5x7 openings and 3 that looked to be 10x10.  Kelley liked the picture I sent her so I bought them. 

 

When I pulled them out of the box, I saw some had hearts glued to them.  Obviously, these were from a wedding.  I had to send Kelley a picture of the hearts.  Kelley's boyfriend is Jason. He is an IT guy who's trying to finish school and then they'll make plans to get married, God willing (as my mom used to say). She would like something small and vintage-like and she loves the carnival theme that has been quite popular lately.  These might be saved for a "someday" wedding instead of artwork.  They're already decorated for the bride and groom.  K+J  lol

Christmas Card Workshop

My daughter Stephanie had her stamping workshop today.  It was part workshop, part open house so we could get to working on our Christmas cards. 

 

 

We made eight cards using the Connie Stewart Flash Card method of cutting cardstock.  If you haven't seen this method yet, check her out by doing a search on youtube.  It's a great system to make a batch of cards but real quick.  We made two sets of 4 designs that Stephanie came up with.  It was fun to not only do cards so quick but also because everyones cards came out so different. 

 



This one is embossed with a snowflake design on the background that just adds a soft element to the card.

 

I love this little cup!  So stinkin' cute! 

 

I did a demo for this coffee card.  Just on time to tuck in a little coffee gift card for your favorite hair stylist or BFF.

 And because Kelley is trying to meet a deadline, she painted some little "people" while we all worked on our cards.  She was trying to meet the deadline for two craft shows Wednesday night and Saturday.  I think these will be gingerbread folks, snowmen and little elves.

Can you guess?

Working on some ornaments today. I love the picture on the pattern. I jut hope mine come out as cute!!

Christmas Cookies

Did you bake cookies this Christmas? We did. See the little bears in the lower left of the photo? Those were my favorites. I used to read a book to my girls when they were little called, "The Gingerbear's First Christmas". I think I bought the book from the Current catalog. It was a cute little story about a family who had many things on their list and they were so tired from all the extra activities that had to be done for the holidays. The mom fell asleep in a chair. The little bears did all her baking, did the dishes and cleaned the kitchen. You can tell the book was fiction as no one except moms do the dishes and clean the kitchen!!! lol Well, I made my gingerbread cookies to look like the Gingerbears with little cinnamon red hot hearts.

Mrs. Claus (my sister) invited me to her house to bake lots of cookies.

I took two days of vacation before Christmas, loaded my cookie cutters, cookie sheets, parchment paper rolls, recipes, rolling pins, etc., etc. and headed out at 5:00 a.m. on Wednesday morning.....in the pouring California rain! I think you might've heard a little something about our crazy weather. I'm not used to getting up that early but my hubby thought even though it was raining, I wouldn't hit as much traffic as if I left later. It was a good idea but I had to have a little cat nap when I got to my sister's house while my sis got her shower and got ready. Once I rested, we baked all day. We started with all the batches of dough that had to be refrigerated. By early afternoon we had some cookies rolled out and ready to frost. I stayed the night and headed out the next day with cookie tins in tow. It was a much nicer drive home.

I came home to some pretty homemade Christmas cards from my stampin' buddies. I'll share those in my next post. And this adorable potholder from my buddy Carolyn. It's so cute, I think I'll give up cooking so I don't risk ever getting it dirty. LOL

Do you take your Christmas decorations down right after Christmas? I don't. I love, Love, LOVE Christmas and even though I'm ready for my house to be back to normal, I'll wait until New Years weekend to take down all of the decorations.

Merry Christmas to you!

To all my bloggy friends and family, I hope you have a wonderful Christmas. I am off to get some veggies ready and put some munchies together for my kids and my SIL/BIL tonight. Enjoy your holiday and I hope Santa brings you something crafty this Christmas. May God bless us all at this wonderful time of year.

Disneyland at Christmas

My friend Susan invited me to Disneyland with a free pass. It was beeeeeautiful! Here are just a few pictures to let you know I'm alive. I'm at my sister's house baking Christmas cookies so I'll be back soon, hopefully before Christmas to say hello again!

The tree on Main Street (looking up from the base).
It's a Small World all done up in sparkly lights. So pretty.

Merry Christmas!!!

Tis the Season.....

....for giving and love and twinkling lights. And a little exhaustion. :o) I finished my decorating the weekend after Thanksgiving and got my cards done at my card party but I was four short. I cut four more out last night and finished addressing all the store-bought cards. Got the postage and labels on and mailed them off today.
With all of the activities going on, and trying to squeeze in some shopping here and there, it is also my turn to hostess Bunco. Needless to say, there is no sewing going on at my house. :o( So I've got Bunco tomorrow night and our family Christmas party on Sunday. I thought I better post something so you knew I was alive. hehe
I bought this wire basket last year at an antique mall. I got two packages of ornaments from the after-Christmas sale at Target and this year, I have a pretty centerpiece. The tablecloth was an after-Christmas item too, from Gooseberry Patch when they still sold giftables and not just cookbooks. (The day I got that email that they were no longer selling gift and kitchen items.....I was SO SAD!!)

Here is my Christmas tree....... Using "The Clapper". "Flash on"...

"Flash off!" I can never quite capture a perfect picture of my tree with my little Sony camera. My husband says I don't need a new one because this one works just fine. Somehow, I don't think my reasoning of it taking bad pictures for my blog a good enough reason to get a new one. LOL

This is the first ornament I painted back in the old "tole painting days". I made it in 1987. I got a scroll saw for Christmas the year before so I could cut out my own stuff. That saw is collecting rust now but I sure got my use out of that puppy!

This was another painted ornament. A little heart upside down to look like a cute chubby Santa.

A few years ago, I 'paid' someone to cut these out for me and I painted them up for an ornament exchange at a retreat with quilty friends. I didn't realize it was blurry until I posted it. Darn it.

I'll be missing again for a few days but will try to check in soon. Until then, I hope you are able to check things off your list and get all of your "to-do's" done. Try to grab a cup of warm tea or cocoa and sit by the fire and take in the wonder of the season. Even as crazy busy as I have been, I am trying to take little breaks in my house with the lights turned down low while I catch a classic Christmas movie!

Christmas cards....check!

I had some of my girlfriends over on Saturday for a Card-making get-together. There were six of us sharing my little house. We did it potluck style so that I could play and make cards too. I made turkey pot pie and pumpkin dump cake. Michelle, from one of my Yahoo group sites and her two little girls brought Chinese chicken salad with the most delicious dressing. Yum!! Two of my daughters came over. Kelley made meatballs in spaghetti sauce. They were delish!! Stephanie came from work so she brought sodas. My buddies Susan and Neena came too. Susan brought a 7 layer dip and chips and Neena spent an hour looking for a grocery store in my neighborhood. (They're hiding!) She finally gave up and came and joined us and gobbled down the more-than-enough food that was already there.

Michelle, Stephanie, Susan, Kelley


Most of us made Christmas cards but Michelle worked on projects for her daughters school like little decorative match boxes for classroom gifts and packaging items that would be sold at the school Christmas boutique.


This is the card I made with last years Stampin' Up! Christmas paper. Gotta use it up so I can use this years paper next year! LOL I copied this card from one I had seen online but theirs had a bow on it. I decided not to add a bow and just use the flat ribbon because of the cost of postage already. I didn't want to make add another 17 cents a card for a little bow. Whatta cheapskate, eh? ;o)

This adorable card is one of Neena's. It is even more adorable in person and can't believe Neena cut out all of those gingerbread people!!! She made six of this card. That's 24 gingerbread people! (She's a show-0ff!) lol

This is Kelley's prototype for her cards. (She already changed the drawing.) She has drawn her and her boyfriend Jason for the last few years so she thought she would keep up the tradition again this year. She used bakers twine and some little brads she found at the dollar spot at Target. Cute, yes? (I know, I'm biased!)

This is Stephanie's card. She only got one done because she was putting all of her new stamp sets together. I love the colors. I think the stamp and cardstock was SU sky blue. You might have to click it to see the details.

So now, I need to make some labels and get mine addressed and in the mail. So, it's not quite a "check" off the list but it's getting closer.

Woohoo!

I can't believe it's been over a week since I last wrote a post. Time has a way of flying by this time of year. I suppose I don't have to tell any of you that though, right?
Let me think....what have I been doing? I went to Joann's on Black Friday but I wasn't crazy enough to go at 6:00 a.m. It was more like 6:00 p.m.! :o) I got a few notions and gifts. Saturday my hubby and I got the bins of Christmas decorations down and I decorated the house all weekend. Ahhhhh, I love those twinkling lights!
Last night I finally made it into my sewing room after many, many days of not playing in there at all. I finished my Christmas stocking that I cut out a few weeks ago.

I bought enough of this focus fabric to make me and my girls a stocking and the guys stockings out of a Christmas stripe. My girls put the brakes on my idea saying their stockings that they've had since pre-school are just fine and leave them alone. (You can see a little of Kelley's stocking to the right of mine in the picture.) I had to laugh. I bought them at a craft bazaar the school was putting on as a fund-raiser and they are made from store bought pre-quilted fabric. I put their names on them with slick paints. Remember those?? The paint yellowed and cracked over the years so I peeled it off and rewrote their names. I guess I should be happy they cherish their hokey little stockings. When I showed my hubby my stocking, he said I could make him one out of hot rod fabric. Gee, I guess I should find a project for all that striped fabric I bought. LOL
Do you have any turkey leftover? My buddy Carolyn shared her Chicken Pot Pie recipe with me a year or two ago. It's the easiest recipe and so easy.

It was delicious! I used leftover turkey and didn't have cream of potato soup so used cream of chicken. Still delicious! And I had the rolled pie crust instead of the deep dish frozen ones. Instead of cutting off the extra, I just rolled it up and crimped it. Not pretty but guess what? Still delicious. LOL Have a great rest of the week!

The Locusts...alll about food!

My little sister Virginia, describes our family gatherings like locusts. You put out the food and they come, they devour, and all that's left are crumbs that would barely feed a mouse. If you come late, somebody had better saved you a plate or you would starve!! LOL

They look kind of calm in that picture, don't they? That's concentration. Trying to decide what chow to put on the plate. We had a Mexican food feast for our Christmas celebration on Sunday.

That good looking young man in the yellow t-shirt is my nephew Greg. I'm surprised he got in line for food. He loves, LOVES, L-O-V-E-S a certain cookie I make called Santa's Whiskers. Every time I went in the kitchen, I would see him over at the baked goodie table and he'd have three or four in his hand. So cute.

So, there were no pretty dishes or fine china. There was however, tamales, enchiladas, enchilada casserole, rice, beans, carnitas, a couple of pasta salads, lots of salsas, guacamole and dip. Oh, and we went through 120 deviled eggs! Unbelievable.

This was a little table we set up to put some baked goodies on. One sister and her family came over the night before we got together and she kept wanting to sample cookies. I kept moving them and telling her "no" because I was afraid I was the only one providing sweets. That was not the case, thank goodness.

I did my baking at my sister's house, as I mentioned yesterday. We did the Santa's Whiskers (top plate on the left), sugar cookies, english toffee and peanut butter blossoms. We also made dough for gingerbread cookies but didn't bake them there. I cut out little bears and put red hots for buttons. I was running on empty by the time I had to bake them and that was all I had left in me.

The day of the party, I dipped strawberries in white chocolate and they were delicious!
This wraps up what I wanted to share about the holidays other than a cool gadget I got for one of my presents. I'll chat about that later. Until then, I hope you all have a wonderful New Year and are blessed with good health, lots of crafting time and that you have a prosperous year (so you can buy new fabric!). :o)