every little thing . . .

I can hardly believe we're already halfway through the month of November.  Where did the first half go?!  Well, actually, I have a pretty good idea . . . I have a lot to show for the last two weeks!

First off, I do enjoy decorating my doorway, so when we moved from October to November, I re-staged my front door accordingly . . .

It makes me smile every time I come home!

Lots of stitching.  Ellie has been working on ornaments for her table at Advent Market next week.  Originally she thought Everley would be able to do half, but Evey is still a new stitcher, and I think it was overwhelming to her.  So I offered.  At first I did the three snowmen . . .

And then I took on the trees, the snowflakes, and candy canes . . . 

I've got one more candy cane to finish.  Phew!  I'll wrap it up with some slow Sunday stitching.  :)  I'll deliver these tomorrow, and then Ellie will do the work to finish them out as ornaments.  She's so clever!

I took a class last weekend for this super cute turkey . . .

Isn't he darling?! The tail feathers (and the body) use the Petal Pop Acrylic Template by Sugar Bee Quilts.  It took about a day to complete and was a fun project to kick off the Thanksgiving month!

Ellie and I decided we liked working on tandem projects, so we picked up a couple of cross stitch patterns to stitch in anticipation of Christmas.  We're going to work on this Primose Cottage Stitches pattern first . . .

It is Merry & Bright! We're working this on 25-count mocha linen, two over two.  

I've also joined along with Mary Corbet's latest SAL, Twinkle,Twinkle. I even got the kit.  It's so pretty!  And the blues—*swoon*!  Plus it has beading.  I've finished the first two steps . . . 

That fishbone stitch was a first for me (and it shows), but it was such fun to work! 

I also got the components cut out for the quilt Sawyer asked me to make for him when he visited in July.  He picked the fabrics, then helped me decide on the pattern.  It's a three-yard quilt, but I'm going to put extra borders on it to make it a little bigger.

I have to still stitch up the strips, and then all the components will be ready for assembly!

Again on the machine front, I got my sweet little wool bowl warmers finished up!

I would have put them in a bowl, but this cornucopia (that you can't see for the pillows) was begging for filler.  Voila.

Every time I get on my machine, Celeste feels the need to come snoopervise my work.  

I finally got out my foot pedal so I could use my hand to shield the needle from her little paws!

And speaking of cats, they had an 'ears' competition yesterday . . .

They're both so stinking cute, I can never declare a winner!  They are such good, sweet, and playful companions.  I'm really grateful for them.

I'll close with some select sunset captures from the last two weeks.  I think I've mentioned that my balcony is west facing, so I see the sun setting in all it's glory, and we've had some interesting ones. I also will include a beautiful shot of the northern lights in our skies!  I had to go to the front of our building to get that one.  Haha.

Have a great week! I'm headed to Las Vegas to meet my James for the F1 Grand Prix next weekend, and then headed back with him to spend Thanksgiving in Temecula.  So Happy Thankgsiving to my 'Merican friends!  Only thirty-nine days until Christmas!!

:)

brevity is not my strong suit . . .

This is going to be (relatively) short and sweet . . . I'm still in the wilds of Yellowstone, having a wonderful time with my daughter and her family!

I did manage to work out my next 3-yard quilt before I left. Fabric Cafe has a new pattern book out and it's BIG Block 3-Yard Quilts . . . for those quilts where you love a fabric so much, you want good chunks of it in your quilt!  

I chose this design, "Felicity" . . .

And these three fabrics . . . 

I'm sure you can work out what's going to go where!  I'll plan on working on this when I return. I got extra of the dark fabric because I like to make wider borders than they do. The finished quilt constructed by their specifications is 44" by 57", but mine will be a little bigger all around.

I also fully finished this piece . . .

So much for having it to work on during my travels! I'm really pleased with it, though, so I don't mind.  

I even love the back! It's really sweet and I'm also tempted to do a second.  I enlarged the template when I printed it, though, so I'll need to remember by how much I enlarged it!

I didn't bring my Mayflower project because it's so big, it's hard to carry around (and would definitely not be fun to work on while flying), so there's not a whole lot of change to it from last week. Besides, I caught an error that needs to be corrected before I can move on . . . so I probably won't work on it for month.  J/K!  

Sunday is a 'down' day for us . . . we've only got one walk *and* a 1.2 mile hike on our itinerary for today.  LOL!  I'll get in some slow stitching on my Spring Quaker project, hopefully!  Linking up with the slow Sunday stitching post on Kathy's Quilts!

I'll be back next week with fun pics from the trip.  Enjoy the Memorial Day holiday and have a great week ahead!!

:)

whirlwind moments . . .

Well. That didn't go as planned!  I knew I wasn't going to be an every day blogger, but gosh, I sure hadn't planned on more than three weeks going by!  C'est la vie. Life has been so busy!  Lemme share . . .

I finished up my March 3-yard quilt.  Whoohoo!  Of course, I never got to the April quilt, so March and April are just going to share this one . . .

The girls immediately gave their seal (cat hair) of approval!

And while it doesn't look like a lot, I finished the waves and started on the ship on my Coming to America project . . .

Thursday, April 17th was a long day.  It was Todd's birthday, so Ezra and I made the trek out to the marina and had a picnic lunch.  Ezra sat in the captain's chair and informed me that since he was sitting there, it was now his boat.  Love that little guy!

From there, we met Joc and the girls (who'd spent the day at their homeschool cover) at the cemetery. 

I'd picked up Todd's favorite ice cream cake and we sang happy birthday to him and shared sweet "Pawpaw" memories.  

All in all it was a sweet (bittersweet) day. But it wasn't over.  While I'd have liked nothing more than to go home and sink into bed, our guild's speaker was Jan Davis, the first woman quilter in space.  

Mind you, she didn't actually quilt in space, but she did bring fabric with her (as one of her two personal items), including this beautiful block of her own design.

I'm glad I went ahead and went, but I slept until noon on Friday!

That Sunday was Easter. I celebrated with the Merkel crew at their house.  It was a beautiful day!

Filled with beautiful kiddos, all decked out matchy-matchy for the day!

Then I was on a road trip to Charleston, SC!  This summer is my 45th (can you believe it?!?) high school reunion, and they're taking a riduculously expensive cruise. I talked to a group of gals I've kept up with, to see if anyone was planning on going, and we decided to ditch the cruise and meet in SC for a long girl's weekend!

It was such fun!  We did the Charleston City Market, the Magnolia Plantation, and even took a haunted carriage tour!!  

We also ate a LOT of seafood; to my heart's content! It was our last night, eating out on the water, that I caught this gorgeous sunset . . .

And then this past weekend, it was ballet recitals . . .

Dinner with the darling Marie Bostwick, who was in town on tour, promoting her latest book, The Book Club for Troublesome Women.  Quilters who are also book readers may be familiar with her Cobbled Court Quilts series. She really is amazing!

And then Sunday evening my mom and I traveled to Gadsden to see the Gaither Vocal Band.  It was a great evening of music and praise and fun.  

Whew! I was actually glad it was Monday, and I didn't have any plans until late this afternoon! Happy month of May . . . summer is just around the corner!

:)