On the eve of Christmas Eve

It's getting late here - the night before Christmas Eve - I'm quite worn out as it's been such a busy day. Pretty much all the days in the lead up to the 25th are hectic and there are few minutes spare. I decided I really must grab the laptop and do a little writing or it'll be another week before I think of it again.

I'll try and go in order of things that are in my phone ... first up, now that they've been gifted, I can share some of the things I made for the gift bags for my lovely quilting friends:

Keyrings made from one of the mmmCrafts 12 days ornaments patterns. I embroidered both sides of these hearts, and they could still be used as ornaments really.

And some bag straps, or phone wrist straps. These were a really fun make. I don't have one left for myself, but I'll fix that in the holidays!

For my birthday my sweet girl Amy found another piece of Masons Vista for my collection. She always knows the very best things to get for me. This ginger jar is just perfect, I love it!

These are this years 12 Days ornaments for the girls and for some friends that live in the USA. In photo order, 3 - French Hen (for our friends), 5 - Gold Ring (for Mary), 2 - Turtle Dove (for Hazel). I love working on these ornaments and simply cannot wait until I get to work on some of the people!

I was thrilled to reach my goal of 300 days of hand quilting during the year. I crossed that line last week, and I don't think I've sat at the hoop since. I'll rectify that after Christmas day.

Because I'm on holidays now, I fired up my sourdough starter again. When I put it on hiatus some time back, I dried and froze some of the starter so it would be easy to get going should I want to. It was ready to bake with again quite quickly, and I made some dinner rolls.

If I make these again I'll try and do better with the shaping, but I'm learning all the time. I didn't have much bread flour which is why I tried these rolls first, and when I got more bread flour I made sourdough and baked it in a loaf tin. No picture I'm afraid, it was eaten so fast. Next time fingers crossed I'll get a picture.

And last of all for today, this afternoon I finished this year's gingerbread house. I'm pretty happy with it!

I used a pattern from Ellen Designs. Her templates are wonderful, and her gingerbread creations are just spectacular. I hope I'll be able to create at her level some day!

So I can hit the send button while it's still Wednesday evening, I'm going to finish up this post ... but first, please allow me to wish you Merry Christmas/Happy Holidays. I hope you have a wonderful festive season, and here's to wonderful things in this coming year! xox

Happy New Year!

Happy New Year lovely friends. Goodness, a lot has happened in the last three weeks, isn't it amazing how hectic life can become in the lead up to Christmas?

The tree was decorated early of course, which you've already seen, I love to take pictures of it - and I'm always sad when it's time to take it down. Usually I wait until the 6th, but I may do it a few days early this year, I feel ready to have less clutter around.

I've been babysitting, finishing up with work for the year, making up Christmas gifts, and all the other things I'm sure everyone else has been working on. I can share the gifts I made for my sweet quilting friends:

I thought I'd taken a photo of the table toppers but I can't see it right now (only little videos) but there were 18 smaller versions of the table runner I made recently. They're super cute.

For Mary and Hazel I made felt ornaments from the 12 Days series - Colly Bird for Mary, and Partridge in a Pear Tree for Hazel.

In the last days before Christmas I finally managed to get a gingerbread house made, I was struggling a bit with motivation this year, but finished it on Christmas Eve.

The house ended up on the coffee table in the lounge nook, and Marty put some pieces of Camo's old Thomas train set around it. There were dinosaurs on standby during construction in case of collapse due to my haste. 

You can see in the last couple of photos that the house has already started being nibbled on - and now there isn't a great deal left of it. I have an odd photo that I took across the room on Xmas Eve, you can see how large the house actually is:

We hosted 16 for lunch on Christmas Day and had additional visitors for the evening. Then on the 27th we visited with friends for Friendmas, I had fun working on a vegetarian starter course for that. It was a great evening with lovely people. And then we went out for dinner on New Years Eve, followed by drinks at our place and then wandering to a local viewpoint to watch the fireworks. This has been a lovely festive season, and now we can rest a little and take it easy on our holiday break.

One of my favourite Christmas gifts was from Amy. She found a toothpick holder which belongs to my Masons Vista china collection. I had no idea such a piece existed, what a wonderful find!

In the Betwixtmas, Amy and I put a puzzle together. It was a lovely gift from my dear friend Lyn who I used to work with:

Isn't it a fun puzzle? It was gifted 12 years ago, and I can't believe that we've only just made the time to put it together. Thank you so much Lyn - Amy and I (mostly Amy) had so much fun completing it.

Last of all, a little quilty content. In a few stolen moments I put some of my Tiny Nine Patch Challenge blocks together - I used a different setting than most people on Insta used. I didn't get far before being called to other things, but I can do some more with these in coming days. 

I had a delivery of a few fabrics suitable for broderie perse - I'm still very anxious about the Morrell quilt broderie perse blocks. I just need to put my nerves aside and just make something. I'll do a lot of learning as I go hopefully.

Last of all for this long post ... are you still with me? ... here is a little hand quilting I've been working on today. I hope I can get Lily Rosenberry finished this year. I'd love to say 'fingers crossed' but that will make it super hard to quilt! :-)

Well, that's it from me for tonight. Thank you for reading this far if you've managed it. This year I hope I can do better with my posting schedule, and also do better responding to messages. Apologies if you've messaged me over the last month or so and I haven't gotten back to you.

Happy New Year lovely friends, and chatter soon!

Christmas lead-up ...

Hi friends, I missed posting last week as I was just so busy in the lead up to Christmas. I thought I'd gotten all the have to do things finished, but when I took stock, there were still a few things on my plate, so I'll share them with you here.

If you're a long term reader you'll know that I always put together a gingerbread creation of some kind. This is my project for this year:

*I don't seem to be able to set the pictures to the largest size as they're too blurry. Must be something I did when transferring the pictures from the phone to the laptop. Anyway ...

This year I melted down butterscotch sweets to make the windows, it's a fun look. I've gone for a very traditional style gingerbread house. I drew the templates for the house up in Corel, and I can save them as PDF's if anyone would like a copy. Just pop me a note and I'll be happy to send them to you.

Next on the agenda was to decorate a cake quickly for a lovely friend's cousin’s wedding anniversary.

This was actually a very quick job - the little bouquet on top had been saved from the 25th anniversary cake, so for this 50th cake I just needed to switch the ribbon in the garland from silver to gold. It has been more than 20 years since I've made one of these cakes with the fondant icing, but luckily it all came back to me and I did a passable job. 

Also before the big day, I wanted to finish up some of the mmmCrafts ornaments for little Mary, and I managed to get this one done:

This is the French Hen from the Twelve Days of Christmas series. I wanted to revist the ones I'd already made, so I also made this one, but didn't quite get it done until a couple of days later:

This one is the Turtle Dove. All the ornaments in this series are just adorable, and I love working on them. Next will be the Colly Bird, and I'll try to make that much earlier in the year rather than waiting until it's actually December!

I made quite a number of placemats for gifts too. Some had to be passed on to other people to hand to the recipients. I hope they've been received now.

These placemats are so easy to put together, and wonderful for fabrics that you just don't want to cut up too much. I'll make some for us sometime ... I have a few things to finish first though.

And last of all for this post, I made up a couple more of the Opasampler blocks this week, one super easy, and a little more tricky.

Block 49 - Pork and Beans

Block 25 - Welcome Home

Both super fun to make, and I just love that little parrot in the window of the house. It came from one of the lovely conversational prints Wendy Caton Reed sent to me a while ago. I reserve those fabrics for the most special of projects!

In other news, I've continued to go through my fat quarters and put them in drawers. I'm about 95% done with that now, and I'm so very surprised at how many I have, and the drawers are entirely full. I really must resolve not to buy any more fabric until I've made some kind of dent in what I already have. It's entirely possible that even if I work at some stitching each day, I will never, ever run out of fabric.

I'm on holidays now until the beginning of February, so I've resolved to get a few things done before I'm back to my routine. The Opasampler blocks - I'd like to catch up on those. I'm determined to finish Camo's aviation themed top, it was started 10-15 years ago. It's time to get it done. I'd like to make another two of the charity quilts. And last of all, I'd like to paint the second bathroom area in the house. It's time for a refurbish in there. Can I get all this done? Maybe ... but at least by writing it down, I'll be inspired to give it a good try.

I hope you're all having a wonderful holiday season, and before I write again we'll have rung in the new year. So I hope you have a Happy New Year, and let's chatter again in 2024! xox

Whoops!

OMG, I almost forgot to check in and post today - we're in that period between Christmas and New Year where time seems to be at a standstill. I seldom know what day it is, and if I'm honest, I tend to get a little nocturnal. This is such an easy time, what luxury it would be to live like this always :-)

But I have still been getting a few things done:

I did finish the gingerbread snowglobe cookies I mentioned in last week's post. I always have such lofty ambitions when I'm inspired by creations on Pinterest. While these are nowhere near as professional looking as those I saw, I'm pretty happy with them. And the kids ate them all on the big day - Camo told me he had three all by himself! I'd like to try some different styles when I have the chance, so I've pinned some more inspiration photos.

In stolen moments I've been putting a few stitches here and there in Lily Rosenberry. I am absolutely loving hand quilting again - if only there were a few more hours in each day to devote to it!

Before Christmas I made these ornaments for little Mary, but obviously couldn't share them until after she had received them. They're the Partridge in a Pear Tree ornament set from the mmmCrafts Twelve Days ornaments series. I am addicted! I'll keep working thru the ornaments and others to build up her own ornament collection as she grows.

And as further proof of my addiction - this week I made more ornaments from the same series. I haven't handed them over yet, but soon. I don't think the recipient is a blog reader, but you never know, so I won't be naming any names. Though I'd like to keep working on these ornaments, I have other things that need my attention - a wedding quilt, and two baby quilts for babies that are arriving in the first half of this year - Sew Much Fun!

Today Marty and I took a little road trip to Mannum - we have spent a lot of time there over the years as it's where my Grandparents lived and my Mum grew up, and other family members still live in the vicinity. We wanted to take the opportunity to visit with Puppa in the cemetary, and take a careful look at the river flooding that is happening. So many of our friends that have river homes along the River Murray have been inundated which is so terribly sad, along with so many other people in so many other towns along the river, the destruction is devastating.

This picture is hard to make sense of, but it's of the Mary Ann Reserve on River Lane - it it weren't for the levee, this whole area would be inundated now. All the businesses on the river side of the main street are closed.

And this picture probably also doesn't make much sense without something to compare it to, but in the foreground is the main road to Purnong, it's under water now, and on the other side of the river, the road from the ferry is is inundated too. I don't know if it's going to get worse or better going forward, but my thoughts are with all the folks in the river communities as they work through this and then rebuild.

Tomorrow evening is New Years Eve, we're looking forward to spending a lovely evening with friends, I'll spend the day getting ready, and then relax for a lovely evening. I hope you're all able to spend some time ringing in the new year with people you love, and if a quiet night is more your style, I hope you have a lovely time doing that too. Remember it's said that whatever you do on New Years Day you'll spend the rest of the year doing. So choose wisely my friends, and let's make 2023 a wonderful year! xoxox