More Christmas Projects

Good afternoon,

The sun is shining, but it is really cold outside. Still in the teens and should be there all day. Tonight is supposed to be single digits. So we are bringing in the new year really cold. At least it isn't snowing today.

I took the leftover pieces of fabric from each grandchild's pillow case and made them small tote bags. I think they turned out really cute. Since I used their stockings to put candy and junk, I used these to put good things, like apples and oranges in them. (grin) I think I will also stick their money in them. The back row has Izzie's (pink) and Ashton's. Front row has Ava's (Tinkerbell) and Noah's (Cars). I am sure you probably figured that out, though. LOL  Madison didn't get one this year, but should be walking by next year.

I also decided to make a pillow case for each of our kids. I am really quite proud of myself. I only bought 2 yards of fabric and used at least 12 yards from my stash for pillow cases. These are all in pairs for the married couples.

These are for the singles.

I bought new pillows for Noah and Izzie, but Cathryn told me she had just replaced Ava's and Ashton's in the past couple of months, so they didn't need new ones. Instead, I finished these place mats for them. They both love dogs, so I think they will like them.

 

Well, that is it for me today. I decided it would be better to do shorter posts, but more often. That has been working out fine for me. We are having our Christmas celebration tomorrow, so I may not get here, but I'll try on Saturday or Sunday. I have to go to mom's early in the morning to get her bills and meds ready for the month. Our gathering is late afternoon, so that will work out ok. I hope you all have a safe and Happy New Year. Thank you for visiting.

Two Days in a Row!

Hello everyone, 

Can you believe I have made a blog post two days in a row? LOL It has been snowing here again, but so far only a couple more inches of the nasty  lovely white stuff on the ground. Not much wind, so no drifting. For that I am very thankful. The forecast is for very bitter temps for at least the next week or so. I guess we won't be having a meltdown any time soon.

I decided today to show you a few of the things I have worked on for Christmas. I started out with stockings for all the grandkids. These were fun to make. I even embroidered their names on them. These are wonky stars, so they are supposed to be all off kilter. LOL I found them on this blog about a month ago. She did a fabulous tutorial on making them.  Here they are all lined up and ready to be filled.

Here are Noah and Izabella's. 

I made Ashton's more grown up looking. After all, he is 6 now. LOL His and Ava's.

This is little Madison's stocking. I filled hers with baby food and a few small toys.

Then after getting the stockings made, I found a pattern for really nice pillow cases here. I love the French seams. This link has lots of pictures which help to explain this process and make it easy.  I bought Tinkerbell and Cars fabric for Ava and Noah, but already had fabric in my stash for Izzie and Ashton. Madison isn't old enough for a pillow in her crib yet, so she will get the Peter Rabbit quilt I made last spring. Here are Ashton's and Ava's pillow cases.

Here are Noah and Izzie's pillow cases.

Here is the Peter Rabbit quilt that I made from a panel given to me by Milah last spring. I think Madison will like it.

Well, I think that is it for me today. My dh just left for work. He has been home since last Thursday, so I have lots of cleaning to get done. For some reason, I just can't get the housework done up when the hubby is home. LOL I hope you all have a great day. Thanks for visiting.

I'm Back!

Good afternoon,

It seems like forever since I did a blog post. I guess it has been quite a while. (grin) So many things have happened, that I don't know where to begin. We had Noah's birthday party, Thanksgiving, my mom's Christmas party, working on lots of gifts, and 2 blizzards. Hmmm, I guess I will just jump around some. It will probably take several posts to catch up, but that is ok. I am several behind. LOL

I guess I will start with the blizzards. We have not had a blizzard here in northwest Missouri in many, many years. Then we have 2 in about 2 weeks. It has been rough. About 3 weeks ago we had a blizzard move in. My dh was at work and I was here at home. We received about 11 inches from this storm. He was snowed out and I was snowed in. He stayed at work from Tuesday morning till Thursday night. Even then, he had to walk in the last mile. He decided steel-toed shoes are not for walking in snow. LOL I sure was glad to see him. Then, there is the Christmas blizzard. That was a bummer. We still have not had our family celebration. We plan to get  together on New Year's. Even though I was sad to not see our kids and grandkids, it wasn't so bad. We had been having rain for a couple of days and they predicted it would start freezing about noon on Christmas Eve day. So we got up early and headed to town to get a few treats for ourselves. We got home at 8:45 a.m. and by 9 a.m. it was freezing all over the sidewalk. We hurried up and got all our chores done. Then prayed that we wouldn't lose electricity. We didn't but we did lose internet service for a while. This was some storm! We had rain, thunder and lightning, freezing rain, sleet, lots of snow, and strong winds. The actual winter storm was from Christmas Eve morning till Christmas night. The drifts were bad. Most of the roads around us were closed. It even snowed most of Saturday and some of Sunday. This was a monster storm.  As I said, we cancelled our celebration, but I was so relieved to know that none of our kids were out on those roads. Kevin and I ate pizza, cookies, ham, chips and dip, and any other junk we thought to pick up. (Eye roll here! Not looking forward to getting on the scales after the first of the year!) We also watched Christmas movies all day Christmas and talked to all the kids on the phone. So it wasn't so bad. Our house was cold like it always is in the winter with the wind blowing, but we bundled up. Kevin bought me a pair of deer skin slippers with wool lining so my feet have been staying warm. They think we may have gotten about 14 inches of snow from this storm, but it was hard to measure because the fierce wind was blowing it around so bad. We finally had the grader go through on Sunday afternoon, so Kevin got out and scooped our driveway. It was over his knees, so lots of scooping. 

This is our road after the grader went through. It doesn't look too bad right now, but two tractors tried to get through it with blades on and couldn't. This isn't the worse part of our road. We have 3 sections much worse than this to go through.

We had a drift past Kevin's waist in front of our door. He was glad we put the scoop inside the porch door. He had to scoop in order to even get out. Here is the pile just outside our door.

Well enough about our winter storms. We have been spoiled with mild winters the past few years, but this year we are just getting a regular winter. I don't like it! I am so ready for spring.

I got a couple of nice gifts in the mail from friends in the past couple of weeks. Here is a wall quilt that Bren made for me. Isn't it beatiful? She knows what kind of colors I love.

Look at these tiny quilting stitches. I hope I can quilt that tiny some day. I love hand quilting, but I think I am actually better at sewing on my machine. But then again, I have had over 30 years of doing that, and just really started quilting about 3 years ago. (grin) The first picture shows the colors better. The flash washed out the color on the second picture. Thank you, Bren. I love it!

My friend Ann sent this candle holder to me. I was amazed. She said her husband made it. I believe he is a blacksmith. I love it. She also knitted and felted the two hotpads shown here.

Please excuse the mess behind this and to the side. I have been busy sewing and always make a mess when I sew. I need to take a day after the holidays and just clean up. LOL

Now I am going to wrap this post up, but I will be back, hopefully tomorrow. But before I do, I want to introduce you to our newest granddaughter, Madison Nicole. She is 5 months old today, but I have never posted a picture of her. For shame on me! She is our son, Isaiah's and Lori's daughter. Look at those round cheeks. She has the bluest eyes and dimples in her cheeks just like our boy. She is so loveable.

Here she is with her proud daddy holding her. I was holding her in the above picture. I wish she would grin so you could see those adorable dimples. So now we have 3 granddaughters and 2 grandsons. (grin)

Well, that is enough for now. I hope you all had a wonderful Christmas. I am sure ours will be once we get to have it. LOL It is good to be back among my friends. I have missed you all. November and December are always very busy times for me, so I don't usually have much computer time. I am going to try to change the look of my blog again. I have tried several times on Firefox, but it didn't work, so now I am going to try changing it on IE7. Everyone have a wonderful day. Thank you for visiting. Hopefully, I'll see you tomorrow.

Happy Birthday Noah!

Good very early morning,

Today is our grandson, Noah's 4th birthday. I will be leaving in a few hours to spend the weekend with him and his family. I thought I would share a few pictures of our little man over the past 4 years. Here he is just home from the hospital. His mama was so proud.

 

Here he is at about 7 months old.

 

This was the summer of 2007.

Noah's daddy holding him and his cousin, Ava.

Welcoming his new sister, Izabella, home from the hospital.

Ok, it is late and I am tired. I have no idea why the pictures are just here, there, and everywhere. Noah, grandpa and I love you very much. You are such a blessing to our family. I hope your 4th birthday is a blast.

Thank you all for visiting. Please come again. I will probably have some grandbaby pictures to show next week.

Happy Birthday Bren!

Good afternoon,

It has been such a lovely weekend here. Yesterday was a perfect day. After the October that we had, it was very nice to have a few days in November with the highs in the 70's. Now it is clouding up with rain coming in tomorrow. It has been really windy today, so I figured it would be bringing rain in.

Now to the reason for this short post. Today is my quilting buddy, Bren's birthday. She is the one who talked me in to starting a blog. She is also a hand quilter who makes amazing quilts. She is a wonderful Christian, wife, mom, and grandma. Please visit Bren and tell her happy birthday. If you have never visited her blog, you are in for a treat.

So HAPPY BIRTHDAY BREN!!!!!  I hope you had a wonderful day!

I'll be back next week with a longer post. Thank you for visiting. Please come again. Everyone have a good evening.

Some purses and pot holders

I apologize to everyone trying to read this first half of my blog. This green does not work at all! I will probably just stick with black. If I knew how to change the color after it is already typed I would, but I am too lazy to type it all over again. Luckily the first couple of paragraphs was just me rambling anyway. LOL  

Good afternoon,

It is another rainy, dreary day here in northwest Missouri. I really believe this month will go on the record as the wettest October. It sometimes rains or drizzles for 2 or 3 days in a row. I don't think we have had more than 3 days in a row all month without some sort of precipitation. I was sure hoping for some nice sunny days before winter sets in completely. I still have hope. I don't think we have had our normal warm spell after frost.

I have been kind of bummed out lately, so Kevin suggested I take some time off of quilting. You know I am not feeling good when even the thought of quilting doesn't pick me up. LOL   So I have basically just vegetated in front of the tv for the past week. I have only done about 3 hours worth of hand quilting this week. That is pretty unheard of for me, but I am getting the urge to quilt again.

I made a couple more purses last week. I decided to change them around and make them easier for me to work on. Took that zipper out and put a little fabric hook on. All I have left to do is sew a button on and these are done. This first one is done in pinks and greens. Here is the front. You can see the green front pocket.

Here is the back of it.

The inside has 2 pockets in the lining. I really don't miss the zipper at all and it was much easier to sew without it.

This purse was made from yellow and blue fabrics. I love, love that blue polka dot fabric, but sadly I have almost used all of mine. I will have to see if I can find some more. Here is the front with the pocket.

Here is the back. Isn't this butterfly fabric adorable?

 Here are the pockets.

These were fun to make. I machine quilted the fronts and backs. I also machine quilted these potholders. I just used my chalk pencil to draw a big 'X' from corners to catty corners. Then I used my walking foot to sew on those lines. I used the little bar thing that hooks onto my walking foot to sew even 1" lines all one way, then turned and sewed the other way. These were just mindless fun. Here are all of them together. These were made from a book given to me for my birthday from a dear friend. What do you think, Teresa? I haven't tried any of the hard patterns yet. LOL  The book is called, '101 Fun-to-Quilt Pot Holders' by Trice Boerens. It is a good book.

I took pictures of two of them at a time so you could see them a little better. I used 2 layers of cotton batting and a layer of Insul-Bright in the middles of them.

 

 

There are 2 potholders here, but I just left them stacked since they are just alike. I took some chicken fabric, sandwiched and quilted. I think they turned out cute.  Kind of looks like they are behind wire. LOL I usually hand sew binding on the back of quilts, but I just used my machine to sew them down on the back of these potholders. They don't look quite as nice, but sure went on quicker.

Tomorrow is grocery day, so I will be out in the crowds. I hope I don't run into anyone who is sick. So far we have avoided sickness during this nasty, cold, and dreary month. I would like to keep it that way. I need to get my grocery list made. I used to enjoy grocery shopping, but anymore, it is just a chore to be done. I think when everything in the store started costing more, it just kind of killed my enthusiasm. (grin) I hope you all have a good day. Thank you for visiting my blog. Hmmm, it seems that I started this blog in green print, but somewhere along the line it went back to black. Oh well. I have it done. That is what matters. LOL

 

Happy birthday JON!

Oh goodness!
I am such a bad mama. I forgot our youngest son, Jon's birthday. He turned 21 yesterday! How do you forget that? I sent him a card last week, but didn't call him yesterday. Jon, if you are reading this, I am so sorry. I hope you had a wonderful 21st birthday! Here are just a few pictures that I found of Jonny. He is like his dad and does not like to have his picture taken. LOL

Jonny is our tallest child. He is like a gentle giant. (Not really that tall, but if you are over 6' tall in our family you are considered a giant. LOL We are a family of short people.) Jon is laid back, easy going and never gets excited over anything. He is very even tempered, and tries to help everyone, but don't do him wrong. He has a long memory for those who have done him wrong. He keeps his hair really short because he has curls very similar to our granddaughter, Ava. He doesn't like the curls. LOL  From the back of his head, he looks just like my dad. We are blessed to have him for a son.

He loves his nephews and nieces. Here he is with Noah.

 

 

 

This last picture was at Izzie's birthday party. He will kill me for posting this. LOL But I thought it was cute. 

Honey I hope you had a great 21st birthday! You know your dad and I love you and are so proud of the man you have become!
Nothing like having your baby boy turn 21, that really makes you feel old.

Thank you for visiting. Please come again.