Merry Christmas!

Merry Christmas to all of my blog friends. You all mean the world to me. I hope you all have a blessed day with your families. Thank you for visiting and commenting on my blog. I appreciate each and every one of you. 

More Gifts I Made....

Today I will share some of the gifts I made for our family. Everyone got something, even though some were pretty small gifts. (grin)  But before I do, I want to tell you that I got the lovely redwork design on the previous post from a free download on Allie's blog. She is always putting free things up for us to use. Sorry Allie, that I neglected to give you credit.

Some of the gifts I will share here were free projects found on the net. I will give credit where I can. Some were printed off a while ago., and if their web address does not show up in the printed copy, I can't share where to find them. Sorry.  I made Carolyn a set of dish towels. I just bought a pair of white flour sack like towels, added fabric to two ends, and appliqued a hen and a rooster on them. I also added a crocheted dishcloth. She really liked them. I found these on Joanna Figueroa for Fig Tree and Company's site.

I bought fabric to make Cathryn a Bow Tucks bag last Christmas, but never did have time to make her one out of the special fabric I bought. When I told her about it last Christmas she said she could use some place mats. I remembered this, so I made her these quilt as you go place mats. I found these on Gudrun's blog.  Cathryn loved them and said they would work perfectly in her house.

Here is a closeup of one of them.

I gave Hazel the Daisy Star quilt. It is a Judy Laquidara free pattern.

All of the guys got neck pillows. I believe I found the directions and pattern for these on the Connecting Threads site under their free projects.

I made Kim, Jon's girlfriend a Sassy Bag from Lazy Girl Designs. Jon said she loves green and small bags, so I figured this pattern would be perfect for her. I think it was. I found these two fabrics in Walmart a few weeks ago and fell in love with them. I think I have enough to make my Kindle case from the leftovers. (grin)

The inside of Kim's bag....

The back of it....

I will share the gowns/pants I made for the grandkids and mom's gift next time. Now on to some more Christmas pictures......
Noah walked in looking so handsome.

Madison wouldn't put down this cookie, even to open gifts. LOL

Hazel holding Izabella. Hazel's hair is normally really curly, but she straightened it for the day. It was pretty, but I love her curls. (grin) I'm a mama, what can I say? LOL

Kim fits in good with our family. You can always tell a good person when the kids love them. Ava laying across Kim....

Ashton......

That is enough for now. I am not sure how I managed it, but I am now following my own blog. LOL  I worked quite a bit on Kevin's quilt yesterday. I plan to do some more hand quilting on it today. I am really enjoying this. The pressure is off and I can relax in front of the tv with the quilt in my lap without feeling like I should be doing something else to prepare for Christmas. (grin)  I think I will post this now and get back in my rocker and do what I love doing. Thank you for visiting. Please come again. Have a wonderful day. Oh, I also want to throw out this. If you still need a guy's gift, these neck pillows are quick and easy to do and all the guys loved them.  Talk to you all later.

Gifts I Made This Year!

I can finally share what I have been doing for the past couple of months. We held our family Christmas celebration yesterday. Our daughter, Carolyn cooked a delicious meal for us and we all came away very stuffed. (grin) It is always so much fun to have our whole family together. I will be sharing some pictures that I took yesterday this week, but first I want to show why I have been missing in blogland for the past month. LOL We decided that we would not buy gifts for the adults, but homemade things were ok. Oh yeah, right up my alley. LOL  I made some things for a few friends. Some I took pictures of and some I forgot till they were packaged and ready to mail. Oh well. I think I shared this little tree before, but here it is after I decorated it.

I enjoyed making this tree. I also loved doing this one. Any time redwork is involved I have fun. LOL

This pot holder went to the receiver of the above mini quilt.

I sent the Spring Flowers table topper to a summer loving friend along with these pot holders and dish cloth.

That is all of the gifts that I took pictures of before mailing. I really must try to do better. Now on to some family things. Oh my goodness, it was so great to see our grandbabies and babies also. LOL I thought it was so awesome that anyone who wanted to give gifts this year either made them or gave pictures. Oh my I got some amazing pictures of grandbabies. Then drove off and left them laying on Carolyn's table. I was so bummed, but Cathryn took them home with her and is going to ship them to me.  On the gift giving, this did not include the kids. We all bought stuff for them. (grin) I actually had a lot of fun shopping for the grandkids. Ashton and Ava are into lots of science stuff, so I went to Hobby Lobby for their gifts. I think I did ok. Cath told me today that they have been working nonstop on their kits. LOL  Ashton thinks he is rich because he is digging out fools gold. Ava is excited because she is digging out T-rex dinosaur bones. She loves dinosaurs, especially T-rex. Noah got a farm set with animals, fences, hay bales, and a tractor and wagon. He is a city boy, but I thought he should learn a bit about his country roots. (grin) I talked to Izabella on the phone and she told me she wanted  Dora stuff. LOL So my little darling got a Dora doll. Madison got a toy that was age appropriate for her.  I also made each of the grandkids some things. I'll share about those another time. I decided to post a few pictures of our gathering at a time.
Look at this. I love this picture. I just wish Ashton had been in it too, but it has all the younger kids.

I loved this picture so much that I snapped another one. On the first one, I almost cut off Madison's head. On the second one I almost cut off Ava's head. I still don't take very good pictures. LOL

Here is Ashton.

I'll share one more with you, then post a few more next time. I usually do not like to have my picture taken, but Hazel grabbed my camera and snapped this picture of me holding Izabella. I actually think it turned out quite good. Of course how could it not be good with the little cutey in red in it. LOL

It will seem weird to me to not have anything Christmasy to work on this week. Our Christmas will be very quiet. We will visit our moms, then just chill. We have a nice ham to fix and movies to watch. Kevin has already given me my Christmas gift this year. I received a Kindle Touch. I really never thought I would like a Kindle, but I love, love this silly thing. I have been watching on Facebook and get a free book or two every day. I have already put over 40 books on it and have read close to 10. (Of course some of them are pretty short.) I have had it for about 3 weeks now. I love it more every day. I always thought the books would be too expensive for it, but I find bargains all the time. So if you are on the fence about getting a Kindle, as I was, just go for it. If you are anything like me, you will end up loving it. Of course, this thrills Kevin. (grin) He already knows that I am making him a quilt. He is quite thrilled about that as well. I have even shown it to him. Didn't seem right for me to have my gift and him to not even know what he was getting. He says to take my time. So I don't have to rush to have it done by next Sunday. (grin)

On the agenda for this week is to make a case for my Kindle and to make a cushion for our Buddy boy. I already have everything for it. Just need to get it together. Well, I guess that is enough for now. This post ended up being quite long winded, but I have not posted for a month. Thank you for visiting. Please come again. Have a fabulous week!

Daisy Star is done!

It got cold last night. We had 20* this morning at 7 a.m. I told Kevin I think that is enough of winter. Now we can go back to 70*. LOL I wish. It is about 34* now, so I doubt that it will get above 40* today. The wind is brisk too, so I plan to stay in the house today. Country Mart has a good sale this week, so Kevin told me to go stock up on some stuff. Good thing I went today, because they were already getting low on some things and were completely out of the $1.98 butter. Bummer. I did end up with some butter at Green Hills for $2.29. That isn't too bad. I now have everything we need for our Thanksgiving dinner.

I went to the doctor yesterday for my 3 month check-up. Now I am waiting to hear the results of the blood work.She had to stick me twice to get the blood. She noted on my chart that I am hard to get blood out of. (grin) I also decided to get a flu shot. I had never had one before, but had a bad case of flu last winter. I don't want a repeat of that. So today my arm is sore and I am stuffy and congested. Not blaming the flu shot, but I was perfectly fine before I got it.

I have been working hard on Christmas gifts. Of course, I am not where I hoped to be by this time of the month, but I am chugging along. Last night I put together the cutest little tree block quilt from this issue of McCall's Quick Quilts. I really love it. I may machine quilt it today, since time is escaping me. Here is the tree quilt.

Isn't this cute? I may even go by Hobby Lobby this weekend and see if I can find some mini-ornaments to decorate it.  I tried not to have any alike pieces beside each other, but after ripping out a couple of times decided this was good enough.
I also finished sewing the binding on the Daisy Star. I am glad to have it done. I think I will give it to Hazel for Christmas. She doesn't read my blog, so I can safely share it on here.  I laid it out on our deck since Kevin wasn't home to hold it up for me.

I'll share a couple more shots of it.  The little spot in the lower right corner above is a leaf. (grin)

Here is the back of it. I used fabrics leftover from the front to give it a scrappy binding.

Well, I'd better get back to work on gifts. Kevin has all of next week off, so I'm not sure how much I will get done. I need to have hand projects ready because he likes me to sit and watch tv with him. (grin) Thank you for visiting and please come again. Have a wonderful day.

Several different things to share.

I am glad Monday is here. Sunday was a long day for me. To start out,  the time change is once again kicking my behind. Oh, don't want to forget about the beagle waking us up at such an early hour. LOL I think my talk with her yesterday helped. Either that, or I was so tired that I slept through her barking last night. LOL  Then Kevin decided to watch a Lord of the Rings marathon. Oh my goodness! I was so bored. (No offense if you like these video's, just not my thing.) He has one of these marathons about once a year. I spent as much time on the computer as I could stand. Then I worked on redwork with my head phones on. I listened to a local country music station. At least I got one redwork project done and started another. (grin)  I forgot to talk about this yesterday, but if you love hand quilting, click on the button over on the right side of my blog that says 'Celebrate Hand Quilting'. Caron has a list of hand quilters' blogs. I believe there are at least 45 that have listed a post highlighting some of their quilting on the list now. I enjoyed checking all of them out.

Last week I got block # 11 of Birdie Stitches done. I finished it in the first week after it was posted. Yea!

I am doing a really cute Christmas SAL. It is supposed to be turned into a banner, but I will probably turn mine into a little wall quilt. All seven of the blocks have been posted. The blocks were removed each week, so if you want them you will have to buy them. These were created by Lesley. I am on block 6. Only one more to stitch. I don't know the order of the blocks. It doesn't really matter. I traced off the first 4 at the same time and just picked one to start on.

Aren't these cute?  I think Lesley did a great job.

I finished putting a lap quilt top together for Kevin last week. I have never made a lap quilt for him. He likes to cover up when he takes a nap or just stretches out to rest. I bought a charm pack at Walmart. Probably won't do that again. I was in a hurry to get them together, so didn't measure. They are't all cut exact, so some of the seams don't match up. It is what it is, though. It is together and is staying that way. I think he will like this. I was playing around with these charms one day and he suggested I lay it out like this. So I did. I am sure he has forgotten about it by now, since I just work on it while he is at work. What do you think?

I think Kevin will be very surprised and I hope he loves it. I am thinking I will try machine quilting a cross hatch in this one, since my time is getting short. I would love to have 3/4 of the gifts I am making done by the first of December. Not sure that will happen, but I am trying. That way I can relax and enjoy the holiday season. Last year was so stressful with me trying to get the quilts done, that I didn't take time to enjoy the whole holiday experience. (grin)

Well, better get off the computer and get started on some sewing. Thank you for visiting. Please come again. Have a great Monday.

I did good at JoAnn's!

Yesterday I had some errands to run. I had been gone from home for about 2 hours when Kevin called to see if I was on my way home. LOL I hadn't even started my errands yet. I stopped by JoAnn's with a plan and I was still there. LOL He just laughed and said to have fun. I did! I always like to make something for each of the grandkids for Christmas. Well, I decided I might as well stick with pjs. They all loved them last year. So I called the girls and got their sizes and headed off to JoAnns with my list in hand.
Ashton is 8, so he got flannel fabric with footballs and soccer balls in it. Ava only wants to wear pink or purple. She is 5 and all girl. LOL Here is their fabric. I got enough fabric yesterday to make each grandchild either 2 pairs of flannel pants or 2 flannel gowns.

Noah likes cars and trucks and the color blue. He is 5, almost 6.  So I found a blue fabric with cars/trucks and a fabric with robots in it for him. Izabella is 3 and loves butterflies. She got this gorgeous yellow flannel with butterflies and lady bugs on it and the purple fabric with bunnies, fawns, owls, and flowers. I think she will love it! Here is Noah and Izzie's fabric.

I haven't seen Madison since Easter except on Facebook. So I don't know much about what she would like. So I picked out what I thought a 2 year old would like. Plus the blue fabric will look so nice with her blue eyes. Here is her fabric.

I also got a couple of McCalls patterns that were on sale for $1.29 each, thread to match the fabrics, elastic for the pants and rib knit for the tops of the gowns.

This is enough supplies to make 4 pairs of flannel pants and 6 flannel gowns. I paid a little over $66 for all this. The flannel was normally $6.99 per yd/on sale for $2.99 per yd. The rib knit was normally $9.99 per yd/on sale for $3 off. I used a 40% off coupon for the elastic. The thread wasn't on sale, but I had a 25% off total purchase (including sale items) that I used. Are you ready for this? I saved over $128!!!! I saved almost twice what it cost me. I floated out of the store. (grin)  I went by the laundry mat and washed all the fabric. Now I am ready to start sewing for the grand babies. Just waiting on their mamas to give me their measurements. I will guess on Madison. I figure I can get pretty close to fitting her with a gown.  Don't you love it when you get stuff that you need and save so much on it?

We are having a nice day here. Kevin is outside piddling. I am on the computer and the animals are all enjoying the nice weather. I'm not enjoying the time change so much, but then, I never do enjoy it. (grin) It usually takes me about 2 weeks to get used to the change. Personally, I wish they would leave it one way or the other. The beagle woke us up at 5:30 this morning barking. That was still 4:30 for me. She barked till it got daylight, then found a spot to go sleep. I should go wake her every few minutes. LOL This is the second night in a row she has done this. I tried to have a talk with her this morning when I fed her, but I don't think she is going to listen to me. LOL 

I have some more things to share, but I will save those for next time. Everyone have a good day. Thanks for visiting. Please come again.

Birdie Stitches - Blocks 7-10

It has been quite a week around here. After hearing about Wayne's passing, I tried to spend as much time with MIL as I could. I sat with her quite a bit on Monday. On Tuesday I had to get our clothes ready for the funeral. Needed to make a trip to town for hose. I seldom wear them, so didn't have any decent ones on hand. Wednesday was the funeral. It was sad, but also very touching. He was a very loved man. Three of his grandkids wrote letters about their time spent with him. His oldest grandchild is a mortician. She works at a funeral home out in Kansas, but the funeral home here, let her help push her grandpa's casket out of the church and drive the hearse to the cemetery. I was quite touched. It was good to see so many of Kevin's aunts, uncles, and cousins. I want to thank all of you for your kind words to us. It means a lot to know that so many of you out there in blogland care for us.  I spent Thursday cleaning the house. It was really needed. (grin) Today was town day. We are now stocked with groceries for the next two weeks. I even came in under budget. That is always a good feeling.

My evenings have been spent quilting and doing redwork. I finished hand quilting the Daisy Star this week. I will probably wait till I get the binding on before taking a picture to share. I also got caught up with Birdie Stitches. I haven't shared any of these blocks since the June block, so here goes. This is the July block.

Here is the August block.

 September's block was a lot of fun. I tried to get a variety of leaf colors.

Of course, I enjoyed the October block. I love pumpkins. I even enjoyed stitching those little spiders. LOL

There are only 2 blocks left to this cute BOM. I am so glad that I have kept up with it. Now while I wait for the next block to be posted, I am working on a Christmas Stitchery. I forgot to write down the blog I am getting these from. She posts a new stitchery block each Friday. I think she only has one or two more to post. These are supposed to be made into a banner, but I plan to make mine a little Christmas quilt. I'll share these next time. For now, I am tired, and just want to sit in front of the tv and work on some handwork. Thank you for visiting. Please come again. Have a wonderful weekend.

We lost a good man today!

Kevin's Uncle Wayne passed away quietly in his sleep this morning. He was a good man who will be missed by all. Wayne was my MIL's younger brother, one of four. He is the first sibling of seven in that family to pass on. Fern (MIL) and Wayne were very close. He used to take her out on the Missouri River in his boat to fish. She remembers those days when they were both so happy. Nothing either one of them loved more than fishing on the river. Wayne also loved to garden. In fact, he was working in his garden yesterday. We spent time with Fern today, then I went on to spend some time with Wayne's widow, Joan. Cathryn took a picture of him, Fern and their brother Dean at Fern's birthday party at the beginning of this month.
He is the one on the left, MIL in the middle and brother Dean on the right. My Kevin has his back to the camera. 

We sure will miss Uncle Wayne. Please say a prayer for his family. This was very unexpected, so they need prayer and support. Thanks.