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!

A Grandma Sort of Day!

Last Sunday was my MIL's 82nd birthday. We gathered together at the nursing home to surprise her. She was thrilled to see our kids and grandkids. We only had one kid and one grandkid that couldn't make it, so we had the lounge full. The home had MIL all dolled up. She had such a wonderful time. Of course, I forgot to take my camera, so I swiped some of the girls' pictures. This is Fern (MIL) with our 3 girls, Carolyn, Cathryn, and Hazel.

Here she is with four of our grandkids: Ashton, Ava, Noah, and Izabella.

Jon was late getting there. We all forgot to call him. He was not very happy with the female half of our family. LOL Oh well, better late than never. He made it in time for cake.

Here is a picture of all our family that were there. (This was taken before Jon arrived.)

By the way, in the above picture it is Carolyn, Kevin, me, Cathryn, Ava, Hazel, Izabella, Noah, and Ashton. I think Bob and Jeremy were taking pictures, so they weren't included. (grin)
We had such a nice day. We knew that Fern would tire easily, so we only stayed about an hour. Then Kevin stayed and kept his mom company while we went to see my mom.

You don't even want to know how long I have spent tonight trying to figure out how to swipe these pictures from the girls' FB pages and get them posted here on my blog. LOL It has been a long evening. Now just so I have a quilty picture posted too....Carolyn entered Bob's Patriotic Shoofly quilt that I made him for Christmas last year in their county fair. I won a blue ribbon for it. I was really surprised, as I have never won any ribbons, but then again, I have never entered any of my projects. (grin) Here I am holding the quilt with the blue ribbon.

As you can see, I hate having my picture taken. I always look so dorky. That is why you seldom see pictures of me here on the blog. LOL The kids were all trying to get me to laugh. That is why I look like I just swallowed a prune. LOL 

I even took  picture of the blue ribbon. May be the only one I ever have. LOL

Here is a picture of Bob holding it up last Christmas.

After visiting with all the grandmas, we all met back here at our house to BBQ and just visited. Thank you to the kids for providing all the goodies. All I provided was some chili leftover from the day before. LOL The kids had such fun playing with Buddy. Ava, especially, loved him. They threw his ball and he would fetch it back to them. She thought that was so great. I had the kids line up for a picture before they left. As you can see, they had already eaten. Look at the clothes and around the mouths. LOL

Well, I guess that is enough pictures for this post. I just wanted to share with you all about our amazing time last Sunday. Thank you for visiting. Please come again. Have a blessed Sunday.

The Grandkids

It is so windy here today, cold too. That's what we get for living on top of a hill.LOL That wind just finds every crack and crevice to creap into. I put my sweatshirt on this morning. Feels pretty good too. I thought I would talk about our grandchildren today. We have 4 of them and they are the light of our lives. I love being a grandma! I will start with Ashton. He is our oldest. He is 5 and in Kindergarten. He is the one who wrote me the loving letter. He has a temper, but oh how sweet he can be. He doesn't like to have his picture taken (takes after his grandpa), so I just have to grab them where I can. LOL Ashton is our fruit eater. He also loves bread sticks. He is already into technology. Loves his computer games.

Ashton has a sister, Ava. I call Ava our little pink lady bug. She used to love bugs, then was bitten by something. After a trip to the emergency room, she no longer plays with bugs. LOL Ava will be 3 this week. I will show some pictures of her on her birthday. She is all girl. Loves her gloss (chapstick) and pink and purple are her colors. Before you ask, yes, that hair is natural. She got most of the curl in the family. LOL So far, she is the only grandchild with blue eyes. She loves meat and candy. (Gets that love of candy from her grandma.) Her daddy calls her his little Princess. She loves that. Next is Noah. Actually Noah is 2 months older than Ava. He was born in November, and she in January. (That was an exciting time. We got 2 new grandbabies in 2 months.) Noah is quiet until he gets warmed up to you. I have never seen anyone love cars like that boy does. He never gets tired of getting match box cars. He will sit on my lap for as long as I can stand it, looking at cars on the computer. Think he is going to be a mechanic? My luck, he will probably want to be a race car driver. LOL He loves Hersheys bars. (Another one who loves chocolate like grandma.) Noah likes to pose to have his picture taken. Then he wants to see it on the back of the camera. LOL

Noah's little sister is Izabella. She looks so much like Noah. Izzie was born 5 weeks premature and had to spend a week in the NICU. She is doing great now. She is almost 8 months old and such a cutey! Noah calls her Sissy. (That brings back lots of memories. I was the only girl with 3 brothers. I was Sissy all my life. To this day, my brothers all call me Sis.LOL) She is just on the verge of crawling. She is very good natured, but loves her bed.

We have been so blessed with our family. First we had 5 children who have all grown up to be wonderful adults. Now we have 4 beautiful granchildren. Does it get any better?

Now for all of you quilt lovers out there, I thought I'd throw in a picture of one of my wall quilts. This one is called My Friend's House, another Thimbleberries. It found a home with a friend.

Of course, we need a picture of the back.

Well, that is it for today. I hope you all have a great day.

Winona