Christmas

 

A big winter storm blew in a few days before Christmas, allowing my son to have an even longer break from school, a chance to play in the snow, and a good excuse to drink some hot chocolate. I'm not a huge fan of winter, but the snow was pretty and it is nice to have a white Christmas.

 We first celebrated with my husband's parents and his grandma on Christmas Eve and I gave my mother-in-law design walls.

Design walls

Each one is 6 feet tall by 4 feet wide, so there's plenty of space for sticking up quilt blocks to see how a quilt is all coming together.  Actually, they are still at my house.  I bought the foam insulation when I was still driving a van and now they won't fit in my new car.  I'm hoping they'll fit in my in-law's CRV.

Since the foam insulation comes in an eight foot tall piece, I had the guy cut off two feet from each board and voila! I have two small design walls!

On Christmas day, we celebrated with my parents as well as my sister and her husband and kids.  I think my son likes having a new baby cousin.  :)

My friend Crystal crocheted a super cute owl hat that I gave to my niece.  She looks pretty adorable in it, if I do say so myself.

In payment for the hat, I'll be sewing together a case to hold Crystal's crochet hooks.  She sent me the fabric she wants me to use.  I'm hoping to sew it up very soon.

fabric for Crystal's crochet hook case - that girl can't resist a zig zag :)

I didn't do a lot of handmade gifts for Christmas this year, but I did make this pillow for my mom:

My parents love going to see lighthouses all over the place and are even going to Puerto Rico in March on a tour with the Lighthouse Society to see some there as well as enjoy a bit of warm weather.

After Christmas, we headed up to Michigan to celebrate with my husband's brother and his family.  I never can read in the car, but for some reason I can stitch.  So I traced this pattern onto some white fabric and stuck it in a hoop for stitching in the car.  I was hoping to finish it on the way and give it to my sister-in-law as a gift, but we ran into a bit of bad weather and it got dark early so I was only mostly done when we arrived in Michigan.  I finished stitching it up while we were there and I think she liked it.  It reminded me of her and her children.

I also brought along some English Paper Piecing.  I won a mini charm pack of Archtextures fabric and thought it would be perfect for EPP.  Alex (my sister-in-law and now my design consultant) helped me figure out a way to put the pieces together and I'm really liking it.  I just don't quite know what to do with them now.  There are only 5 and I think I need to make a 6th, but I have no more of that fabric.  I'm thinking I'll either make a pillow or tote bag unless someone else gives me a different brilliant idea.

I brought along some Shrinky Dink plastic to Michigan thinking that the kids would enjoy tracing and drawing designs and seeing them shrink in the oven.  I was sure my son would think it was a really cool activity, but he had no interest.  This was, however, I think before he was banned from playing the Nintendo DS.  Anyway,  the rest of the kids, my mother-in-law, my husband, and I enjoyed making them.

Me tracing and coloring in the Pigeon, Elephant and Piggie, and some random lion.  I think he's been declared to be Aslan now.

before being shrunk

during - I even convinced my son to watch because c'mon, cool stuff going on in the oven!

After!  I stuck magnets onto the back of the ones my husband and I did and now they are on our fridge.

It was a good Christmas season, but I'm glad to be home again and to have laundry done (for at least one day) and the decorations down and to get back to a regular routine.  Time spent with God is not as regular or as deep when life is busy, so I'm glad to be back to usual.

Tomorrow I'll post pics of what I bought with the various gift cards I was given.  Can you guess what I might have purchased?