Christmas Concert 2011

Last Saturday night, we went over to our church and listened to the Christmas concert.  Wonderful music for a wonderful Chistmas season....my two oldest grandkids were in a small part of the program and they were excited to participate.  I love that children want to praise God.

Decorating the tree and the grandkids

Well, so much for pictures. The grandkids came over and between the TV and the computer, they were too interested to decorate the tree.  My youngest grandson did help a little but I didn't get any good pictures.  I'll show you pics of them later in front of the tree at Christmas.  Here's my youngest granddaughter, Carmen,  playing with one of the decorations....

Here are the cookies my husband made for dessert. He decorated them himself...He did an A for Alayna, B for Brandon, T for Trent and trees and Merry Christmas too....He actually had fun doing them and the kids loved them.

This is the only picture I got of the other grandkids, as you can tell, they were running around and not decorating the tree!    Like I said, I'll have to get them around the tree later...

Here's what they really look like...not at my house but they were still enough to get a picture!

Weekend Happenings but no sewing!

Friday night, our doctors took us out to celebrate. We were celebrating the office manager's 20th anniversary.  We had a wonderful dinner at Ocean Prime. A wonderful seafood restaurant in downtown Dallas. I had planned on coming home afterwards and getting ready for Saturday.. I had a Christmas party to go to early (around 10:00) and I needed to fix my dish to take.  Well, that didn't happen!  I came home and crashed. I set the alarm and got up early and cooked my food to take with me. 

I went to my sewing guild Christmas party.  There were fourteen of us that came  and we had a great time.  Good food and good friends getting together and chatting and celebrating.  We played the Mr and Mrs Right game. We brought tea towels to exchange.  Well, some of us brought tea towels and some brought white elephant gifts, I brought the knitted dish cloths.  Anyway, it was fun to see who knows their right hand from their left.  We had to stop a few times to let some catch up!!! 
We ate lunch and then we exchanged gifts. We played the Chinese game. One person opens the gift and the next person can take it away or choose another unopened gift.  I've been in the group for 4 years and I have tried to win a gift from my friend Cathey.  She has been making the same thing for 9 or 10 years because everyone wants it...She makes a stuffed bunny sewing machine cover.  Until we all have one, she will keep making them, or at least that's what she says!  Anyway, I finally won her gift.  I got it and held my breath the whole time during the gift exchange and the bunny came home with me!  I was so excited.  She is so cute and I'm so pleased she came to live with me and greet me every time I go to my sewing room.  I did not take pictures but I will and show you later tonight....

Sunday afternoon, I decorated the house with all my Christmas quilts and we put up the tree.  My grandkids are coming over tonight to eat supper with us and decorate the tree.  This will be alot of fun tonight and I'll take pictures of my grandbabies and show you how big they now...
I didn't get any sewing done over the weekend but will be able to sew a little this week.  I have a Christmas tablerunner to finish so I can put it out this week.  I hope I get it done. The tablerunner is done except for putting the leaves all over it....I'll show you that later too.  Until next time, happy sewing!

And now for a winner!

Yes, it's December 1st and time to give away this wonderful book by Jennifer Chiaverini!!!   I used the Random number widget to pick my number but I don't know how to get it to display on this post.  (It's on the bottom of my blog)  I'll figure it out eventually but don't have time to mess with it right now....Mr Random picked number 16 which ended up being Jackie from It's a Wonderful Life. Her blogsite is this:  http://quiltytreasures.blogspot.com/... Jackie is a local girl and a Longarm quilter too. I won't even have to put it in the mail to her.  (This gives me a chance/excuse to go over to her house and see what she has on the quilting frame!) Congratulations, Jackie!      For all the others that didn't win, thanks for participating.  I will be having a few more drawings this month of various things, mostly books but maybe some gadgets, patterns, or who knows what?!   So, please come back and visit me again and enter the December drawings.  Merry Christmas!

Pocket Gift Basket

I came home and talked my husband into picking up dinner so I could sew.  I was excited about making this little gift basket that I had seen on Lillian's blog (see my previous post) as I needed another gift for my sewing Christmas party this weekend....We ate dinner, I knitted for awhile and watched Scrooged with Bill Murray on TV.  Once it was over, I headed upstairs and thought I would just work on this basket for a little while and do the finish work tomorrow.  I had Lillian's directions in my hands and I picked my fabric and started cutting.  I sewed it up and put the binding on and finished it up tonight.  It went together very easily with her directions and my gift is finished completely.  All in all, it took me about two hours to do this little project.  That includes hand sewing down the binding too.  I wanted to try the pattern out first before I did more of these. Now that I have, I'll definitely be doing more of these cute little baskets.  I used Christmas fabric and I think it turned out really cute.

I'm really pleased and I hope my friend will like it too.  I plan on putting a few sewing notions in it and some fat quarters. I think this will be a nice little gift and I didn't spend any money making it as it was all leftover fabric from other projects. 

A quick gift...check out the tutorial from Lillian's Cupboard!

I am going to go home tonight and make one of these....Lillian over at Lillian's Cupboard has written a wonderful tutorial for some quick little Pocket Gift Baskets.  I need a gift for a friend and I need it quick so I'm going to make it tonight.  I'll post the pictures tomorrow or who knows, maybe later tonight!  Anyway, here's a link to her great tutorial.  She always shares good tips and great recipes.  If you haven't found her yet, please check her out and go over and say hello....

My Christmas Quilts

I wanted to show you my Christmas quilts. I try to make a quilt or ornaments every year.  SewCalGal is having a Christmas quilt show and these are mine for the show.  These have all been done in the past few years.  I haven't done a Christmas quilt this year but I am working on the snowman quilt...I did do a small banner and Christmas card holder but no full size quilt. I want to make a big Christmas quilt but just haven't taken the time.  These are all wallhangings or tabletoppers....I hope you enjoy seeing them.

                        My Christmas Stars-all the stars are different and the quilt is all hand quilted.

This is called Texas Christmas.  My brother in law loves this quilt. I guess I'll have to either give it to him or make him one like it.

I made this several years ago. This is an Eleanor Burns pattern.  It was alot of fun.  I made 3 of these and gave two as gifts and kept one for myself.

I made this one along with a friend of mine.  This is from Country Woman magazine many years ago.  I was teaching my friend how to sew and make this little wallhanging at the same time.  We had alot of fun together doing it.

I made this one last year.  My sewing group all made items using the red work embroidery. I made this little wallhanging.  Others made bags,ornaments or little purses.  It was fun to see what non-quilters did with their sewing.

I did this one several years ago at the quilt shop I used to work at.  We had a lock in at the quilt shop and we brought food and all worked on this little quilt.  We all had a quilt by the next morning. 

These are little candle mats.   I put red or green candles in the middle of these on my coffee table.  I'll be decorating with these this week....

You just saw these a few weeks ago but I wanted to put them here too along with all my other Christmas quilts.  I finished these the last few months ago...

My little Joy banner.

This one is a Christmas card holder.

Ok, now you can go to  SewCalGal's site and look at everybody else's....have fun and enjoy the show.

  Click here to go to see everyone else's Christmas quilts.  Merry Christmas!