Some Christmas pictures....

I haven't been able to blog lately.  I can't blog at work anymore and I have been too busy at night to blog.

Here are my beautiful grandchildren.....We had a great Christmas. I love spending time with my kids and grandkids during the holiday season.   They make it so special for me.

Here's some knitted scarves I made and gave away at Christmas.

My oldest granddaughter and my sweet MIL....

I have done very little sewing this month.  When I was in the mood, I didn't have the time and when I had the time, I  wasn't in the mood.  Hopefully, the new year will bring some much needed rest and I'll want to get busy too. 

I was going to have some drawings this month and just haven't gotten it together. I will celebrate the new year and have some giveaways in January.  Please bear with me while I get my momentum back!

I hope everyone had a wonderful Christmas or holiday season and that you will have a prosperous, healthy and happy new year!

Until next time, happy sewing!

Our anniversary and my husband's birthday.

Today was our 33rd Wedding Anniversary.  Wow, 33 years!  Some days it seems like just yesterday and other days, well, we won't go there! I am a very lucky woman and I'm married to my best friend. He loves me and let's me be me....We have grown and changed but we've done it together. 

Tomorrow is his birthday and we will continue to celebrate.  He's off work tomorrow and we'll be hanging out together.  I guess I won't be sewing too much this weekend.

Happy Anniversary and Happy Birthday, honey, I love you! 

Christmas with my sewing friends.

Last night, my quilting group had our Christmas party.  It was so good to be with my sewing friends, eat good food and win some quilting blocks too. Yes, that's right, I was one of the lucky winners for the Christmas blocks.  I won 16 blocks and three other people won 16 blocks too. I don't know if you've seen or remember the Christmas blocks I've shown but here are some of the blocks....

and here is a quilt made by one of the girls that picked out the Christmas blocks for this year. 

This pattern can be found a few places on the web but here's a link to it if you want it....

Christmas boxes

There were 32 of us that ventured out last night in the rain for our party.  Here's a few pics of some of the quilts that my little group did to give as gifts this year.

This was Rosemarie's first quilt from years ago.  She had put it away. She dug it out and just got it back from being quilted...

This is a gift for one of her daughters.

A gift for another daughter.

Deanna made this one and she worked on this at retreat. It is from Suzanne McNeill's new book, 10 Minute Blocks. It's based on using Layer cakes and looks like a big bow tie block. (She's got a great Youtube video out there, here's a link to it...)

This is the back of the quilt.

Deanna made this one for her grown daughter, it's a sock monkey quilt.

Lois made this one for a customer. 

Rita made this one for a customer too. The customer gave her her baby's shirts and clothes to use for the blocks.   If you click on the picture you can see photos of the little guy and some of the sayings in the quilt.  This turned out so cute!

This one is Martha's redwork Santa quilt.

This is Dee's snowman quilt.  There were 10 of us involved in this exchange.  Of course, mine is not finished yet...Dee did hers with Log Cabin blocks and this is wonderful.

I gave Dee the boot pattern two months ago and she made this cute Christmas boot quilt...

Here's my wonderful quilting group.   You can't see all of the ladies but we were all smiles and wishing you a wonderful Christmas.

Queenie and a few projects.

I forgot to show you my new friend....

  This is the bunny I won from Cathey at the sewing party.  I just love her. She sits on my sewing machine and greets me every time I go up there.  I have named her "Queenie" as she is the Queen of my sewing room!  She even has her own little quilt and is dressed in my favorite color. 

This is another bag I made to give as a gift.  This one is about 9" x 12" big. It is another Lazy Girl pattern, it is the Perfect Pouch pattern again and is the biggest one. The fabric is prequilted and is double-sided.  It was pretty pricey fabric but I've used it for this and another project too.  I bought it for an applique pillow, I guess that's what you would call it...It's a big pillow you put in your lap and use as a large pincushion or aid to help you bring your work closer to you and also help your back...  

Here's the big lap pillow I made using the same fabric. 

I have a little bit left over and I'm going to make a small version of the Perfect pouch. 

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!