Christmas with the parents and other fun stuff!

We had a really nice, stress-free holiday this year, again.  My parents came over for a dinner of prime rib, roasted potatoes, broccoli, warm rolls and spiced peaches.  Key lime pie for dessert with real whipped cream made by my husband.  He also cooked the meat to perfection in our convection oven, that convection feature really sears the juices into the meat.  And he was so helpful around the house, too, getting ready for company, he dusted and cleaned the chandelier and did dishes for me.  I have such a wonderful husband and I know it.  After we ate, we played a game called "Fact or Crap" and it was fun and informative.  We all had a great time.  Sent half the leftovers home with the parents so they were set for dinners for a couple of nights.

We were also dealing with a sick kitty- Gravey stopped eating around Tuesday and we took her to the vet where it was discovered that she had a fever and was sick to her tummy AND she had round worms. A shot, some antibiotics and a topical de-wormer, along with 3 days of us force-feeding her watered down baby food, and she finally started eating on her own late on Christmas day, which was a huge relief for us, we were very worried about her.  She's still getting her antibiotic, but is obviously feeling back to her sweet, rascally self!  Yay for that.  She found a folded up, unfinished quilt to rest on as she recovered. 

I finally put together one of the mini quilts made from swapped bitty blocks.  These blocks finish up at 3" square.  This is the circus set, I only made the one in the bottom left corner, the guy falling off the trapeze.  :)  The other 8 were made by friends.  I did a simple quilting on it and I really like how it turned out.  Currently we're swapping birds, that's going to make a really cute quilt. 

You can see the quilting better on the back.

I also made a couple of special order sewing caddies for a friend to give her moms for Christmas.  She sent me the fabrics and this is what I came up with.  Almost identical so the moms won't fight over them.  :) 

Inside-

I finished up one of my 2 hexagon quilts and gave this one to my mother for her 90th birthday that she celebrated last week!  She likes it, she's all about color, too.  That is obviously where I get it from! 



I hope everyone had lovely holidays, too, I know we did.  Have a great New Year's Eve, too!

All Presents and Accounted For... Mug Rug!

This is what I sent to my partner in the mug rug swap- A stack of presents with labels that spelled out her daughter's name- her daughter was born last year right before Christmas and Angela (Tweedledee Designs) says she was the best present ever.  So the little red present on the left hand side-

is actually a cover for a window that holds a photograph of said adorable child!  Here she is in her Halloween costume, but I'm sure Angela will get a more Christmasy photo to put here.  :) Making this was fun but I darn near melted that plastic a half-dozen times.  Phew.  I sure didn't want to have to pick that part out and re-do it, in my experience it's never as nice if it's fixed.

Bad enough that the stripes of words on the back got off-kilter and looks like crap!  I sent it anyway and Angela is nice enough to say that she loves the wonk.  

As a consolation, I sent her these 2 mug rugs also.  Myrtle and Myron, decorating the tree.  She also got an ornament for the tree that will hold another photo, a couple of drink mixes and a crap caddy pattern.  :)

                                    

                                   Parker and Gravey playing in the messy desk.  Got yer tail!

And some bird blocks I did for our itty bitty block swap group- these are 3.5" square.  

And the same for our rainbow blocks- 3.5", I traced off 7 circles on fusible backing paper, fused them to 7 different fabrics, cut them into 7 wedges and then fused the little wedges into a circle shape to make 7 blocks of rainbow wedges.  (I did this twice to get 14 blocks.  Actually, I did it 4 times to make 28 because I screwed up and sewed the first 14 with black thread, as you can see on the bottom row and my husband gave me a big thumbs down on that, so I redid them all.)  This was the idea of my friend Ruthie, to make my block like my Flickr icon, which is a mini photo of the ticker tape color wheel that I made.  I think these came out super cute, once redone.

Now I'm busy working on another set of different birds for the other group and then I have some special order sewing caddies to make for someone.  That's next on my list of things to do.  Busy, busy!  Hope everyone is staying busy, too, but aren't stressing out!