Christmas Postponed

Oh I am so happy with how this turned out I have to share this with you first! Over the weekend, I was able to get a few alone hours in the sewing room (without Nora) so now I can share a photo of the finished round robin with you - the last two sides were assembled and attached and I mailed it off yesterday!!! It was so windy out and after about 25 clicks of the digital camera I finally got one without it flapping in the wind! Thank goodness for digital cameras and not having to waste film!

Well David is back at work today after being off for the holiday Monday & yesterday. It was so nice for him to be home with us - Nora really enjoyed his playing with her all day. They needed that time together and I hope they can get more time like that together to bond more before the twins arrive. Nora is such a Mommy's girl it is not even funny. Sweet but annoying at times b/c she won't let David do stuff for her and he so wants to be the "Super Dad" - but most times she won't let him.

Christmas for us wasn't anything special - just being together at home and taking it easy. We thought of our families in Kentucky and called them. Seems like this year we were the only ones who didn't come home.... but we were just there 10 days for Thanksgiving so that isn't so bad. We just can't afford to go twice back to back - I rather spread out the visits. Perhaps next year we will do Christmas in KY instead of Thanksgiving? I did make a Happy Birthday Jesus cake on Christmas day. Nora even got to help with the icing :c)

Poor little Nora hasn't opened a one of her Chirsmas gifts yet - see, we wrote Santa a note and asked him to pass us over Sunday night and if it wouldn't be too much trouble to return Thursday night instead. Tomorrow David's mom, Kathy, and Grandma, Corrine, will arrive from KY. We have to drive to Houston to go pick them up tomorrow afternoon so we will have Santa come tomorrow night. Nora is only 2.5 yeas old so she doesn't know enough yet to know the difference. However last night it occurred to me that probably every child in the country except Nora received their Santa already......

So today being Wednesday on the calendar - it feels like a Monday to be b/c David has been at home with us. Weeks like this get me all confused on what day it is.... but we are trying to get back into our routines. Today we will go to the Post Office, to the grocery and then return our books at the Library. I have a feeling Nora will have to recheck her "Sam I am" book - actually the title is "Green Eggs and Ham" and had I known she was gonna love this book so much I would have searched for it for a Christmas gift but I do not have time today to go to the store with all there is left to do to prepare for family arriving tomorrow... I am sure after we run our errands, Nora will be more than ready for a nap and I am not about to take a 2.5 year old into Wal-Mart who needs a nap! (Been there & done that!)

Speaking of preparing - I have to brag on my dear husband. Yesterday David ran the vacuum all over the house for me!!! Both down stairs and upstairs! Then he also moped the kitchen floor (one of the two cleaning tasks I hate to do!) Being pregnant the cleaning chemicals really do a number on me and so he helped me out by moping the floors and even promised to clean the downstairs toilet for me tonight (the #1 cleaning task I hate to do!) Isn't he a sweetheart!!?!! I love him so much for helping me out!!!

While he was busy doing that I ran to the Post Office alone - no Nora with me! woo hoo! :c) Then when I got home, I attempted to tidy up the computer desk - it stays such a mess!!! I also cleaned out sewing stuff from the guest bedrooms. I have swap stuff in the small guest room and had to get it off the bed and dresser in there to make room for family to feel at home. Then the larger guest room is my sewing room and it took the longest to clean up - but I think they will be able to be comfortable in there now. Both beds have been stripped down and sheets washed and are in the dryer now. I still have several loads of laundry left to do today and tonight before the in-laws arrive.

I have cleared off crafting stuff from the dining room table and it is ready to set - however I will wait to do that after the family arrives and we are ready for our meal - as I do not trust Nora with dishes left on the dining room table anymore. Use to she wouldn't bother it and the dining room stayed looking so pretty - it made me smile to see the table set all the time... but those days are over for a while anyway.

Christmas is just around the corner!!!

Well Christmas is just around the corner and we still are SO NOT READY!!! David's mom and grandmother are coming the week after and staying thru New-Year's with us here in TX.... so on top of all the last minuite details of Christmas preperations, we are getting ready for guests too! This weekend we need to help Santa get his stuff prepared - the last time I spoke to him, he had not located the 3 itmes on Nora's wishlist!!! (eek!)

Here are a few more photos of ornaments I promised last week. I just haven't had time to sit down and post until now...sorry.

In the photo to the left is a NOEL wreath that I made when I was about 9 or 10 in Girl Scouts. It was so fun painting the letters and creating my own design for each letter. Also in that photo is a crocheted angel made by Momma Newt.



Here you see a very special angel given to Nora last year from David's Aunt Connie. It is made by Lenox™ and is personalized with Nora Anne's name. It has been crafted in the classic Lenox tradition of hand-painted ivory fine china accented with 24 karat gold. We hung this one very high up on the tree of course :c)



In the background is one of about 7 "Baby's 1's Christmas" Ornaments that Nora received her first Christmas. Up-close is a crocheted angel holding a bell that was made by Momma Newt. I was very young when she crocheted these types of ornaments - she made stockings and snowmen too like this angel. I remember each year, she would let me have 1st pick of her homemade ornaments – this year I choose one stocking and one angel. :c)


Here we are - our first year as a snowmen family :c) The year before when I was pregnant, the same lady made an ornament with David and I and she made me have a very pregnant belly :c) it is so cute - but I forgot to take a photo of it. Next year we will have to have another made to include the twins!


Hope you and your family have a blessed Christmas together this weekend! :)

Love from Texas, Bonnie

A closer look at a few favotires

Yesterday I mentioned I would try and get a few closeups of our favorite ornaments and post a few each day. Here are three ornaments that I love:

Here is one of the oldest ornaments I have that I made. When I was about 2 years old a teenager named SueEllen, helped me make this while my parents took square dance lessons. It is a starafoam ball with a peal and stick santa sticker and hangs with a red bread tie. So if I were about 2 when I made it - that would make this ornamnet 30 years old!

Of all the ornaments my husband thinks it is the uglyest and if he pulls it out of the box before I do you can bet he is gonna hang it in the back facing the wall.

This one is my very - very - most special ornament. It is a photo holder of my grandmother, "Momma-Newt". She was the only grandmother I ever had in my life and she made many beautiful quilts and even Christmas ornaments for me. I always place her near the top and center of the tree because she is my angel :)

After she passed away in 1995, my dad gave me her sewign machine and little by little my quilting began. I only wish she could see what I have acomplished. :)

I will try and take a few photos of some more of the ornaments she made tomorrow. Below is a snowflake ornament she made.

This is just one of many snowflakes that I have made by Momma-Newt. My mom and I divided them out the year I took my ornaments. I so wish I could have gotten the others after mom died... but I didn't. Instead they were sold in a yard sale.

Also you see one of about 50 candycanes that David and I made together in our dating years. Only one year of my life have I had a real live Christmas tree - he was working at Kroger and his boss gave him a tree. He brought it to my home and we made these homemade ornaments and also strung popcorn for the first time to use as garland. However it took FOREVER to just get a strand long enought to go around the tree once, so being the typical teenagers we were, we gave up and went to the movie theatre instead. Later that night after our date, David brought me home and there was our tree decorated with our ornaments and lots and lots of popcorn garland!!! My mom had continued stringing popcorn while we were on our date. :c)

Getting back into the sewing mood - Round Robin

Today I got back into the sewing mood despite all the laundry I still need to get caught up on!! It all started out as a sewing room cleaning and before I knew it - it was already 11:30am and Nora and I were still in our PJ's :cP I had 4 plastic boxes I had bought at Wal-Mart that I gathered up supplies for different projects and organized each one into it's own box and labeled them. I have seen photos where other quilters do this and it seems to work for them so I am gonna give it a try. I need to purchase a few more though... but I don't want too many. Maybe a total of 10-12 and then that will motivate me to finish up one of the projects before beginning anything else.

Speaking of finishing up - I have decided for the coming year nothing new will get started! I am only going to work on things I have already started. I have many blocks from swaps that I participated in this year from HGTV.com's quilting board plus several other quilts started not to mention a few aging UFO's. My goal for next year is to mark off those items listed in my left hand side bar!!! :)

After David came home for lunch, Nora and I headed back upstairs. (he didn't even make a comment that we were both in PJ's still - guess he didn't think it was safe since I have been so moody lately with this pregnancy LOL) I was so pleased with Nora being able to entertain herself all day in the same room. The second part of the day she spent squirling small toy items into the sewing room's closet and playing with them in there. She would talk to herself and sort items on the bottom shelf and then into a cardboard box....It was like she had her own little club house.

Although I really wanted to get back in there to reorganize the sheves, I let her have the closet since she was so content and used the time to get the guest bed cleared off. That is the only thing I don't like about my sewing room - it has a queen size bed in the center of the room :( which is a chatch all. Yes, it is great for laying out projects and adding boarders adn pinning but most of the time it is covered with too much stuff for that - so today I got it mostly cleared off so I could use it.

Around 3pm we took a book reading break and I was able to rock both Nora and I to sleep. I woke up and put her in her bed and although I really wanted to go to my own bed I thought it would be best to use this time for some sewing since it is nearly impossible these days when Nora is awake. After an hour or so later - ta-da! I was able to add two sides to my current Round Robin! :-)

I debated and debated on rather or not to share a photo of this RR. But since I have not given out my blog address to anyone I know from HGTV I think it is still pretty safe that the owner of this quilt will not discover it here and ruin her suprise. This quilt will go back to the person who made the center.

When I first received the quilt I had no idea what to add to it - (normal response to each of the Round Robins I have received this year. LOL) But the longer I looked at it, I came to the conclusion I was just gonna have to "cheat" and use the 4" finished squares like the center and then add a note to the owner that she could come back and add her origional applique work on top of it if she desired. Now, after the first two sides have been added on - they look perfect and honestly I can't imagine anything else that I could have added that would have looked any better! :c)

This RR top is huge compared to the others I have worked on... guess beacuse we are nearing the end. Our group is the lap size group but this one will be able to fit a bed for sure after the next person addes their round. I think it only has one more to go to before beign returned in January to the center person...???....

OK, yes this is the same room I described as cleaning up earlier this morning... I know it doesn't appear to be cleaned up but it is. The little desk infornt of the quilt isn't my cutting table. I just have a spare cutting mat on it to protect it for when Nora wants to do her writting while I am in there. I usually have it centered on the wall but had to use it to stand on for pinning this up to the wall for the photo. One day I would like to make this wall space between the doors a design wall. The bed is holding squares for the other two boarders laid out. I hope to get them sewn into 9 patches tonight after Nora's bath and bedtime. :c)

It feels good to be back in the sewing mood again! And to have a photo to share with all the other quilters who I love seeing their photos on their blogs! Maybe one day I will be quilty enough for one fo those web rings... one day...

ok good it worked - but the date is wrong...?

ok the previous post was a test post before I get carried away in some long detailed entry and loose it. I just posted it not 5 minutes ago but the date says December 4th??? and today is the 12??? odd. Oh well at least it let me post!!! and I am grateful!

Today was a busy day for Nora and I. We had our monthly MOPS meeting this morning at my church. I am the chairperson so there is a lot of preparing to do each time. I kept telling Nora she was going to MOPS today and named over all the kids in her class trying to get her excited about going but when we got there she did NOT want to go in her classroom. I could hear her wailing for about the first 30 minutes of the meeting but then she settled down. It is her only time to be away from me - 2 hours, once a month and it about breaks her little heart. But she and I both need that separation time.

Our meeting theme was "Perspective" today and it was a great topic for the Christmas season. We had two new moms join us for the first time this month and I think they had a good time and will be back with us in January. This MOPS is a brand new outreach ministry at our church that just started this October and so far we are a very small group but little by little we grow. Every time I am at the park I try and invite any mom I see that has a child ages birth - 5 years old and so do the other members. So far we are up to 11 members and the 2 guests today. The MOPS group I came from in Georgia had 60-80 moms in that group but it was also a much larger city. I would be tickled pink to have 25-30 moms and eventually we will get there.

For our craft today, we made "I-Spy" bags for our children. Last week a few of us got together at my home with our sewing machines and made up the bags using fleece and clear vinyl to make them and sew along 3 sides. Today after everyone filled their bags with their items then we had two sewing machines to whip the 4th side shut.

The filler for the example was a mixture of rice and clear beads. One of our moms on the planning committee was very concerned about using rice b/c what if the "I-Spy" bag ever become wet then it would be ruined. However buying all the "I-spy" items wasn't cheap to do and since rice was on sale 5lb bag for $0.99 we thought that would be the best thing to use. But this mom thought of the idea of using bean bag filler pellets so she brought those today to use too.

I made two bags and used rice as my filler in one bag and the pellets as the filler in the other. I didn't sew either of mine shut yet b/c I goofed up!!! I will fix them in the next day or so and
close them up here at home.

In the "rice" bag - I added too much rice and you can't move the items around to find the "I-Spy" items. I need to take about 1/4 of the rice out and then it will be like it should be.

In the bean bag filler bag - I wasn't happy with how the static caused them to all stick to the plastic window so I didn't close it up either and here at home I will remove everything and then fill up with either rice or go buy my own clear beads using a 40% off coupon at JoAnn's.

There are all sorts of neat items in these bags....but you have to be holding them and wiggling them around to see them. There are slots on the back sides for index cards and I will type up a list of what I put in them so that later on you can pick an item to search for.

Some of the items include:

$1.00 bill - domino - dice - feather - army man - sea shell - fireman -dolphin - hair clip - bowling pin - snake - frog - school bus - crayons - eraser - marble -match - penny - ABC letters - star - fall leaf - even box top points from the food boxes! :) and lots more. I think I had over 50 items in each of my bags.

We had lots of extras left over and plan to make up more bags with what we have an possible buy more and then sell the "I-Spy" bags as a fundraiser to have some money for our MOPS group. I think people would pay $10-15 for these. Don't you? They make great "quiet toys" for children to have to look at during church or in the car. Of course we will have to find a way to buy filler beads in bluk so that we can make a profit. or use rice... and when we make more I would like the square window to be on point... ideas - ideas! :c)

urgh!

I know it has been forever since I posted last - but it isn't b/c I have not been trying to!!! Here goes my 3rd attempt for this afternoon.

(xxxxxCROSSING FINGERSxxxxx)

ok, I did the upload switch thing although I don't completely understand it or why it was necessary. I am really not a computer techno person. I hope that is not my problem...

ok I am gonna include a photo of our Christmas tree as a test. That seems to be my problem - when I go to attach a pic I loose everything... :PThis year I debated on doing the decorating while Nora was asleep. When we were home for Thanksgiving she never once bothered the tree at my dad's home. I had feared if she saw us putting it up and she started to help then after it was done each day she would go about helping to redecorate. However, because it is an artificial tree and takes so long to put together there was no way we could have done it all after she was in bed unless David and I wanted to pull an all-nighter and we didn't so we did it with her help.

Any of the lights that wouldn't work I threw over onto the floor and she had a ball playing with them and even a few times stuffed them into the tree "helping" - it was cute. We did wait to put on the ornaments until after she was in bed. I think that worked out good. So far she hasn't taken any of them off.

I had thought our tree would look top heavy because we were putting all breakables waist high and higher but in the end it all worked out pretty good and the ornaments don't look to loaded down at the top of the tree. Nora loves all the Disney character ornaments the best. And I have a few ornaments with photos in them and they have caught her eye.

Also this year, we didn’t put the tree in the computer room/living room at the front of the house facing the road. It was there last year and I so missed seeing and enjoying the tree last year because it was in a different room from where we spent most of our time as a family so we put it up in the den this year. So what if people from the road can’t see it this year – it’s not like they could even see the cherished childhood craft ornaments from passing by anyway and this year we can! :c)

David and I really do love our Christmas tree and all the ornaments. It is too bad they don't show up good in this photo. Perhaps I can try to take some close ups of some favorites and share in the coming days....? I'll try. ;c)