Just A Few More Days

Today and tomorrow I have to work, then I am off for 11 days straight.  I am so ready.

Almost all the presents are wrapped.  I have to rewrap a few gifts because Addy got nosy.  Sigh.

Still have to make the Christmas bags for the kids.  Going to stuff them with little goodies from the dollar store and some instant lottery tickets.

Having lunch with Johanna today.  Love being able to do that.

Plans Changed

Had an ice storm Friday and was not able to travel.  Have to reschedule our trip north.  That's okay, better to be safe than have an accident.

Holiday Hub Bub

It is getting close to Christmas!  More cookies were baked this week, the tree is up and waiting to be decorated, the majority of the gifts have been bought and are waiting to be wrapped, and our trip to visit family is drawing near.  Lots to do!

Next week is a short week, only 4 work days for me, then I will have 11 days off in a row.  I am so excited about that!  woohoo!

Going to Wal Mart today during my lunch hour to get a few gifts and the fixin's for a casserole for Ev to take to his mom when we visit.  Might even make a coffee cake for there if I feel ambitious.

I have yet to make the gift bags for the kids, but that won't take too long.  They are going to be a bit smaller this year, I think.  The kids are getting older and I'm just going to put some token goodies.  Johnathon will get some extra treats, but he has some awesome gifts coming, too.

One of the Yahoo Groups I belong to is having a New Year's Eve Mystery Quilt project that I intend to participate in.  Looking forward to that.  Mary and Sandy are going to play along too, so it should be fun.

The Moon And Snow

Last night when I was driving home from work the moon was so bright and big!  There was still a lot of daylight and that ol' moon was just a shining as bright as you please!  Very pretty

Then this is what we had in the morning:

Snow!  Finally!  But it has all melted already.  Sigh.

Cookie-A-Thon

Sunday was a busy baking day for me.  Next weekend I am going to be exchanging cookies with Mary, so I need to have three different kinds of cookies baked.

The first thing I did was make the dough for the Amish Sugar Cookies.

Here it is ready to go into the fridge.  It has to chill for a few hours before it can be made into cookies.  The dough is then made into balls, rolled in sugar, and flattened on the cookie sheet.  I wanted them to be a bit festive, so I made my own colored sugar!

All I did was take about a third cup of granulated sugar, put it in a jar, dropped a few drops of food coloring on top, closed it up, and shook the jar.  It turned out pretty good.  There were a few spots that were darker, where the food coloring slightly clumped up, but it wasn't bad at all and I didn't have to run out and get colored sugar (and pay for it!).  I will make my own colored sugar again in the future!

The sugar cookie recipe makes over 6 dozen cookies, so one batch was plenty.

The other cookies that I baked yesterday were walnut cookies.  They were a shortbread cookie with ground up walnuts in them, then rolled in sugar.  The original recipe had them rolled in granulated sugar, but the cookies I remember were rolled in powdered sugar, so that was what I did.  The recipe only made two dozen cookies, so I made two batches.

I have one more batch of cookies to make for the swap.  I think I will make oatmeal raisin cookies.  They are a good old stand by that a lot of people like.

The Before Picture

Here is our Christmas tree before we decorate it.  Ev and I went to the tree farm and cut it down Sunday afternoon, between my baking batches of cookies.  He will get it in the stand today and during the week we will get it decorated.  Hope the animals leave it alone.

The pickin's were slim at the tree farm we go to.  A couple bad years worth of weather set them back, and they don't have a lot of mature trees.  I really hope they continue to offer trees in the coming years, and that they have some new growth!  The farm is very close to home, and real convenient.

Ta-Da!

Finished binding all four nursing home quilts and sent them on their merry way.  Here they are:

Hubby was kind enough to be my quilt holder for the pics.

I have one more top to quilt for a person in assisted living, but it can wait a few days.  The others had to be done before Sunday.

Bound To Bind

The last two nursing home quilts are quilted and ready for binding!  Have to do it tonight or tomorrow because they are to be given away Sunday.  Once again, nothing like the last minute, right?  haha.

Another thing I need to do this weekend is start my baking for my cookie exchange with my friend the following weekend.  I have two recipes I know I want to make and an idea about what I want to do for the third.

Was going to make chicken bacon ranch subs for dinner last night but I forgot to get tomatoes.  Ugh.  So we went to Tilly's instead and I will make the subs tonight.  After I go to the store and get tomatoes....  haha.

Sewing Last Night

As I am sure some of you noticed, I hadn't been sewing for a while.  To be honest, I was just in a funk.  Well, I am out of that funk and roaring to go!

I did some sewing on Gemma last night on the last nursing home quilt.  Made two passes of quilting on her and have two left and she will be done.  Hoping to get to that tonight.

I would like to have them done so that I can do some holiday baking on Saturday.  Need to make a few batches of Christmas cookies for my exchange with Mary the following weekend.

Winter

Temps are dropping and it is getting colder!  Hoping to see some snow before the week is out.

Happy St. Nicholas' Day!

Two Christian holidays that are near and dear to my heart are St. Nicholas' Day and Epiphany.

St. Nicholas is dear to me because we named our son Nicholas.  I had always wanted a baby boy born near Christmas and wanted to name him after Santa Claus!

Epiphany is the day Johanna was born on.  What a beautiful gift we were given on that day!

Happy Place

Just like my mug says, my sewing room is my happy place!  I was downstairs working on Gemma over the weekend.  Here I was just winding bobbins.  This was a thread that I had previously deemed not usable because it kept breaking.  After gaining some experience with the machine, the thread now works like a dream.  I used it for both the quilts I worked on this weekend.

This is the last nursing home quilt for the year, on the frame.  Just doing simple quilting on it.

TSO!

Here was our view for the Trans Siberian Orchestra concert we went to yesterday.  Great seats!  Even though we were up high, the view was fantastic and the sound amazing.  Cool light show and pyrotechniques.

Had an awesome time with my honey.

Crunch Time

I have to get those nursing home quilts done before next weekend.  This year it has been hard for me to get motivated to do them for some reason.  It's not like I didn't have the tops completed early enough... haha.

During my lunch hour at work I have been working on more snowmen.  Here they are before they have little faces and buttons.

I love those little sock hats!  Wal Mart had 10 pair of the cutest socks for $3, probably a Black Friday sale.

Doctor Visit

I had my annual physical yesterday.  Some of my numbers were off from the blood work I had done, along with a few other little things, so he changed up some of my medicine a bit.  Not a big deal and hoping all works out.

I really need to lose some weight to get those numbers back in line.