Happy Holidays!!!

Happy Holidays everyone!  I hope that you are having a wonderful holiday season!

It's become an expected family tradition for me to make at least one handmade item for the ladies in my family (and sometimes the men too) for Christmas in addition to the usual store-bought items.  This year I decided to make fabric Christmas ornaments as seen in an earlier blog post.  I really enjoyed picking out the various fabrics and even had a fabric swap with one of my friends, Kelley, who is also making a few for the holidays.  I ended up making almost twenty ornaments!  Boy, were my fingers sore from all those pins!  Even with a thimble.  Ha ha ha!  But they were a joy to make and I thought I'd share a few with you to celebrate the holiday season.  I will definitely have to make a few more just for my tree next year!  I do hope that everyone will love them when they open their gifts tomorrow.

Update on Our Impending Move

Exciting news!  My hubby and I have finally found a place in Charleston, SC that we are happy with and is within our budget.  We're going to be living in a condo about 25 minutes from Folly Beach and downtown Charleston.  It will be much smaller than what we are used to and we'll definitely have to downsize and get rid of a lot of stuff.  This is, however, a good time to go through my craft stash and clean it out!  

We will be moving near the end of January 2015.  We have already packed a few things but now we have only about 5-6 weeks to go and we have soooo much to do.  It looks like our moving day will be around January 24th or so.  We have to get the dates finalized and get this house packed up quickly.  We'll be living among boxes for much of our last weeks here in Georgia.  Our friends are happy for us but not so happy at the same time.  We will definitely, definitely miss them but I hope we can visit often.  Now that we have a tentative date, our move seems more "real".  These next few weeks will be difficult and I probably won't have a lot of time to post many new messages but I'll try to pop in around the holidays if I can.  Now...back to packing!!! 

Happy Halloween!

Happy Halloween!  I hope that you are enjoying this spooky and fun holiday.  I just had to pop in to share a couple of pics of my friends' kids from this week.  Love this time of year!

Quilted Christmas Ornaments

A couple of weeks ago, I was looking for Christmas ornament ideas to make as gifts this year for my family and friends.  It's become a tradition that I give everyone at least one handmade gift each year for Christmas.  I knew I wanted to do something that people could use during the holidays but I wasn't sure exactly what it was that I wanted to try to make.  I love using fabric and I had a lot left over from the rag candle-rings I made for everyone last year.  I searched Pinterest (the best place ever to get ideas) and ran across "quilted" ornaments.  I located a quick how-to video on YouTube and decided to give it a try.

The first one I completed has a white center with black and white polka dots and a red and white Christmas fabric.  The lines are not exactly straight and the ribbon I used for the top of the ornament came out a bit floppier than I like; however, I think it turned out really cute for a first try.  I added a red pin to the center of the star on each side just to add a bit more color. 




I'm pleased with the second ornament as well. For it, I used a Santa fabric for the center along with red and white polka dots and a striped fabric in holiday colors.  (Can you tell yet that I really love polka dots?  They make me smile.)  I think that both ornaments turned out really well and I'm looking forward to working on the others that I will be giving as gifts this year.  They really do look "quilted" even though there is no sewing and no glue.  I have a huge stash of fabric that I get to use for my others but... I may still have to go shopping for just a bit more to add a bit of variety. :-) 

Autumn Love

I love Autumn.  I love the cooler weather, the changing leaves and all their brilliant colors, Halloween, outdoor festivals and craft shows, comfort foods such as chili and hot dishes made in the crock pot, and of course, decorating the house with the warm, inviting colors of the season.  Autumn is easily my favorite time of year, followed closely by Spring.  After the heat of Summer in the South, the cooler temperatures and crisp breezes of Fall are very welcome.  As I sit typing this morning, it's about 55 degrees and should warm to around 67 degrees by this afternoon.  Love that crisp chill in the air!  

This time of year seems to make me want to engage in more arts and crafts.  I've been busy working on several projects over the past couple of weeks, some cross-stitch related, others are rag wreaths and other projects.  My good friend Kim is expecting her 2nd daughter any day now and I'm working with another fellow crafter to create a cross-stitch quilt for baby Samantha's nursery.  The room is being decorated with a butterfly theme in lavenders and pinks.  I found a cute pattern from Gail Bussi in one of my "The World of Cross Stitching" magazines (WOCS) called "Flutterby Trio".  I changed a few colors around and added metallic thread and iridescent filament to give it a little sparkle.  I've been working on the cross-stitch portion while my partner has been picking out matching fabric to create the quilt.  So far, I've finished one butterfly completely and have two others partially finished.  I really hope that Kim and baby Sam will love it.

I've also been busy trying to decorate my fireplace mantle for the season.  As I mentioned before, I love the warm colors of Autumn and I also love Halloween.  I wanted a mantle that didn't necessarily scream Halloween and could stay up even after the holiday but definitely had elements from this favorite holiday.  I decided to use one of my framed Halloween cross-stitch pieces and one of our many "scary" buildings from my husband's Halloween village.  We have a ton of these but I only chose one to go over the fireplace.  The rest are packed up pending our move to Charleston.  I think it came out pretty well and we are definitely enjoying it each evening.