Advent Day 2

OOoooo boy did I enjoy another wonderful present this a.m. from my Advent partner.  Jorja gifted me with these beautiful Christmas tree earrings in this adorable snowflake tin.

I love them!!!  In fact, I have already put them in to wear today!

Advent Day 1

Now.....on to the fun part of today's post! I belong to a message board and every year, those of us who want to participate do an Advent Exchange. Wish Lists are filled out, names are drawn and given to all participating. For 24 days, it should be some fun little thing that you might like to have. Don't give something that you yourself wouldn't want to receive. It might be a box of hot chocolate, a package of xstitch needles, a few skeins of DMC, an overdyed floss for xstitching with, a box of jello with cookie cutters, Post It notes, writing pens, small charts from your list, etc. You get the idea. Then on Day 25, you get something from your Wish List up to $25 from the person who got your name.

My kids help me open my gifts too. One opens on the odd days and the other opens on the even days. Today, Daniel helped me open my first gift. We unwrapped an quilted Advent Calender that my Advent partner made me!!! OH MY STARS!!! IT'S ABSOLUTELY GORGEOUS!!! See the picture below.

I've seen Jorja give this as a gift in the past and have loved it!  In fact, I was going to sew me an Advent Calender this year but for some reason I never found the time to do it.  Good thing I didn't!!!  I love how she quilted this one!!!  She is such a great quilter!!!  Thank you Jorja for my Advent Calender.  This could have easily have been my Day 25 gift!!!  I LOVE IT!

I hope to show you some other xstitched gifts that I'm giving family in the next few days.  Which is fine because NONE of them have computers to see the stitched gift.

Happy Stitching and have a great day!

Updates

Ooooo I love this time of year! Where HAS this year gone to I'll never know???!!! Thanksgiving came and we spent it here together as a family and all had a great time. That evening the kids and I started a new tradition that Thanksgiving night. As always I look, and look and look some more at all the sale ads trying to map out what I am buying for the kids on Thanksgiving Day. Welllllll, the kids are much older now and I have a hard time remembering WHAT kind of toys/names that Daniel wants. So this year, we went to pick out some at Toys R Us for some Beyblades for him. Good thing as I would have NEVER remembered....and he changed his mind 3 or 4 times on some of them. Toys R Us opened at 9pm ON THANKSGIVING! Now...my degree is in retail....I love the WHOLE Black Friday shopping and in fact used to get some of my kids presents on that day.....or things we as a family wanted for Christmas on Black Friday due to such great sales. But it's not often that I've shopped on Thanksgiving Day. I have in the past but not usually. So this may be a new trend for the kids and I to go and do.

But this year the kids are getting older and just wanted money. Who doesn't want money for Christmas is a better statement but I told them they had to tell me some smaller things for them to open on Christmas. Now......do you see why I had to take Daniel with me??? I don't know all the names of these Beyblades but I told him he definitely couldn't have them til Christmas. After he picked them out, I wouldn't even let him read the back of the packaging. He has to wait. Grace found the other movie that goes with "How To Train A Dragon" ..... which I might add is an adorable movie!! But she's getting a little old for anything from Toys R Us. She did think about looking at the Nintendo games but the line to get INTO the electronic area was to the back of the store.  I do have other things in mind for her gifts though.

Grace's comment on shopping on Thanksgiving was that she was in "training" on how to do it for Black Friday for the future when she is out living on her own. Ohhhhh my baby made me sooo proud of even wanting to go! Both thought it was quite fun. Neither child complained about how long the lines were. They were just astonished at how long the line was to GET INTO Toys R Us to begin with.

But I still have some things they don't even know about to unwrap for Christmas. Then....we all get to go shopping again with their Christmas money after Christmas. I love...LOVE....shopping with my kids! Saves Ted's sanity too so he doesn't have to do that.

We did stop at McD on the way home Thanksgiving night to have McFlurry ice cream and share a large French Fry!! Even at 11pm!!

Ok....enough rambling as I have other things to post about.....

Friends and gifts.....

Here is my friend Beth who was my neighbor when I lived in VA.  I gave her the JBW French Country Rooster pillow as a departing gift from me before I moved to Germany.  Then I gave her the French Country Hen pillow when I came for an early visit before my retreat this year.  It was a birthday gift to her.  She loved it!  I was hoping so because she also raises chickens.

But Beth now has the two pillows displayed nicely on her living room couch!  They look so nicely displayed here!

Now seeing them all done up and displayed so nicely makes me want to stitch a set for myself!!!

But here is a picture of both of us before I leave for retreat:

I will try to get the rest of my retreat pictures uploaded, named and posted here in the next few days.  The retreat was awesome but I'm soooo thankful that Beth and her family let me visit them for a few days before my retreat!

Time with friends ALWAYS seems to go soooooo fast!

My new YARN BOWL!!!!

Oh my stars!!!!  I've just been blessed by dear friends of mine!!!  Sandy is an avid cross stitcher and knitter and Sandy's husband made her a bowl to hold her yarn in to keep it clean while knitting.  Wellll, I had a fit over how wonderfully made the bowl was but what an EXCELLENT CONCEPT too!!!  Her husband, Larry, handmakes these bowls and I've been the lucky recipient of one of his handcrafted bowls in the past among other wonderful wooden things as well.  Sandy and I have exchanged mailart, ornaments and other stitching items but when she showed me the bowl that Larry made her, I was just speechless.  One because of her fabulous knitting but also because of the bowl.   So without me rambling on and on about this bowl, you can see it here:

You can see in the lower right area where the yarn feeds through the hole while the yarn sits neatly inside the bowl and off the floor or couch.  Each piece of the bowl is handcut and shaped into making this bowl!!! 

All I can say is......I'm sooo amazed at his craftmanship!!!! 

THANK YOU SANDY AND LARRY!!!!

Happy Veteran's Day

Today I want to say a special Thank You to all those people who have served in our military and are serving now!!!  Thank you for your service, sacrifice and let us not forget those who have gone before us and are not here today.  I want you to know that you are not forgotten!  Being a military wife, I understand! 

iStitch Mystery SAL Completed!!!

Yeah me!!!!  I got the last of the chart and was able to complete my iStitch Mystery SAL, photographed and sent off to Carol to have.  Now.....I have to sand down my box and stain it this week in hopes of doing the "finishing work" for this project.  But here is my piece stitched as a whole:

I am thinking I will finish this one up and display it in my master bedroom somewhere but I'm thinking I might stitch this again in another color of Hand Dyed Fibers called Winterberry 1423 and display that one in my sewing room.  And who knows.....I might even stitch this again as a gift to someone at some point in time.  We'll see about that later on.

I've returned from my retreat last week but I will write about that this coming week and include pics to show.  I had a blast though and it was great to get away from the things that I do every day.  I'm already looking forward to my retreat get away next year!!!

I'm off to do some finishing work for some Christmas presents.

Have a great day everyone!