Winding Down

It's just about the end of another year, and this year started out as a doozy with a broken ankle, putting our dog down and having a close family member find out he had cancer all within the first month!!  Thankfully, ankles heal, broken hearts do too, and with an excellent team of doctors our loved family member has tested cancer free for the past few months. Even so, I'm ready for this year to be over and to start fresh with new dreams and goals to look forward to.

I got all the Christmas things put away today - mostly because our daughter has a friend spending the night, and in a 700 square foot house, every spare inch is needed!! But also because I'm ready for getting the clutter cleaned up. House work, minus the laundry, is just about caught up after the Christmas craziness. It was a wonderful Christmas too. Lots of visiting family and some quiet time just for the 3 of us. We got our daughter some board games as playing games has become an almost nightly time for us to come together and talk and laugh. We are finding this more and more important as our daughter gets older:)

I had a fun time with my sister-in-law yesterday. Our local needlework store - Hearts Desire - has a year-end sale and we hit the sale with gift cards in hand that our mother-in-law gets us for Christmas every year. I bought both the Summer and Winter Snapperland series from Bent Creek, 'Bunnies Galore' from BritterCup and a fat 1/2 of 32ct natural light linen which I'll use a bit of for the Winter Snapperland.

Tomorrow I will be doing a post on all the Sals and Challenges I am hoping to participate in for the new year. I even have one I am going to try and host. A 'Something Old, Something New' Sal. Hope you can join me:)

NewFO Challenge

I've been spending some time here lately looking into what kind of challenges and Sals I want to get involved in next year and decided that I would like to work on my quilting skills in the coming year. Now, don't get me wrong, there will still be lots and lots of stitching as well, but I have been following a few quilting blogs for the past several months and they have inspired me to learn more about quilting.

 
The 2014 NewFO Challenge is run by Barbara of Cat Patches. Barbara blogs quite regularly and is always showing off her beautiful quilting skills (and incredibly witty kitty cats:). It is always a joy to read at her blog!!  The goal of this challenge is to start a new quilted piece each month, create a blog post the last day of the month and link up to her 'party'!! What's great is that there is no pressure to actually finish the quilt in any particular time frame. And it doesn't have to be a full sized quilt either. Your project can be anything from a potholder or mug rug to a wall quilt or full sized quilt. That works great for me!!! :)

As part of this challenge we are to post some of the quilts we would like to start this year. Barbara has her whole year planned with pics of each of her planned quilts. I'm really a beginner quilter so most of mine will probably be fairly simple, patchwork and the like. But I want to stretch myself on a few of these as well. I would really like to incorporate some embroidery on at least one of them too:)

So here are a few quilts I'd like to start this year....


Winter Wonderland

Merry Merry Snowmen by Bunny Hill Designs

 

 

Hope Valley Quilt found at Diary of a Quilter blog

 

This last one I would do in other colors but I like the look of it overall. There are a few more quilts I found that I couldn't link up to and give proper credit to the owners/designers, so I'll just wait until I've started them and link up another way. I do like some of the modern quilts and would like to do one hexie quilt as well. Hmm, lots to think about and plan over!! Really getting excited about this challenge:)

 

EDIT: OOPS!! I forgot to add that if you want to join and win a prize as well, go over to Barb's blog right NOW!!! and join in. At midnight tonight (12-21-13) the contest will end:)

Pay It Forward

I have a sad confession to make - I forgot all about the Pay It Forward promises I made this year. I was so nicely reminded when my Pay It Forward package came in the mail a couple weeks ago. Carol, aka Beulah from Sowing Stitches so nicely gifted me a lovely notebook cover, complete with a notebook in it:) I had so completely forgotten about Pay It Forward that it wasn't until I opened the notebook and found this friendly note inside that I finally figured out why I was getting a gift in the first place.

So I will re-commit to sending out my Pay It Forward gifts to the 3 people that responded last February. Lynn Cockrell, Deborah Burke and Eusebia Blumenstengel. Please understand it will be after the new year as I am still working on Christmas gifts right now:)

And Thank You!!!! to Carol of Sowing Stitches for your kindness and thoughtfulness in sending me this sweet gift:)

December WIPocalypse

A day to two late:) Not much to show off this month, and that's really sad since it's been a couple months since I've blogged a WIPocalypse post!! Right now I am working on the first of what will be two blocks made from the same pattern. This is for LoveQuilts and is for a young man who's father is a police officer, of course this means the young man is very interested in the police theme too:)

I rearranged the moffits for this block because another stitcher also signed up for this pattern too, but it wasn't noticed until after we both had the pattern in hand. So I said I could play with it and make it look a bit different. The second block I am going to make with this pattern will have just the words placed randomly. Sometimes we have a hard time finding suitable patterns for the kids and need to make some changes so we can make sure to have enough blocks for each child's quilt.

I have been busy here lately with other things too, but most of it is Christmas gifts, and since I have a pesky SIL (Marianne) who sometimes checks on my blog, I can't show off what I am making yet:)  As soon as I get the Christmas things all done and gifted to their rightful owners, I'll show off what I've been up to.

A New Fur Baby

Actually it is my daughter's fur-baby. She is just so cute!!

Her official name is Nikki (according to her papers), but my dd liked the name Nutmeg better, so that is what we are calling her. She needs some extra work and special cuddle time as she is still pretty jumpy, but dd is really doing well with her and she is coming along nicely.

Nutmeg will eventually be introduced to this handsome fellow...



Fargo:)

We are keeping them completely separate right now as Nutmeg isn't quite old enough to be a momma, and Fargo is just a wee bit too eager to meet her!! We are hoping for several cute babies from these two to build up dd's collection for showing for 4-H.