Happy New Year

Wishing you all a Happy, Healthy and Prosperous New Year

This and that and Christmas ;)

I saw the recipe for these "French Breakfast Puffs" on Paulette's blog, and decided they had to be tried, so Naomi baked them yesterday morning. They were gooood, although she pronounced them fiddly to make. That might be because she isn't used to American recipes with cup measures though.

A few of you asked about the design of the stag ornaments I showed you in my last post. Its a part of a design of my own based on the carol "The Holly and The Ivy", the chorus goes:-

O the rising of the sun

And the running of the deer

The playing of the merry organ, Sweet singing of the choir

I didn't get it finished in time to release for this Christmas but watch this space ;D

Speaking of designs, I hope this works, it's just a little Christmas flower from me to you, Hopefully you can right-click and save itI'll leave you with a picture of the Nativity Scene by my front door, and my best wishes for a Very Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year to you all

Ornaments

Its reveal day for the Stitch and Stash Ornament Exchange. Here is the gorgeous ornament I got from Julie. Its a Cherished Stitches design and I love it. Julie says her husband wanted to keep it, I'm so glad she talked him out of it! It is three sided, Julie has pictures of the other sides on her blog and they are all equally stunning.

I also recieved this beauty from Valerie in the TGOSM exchange. Aren't those little squirrels just the most adorable little things.

These are the two ornaments I sent out. As you can see they are both the same design, but done in slightly different colours on different count fabrics. They are both backed with the rather fabulous fabric they're photographed on.

As it happens one went to Julie (I'm not sure if the exchange was designed that way or if it was a coincidence). I haven't heard that the other hasreached its destination yet (it had a bit further to travel), so I'm not saying who it was for.

Flowers

Regular readers will know that our local florist holds a Christmas flower arranging evening each year which I like to go to, and this year was no exception. These are the pretties we made this year:-
a star shaped arrangement and a pair of "bridged" arrangements.
I've got pictures of two beautiful exchange ornaments I've recieved to show, but it isn't reveal day till next week for one of the exchanges, so I'll save those till I can post them all.

DIY Door Wreath

I got the idea for this from a post a few months back on Heidi's blog, where she had made a lovely fabric wreath.

There are two parts to making this:

1) the indoor part

Get a pile of 5" squares of Christmas fabric, fold in half wrong sides together, sew along the long edge and one short edge, & turn right sides out.

Stuff them with polyester fibrefill, turn in the open edge and stitch closed to make little pillows. I made about 16 because that was when I ran out of fibrefill.

2) the outdoor part (because its messy)

Take a bag of straw , a wire wreath ring and a bundle of raffia.

Take handfuls of the straw, and working round the wreath base bind them in place with the raffia.

Make a loop of raffia at the top for hanging.

Don't worry about any long endy bits. Rustic is good.

Now take your little pillows and tie them tightly to the wreath using short lengths of raffia and tying little bows.

Finally add some little wired baubles to finish off and hang on your front door.

Ta da!

(Note to self: Front Door needs painting)

This and that

Its reveal day for The Monthly Challenge at the Stitch and Stash forum. This month we all stitched "Peace" by Elizabeth's Designs. Here is mine. I Christmassed the colours up a bit from the original and changed the flowers to snowflakes. The other finishes are in the album here.

Other than that I've finished and posted two ornaments for exchanges, that I can't show you yet, and recieved an absolutely exquisite one, that I also can't show you yet though I'm itching to.

What I can show you is this. They held a quiz night last week at the girls' school to raise money for prom (when did Eloise get old enough to be going to prom next year???) and "Team Wilkins" won!

By the way, my living room wall isn't really "inside of a submarine grey" its a nice soft antique sage colour, but it couldn't compete with the blinding glare from the trophy ;D

Is there a teenager in the house?

In point of fact there are now TWO
(be afraid, be very afraid),
because Naomi is 13 today.....
Yes, my baby is all grown up
It only seems yesterday when she looked like this!
A good post day too. I won a door prize from Arachne's Silken Web at the Online Needlwork Show, and it came today. Isn't it lovely? Sadly I fear there is absolutely no chance whatsoever of this one being done by Christmas...