Merry Christmas to all and to all a good night!

Merry Christmas from Mr D ... and his entourage, including Beach Nana!

Holiday wrap-up coming up when we get home Friday!  Hope your holidays were merry and bright!

It's Christmas Letter time!!

Christmas letters - the correspondence we love to hate!!  We've all received examples of what NOT to do.  And even people with the best of intention mess up.

For example, my DD was so excited when she sent out a yearly letter, hmmm, over 6 years ago!  The very special news of expecting the Divine Miss P was at the end.  The letter was long, but it  was chatty and very like sitting down and talking to her.  I was truly surprised by people I met that said they had gotten/enjoyed her letter but no mention of the news!!  We knew they had not read it to the end!!  LOL!  That baby was a surprise to many people who should have known!

I send out a Christmas letter every year, tucked into our Christmas cards.  It's a half page with a picture on the top.  So now - you're all on my Christmas card list!!  Merry Christmas everyone!!

Happy Holidays from the Boyds

It must be December – the winter storms have started in earnest at the coast.  We had over 12 inches of rain last week and a wind that makes Nebraska’s wind look like a gentle breeze!

Miss P started Kindergarten this year and is doing great. She’s the one reading the bedtime stories to me now. Mr M started a speech therapy class once a week.  Riding the bus to school is fun for both of them!!  Mr M  also loves to play electronic games; especially Angry Birds.  Mr D will be two next spring – needless to say, he’s busy, busy!!  He’s starting to put words together – “I you”  is “I love you” and is just as cute as cute can be.

Along with lots of golf, quilting, and time spent with good friends; we started walking portions of the Coastal Trail this year.  We’ve walked 10 miles by Hwy.  But the trail winds around quite a bit more!! A 3 mile trail jaunt took us ½ mile by hwy! But the trail takes your breath away in so many ways!!  We plan to continue on this quest after the rainy season.  I’m happy to report it was another wonderful year on the Oregon coast with kids and grandkids close by. 

Wishing you and yours the best in 2013

Here's some additional pix from Thanksgiving.  

Computer games with Beach Papa

A and M chilling out!

Dinner!  We were also celebrating Mr M's 4th birthday - Angry Birds theme.  Ironic when you're eating turkey, don'cha think!!

Mr M would not smile naturally for any pictures - and we had to wrestle him out of that new Angry Bird shirt!  Go Nana - good present!  PS - that's his robot PJ pants made by yours truly!!

No one gets Mr D to smile like his mom!  Or dad!  Most of the time!

Ooops! I've been a bad, bad blogger!!

Believe you me, I mean it when I say where the Heck did November go??  Sorry I was so quiet - can't really put my finger on why!! But let's just move forward, shall we?

The whole month was a blur.  But we did have some nice sunsets!

We went up to my daughter's house in Portland for Thanksgiving.  Mr M has a November birthday.  So we celebrated that at the same time.  We ran into the worse traffic ever on our way to their house.  WORSE EVER!  So our thinking is instead of moving Mr M's birthday to Thanksgiving - why not move Thanksgiving to the weekend closest to Mr M's birthday???  We'll see - the people who still worked weren't as excited about it as we were!

Mr M is all about all things Angry Birds!!  So his birthday present from us was a bag of angry birds!!  There was a 24 piece puzzle and a coloring book [Dollar Tree]; a red short sleeve tee shirt [Fred Meyers]; the black hoodie and Angry Bird underwear being modeled on the outside of our PJs [WalMart].  It was a hoot, and may I add he didn't take this outfit off for hours, the t-shirt finally came off Saturday!!  He's giving you his best angry bird face here!

My condo is decorated for Christmas.  The threat of this big storm got me busy.  Our decorations are stored out in the deck closet.  We have a sliding glass door ... neither work well in a winter storm with rain and wind.  So-o on the last nice day scheduled I set up Christmas!  It was fun. Something about getting out decorations from years past really brings back the memories - good times come to mind. It's the only day spent cleaning with a smile on your face.

I've started the countdown to Christmas.  I have the felt/velcro advent calendar that my kids used growing up.  And yes, I put it up for me every year.  If I ever find one I like as well, I'll buy two. One for each household.  AND I'll still keep this poor raggedy one!!

My 'to-do' list for Christmas is legendary - as usual.  But I'm chipping away at it.  I belong to a small group here and we decided to exchange little somethings for the holiday.  I made the Chicken Pincushions.  At every group meeting I'm trimming mini-log cabins.  So what is more fitting than a log cabin project from me??

Of course, I've explained about the shopping available in our small town.  So what to stuff the pin cushions with?  I'm surrounded by sand here - so I certainly wasn't going to buy more to use.  And I know better than to use beach sand [what's that fishy smell???]  I headed to the quilt store, no walnut shells; so on to the pet store.  She didn't have any and got a little snippy with me about using them for pets.  I didn't bother to tell her I had no pets.

But then I was picking something up at Bi-Mart and wandered back to the pet section ... there was a bag of corn cob bits for bedding/litter.  Hmmm, chickens like corn!!  LOL!  So I bought it.  It was everything I hoped for!  It was cheap, easy to pour into the chickens, and it even makes a satisfying crunch sound!!  I'll let you know how it holds up on the wet west coast.  But I think it could be awesome anywhere in the country.

Bi-Mart doesn't really check for your membership card, in my experience, as long as you use credit or cash. You too can have corn-cob-chips for pin cushions, if you want.  I bought the $5 membership when they opened - mainly because you got $15 worth of food to join!!

So this weekend I am working on the next items on the 'to-do' list:

Yesterday I got the 4 PJ pants done for the grandkids.  Hooray!!  There was a fair bit of ripping though!  A 1 inch waistband elastic does NOT fit in a 1 inch prepared waistband!!  So, assembly line sewing was not my friend!!  Did assembly line ripping in front of DVR. Then put it in right.  SO MUCH easier!

The funniest thing I took the time to do yesterday was clean ... a pin cushion!!!  YEP!  Out of that whole disaster area of sewing space I was aghast at my Fons & Porter 'daisy color wheel' pin cushion covered with thread and tiny dust bunnies!!  

So as I was pinning I used all the pins in 1/2 the sections.  It cleaned up nicely with masking tape to gather all the dust and threads!!  Transferred the pins to the clean sections and 'masking taped' the rest.  It's a thing of beauty now!!!  And I feel so much better?!?!

Last year I did the embroidery work for new stockings for us.  I made "Beach Nana", "Beach Papa" and the grandkids' names.  We had large knit stockings for us and our kids; back when we were the parents!  But I made quilted stockings for the kids and grandkids and the granddogs to be honest. [and possibly the rest of the world too]  The large knit ones can look greedy when we take them along for Christmas at their houses!!! 

Since I'm Lady-in-waiting #8 for UFO Queen at Stashbusters ... today is the day to finish those stockings and then sew the binding on the wedding quilt. 

But first I might just go in and admire that clean pin cushion!!!