Raindrops on Roses and ...

Do you recognize the song?  "My Favorite Things"  And that's what I'm going to talk about today.

We lived in a good sized house in Nebraska.  And I L*O*V*E Christmas!  And just think how many really, really cute Christmas decorations there are!! Multiply that by 44 (adult) years! And I didn't buy them all! - And quilters can figure out patterns and methods.  Alot I just re-created!  AND then came the greatest enabler of them all - Pinterest!!  I'm just saying - opportunities exploded!

Of course, when we moved we downsized, downsized and downsized - I gave alot of Christmas goodies to family and friends.  Sold even more at the garage sale.  Even dropped alot off at the thrift store. But there are favorites you just have to keep!

Our little condo is just chock-full of Christmas!  Here are a few of my favorite things!

Our Nativity Scene - I bought this right after we were married from a church supply store I worked by.  I loved it.  I thought it was the loveliest one I'd ever seen - and 44 years later, I still think so!  It used to sit under the tree, now it's on top of the Barrister's Bookcase full of quilts.

I asked DH which of the decorations was his favorite - and this wall quilt was it!  I made this from an Heart to Art pattern in one of their many Christmas Books.  When I was working on it, DH looked at the cut out shapes and wondered why I was making 8 tiny schnauzers pull Santa's sleigh.  They do have the same body type!  And yes, that is hand embroidery around the center!  It's made to be a table runner, but I (we) like it on the wall, where you can see all the details.  That is one of the 'tips' of living in a small condo - take down the pictures and hang your seasonal wall quilts in their place.

I love Heart to Art patterns.  Cute but not too 'cute-sie'!

I love this wall quilt - found it on Pinterest!  I made the center for my favorite Christmas Elf.  A good quilting friend that was our Christmas party chair for years.  I liked it so much - had to make 'one for me'!!  But it was too small for the space I wanted it in. I just happened to have a bazillion tiny log cabins, so I sacrificed 20-some of them to bring it up to size. The most unusual thing about this little lovely - I finished it the same year I made my friend's!  Ok, lets be honest - how many 'one for me' projects languish at your house?? Yea, me too.

The bookcase is full of Santas and Christmas card pictures thru the years! And Christmas tins!  I used to have dozens of tins - but just since we moved here - I kept only as many as will fit on the bookcase!! (kind-of!)

Mom loved to write things out with Alphabet blocks.  I collected them too and wrote "Merry Christmas" and "Happy New Year".  DH said, "Where's my sentiment?"  And what would that be??  "Bah, Humbug! of course!!"  So now every year both our sentiments are on the shelf!!

I miss Prairie Schooler.  They retired last year? And I collected their yearly Santa for decades.  In the beginning, I made each Santa religiously!  Then we hit a design I didn't really care for - and you know you had to make them in order!!  So I developed quite the backlog. 

One year I pillowed at least 7 of the them!!  And the downfall was it was easier to do them by batches!  At least you remembered how you did it!!

The second Santa from the left was supposed to be growing Pointsettias, but sunflowers were popular on the prairie - so I [gasp!] changed it!

And although they have oh-so-much-detail they do not have any nasty half or quarter stitches! YAY! I love their eyes and rosy cheeks. I'm sorry to say, I have another backlog of stitched Santas to pillow.  And they are the cutest ones!  Sewing Santas!  Sigh.  But now that the design series is complete, maybe I can talk myself into getting busy! LOL!  The rest of the year they are at the bottom of the To Do list and December is way too busy to do them!!!  But, if I can find them ... this could be the year!

My good friend C has her name on these!  Otherwise, we both fear they will end up at a thrift shop!!! A quilting teacher once said, don't give your best quilts to your children.  They will sell them for a lift ticket!! They grew up with them, they usually don't cherish them appropriately!! There's a little truth in that, even with the best children!!

STOP THE PRESSES!  Look at this great idea for hanging stockings!!  I have two of the low, heavy brass hanging 'platforms' with an adjustable curtain rod between them!  You slide the stockings onto it, space them out evenly and you have space on the mantle for things other than stocking hangers!!  What a concept - add stockings at will! Much easier than finding or collecting (or dusting) stocking hangers for all the stockings!  Thank you, Pinterest!!

We needed stockings the same size as I made for the kids.  We couldn't expect any stocking stuffers if we didn't have clearly marked Christmas stockings.  So I made "Beach Nana" and "Beach Papa" and one for each grandkid to hang at our house. We pack 'Nana and Papa" every year and take them with us on the Christmas trips.  And although we really don't behave that well, there is always something in them!!  Yay!

Merry Christmas to all and to all a good night!!

Happy New Year - welcome 2015!!

Well, there's nothing like starting the year out with the best of intentions!! We'll just see how long that lasts!!  LOL!

It's time for a 2014 wrap-up!  I love doing these - my year doesn't seem "finished" until after the wrap-up - so here we go!

Not a big year for reading!  Around 50 books and a lot of those were re-reading favorites.  Do you ever do that??  I did forget to add Kindle books to my list, so had to go looking for which ones I read that way ... not an exact count this year.  :(

Best books this year:

Bad Blood by Dana Stabenow.  Kate Shugak series is a real favorite of mine.  Gotta love spunky women!

Notorious 19 and Takedown 20 by Janet Evanovich.  Both of these Stephanie Plum books got 4 stars from me! And if you look up "spunky women" in the dictionary, surely Stephanie Plum is pictured!

The Second Coming of Lucy Hatch by Marsha Moyer - great fun

Pure by Julianna Baggott - science fiction -  an unusual story line. First in series of three

Outlander by Diana Gabaldon  I can't believe I kept away from this series so long!  And I thought I wasn't interested in "Historical" books!!  We had Outlander Series on Starz parties too!

Pope Joan - Donna Woolfolk Cross  A book club selection that surprised me with how well I liked it!  Historic!  Who knows - maybe I'm NOT set in  my ways!!

Deadline - John Sandford  Featuring Virgil Flowers as a friend put it, "I love me a good cowboy!"  Made me reread all the other Flowers books.  This one was awesome!

The Arsonist - Sue Miller Small town under siege, loved the main characters

One Hundred Names - Cecelia Ahern  I loved this book, also out of my 'box' - contemporary Irish tale.  In the author's notes at the end she tells how she got the idea for the book! She was at a literary awards dinner; heard "one hundred names" and went off in her mind on the tangent of what that could be about.  She 'came back' to the present just as the award winner was saying, "and look for our movie out in March "The Hunger Games"!!!  I'd say that idea was pretty pushy about who was writing it!!

Year of Pleasures by Alice Berg I love her.  I get so much insight into me by reading her books! How does she do that??

Now to the fun part of my year - quilting!  I'm happ-happ-happy to say that "Birds of a Feather" a BOM offered at Gretna's Quilted Moose is finally done-done!!!  YEA!  Poor baby languished for years, but finally made it to the big times! You can read all about it here!

The other big finish I had was J's recovery quilt - My beloved SIL celebrated a year free of cancer around his birthday.  So this quilt was his present.  You know how those 'quiet' steady relatives usually don't get quilts - because they don't nag you about them???  I pieced the top the same time I made my Nephew's college graduation quilt - ummm, 2 years ago!  Thankfully, he felt it was well worth the wait!!

There were 4 QOV; baby charity quilts; Christmas stockings; fabric post cards and too many doll clothes to count! (apparently!)  But it all equaled a great deal of fun!

One more thing before I close today - you may know I have a Pinterest account :)  There are approximately 13,800 posts(!) and 1,400 followers(!)  A fact that amazes me and my daughter!!  But makes it a great deal of fun! If you want, there is a icon on the left side of the blog that will take you right there!

I'm not exactly sure why Pinterest is so-o much fun.  But for me, a list-maker; an idea keeper; a creative woman who thinks she can recreate anything that strikes her fancy!!  It's really nirvana!  And so easy to update when you're watching something on TV that doesn't need your undivided attention!

My idea is to go back into my boards and look at what I've pinned and figure out why? what attracted me to that pin and what it says about me??? Just a thought!

Today's board  I evaluated was "My Quilts Thru the Years"  I usually make a "word" copy of each year's blog entries; and check to see if the quilt pictures are on this page.  I like having them there - for quick access.  I don't know about you, but digital pix are hard to keep track of!  There's 1000s of them, in different places and mine really need a spruce up!!  Meanwhile, I need to look back on them to remember details or sizes ... well, here's where they are!

My first go at saving the quilts was early in my Pinterest 'career'.  I looked to see if they actually saved and each one had a 'pin' already.  Oh, gee - what did I do wrong?  But no - someone had actually created a board on their Pinterest featuring all my quilts!!  Was that admiration or stalkery???  It did make me think!!

Do you have favorite quilts that you've made?  They could be "standards" that you make for many people.  They could be a quilt that resonates within you; because of who it is for, because what was happening at the time; or just because.

That's all for now - this has been so much fun!  More of it in 2015, please!!