Going On a Little Trip

To Williamsburg Viginia to Parkside Timeshare with Mr Creative, my sister P, and meeting up with DD and her DH B&B and his parents S and F to enjoy a little get away.

I am not sure what we are going to be doing there but will enjoy the scenery and beauty of the area for sure.

Maybe I will get lucky and find something I need to buy...LOL...I love the shops in the old restored city and have a meal at the tavern.

Silent Night, Holy Night

From myself and all of my family near and far.

May your Christmas be Merry and Bright and may the love of our Savior surround you and touch the hearts of all the world.

God Bless Us Everyone

OK, so what happened?
I left all the snow back in Utah I thought! Yesterday afternoon we got hit by a big ole' snowstorm. Yikes! Lots of snow outside my parents home but just rained at my sister's, lucky girl. Guess we will be staying home for the day!
Other than that things are great...Little A is having a bit of a tough time being sick and just ready to go home after over 3 months away.
We baked cookies, did some shopping, cooking and decorated Grammy's tree with Unca R.
I hope to post a few pics soon.

Well I am all packed...and almost ready to head out to the airport.
I am not looking forward to about 5 hours on an airplane but I am very much looking forward to seeing and spending time with my family in NC once more.
Not sure how much blogging I will be doing but I hope all my online friends have a great Christmas Holiday!

Back From the Quilter

Two fall time quilts that I had hoped to hang but with my quilter having family surprises and then she and I having a tough time getting together fall is gone but I now have about 9 months to get them bound LOL
I love how she compensated for my less than perfect work on the basket quilt and the leaves and pumpkins have some great swirling leaves quilted in

A Great Blog Give Away

Green Fairy quilts is having a lovely give away on her blog.
She has some darling patterns on sale 2 for 1 until Tuesday...check them out!

Christmas Around My House

I know that I was NOT going to decorate this year since I plan on being away for several weeks but...
as you see I couldn't help but hang some of my quilts and put out a few decorations.
Merry Christmas at Cathie's home.

Pictures top: On top of my vintage Jelly Cupboard a Santa made by my grandma Shirley, an brand new afghan crocheted by my dear friend CM, two Stained Glass style quilts, my kilted Santas, and a vintage quilt from NC

Pictures top: one of my first holiday quilts and some vintage crochet pot holders gifted to me by my friend CM, a granite ware pitcher on the front porch, a cross stitched sampler, my Twelve Rows of Christmas quilt and Patchy the kitty, the wreath on the front door and the Three Kings wall quilt taught in class by Sharon Wright of Woodland Hills, Utah.

Last Minute Crafting

Because I am leaving soon I spent the past couple of days finishing up some little projects for Christmas.
I am giving a couple of gift cards and wanted to make something personal...sort of...to hold them.

There is a wonderful how to video on this blog for making gift card holders and I used it as my inspiration. I had forgotten the sizes to cut so I did a few that were too small to start out with...sheesh I just need to remember to read my notes before cutting. It's that old adage...measure twice cut once! Anyway, I used some of the too small cuts to decorate the correct cuts and made some lemonade from the lemons! LOL

This year's fall and winter Debbie Mumm stack from Joann's has some fun papers and the penguins are from that stack. I used the large squares to make the "envelopes" for the card holders. And tried to decorate each a little bit differently. I am glad I invested in a scoring blade for my paper cutter as it makes the folds much crisper than hand folding. I love that I can just cut the parts with my Cricut and the Wild Card cartridge and then decorate. It also has an envelope too but I wanted to use the cute paper. Ribbon is from Offry and the snowflake brad is by Bo-bunny.

It's hard to tell by looking at these pictures that there is acrylic rectangles as the base for my ornaments. Each year my family "expects" me to make them a new ornament or decoration for Christmas. It all started the first year I was married....1976 when I sent home the presents with these little pom-pom mice I had made. Each year afterwards I was asked what the ornament of the year was going to be? LOL
Since we had some new family pictures I remembered this idea from an Archiver's ad...with my own spin...and created these for 2009. I had fun digging through my stash of Jolees, buttons, and other dimensional goodies to decorate. I bet my sister knows which one is hers! They are all different and I used a picture on all but one which my DIL requested two pictures on hers.

I took pictures of both the backs and fronts.

Keeping Busy with "I"

I am lucky to have the time to spend with my grandson I because I babysit him two days a week. I try to think of things that we can do together so that he doesn't get too bored.
I had finished my Christmas cards and had the photos printed to send along so it was time to "brave" the post office to buy stamps. Because the cards were square I had to put an extra 2o cents on them so we had to buy the extra postage. The line wasn't awful but I got a bit impatient waiting. We got the stamps and then it was time to seal, stamp and mail the cards.
I had a great helper as you see. He helped me stick down the stamps and then put them in the right box inside the post office.

Today it was early afternoon and getting to be time to nap but I wasn't quiet ready to lay down so Nana decided that a few books would help out. He picked out a Wonder Pets book and told me the story as he turned the pages. He loves the Wonderpets and luckily it wasn't long after this that he "conked out" LOL

Why Belle and I....

Didn't walk outside today!
Yeah, I decided that since Belle sometimes pulls on her leash a bit it wouldn't be a good thing to walk on the snowy sidewalks even if they were scraped, and most were not.
Oh well maybe by Friday they will be clear enough to go for our outside walk.

Let's Make Ornaments

We had our family pictures done yesterday and since we had all the family who lives near by together Mr Creative and I decided it would be a nice time to have a family evening. We stopped by Costco on the way home and bought two pizzas, since they are huge we figured it would feed the crowd and except for 2 pieces it was devoured LOL
As usual Nana...that's me...had a craft in mind for the kids to do.
These great ornaments were shared on the Christmas With the Cricut blog a bit ago and I thought they would be perfect for the kids to make. Easy and they looked so impressive when done. I pre-cut the initials with my cricut from vinyl using the Storybook cart and the letters were a bit tricky to not get a bit wrinkled but the kids were OK about it in the end. I demonstrated with I's ball since he was more interested in playing with the Thomas Trains and the "guy" stuff in the other room LOL

AS you can see they turned out great and the kids enjoyed making them. We created a nice glitter mess but most of it was made by Nana as I opened the containers and the glitter just flew around. I think my jeans and top now have a lovely sparkle. I even let them choose from my new box of Christmas ribbon for their hangers...see I am using what I bought!

Here are our great ornaments, the kids and I!

I Love Warehouse SALES

Ok I might not live near a beach any more here in Utah but....
I do live in the area where there are several scrapbooking supply manufacture-ers and American Crafts is one of the great companies that have a warehouse not more than 15 min from me.
I got an email the other day with a notice of a warehouse sale...YIPPEE...starting today in Orem.
So of course I had to see what they had and I think I hit the jackpot for sure.
I love ribbon so I was able to buy some lovely ribbons and the best part was the prices. For example the white box at the top of the picture with 5 boxes of various color ribbons was $5... less than the price of one of the individual boxes in a scrapbook store.
The patterned paper packs were 3/$10.
I wish you could all be here with me to shop but I am glad I could go!

The Moon, A Friend and a Baby Quilt

I took this picture yesterday on my front porch. The sky was much blue-er than it looks in the picture and the moon was much brighter and the mountains were much pinker LOL It was a lovely sight though and I wanted to share the moon with my grson A, with whom I share the song...I See the Moon...and he and I love to remember that when he is looking at the moon he knows that Nana loves him!

Today my small group of quilt friends met up for a Christmas lunch at Mimi's and enjoyed time chatting and catching up since we were all there for the first time in months. We are creating the blocks from the Civil War Love Letter Quilt together monthly, taking turns teaching. CL and I were exchange partners...long story there...and I gave her one of my mini lunch boxes decorated with special sewing paper with a couple of Fons and Porter notions inside. She gave me a lovely stack of Civil War repros fat quarters...just love those and amazingly enough I didn't have one of them already! I will have to share a picture later.

Here is my baby quilt all finished and bound and if you look close you can see where I added a yellow strip to finish the binding. It's OK, and the baby won't care, right? LOL

New Friends party tonight so I will have more pics to share soon.

Does this Happen to YOU?

I am really in the mood to finish up a few little projects that don't have much left to be done.
This little quilt was supposed to be done in July but it got put on the back burner for months until I decided just to finish it up. The quilting is a mess...too close together and too jerky but in the end hopefully the baby who gets it will be warm and grows up Loving Pooh Bear and friends.
So I used up all the leftover bits and pieces of the top thinking I had enough to bind the quilt and as you can see it will end up about 8-10 inches short! GRRRR!
So what's a quilter to do? I will raid my stash and hopefully come up with a suitable piece to finish the binding after all.
I will let you know.

Family Traditons

Every family has traditions even if you don't always think that some of the things you do together are official tradition.
Christmas for me as a child had a number of traditions but one that always seemed rather magical was the Advent Wreath. Every year my Mom would make sure that this special wreath appeared on our table for the Christmas season and there was always a big beautiful one at the church too. During Sunday School I made a miniature one, probably more than one time, that had a ring of Styrofoam, plastic holly and small candles for the four Sundays of Advent.

I was converted to the Church of Jesus Christ of Later Day Saints as a teen and then came here to Utah for college where I met and married Mr Creative. Utah and the Mormon Church doesn't have the same traditions of the Advent Season and so no wreaths to be found and especially hard to find are the sets of candles. When I do find them I stock up and I haven't found them for two years now and my stock pile is dwindling. I did continue the tradition of the Advent Wreath with my family and over the years have made several different ones for our table. A few years ago I got lucky and Joanne's Fabric and Craft had a "bare" candle wreath that I was able to meld with an artificial greenery wreath and also carried the candles as well.

I wanted to pass the tradition on to my children and so this year found one lonely wreath at Joanne's in Draper and bought some purple ribbon for decorating it and presented it to my oldest son and his family today, the first Sunday of Advent. I gave them one of my carefully hoarded sets of candles as well and told them that they are like "gold" LOL

Mr Creative was supposed to create a listing of scriptures to read for each day before Christmas but time got away from him so that will have to come sometime this week hopefully. I made my son and grandson pose with me to commemorate the event...not such a good pic of me and little I but DS D looks great!
What traditions are you passing along to your family?

Fun Little Project

Thanks to OkieLadybug from the Cricut world I found this great idea for "altering" (which is Cricut speak for covering with paper and embellishments) a little mini lunch box tin from Dollar Tree.
She had created and shares the cut files for the little box and then she has a great video post so that you can watch her create.
I am making sme gifts and thought this would be just perfect as a little mini photo album holder.
The papers are from a couple of different sources...the paper for covering the box and the little album was from two stacks sold by Michael'... Holiday Collection Patterned Paper and Cardstock by DCWV and the little bird is from a Christmas Glitter patterned paper stack 2008 by DCWV. Ribbon Making Memories, buttons from my stash, Perle cotton and hemp from my stash. The Merry Christmas stamp is an old pre-inked stamp.

Here is inside the tin with the mini book

Just a thought. Okie paints her tin and then uses ink to distress it...I was too lazy and just left it as it is but you can see the blue color and print on the edges...maybe I might have to either see if I can find some with different colors printed on the tin or actually paint them LOL
It uses Plantin Schoolbook or she has a file for George too and if you have those two and even the trial version of the Design Studio you can make these great tins!

Black Friday Shopping...or

I am very very spoiled!
LOL

One of the bad things about living in Utah is the lack of a beach and the ocean and being so far away from my family in NC. However, one of the great things about living in Utah is Roberts Arts and Crafts stores.
Long time ago Roberts was known as Provo Craft being located in...
You guessed it Provo, Utah. When they began to expand they became Roberts Crafts and they separated from the Provo Crafts part of their business and Roberts was the retail while Provo was the developers of new products for crafting. Funny thing is that even that they are so closely related we here didn't always get the newest supplies most especially the Cricut products but things are being made up for in the past couple of years with the mega sales of Cricut cartridges.
Lucky me today was one of those sales...lowest price on ALL regular carts...4/$100...minis $14.99 and solutions $19.99. I had talked to DH and said that I really don't NEED any new carts but maybe I would go look and see what I could find for DD for Christmas...
YEA, Right! I am sure he thought and he was right. As you can see I manged to find 4 that I "needed" and one for a gift (which is why one is hidden with the Cuddlebug folder I got to make some cards...after all it was 40% off too)
So, DH Mr Creative Days just smiled when I returned after shopping and I even waited until almost 9 am to go thinking they might be sold out of the ones I was interested in as a sort of preventative LOL

Oh yea I did get tops for the family to wear in an upcoming photo to come does that count as Christmas shopping?

Thanksgiving at Our House

Here we are ready to eat. The traditional family pose with Belle in Aaron's arms LOL.
As you can tell is was a sunny day with the afternoon sun shining through the window in the kitchen making it a challenge to take decent pictures.

Grandson I with an olive on his finger. Every kid has to do that don't they?

The day before I had two helpers in the kitchen making some side dishes. Grson I and I making the Broccoli Cheese Rice Casserole. along with his sister C who were great mixers.

Everyone enjoyed their contributions to our meal even tho C spent the day with her Dad's family. I made sure she could have some of the leftovers when she gets back.

Gobble Gobble

To all my family and friends near and far...
Happy Thanksgiving

Instead of Cleaning the Bathroom...

Yeah, I should be cleaning the bathroom or maybe the fridge or de-junking my bedroom but....

I just needed to add the final borders and this top was done so...that is what I did! LOL
The color looks off on my screen but it was in bright sunshine so maybe that didn't help. I know it is wrinkled and needs pressing, and some thread trimming and maybe even some final applique but I am thrilled to have this done before next year's projects start piling up!
Thanks to Debbie Mumm's free BOM for 2008 (I think) I was able to make two different color palates of this great wall quilt. It is destined for my living room when I don't hang seasonal quilts.

Because of....

This.....

I created these...
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This was such a quick and simple way to make some wonderful cards.
The first I made using the instructions from Christmas With The Cricut and it was so fun and easy I did a second one using a different cut. Only problem is that I haven't figured how to create the oval opening in a rectangle to cover the "tape"on the back side of the card but in the end I am OK with it just the way it is! LOL
I wish I could show how pretty the sparkles are...kind of like seeing Edward (for those Twilight fans out there) only in this case in blue not "diamond" but I can buy some "diamond" glitter next time it is on sale or even use a coupon. Hummm I think I have one burning a hole in my purse!