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.