Easter Fun

What a wonderful Easter! Andrew brought the boys over for an egg hunt and dinner. Alison is expecting their baby girl in a few weeks and needed a break so she stayed at home.  The weather turned out perfect for playing outside and looking for eggs. As you can see, the little guys are more interested in the chickens than anything else. But Tad was all for finding the eggs with the treats and toys inside! Then we had to inspect the gardens and swings. Even though Jasper is a little bigger and more sure on his feet, Klaus is the thrill seeker! He loves going high on the swing and being thrown in the air. Even though they are twins, they are different and special in their own ways.

I had fun decorating and making goodies for dinner. And I love to make little favors for each plate. It gives me another excuse to use my paper crafting supplies! The stamps I used are from Lawn Fawn. I love their images and they are so much fun to color.

Did you notice those cute toys for the boys? I found those at Meijer. Each little house has several animals that make a sound. We were mooing and growling a lot!

I hope everyone had a good weekend and Easter celebration (if you do so). This is my favorite time of the year and I will be posting pics of our gardens and some new spaces very soon. Have a great week!

Hearts and More Hearts

I realize that Valentine's Day is just a fond memory now, but I wanted to share one of the gifts my sweet, talented husband made for me.

It's a stepping stone for the garden! I just love it. We have been adding homemade stepping stones for a long time. We have some made by the boys when they were young. We added all kinds of things to the concrete: shells, marbles, old tools, fossils and rocks. Rick saves everything, and he had a jar of those flat marbles and put this together. I love those 3 blue ones.

Rick has been a maker his whole life. Even when he was a teacher he was carving wood in the evenings. He eventually went back to carpentry and now a handyman. So through the years I have gotten some beautiful handmade gifts. Here are a few of my Valentine's from other years:

This beautiful jewelry box is made from walnut. I can't remember when he made it, but it's been a long time. I use it to keep old pieces that I don't want to get rid of:)

This is from the front of an old coal furnace. (Don't you wish utilitarian things were made this decorative now?) He attached it to a wood base and hinge. Inside he etched a loving message. So sweet!

This heart flower planter is made from copper. You can see that he "sewed" it with copper wire. And then added some smaller hearts to decorate it. This usually hangs on a fence with some dried flowers in it. I love to display these expressions of love from Rick and smile when I see them.

In other news, I'm impatiently waiting for spring. We had to go to southern Indiana to help out some family over the weekend and got to see some crocuses blooming. It can't be long for us now! And I've seen my first robin for the spring!

Hibernation

Things have been very quiet around here. Hence, not much to blog about. I've been in hibernation mode. Spending a lot of time knitting and quilting. Some scrapbooking. Movie watching and  tea drinking. Well, you get the idea!

These hyacinths look and smell like spring and that's what I"m thinking about. I've started quite a few perennial flower seeds. They're mostly all germinated and under lights in the basement. I get such a sense of accomplishment when those little plants come up! (As if I had that much to do with it!)

I have been working on a new sweater, for myself this time. I found the pattern in a Debbie McComber book from the library. I splurged on some good yarn from our local yarn store: River City Yarns. It's called Elysian from Cascade Yarns. I love this soft shade of blue and it works up so nice.

Then I saw this free pattern on cluckclucksew.com. 
and just had to make it. I had several fabrics in these pink and aqua colors that worked perfect together. I'm having fun doing the quilting using a stencil I bought at Joann's. Now I have to figure out how to quilt the inside of the hearts. Hmmm...

How are all of you getting through the winter? I would love to hear!




 

Christmas Quilting and Knitting

I hope everyone is settling into a wonderful new year! I sure am, and staying cozy inside while it snows and blows here in Indiana. Winter has finally arrived, and I'm glad I don't have to go out if I don't want to:) I'm making comforting soups, crocheting a warm blanket, sewing a heart quilt, and doing some scrapbooking. If I'm in the mood, I even do some "spring" cleaning. (I do it in the winter - I'm much too busy gardening in the spring.)

We had a wonderful holiday once Justin and Kelly got here. We spent one whole day with everyone, including my niece and her boys -laughing, eating, playing games, and opening presents.  It was perfect -there is just no other word for it! So now that it's all over I wanted to share some pictures of the gifts I made for our little guys.

I made little crib sized quilts for Jasper and Klaus using a variety of reproduction prints. The colors and all the hand quilting make them look and feel like antiques. Of course throwing them in the washer and dryer helped! Then I decided to make these super cute pillows from Amy Sinibaldi's book, Sweetly Stitched Handmades. (There are so many things I want to make in this book!) I hope the boys love to snuggle up in these blankies, as much as I loved making them:)

I also got out the needles and made up these sweaters for all three boys. I used a free online pattern and yarn from Joann's - Vanna's Choice. They were supposed to be hoodies but for the life of me i couldn't figure out how to do the hood. I tried several times and then gave up and made matching hats. Alison said the boys don't really like hoods anyway, so it turned out all right.

I am so loving making things for our grandsons. I used to quilt and knit for our boys when they were little, but that's been a while! Next I will be picking out a pattern and fabric for a little quilt for Beatrix. How fun is that?

Thank you for stopping by and for your sweet comments. Stay warm!

Christmas Cookies

Last Sunday we had our grandson Tad over for the afternoon to cut out and decorate sugar cookies. It brought back so many memories of doing this very thing with our boys through the years.

This is serious work!

I've learned the easiest way to do cookie decorating with little boys is to put out a cookie sheet for them to work over so as not to get sprinkles all over the floor. Don't forget one of Grandpa's old t-shirts.  And to have the best time - don't worry about making a tray of perfectly frosted cookies! Let them have fun and do it the way they want. To us, they are all masterpieces. And the cookies taste just as good. Probably better because of who did them!

Besides the sugar cookies, I made chocolate mint ( made with Andes pieces), Mexican wedding cakes, chocolate caramel thumbprints, and Santa's whiskers. I make up large batches pf each and freeze them. When we have company or go somewhere, I just take out some from each bag and make up a plate.  (If anyone wants recipes, just let me know.)

As it turns out we are not doing our family Christmas until next weekend. Justin can not be here until then and we all decided it was better to wait and have everyone here together. That works out well for Andrew and Alison. They are hosting her family's dinner tomorrow and of course, Santa will have been there. It will give them time to recover and the kids time to play with their toys before another round of festivities at our house. Eric, Rick and I will have a small dinner and maybe some games of Scrabble tomorrow. Very low key, but nice. I can't wait, though, for Tad to open his gifts from us. So fun to have little ones at Christmas!

I'm wishing you all a very happy holiday with your loved ones! See you next year!

Christmas Kitchen

Well, the house is decked out, the presents are wrapped and under the tree, and the cookies have been baked (and quite a few eaten:). All that's left is to address and send out the cards. I have never been this organized for Christmas in my life! And it feels so good to know that I can spend the rest of the days leading up to the the Big Day relaxing in that warm glow of satisfaction! Ha!

Since we spend so much time in our kitchen/ family room, I wanted to share what we see as we sit in here and eat dinner, or watch TV, or read, or knit or.... It truly is the heart of our home!

I love this twiggy tree. I have it decorated with homemade ornaments, birds, dried apples and oranges, and popcorn and cranberry garland. When my grandson saw it, he said, very seriously, "My family doesn't put food on our tree." He cracks me up sometimes!

This is the cabinet that Rick made years ago. It's a great place to decorate! We use it to showcase the Santas that Rick has carved through the years, as well as our Department 56 village pieces.

You may have noticed the vintage boxes in the hutch. For awhile I was collecting old Christmas decorating items just for the wonderful colors and graphics on the boxes. I have several snow, ornament hanger, and candle boxes. I even found a pair of strap on "sled skates" in the original box! Love them.

I hope you all our having a great time getting ready for the holidays. It doesn't look or feel Christmassy outside ( it's been mostly warm and rainy here) but it feels perfect here in the kitchen!
Take care!

Some Cross Stitch

I hope everyone is having a great Thanksgiving! We are not celebrating until tomorrow due to having to share Andrew and Alison.  But it's all good. I spent today baking (apple and pecan pies) and doing more house cleaning in anticipation of putting up the Christmas decorations. We will be a small group for dinner, so I bought a roasting chicken instead of a big turkey. I'll make the usual sage stuffing, mashed potatoes and gravy, deviled eggs, and salad. Rick is going to make his mom's cranberry relish (so good!) and homemade rolls. Have I told you what a good bread maker he is? He's taken it over because he does a much better job of it than I ever did.

In between working on Christmas presents, which are almost done I may add, (aren't you impressed?) I have been finishing up some little cross stitch projects. These are so fun. I have been choosing small patterns that don't take too long and are fun to finish. Also, I have been finding so many cute ones for free through pinterest.

I changed this one a little so I could get it done quicker, but I loved the way it was finished and found I could do the apple very easily. This was found at http://perelles.canalblog.com/. She has so many cute patterns and finishes.

I just finished this one yesterday. I love adding a little charm, in this case the tiny bell. This one was from http://carmelabrode.canalblog.com.

I made this one last year, but just got around to finishing it. I had never done beading on one of these before, and though I won't do it very often, I kind of like it. Something different, anyway. What do you think? Here again I added a charm. It's hard to see, but it's a tiny fireplace. It fit perfectly in the doorway and I thought it was a nice addition. Sorry, I can't find the source of this one.

I just had to share this picture of our backyard last weekend. Pretty, isn't it? Today it was sunny and in the 60's!