Happy New Year

My table is set and we are ready to celebrate bring in a new year ... hope you all have a wonderful fun filled evening ... I think we will *smile*

I have two quick things to show and yep it's stitching ... This is a chart Karen gave me for Christmas. It stitched up really fast! and I love it. It's by Shakespeare's Peddler ... Karen included some of her coffee dyed fabric, I think it's perfect with the floss color ...

and this is official my last stitch for 2009 ... I started this two years ago, adding the year with the floss color from the last design I stitch on ... fun little tradition ...

I hear a margarita calling my name ... sure glad I don't have to drive tonight! Please be safe and enjoy your evening.

I hope you find your Joy in your stitches ...

I'm grateful for a new year ...

It's been too long ...

I really had the best of intentions of keeping my blog updated during December ... guess that didn't work out too well lol ... while I was gone this is what we were up to ... you might want to grab a cup of coffee or tea before you start reading lol ...

After picking out the Christmas tree it was home for muffins and hot chocolates then time to decorate ...

Chris was going through his box of ornaments and sharing them with Monica. I think it's been about 5 years since he's really spent anytime with his box. Someday most of them will go with Chris, but their condo isn't big enough for a tree yet.

Here's our tree all decorated. It was a bit smaller than years past ... but what a deal we got ... final cost was $12! The tree was missing the top and Terry decided to ask about a taking some money off the price ... the tree was only $17 to begin with ... but every little bit helps! I just love our topless tree :)

Shopping and wrapping done about three days before Christmas ... next up was Christmas Eve with my father-in-law. It was a really nice evening .. quiet but nice. We went to dinner at a local restaurant called Bahama Breeze ... I had the yummy pomegranate margarita and a lobster and shrimp alfredo that was out of this world.

After dinner we went back to my fil's house, opened some presents and played with Friend (the dog).

Christmas morning Chris and Monica came over about 8:30am ... here's a picture of them stuffing our Christmas stocking (under that blanket are the presents from Santa lol)

Before opening presents Chris and Monica wanted to start the dough for cinnamon rolls. Monica's mom taught them how to make a couple of family recipes when they were visiting for Thanksgiving. One was cinnamon rolls and the other was orange rolls ...

I forgot to take pictures of the cinnamon rolls but I did take pictures of the orange rolls ... they were all yummy. They also made some dinner rolls for Christmas dinner at my Dad's ...

We had a very nice Christmas morning ... here's one of my favorite presents I received from the kids ... my very own Lego kit ... and I put it together all by myself! lol ... my other favorite present was my new Red iPod Nano. My old one died a few months ago ... My Dad and my kids went in together to replace it for me ... I really had missed having one.

Later on Christmas Day we headed over to my Dad's to have Christmas with him and my brother and his family. I love this picture ...

We had a lovely time with everyone ... Prime rib dinner and lots of laughs playing Taboo after dinner ... we played family against family with my dad keeping score ... Walker's won 2 to nothing! woo hoo!

And lastly I want to share a couple of stitching gifts I received. First is a PIF from Natasha ...

I just love this biscornu and the sweet little reindeer hiding between tree ... Thank you Natasha for everything ...

And from Chris I received this ornament and goodies ... how wonderful are these reindeer! I've always loved this design ... thank yo9u so much Chris for stitching it for me ...

I have more stitching to share with you ... but I think I'll wait until my next post. Happy New Year to you all. I look so forward to 2010 and to getting to know you all more and more.

I hope you find your Joy in your stitches ...

I'm grateful for family ...

4 Days Off ...

I decided to take Friday and Monday off and give myself a nice long weekend. All of a sudden the month is flying by and I'm not even close to being ready ... breathe ... yes the house is done inside and my baking is in the freezer waiting to be given away (only if I stop eating them! There's nothing any better than frozen Christmas cookies and hot coffee yummy!) ... but for all my good intentions I have hardly started my shopping. It's not that I have a lot to buy. Like everyone else out there, we are spending less and I really don't have much to mail this year ... but for some reason I'm feeling a bit like time is running out ... breathe ... and I don't like to feel hassled, hate it in fact and try my hardest to keep from getting there ... so taking a couple of days of vacation should be just what the doctor ordered ... breathe ...

I do have a finish from last week ... It's a new design by Lizzie Kate ... I love how it turned out, but damn all that solid color stitching sure got boring real fast! I wasn't sure I was going to like the white lines when I was stitching them, but wow they look great all done ...

I put up tree with all my stitched ornaments ... this is such a fun tree. I bought it last year as a bit of a splurge for myself ... putting it up this year, I was sooo very glad I splurged last year ...

another view ...

Off to stitch on a Christmas gift, but before I do, I want to let you know about two blog giveaways ...

Karyn is having a great giveaway on her blog ... look at all the goodies ...

And Chiloe's having a giveaway too ... what a sweet figurine ...

.

Thank you all for your sweet comments about my Christmas decorating and my finishes ... I love reading all your comments!

I hope you find your Joy in your stitches ...

I'm grateful for red Christmas trees ...

Christmas decorating and baking ...

Most of the house is decorated now other than our tree. We'll put it up sometime next week. I did things a bit differently and really was pleased with how everything came out. Here's the window above my kitchen sink ... DH said he liked the "childlike" feeling of the window sill ... said it looked like I had fun putting this together ...

This area is in my kitchen nook ...

and here's the kitchen table ... there are now candy kisses in the glass tree and candy canes in the square basket ...

we have a room divider that is home for a lot of my reindeer at Christmas ... here's a picture of a couple of the shelves ... this year I put all my antique reindeer all together on one shelf ...

this is a small wall in our kitchen, which backs up to our family room ... these plates are from Crate and Barrel, pretty cute plates for $5 each! I've been collecting them for the last few years. Usually they hang in the dining room for Christmas, but then I don't get to see them alot, so this year DH helped me hang them in the kitchen and I love how they look!

and here's the fireplace mantel in our family room ... one of my very favorite place to decorate (for every holiday!) cause we spend all our time here and get to enjoy the display ...

Now on to the baking part of this post ... yesterday Lisa and I got together for our annual Christmas cookie baking. We had a great day ... after baking we had pizza and watched Miracle on 34th Street and then enjoyed the hot tub ... wonderful day/evening!

Here's Lisa ... wonder if I made her forget how many cups of flour she was doing?? lol

cooling the cookies ... don't you love the smell of Christmas cookies ... all the butter and sugar and vanilla smells ...

Here's what I had this morning after our day of baking ... some curious reindeer want to know what's in the tins ...

here's all the goodies ... we have cranberry cookies and Spritz cookies, two tins of pretzel bark (thanks Paulette) and a pan of Crispix mix (caramel coating with peanuts) ... hmmmm think maybe I need a little plate of goodies to go with my latte that DH just brought home for me :)

I hope everyone is having a great weekend! I'm off to stitch and watch the Seahawks ...

I hope you find your Joy in your stitches ...

I'm grateful for Christmas goodies ...

Love Friday ...

Just had to share this picture I took tonight ... what a lazy group! You'd think they had worked hard all day! lol

I have a finish to share. It's Sew Noel, a design by Carol. I had a few issues with this design ... one being that my floss wanted to run and second was my counting being off ... but I didn't want to frog much because bleeding floss ... owell, I still love the design

How are you holiday plans coming along? Have your tree up yet? We always get a real tree so it won't go up until next week. Lisa and I are doing a bit of baking tomorrow. We aren't doing as much as we usually do, but we both love having baked goodies around ... so the cookie menu this year is Spritz, cranberry cookies, pretzel bark and a sweet Chex mix. Sounds yummy :)

I hope you find your Joy in your stitches ...

I'm grateful for my furbabies ...

Lots to share ...

I hope everyone had a wonderful Thanksgiving with your families and friends. We had a very nice dinner with my father in law. I spent Friday with Lisa doing the Black Friday thing ... we do this every year and have a great time. The rest of the weekend was spent getting the inside of the house ready for Christmas ... I love decorating (as you probably already know lol) and this year I had fun changing so things up ... I'll post some pictures later ... but now I should talk about stitching ... or finishing ... or exchanges ... first finishes ...

I had a 3 fair and squares exchanges that I really wanted to get finished so I could enjoy them during the holidays so I sent them off to Nancy. Look at what I received back ...

This cute snowman was stitched by April ... I love the wire hanger and the beads ... what a cutie, don't ya think?

Janice stitched this sweet reindeer for me ... love the simple finishing of this one and the beads really add a nice touch ...

Nancy turned Melissa's squares into an adorable pinkeep that I got to enjoy among my Thanksgiving decorations ...

and this was how Nancy finished my cute turkey ...

Now on to exchanged ... I participated in an ornament exchange in a Yahoo group ... here's the ornament I received from Renee. I just love this design. I've stitched this before, but not for myself ... I was thrilled to see it stitched for me ... and it was finished into a little pouch ... cute cute cute ...

This is the ornament I stitched and finished for Shari. It's a design by Trail Creek Farms ... I though it turned out pretty nice and Shari liked it ...

Thanks for visiting and letting me share more stitching with you. Hope your week is a good one.

I hope you find your Joy in your stitches ...

I'm grateful for long weekends ...