New Years Eve and Apple Rolls

I’m off work again until January 5.  🙂

Today I had an e-mail from an old friend asking me for a recipe I used to make – Apple Rolls.  I sent him the recipe, then realized I had all of the ingredients on hand to make up a batch, so that’s what I did this afternoon….  These are rolls of sweetened bread surrounding apple slices that are coated with cinnamon and sugar.   The apples bake inside the dough and the cinnamon sugar melts and gets gooey. They are sooooo yummy!  I cut the recipe in half and ended up with these:

I normally don’t make New Year’s Resolutions, but I do have a goal to finish stitching Alpine Seasons in 2009.  I’ve been working quite a bit on it the last week or so, and I hope to get quite a bit more done in the next 4 days that I have off work.  Look out for a progress pic late Sunday!

Four hours until the New Year here in Indiana…. off to stitch!

More Victoria Sampler Finished Projects of the Week

The finished project of the week series is posts that feature finishes I had prior to starting a blog.  Right now I’m putting more work into my Alpine Seasons BAP (click HERE to see last progress post), and don’t have a whole lot of progress to show just yet…

Here are two birth month samplers by Victoria Sampler done for a friend’s children.  The oldest was about 11 when I did these, and she is the one that picked out the mats and frames with me at Hobby Lobby…. I think she did a great job.  The designs are nice because they are meant to fit in a 5 x 7 frame so you don’t have the expense of custom framing.  We chose to use mats and and 8 x 10 frames instead.

I don’t see this “friend” anymore, so I hope the kids still have these hanging in their rooms:

Merry Christmas!

I’ve been laid off work this week due to slow business and took the opportunity to go to Oklahoma to visit my parents and my brother’s family.  I left on the 20th and got back Christmas Eve.  After a delayed flight back to O’Hare, DBF and his son picked me up and we went to his mother’s house in Hoffman Estates for their family festvities.  We had a nice time, but didn’t get back home until 3:00 this morning.  Of course, we all slept late, woke up late, exchanged gifts with DBF’s son, then took him to his mother’s house.

We went to breakfast/lunch, then went to see The Curious Case of Benjamon Button, which I really liked!  We didn’t open our gifts to each other until around 4:30 this afternoon.

While I was in Oklahoma, I only did a tiny bit of stitching, mainly because I wasn’t really into what I was working on, plus the lighting wasn’t the best.  I think I’m going to pull out my  Alpine Seasons and work on that a bit.  I’ve got more time off next week so should be able to get some good stitching in.

A while back,  I sent a note to my friend Susan’s mom, Shelagh, as she’d gotten sick.  When going through the mail this morning, I saw that I’d received a package from her.  She stitched a really pretty pincushion and sent a nice card.  I didn’t expect anything at all, so was really touched by what she wrote and her thoughtfulness:

Since I’m always losing my needles in the couch (between cusions and in the arm, where I usually sick my needles, I’m sure this pincushion will help. 🙂

So, I’m off through Sunday, then have to work a couple of days next week.  I’m feeling spoiled by all this extra time off over the holidays…

I hope everyone had a peaceful holiday with friends and family.

38!!!

I celebrated my 38th birthday last week with cards from friends, special treatment from DBF, and a visit from my friend Susan.

Susan visited me last weekend and brought me some lovely gifts:

I love everything – what a wonderful gift in a pretty little bag! She also brough a mini carrot cake (my favorite), which didn’t live long enough to make it into the photo. :p We went out to lunch and stitched at my house and had a lovely day.  I’ve always wanted a friend who I could stitch with, and Susan fits the bill perfectly!

DBF gave me an electric blanket (I LOVE IT!!!), an origami kit (expect to see pics in the future), the Rachel Ray vegetarian cook book and the Huffington Post Complete Guide to Blogging.  He also treated me to a lovely meal at Indigo, a newer restaurant I’ve wanted to try.  This is easily the finest restaurant in Elkhart County… a wonderful menu, excellent service, and live jazz.  Oh yeah, and I almost forgot, all of the tables had the cutest candle holders – maybe a sea urchen?

All in all – a great birthday!

Mill Hill Ornament Finish

I finished this up last night – a quick stitch and really sparkly and pretty finish! I added the beads to the back, as well as the year.  This is Mill Hill Icy Snowflake:

This is the first time I’ve done a finish like this, where you fold the corners back and stitch up. I like the way it looks. 🙂

I’m working on another small ornament this week and hope to have it finished by Friday.

I had a fun stitch-in with today with my friend Susan – kind of a post birthday thing for me. We watched Made of Honor, went out to lunch, and stitched and talked. Lots of fun!

Thanks for reading!

Oh Christmas Tree!

I finally got my Christmas Tree out and set up.  I really wasn’t too excited about doing it and haven’t felt in a holiday mood, but then I decided maybe I wasn’t in a holiday mood because my Christmas Tree wasn’t up yet!

Here is the tree – the tree skirt was made for me by my grandmother:

I have several stitched ornaments on the tree that I thought I’d show pictures of… some were made by me and others were given as gifts or received in ornament exchanges:

There are a couple of other stitched ornaments on the tree, but I felt like this post was getting a little too photo intensive! As I was hanging my ornaments last night, I had the thought that I’d love to have even more stitched ornaments on my tree, and might try to stitch at least one a month in 2009, either to keep for myself or to exchange with others. 🙂

The tree has been up for two days now and the kitties have not destroyed or tampered with it in any way – AMAZING! It could be that I set up the vacuum cleaner (aka cat eater) next to the tree to discourage any sort of tree climbing or ornament batting. LOL. I should put some lights on the vacuum and a bow on top.

Thanks for looking at my tree and thank you always for the lovely comments that you all leave.

Another Biscornu

Here is the Sweetheart Tree Holiday Holly Biscornu, finished as an ornament with a beaded hanger:

Here’s a picture of the side that kind of shows with the other stitched face of the biscornu looks like:

I have to say, I didn’t like stitching this AT ALL….  I have vowed never ever use opalescent or any other sparkly fabric!  There were times that I just wanted to toss this and start again on some really nice 28 count  evenweave.  I don’t think the effect of the sparkly fabric was worth the headache of stitching on it.  NEVER AGAIN

So, I finally fnish and get to the finishing part of the project, thinking that this was the easy part, and either my beads were too small to fit over the end of the beading needle… or… the thread I used to sew the biscornu shut and attach the beads would get tangled on every other stitch!

However, I can say that I’m really happy with the way it looks now that its all finished.  🙂

I’ve been thinking about what I’m going to work on next… the choices are:

• Start Winter Getaway by M Designs
• Start Snowflakes by Little House Needleworks
• Work on my much neglected Alpine Seasons by Chatelaine

For the new starts, I have everything I need to start right away with no shopping required, which sounds appealing right now.  What do y’all think?