How Not To Make Christmas Presents

Continuing with how I'm NOT making Christmas presents this year.  Here are some more things I've been furiously finishing for Christmas.

I bought a book of counted cross stitch bookmarks.  Dang it, if I don't like like every darn one of them!  However, just like always, counted cross stitch has reminded me that I can't count...

I'm always off by 1 or 2, okay maybe 3 or 4 stitches.  No, you're right, it got worse.  But, if you don't know what it's SUPPOSED to look like...

Cute, though.  Right?

This one is way prettier in real life.  I shouldn't have taken the picture with the dirty, white background.  There's another one started that may or may not see the light of day.

I decided to make my nieces and nephews Advent Calendars, too.  Now, the plan was to be done in November so that they could be shipped in time to have them for the month of December.

Then I laughed, and I laughed.

Without getting too personal, one of my kids spent about a week in the hospital.  All creativity stopped.  We're back, we're getting healthier by the day but we are behind on creativity.  As a whole, the stress level has been at maximum.  Heather is barely functioning as a human any longer.  I did get a lot of baking done until my kitchen floor got flooded, twice.  But whose counting, right?  Not me, because I can't...

This is a terrible picture but I like this one so much that it may replace the one we use at our house.  I've been noticing this year that my skill level has improved a lot since the beginning.  I kind of want to toss out my early work and replace it with better stuff.

This one is great, too.  Don't get too excited but I was able to free motion quilt these without too much trouble from my machine!

There's one more that needs to be quilted.  I can't upload the picture for some reason.  It's a teddy bear riding a rocking horse.  I bought the backer fabric a month ago and have NO IDEA where I put it.  It's probably in the same spot as Ethan's expensive computer part that I can't find.  At least, I'm ahead of the game for next year.  It's just going to have to be Bah Hum Bug from Aunt Heather this year.  Sorry, guys.  Too much is, too much.  Know what I'm saying?

This most excellent project was done my my son Hunter.  Isn't he awesome?!  Hunter drew that horse himself.  I swear, if I could draw that good, I'd be a quilt designer for sure!  This was his Ugly Christmas Sweater entry.


And, that concludes our lesson on How Not to Make Christmas Presents.  You're welcome.

Busy As A Bee!

It seams like forever since I've had time to work on Bertie's Year!  This is March and the whole reason why I wanted to do this project!  The bee stripes!  The shamrocks!  Her little hat!  Ugh, so cute!  I came up with a different name for it which I've forgotten now.  It was something like Roberta's Year, only cooler.  My mom's name was Roberta Anne and I miss her.    The next month is April and she's wearing a bunny hat!  Can't wait!  I almost postponed Christmas presents so I could start on it...My mom was not a cutesy, girly woman.  I used to force it on her all the time.   Our pink carpet in the 80's?  My fault.  I think this is just another attempt of mine to bully my mom into cutesy stuff and she'd completely cave to my will, with a smile.  

 

The Churn Dash baby quilt is finally quilted and bound.  These colors made me happy the whole time I worked on it!  I used my Best Mom mug to trace the scallop quilting pattern on.  It was actually more difficult to do the scallops than it was to do the orange peel pattern.  I did not see that coming...  Making the pivot, readjusting the quilt each time, took some time.  I'm really happy with it.  Now, if the lady who asked me to make it, would just get back to me.  It's good either way, if she doesn't want it, I've always got people to gift it to.










I wasn't going to make Christmas presents this year.  I was going to give myself a break and buy everything.  Then, naturally at the last minute, I made Christmas presents.  This is a Nook cover that I made for my mother-in-law.  I was trying to be sly about finding out the size of her Nook.  Apparently, there are a billion versions all with different dimentions.  We called my sister-n-law, she couldn't remember which one Ann had.  Rich kept forgetting to call his dad about it.  Then I texted Ann, she forgot to get back to me... You know, just casually curious about what version she had.  Finally, Rich had his dad measure it.  Then, Rich promptly texted Ann with the measurements instead of me.  Yeah, we're a sly bunch, all right.  We went to Iowa last weekend to visit the farm and had Christmas with them.  It's always good to see them.

I got it together within hours to spare of our departure.  I thought it was cute.  Grandpa got a giant bag of work gloves.  Boring.  But, useful.

Those Crazy Mantz'
(the beautiful blonde in the middle is my step-daughter Alyssa)