Happy Thanksgiving!

Wherever you are, and whether you celebrate the holiday or not, I hope you have a lovely day. I share this little quilt with you that I designed and stitched in 2000............

Thank you, Thank you, Thank you to all my quilting friends, blogging friends and each of you that read, comment, or follow my blog. You are all a blessing!

Sandi

P.S. If you want to see the Hay Bail Turkey that sits on Main Street in Henderson go here and you can see him in last November's post. He looks the same this year. :-) You'll also find the recipe for my son's favorite Christmas candy that you might want to try. Yum!

Almost forgot to mention....

that today is our 41st wedding anniversary. We sort of celebrated yesterday with a trip to Mankato to eat at Happy Joe's because pizza makes me happy :-) and Steve likes chicken and such so with the buffet we can both enjoy our favorites. We did a little bit of shopping for some supplies and, of course, I found a little Christmas ornament to add to the tree. :-) We're thinking that after the holidays, we'll go some place for dinner and it will probably be to Khan's Mongolian Barbecue as that's a favorite place for us. I just like it when someone else cooks!
Talked to my mom and she's sounding good but tired. As my sister said tonight.....we'll just take one day at a time and won't try to plan much more than that.
No photos tonight, no finished projects as the day was filled with lots of phone calls and sprinkled with some cleaning and decorating. I did do some stitching, though, while I watched Dancing with the Stars tonight. My favorite was Donny so I was glad he won. Steve was hoping for Kelly or Mya. That Kelly really blossomed. She looked like she was having such a good time. I thought her partner, Louis, was going to cry when Carrie Ann was praising Kelly. It's amazing what encouraging words can do for the soul!
Time to close up shop for the night. :-)
Sandi

Here are the winners.......

of my "Friday the 13th Lucky Day Giveaway". I've sent e-mails to each winner and their packages are all ready to go. All I need to do is add the addresses and they will be on the way to.........

Tudy is the winner of the notebook and fabrics.

Dee is the winner of the Gold bag of star fabrics for an old friend and

Lisa is the winner of the Silver bag of star fabrics for a new friend.

And Gari is the winner of the final prize of fabrics as someone

who has commented on my blog in the past 40 days!

I would love to give a prize to all of you who commented. I enjoyed reading each comment and started out to answer each one.......and then, my mom got sick some things had to go. I will be replying to each of those comments as I really appreciated some of the thoughts you shared!

Also, the charm squares are cut and ready to go to this past summer's Christmas in July charm square winners. I think they'll get packaged and addressed before I leave for Iowa, but maybe not. You will get them soon though. Nothing new to report on my mom so it's like being put on hold in a phone conversation. Can't quite do some things and also hard to think straight til this all gets worked out.

Sandi

Song to remember...........

It was a busy day with lots of phone calls and errands. My mom will be transferred to Iowa City and that's all I know now. She's doing okay, just a little uncomfortable, but getting some rest and soon to be on the mend once they do the surgery. I appreciate your thoughts and messages. Yes, it's been a bumpy road for her. Hoping this time the doctors will take care of things. Not sure when I will go to Iowa until we know what doctors there will be doing. That's all I know for now.
No pictures tonight but I want to share a link to a song I heard on the radio a couple of weeks ago. Some of you may have heard it, but if not click here and take a listen. The song is "Alive and Well" sung by Kenny Chesney and Dave Matthews. The song spoke to me the minute I heard it. In spite of all that life hands out, I'm "alive and well". Hope you are, too. :-)
Night all......
Sandi

The tree is trimmed.......

but I forgot to take pictures so I think I will wait til after Thanksgiving to share photos of the finished tree. Actually, there are two decorated trees........the big one in the living room and a smaller one in the family room. The one in the living room has 40 years worth of ornaments on it. The one in the family room is decorated with ornaments that I designed and taught in community education classes and at Murphy's Landing (now known as TheLanding - if you live in or near the Twin Cities make a visit in December as it's a wonderful place to step back in time to Christmas Past!). Many of the ornaments on our big tree are from trips we took when my husband's job took him overseas. I love to visit "far away places". As a kid, I loved that old Perry Como song of the same name. I imagined I would travel someday and I am glad that dream came true. I don't do much traveling these days, except to Iowa to visit my mom but the postman brings me things from "far away places" ......... like this..........

As I mentioned in my previous post, Jenny organized "A Very Quick Christmas Swap". On Friday, I received my package from swap partner, Marlene. I was also swap partner to Jenny. :-) Her package arrived on Saturday afternoon, just when I needed a break from tree-trimming. She sent me an extra fat quarter because she didn't think her ribbon was very "Christmasy". I think it's lovely and it will end up in a crazy quilting project as little florets. :-)


After I took the photo, I almost threw the envelope away and then I realized.....it's an original sketch from Jenny. Can't toss that in the trash so it's going in the scrapbook file. :-) Thanks, Jenny!
On a serious note, my mom is in the hospital. She's developed some issues related to the kidney stones. The doctor wants to keep her for a couple days and run some tests so that surgery can go on as scheduled for next week. I have appreciated all your thoughts and prayers and ask that you keep it up. She's doing well, but what a bumpy journey she is having. We'll know more tomorrow about what the week will hold.
That's all for tonight. Have a great Monday and a good week!
Sandi

Oh, Christmas Tree!

Yes, I know that it's not yet Thanksgiving so I shouldn't be putting up the tree so soon.......but I'll be heading to Iowa right after the holiday to be with my mom when she has surgery. I had this plan that if she came to visit that we would talk about Christmas memories from the past. I think that would have been so much fun. Instead, I set up the tree by myself but later on my husband helped with the lights. He had no choice but to help me with the lights as he's taller than I am plus he's the one who has to replace light bulbs when they burn out. You see, we have these lights we bought years ago (like 15 at least) that do this cool "fade in, fade out very slowly" thing and he really likes them. However, the bulbs burn out all the time so I'm not happy when the lights don't work. I solved my problem, though. I put white lights all around the tree first and embedded them deep with the branches and then we added the "fade in, fade out" lights. Now if they don't work, I have back up!! I am so pleased that I thought of this!

So, here's the tree prior to adding the lights. I show you this so you can see that it's a nicely shaped tree. It's as old as the lights. It keeps shedding. See the photo below.............. You would think it was a real tree!! I figure that eventually the tree will go bald and we can finally get a new one. New lights would be nice, too, but Mr. Engineer likes to fix things so I'm sure they'll be back next year. :-)










I tried to take a couple of pictures after all the lights were on...including my back-up lights and the "pizza light" as it's known that tops the tree.
I really need some photography lessons but I kind of liked this one and the way the tree reflected in the window in the living room. Tomorrow, I'll add the decorations. It will take me all day because I love looking at each one and remembering where they all came from or when we made them. :-)
And speaking of decorations, I'll have a new one to add to my tree thanks to a package that came in the mail today. I only signed up for a couple swaps this season and one was Jenny's "Very Quick Christmas Swap". All you had to do was send two fat quarters, a yard of ribbon and two buttons - all Christmas themed. Here's what I sent off to my partner, Marlene and also to Jenny. I offered up to do two swaps if there was an uneven number and so I got to swap with Jenny, too!! (I love her blog and her Shabby Roses BOM!)


Here is the package I received from Marlene. Each item was gift wrapped and, if I was to wait til Christmas........well, I didn't.........it was just too tempting. There were two lovely fat quarters, the ribbon, and two of the cutest angel buttons and a Santa ornament!! So Santa will go on the tree tomorrow and the angels are going to become an ornament, too. Thanks "sew" much, Marlene!!

I also got an e-mail with good news. I won a giveaway over at InchWorm fabrics and I've got some blueberry muffin goodies coming to me all the way from Pago Pago. I'll tell you more about that when the goodies arrive plus a little Pago Pago connection that I had several years ago. Funny how things happen!

There was not much sewing action going on here today because I was determined to get the tree set up. I'll get back to my projects on Sunday after church. I'm just happy the tree is up, that it didn't fall over and that I didn't fall off the ladder! Oh, and the lights are still working! :-)

Have a great weekend!

Sandi

Christmas Fabric Fun!

I am so glad that Gudrun and all the other designer's decided to host the Cross Country Christmas Blog Hop. The stories they have shared and the patterns have all been really great. Thanks to them, my sewing room is a chaotic scene of Christmas fabrics draped over the ironing board, on my chair, on the floor, in a box, you name it.......Christmas fabrics everywhere. Out of that chaos, came the mugs for the Molten Chocolate Cake bags (go here for the info and pattern) and the Candy Canes from Carrie .........

Those little bags were so super easy and I'm not saying who'll be getting the ones in the picture but they will really like them, I know that for sure. I thought the candy canes might be a bit difficult but they, too, were really easy to stitch and stuff. While finishing up the cutting of all those charm squares for my blogging friends, I discovered that I have some really cool stripes that will make neat candy canes. I am going to do the glue and glitter thing to them (it's in the directions so go here to read all about how to make them) because glitter is one of those things that I love to do because I love the sparkle! I think I mentioned it in my last post, but I found the mugs for a buck each at Michael's. I need to get some more now because I have a list of who should get one of these. :-)
In addition to Christmas fabrics spread all over the room, I also was sorting through fabrics for something that would be appropriate for Thanksgiving. Surely in all that fabric I had something that would work but I discovered I really don't have much that has turkeys on it. I wanted pieces that will work for a mini sampler and I finally found some things that will work but it's not quite what I was seeing in my mind. So, does that happen to you.........you can see it in your mind but it doesn't come out quite right when you actually make the item? Sort of like dancing for me.....in my mind, I can see myself dancing. In reality, I am not sure I could dance if I had to!! Gotta dream, though, don't we? I'll sleep well tonight as there will be all sorts of Christmas projects and fabrics dancing in my head. Who cares if I can really dance, when there is fabric to play with? LOL!
Kaiser, the beagle is still "on the mend". We are hoping that his hip/leg problem is not permanent and that when the drug that caused his problems gets out of his system, he will improve and can walk right again. Time to turn out the lights and go to bed. Later, friends...........
Sandi