Categories: fabric designComments Off on Christmas Memories
One of my current fabric lines is Christmas Memories. It’s a small line, with an adorable panel and a companion snowflake fabric. The line comes in Blue or Red. When I got my sample fabric, I whipped up a quilt from the red colorway. Much to my delight, today at our Redwork Club meeting I got to see a completed quilt top in blue!
Earlene did all the stitching on this one.
She did a fantastic job.
I just love how she did a little red in each block.
In some of them it’s quite obvious.
In others, you have to really look for it.
This wasn’t her original plan.
At first she did everything in blue…
…except this little dog’s tongue.
But once that was done…
…she thought every block should have a little red.
So she carefully unstitched a little bit in each block.
I think the result is fabulous!
Her are the two quilts, side-by-side. It’s so funny, when I’m looking at the red one, I think I like it best, but when I’m looking at the blue one, I’m sure I like IT best!
Christmas Day was a Very Merry Christmas at our house.
The mantle is filled with my Christmas village.
Despite Bob’s concerns that all the heat will go up the chimney, we have a roaring fire!
Here’s the tree…
…with lots of blown glass ornaments collected over the years. It’s so fun to think of the places I visited and who I was with when I got each of them–like New York, San Francisco, Colonial Williamsburg and the Hotel Del Coronado.
For years I collected vintage looking boxes. I hadn’t used them in over 15 years.
But this year I dug them out and discovered I still love them!
We did brunch here, with fresh Dungeness crab legs, barbecued pork, gruyere potatoes, my mom’s homemade potato salad and her homemade cheese–along with some Cougar Gold.
I baked cardamom bread…
and pecan sticky buns and orange rolls. We love our carbs in this family!
Sally, Ray, Dad, Mom and Cole.
Cole (hey! how did he get in there again!?!), Melissa, Matt and Bob.
Of course, if I had my way, I’d have been in Sweden for midsummer. But, not this year. So, we had a midsummer celebration here in Long Beach.
First, the Swedish cabin in our woods needed some attention.
We’d been using a ladder to get up to the loft, but I wanted stairs that were carved out of one log like I’d seen at farm museums in Sweden.
Josh Blewett, a local chain saw artist, did these for me.
It took a lot of “oomph” to lift it up.
And then it needed some tweaking.
They had to take it down…….
….and put it back up a couple of times.
In the end, it was a perfect fit.
I took the inaugural climb, and Josh joined me in the loft.
Last summer in Sweden I bought a wind vane that’s based on an historic design. Note: It’s always good to buy heavy items made of metal to put in your suitcase–especially early in your trip.
John Bahner made a beautiful mounting bracket for it–even duplicating the heart that’s on the vane–and got it done in time for the weekend festivities.
The setting around the cabin is so beautiful this time of year.
I love the delicate ground cover called miner’s lettuce.
It even manages to find its way into the crotch of the trees.
The log by the troll house had a nice crop of mushrooms.
On the morning of the midsummer celebration, Bob had the maypole in place and ready to go.
I spent the morning making garland. I wish I had birch leaves, but alder had to do. Bob and my cousin Susan help me bring everything to the maypole.
Cole supervises as I wrap.
The onlookers–my mom, my brother, my uncle, my dad, my uncle and my cousin. Quite the family affair!
The decorated maypole.
The three guys get ready to lift.
Can they do it?
Higher……
….and higher……
Yeah! It’s finally in place.
Locked in.
By afternoon, we had sunshine and blue skies–perfect for picture taking.
Midsummer means lots of flowers for decorations. These are on the cabin.
I especially love the wild fox gloves.
This is probably my favorite bouquet. These flowers grow wild behind my studio.
A little something for the living room.
It’s traditional to decorate the entrance to your home with birch trees. Since none grow around here, I bought two at the nursery. Now I’ll plant them by the cabin. I figure if I do this every year, I should have a whole birch forest in about 80 years!
My collection of Swedish horses came out for the occasion.
Dinner’s nearly ready and Sally is pouring water. We had the traditional meal–meatballs, dilled new potatoes, pickled herring, rye bread, lingonberry sauce and cucumber salad.
And two desserts–strawberry whipped cream roll and princess cake.
Later in the day we relaxed in the cabin.
The weather was perfect for being out.
Before the day was done, we had to have our picture take in the lupine.
The lupine in Sweden grows wildly and abundantly. I’m trying to get the lupine established in this area of our yard, but I have a long way to go.
So you can see what I mean, here’s a picture taken two years ago in Sweden. Can Cole really have grown so much in just two years!?!
Categories: Everything!Comments Off on Sally’s Wreaths
In addition to all the other Christmas decorating Sally does, this year she added some special wreaths–six of them, in fact. Each wreath has a special theme, and they are on the doors to each of the upstairs rooms in her home.
Luckily, there are double doors on the master suite, so there was room for a wreath for Sally and one for Ray! Ray is quite the coffee guy. Can you believe she found ornaments like little Starbucks cups as well as an espresso maker!?!
As you might imagine, Sally is a super shopper! And her wreath reflects that passion with shopping bags and gift cards from some of her favorite stores.
Cole’s room has a baseball theme–and so does his wreath! If you look carefully, you can see part of the baseball mural on his wall. Go Mariners!
Some of you may remember the post about Sally’s craft room party. The purpose of Sally’s craft room is gift wrapping and scrapbooking. For the party, she had a wonderful centerpiece with adorably wrapped boxes. Always the frugal one, she repurposed those little boxes for this wreath on the craft room door!
The bonus room contains Cole’s computer, so it got a computer themed wreath.
And last but not least, the guest bedroom. This room is most frequently used by my daughter Melissa, our friend Robbyn from Florida and me! We’ve all been known to enjoy a fancy martini or two!
