Surviving the Holidays...or at least the first part of it

I hope everybody is surviving the holidays!  It's been a good one for me, if you discount that the post that holds up my computer monitor decided to break and my computer fell over on top of my keyboard.  Nothing broken though).  For me that means relaxing a bit and chatting with one of my best friends A LOT (all over the phone...hehehe).

I thought I'd take a moment out to talk about what I finished working on, what I might work on in January and please forgive me if I have posted some of this already.  So sit down in a comfortable chair and here goes.

Shall I talk about food first of all? I decided to freeze up some meals so I wouldn't have to cook as much during this break.  That means I did a crock pot full of Beef and Cabbage soup as well as a crock pot full of Pork and Hominy Chili.  I also made a Bacon and Potato Casserole.  For Christmas Day I made a Cornish Hen and scalloped potatoes and had some Lindt chocolate for dessert.  Today I made Russian Tea Cakes.  Now I'm all cooked out for a bit but that's ok.  It leaves more time for crafting and naps.

Here are some pix.

Cabbage and Beef Soup

Russian Tea Cakes (half the recipe, the other half gets baked tomorrow)

Bacon and potato casserole

Pork and Hominy Chili

Cornish Hen and Scalloped potatoes

Not bad huh?

That left me time to start to organize my crafting stuff, alternating with crafting and napping.  Cleaning can wait until after I go back to work (except for dishes).

At work Theresa, a co-worker and the one I helped do the t-shirt quilt before, asked me to help her make a Christmas gag gift.  I said ok but wasn't too sure since we had less than one lunch hour to do it.  Can you tell what this is suppose to be?

I don't blame you if you can't.  I wouldn't have known and I was the person who was helping to make it!  The white batting is actually the pattern.  I took my material and pinking shears to work to cut down on sewing.  I just did a running stitch by hand around the batting.  AND....this is the result.

Theresa was to put a snap on the Horse blanket.  So here is the story.  A family member has this horse which by now has only 3 legs.  This horse goes EVERYWHERE with them and is always showing up in family pictures and vacations, etc.  So she thought it would be cute to make a horse blanket/saddle for it.  The problem is that the family member seldom lets this horse out of his sight.  She finally managed to sneak the horse into the bathroom one day and took string in with her.  We had two pieces of string to determine if our blanket would fit.  One for the circumference of the horse and an even shorter piece of string to show how far we had to taper it to fit underneath.  I think we did pretty good all things considering.  There was a brown blanket that we made for it also.  LOL.  Theresa said that everybody had a good laugh over it.

I managed to get the test blocks done and mailed off and today I received the email saying that they loved how they turned out.  :)  YAY ME!  I'll show you the blocks once it is published in The Quilt Pattern Magazine.  I think it is scheduled for July or August?

Then I didn't finish making Lyndon's quilt/wall hanging but I did show it to him and he liked it.  He has to come back to the office on January 4th so I hope to have it ready for him by then.

Here is a decent picture of it.  The material hanging over the side will be the backing material.

Did you get a quilty present for Christmas?  My friend Janine crocheted me an infinity scarf.  I was wearing it around all Christmas Day since it felt nice and soft against my face.   :)

It was even long enough I could wrap it around the top of my head.  Sooner or later we will get snow and that will be handy.  Notice it is in NIU's colors of red and black!

I also managed to get to work on my cross stitch saying.

I think it is coming along nicely.

I'm not sure if I will finish stitching it now or put it away until July when I can tell my brain it's Christmas in July and time to start to finish Christmas projects.  We'll see.

January is right around the corner and I have some projects already lined up for that.  There is a three month Stitch a long in one of my Facebook stitching groups.  We are to stitch anything that has wings.  I might do The "B" Flower Fairy from the DMC Collection (By Cicely Mary Barker).  I am also getting ready to work on a Theresa Wenztler Golden Dragon complicated cross stitch which I totally know will NOT be finished in three months.  That's why I thought the small B Flower Fairy.  I could put it, perhaps, in one of my embroidery hoops and hang it on the wall.  We'll see.

How is everybody?  I hope you are having a wonderful time no matter where you are or what you are doing.  I'll catch up with you in the next post.  :)