The twelve days of Christmas

 I have wanted to do the twelve days of Christmas for over 30 years!

This year is the year!  I did a little research and found some ideas that I really liked.  I used Jeni Baker's pattern "Lined Drawstring Bag" and made the snack size.  I meant to make 12 of them, but somehow I only ended up with 11...That's ok, I'm just using a paper bag for the first day.  I found a cute little Nativity set on Amazon, the figures are 3" tall.  Perfect!

I think they're really cute!

This is my basket of bags, each bag has a tag on it with the name of the nativity piece and the scripture that goes along with it.

There are only 10 pieces in the nativity set, so I made some things up for Day 1 & 2.

You can see the paper bag, I have a battery candle inside and a picture of the Savior for Day 1.

Day 2 has an inspirational quote book inside.

I just love these little bags.  They are a little difficult to give away... 

I know the recipients will love getting a surprise every night and seeing their nativity come to life.

There is so much more happiness in giving than in receiving, although it's fun to receive too ❤️

It's going to be a busy 12 days, and the recipients have a RING doorbell so I'm going to have to be creative to stay anonymous :)

Enjoy every moment of preparing for Christmas ❤️

The Quilt Giveaway and Cute Grandchildren

Well, the quilt giveaway was successful!

I think all of my grandchildren were happy with their selections.

My son did an incredible job capturing all the excitement and anticipation of the activity ❤️

I'm not sure if the video is going to load, I haven't had success loading a video onto my blog for years!

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Thanksgiving

I'm grateful for my family and will show you some photos once they are edited :) 

We had the choosing of the 27 quilts for 15 grandchildren.

It was so successful, my son made an incredible video that captured all the fun and emotion of the activity.

It's funny too!

It should be ready later in the week :)

Below is a photo of the 27 quilts ❤️

Sewing bags

 Since I have all of my "grandchildren" quilts sewn....I've been wondering how to occupy all my newly acquired free time ❤️

I learned a long time ago that unless I have some ideas in my head and maybe even on paper, I can waste a lot. of time.  I've been decorating for Christmas and reading some books and preparing for our family reunion.  I've also been making some bags.  I've made about 8 Sew Together bags for gifts, but I've never made one for myself.  One of my favorite designers is Rifle Paper Co, so I used this fun "Alice in Wonderland" gold on black fabric along with some Rifle Paper flowers.  

The side is pretty colorful!  Each zipper coordinates with the color of flower fabric that I used.  Of course, I'm only as good as my fabric and zipper stash.... I think you can see that the inner lining is a black fabric with gold stars.  Not quite as scrappy as other bags I've made :)

The first pocket is pink.

The second pocket is yellow.

The third pocket is green.

The bag is matchy matchy with a punchbag I made a few weeks ago.

I love this Sew Together bag, but I may just gift it to someone special instead of keeping it for myself :)

I also made three more lined drawstring bags.  

Choosing fabric is the best!

Baby Chick quilt

 This is a quilt I have been wanting to make for a long time.  The pattern is found in Lori Holt's book, Farm Girl Vintage.  In the book this quilt has pink borders, but I wanted to make it in blues so that there would be some blue quilts in my grandchildren pile.

Funny story.....I had all the chick's little legs drawn on the fabric with a frixion pen, ready to embroider.  I was going to take the hand embroidery project with me to my son's house but decided to leave it in the car.  It was a hot Phoenix Sumer day.  That evening when I was home, I sat in front of the TV to embroider the chick's legs and the frixion pen had disappeared!!!  The pen markings are supposed to disappear when you iron them and apparently the Phoenix heat works the same magic! LOL!

I have a grandchild in mind for this quilt, but they're in the middle of the 15, so who knows what will happen.

I really enjoyed machine quilting this one, it went very smoothly.

Pretty little swirls like a soft wind in the chicken coop.

Finally, here is the label I made.  I used to hand embroider all my labels but I think a permanent fabric pen does the trick also.

The choosing of the quilts will be on Wednesday, November 24.

I've asked my son to photograph/video the entire thing and edit it to maybe 10 minutes.  I'm so excited for the event!  I've worked really diligently to have 27 quilts for 15 grandchildren to choose  from. My vision is that I will have a trunk show, telling the story about each quilt.  Each child will have a list of all 27 quilts, in alphabetical order.  They can write notes or mark their favorite ones.  Then the oldest (Bridger 16) will choose the quilt.  If they want to see a couple again, we could do that.  They will keep choosing one until everyone is happy, hopefully...

Actually, I'm the one who needs to be happy, lol!  It's been a year and a half to have all these quilts ready for this day.  It has been a labor of love.  I have thought of different grandchildren as I sewed, wondering if a particular one would like the quilt I was sewing at the time.

I'm hoping to be able to share the video here on my blog.

Thanks for following and have a great week!

Halloween 2021

 

I'm a little late with my post, but my Hallowe'en was spooktacular!!!

I'm going to show you how all of our 14 grandchildren transformed themselves for this fun night! I didn't get a photo of our oldest grandson who's 16.

Maisie (11) is dressed as a devil along with her cousin who is an angel ❤️

I'm not really sure who Ben (9) is dressed as, but he's cute!

Jacob (5) is a counter terrorist.  His Dad loved making the costume!

Charlotte (11) is Mother Gothel and Lucy (8) is Rapunzel.

Lucy has dreamed of having long hair since before she was even one year old!  Well, now she realizes just how heavy long hair is!!!

Once the wigs went on, they were transformed into their characters :)

My daughter Lindsay has been creating a Disney Haunted Mansion on her home.  She dresses as one of the maids and Kennedy (14) walked back and forth on the upstairs balcony like a ghost with spooky music playing loud for all to hear.

Reagan (10) was a beautiful Carmen Santiago.

Paisley (7) was an astronaut.  

Taylor (5) is Glenda the good witch.

Riley (3) is Tinker Bell.

Their parents were Bellatrix Lestrange and a dementor!

Izzy (6) was Estella, Kylie (8) was a Dalmatian and Neo (11) was Cruella.

Izzy was the perfect Estella!  The perfect size and the wig and outfit were so cute on her.

Cruella had 'FUTURE' on her forehead, just like the movie!

Cute little Dalmatian ❤️

My husband and I were Hagrid and Professor McGonagall.  

My husband was the perfect Hagrid!

I created Hogwarts in my trunk at the Trunk or Treat.

My son dressed as an 8foot Sasquatch (on stilts).  He terrified me in his costume about 6 years ago when I didn't know that it was him!!!

The same son and his family and our youngest grandchild, Sabrina.  A cute Star Wars family!

aaaaaaaahhhhhhhh.......

Two of our sons live a few blocks away from us and we had our 2nd annual Halloween party.  The meatballs had eyeballs in them!

I was a "Grammy Witch" which like a normal grammy but more MAGICAL 😂

These are the grandchildren who I get to see whenever I want :)

The blood was delicious, type AB.

The dessert was so delicious and really spooky!  The cake is red velvet and the cake pops are really buck eye balls, so good!

We have a lot of fun with our party.  The appetizers are at one house, dinner at another and dessert at yet another house!  We play games or do an activity at each house too.  This year we celebrated on Halloween night, but last year we chose a different evening.  I really love setting traditions since we finally live by two of our children.  I hope you enjoyed the halloween fashion show! 

Bats & Boos

I finished my Bats and Boos table topper.  I made mine a little different though.  It is directional so that everything is in sync with the witch's face in the middle of the quilt.

 

I absolutely love quilt alongs, it's so much fun seeing everyone's finished quilt.

Now I've finally got a Halloween table runner for my table and it matches the centerpiece I made with a branch and acorns.

This was a short post, but one that celebrates Halloween!