Favourite Christmas Decoration

I bought this hand carved Santa's sleigh over 20 years ago ...  

It was my favourite Christmas decoration then and still is..   If  I could put up only one decoration, this would be it ... even over the tree!!

Do you have a favourite decoration?

Hand made Chistmas cards

I made my own Christmas cards this year for the first time.   I've always been an avid scrapbooker, but there are only so many pictures to scrap!

They are only going to people I REALLY love.   The rest are getting store bought.

Made multiples of 5 different styles:

Little button says "Santa was here"

I'll get the envelopes addressed this week ... and send out next... still lots of time!

Happy Thanksgiving!

Happy Thanksgiving to all my American Friends!!!!

Enjoy the time, fun, food and family.

Technical Difficulties

My DSL (?) internet link is not working, so I am off-line until Friday.   A telephone company tech is coming out to re-set sometime Friday morning.
There is really only so much blogging you can do from work   :-)) ... so I'll see you Friday!

What's a Tablescape?

It was Greenery Day yesterday.   Every year, the four of us go up to Nancy's cottage on Balsalm Lake and cut greenery for our holiday pots.  We all take something for lunch, and stop multiple times on the way at our favourite bakeries.  One is "Butter Tarts and More" ... need I say more!

When we get to the cottage we cut our greenery and then start with the appetizers in front of the fireplace. It's really all about the food.  When it came to lunch, Nancy said she didn't have anything festive for the table.   But really ... you can put four girls in the middle of no where ... but they can always find a way to make a table beautiful.   The bottom red layer is an apron folded in a square, then we layered a plaid scarf on top as our runner.   We used  greenery in a little pot of polar bears we found in a cupboard, and as we had exchanged our gifts, Nancy had received the pretty snowflake plates. When it was complete, I said "Voila...a tablescape".   I was met with three blank looks.   Obviously my life is divided into bloggers and non-bloggers :-))

Should I link this in for one of the many Tablescape days (hahaha)

I was up early this morning to rake the remaining leaves and had that and my pot for the front constructed by 9:30AM!!!

    

I need a bit more soft pine that I'll pick up at the garaden centre this afternoon ... and I'm ready to welcome visitors.

Festive Pictures Framed

I went to Michael's to get a frame that would hold three 5x7 Christmas cards.  I really wanted the pictures vertical, but could only find horizontal.

I looked through the stack and every single frame had chips.   I took the least chipped frame to the checkout, and the conversation went like this:

Me ... "every single frame had a chip"  (no question/request here)
12 year old seasonal Clerk... picks up phone and asks for customer assistance.
Clerk ... she scans the frame ... original price $29.99 and it is 40% off ... it comes up at $19.99 (which isn't 40% off, but I didn't say anything).   I give her a coupon for 25% off frames over the sale price (which would have brought it down another approx $7.00) ... she looks at the coupon and says, with rolled eyes, ... "they won't give you any more off than this."
Me(politely):  "mmmmm"
There are now people lining up behind me.
Clerk, again with rolled eyes, maybe because no one from customer assistance has come, jabs a cash button and says ... "I'll give you 80% off."
..... 80% off the sale price!!
Me (doing internal happy dance) says .... "Thank you."

YAHOO ... I got a $29.99 frame for $4.00!!!!!  I live for stuff like this.

I took it home, got out my black spray paint and in 2 seconds had the frame pristine.   Doesn't it look nice with these festive cards.

It's more winter seasonal than really Christmas ... so I hung on the wall.   Love it!

******

This is my "Greenery Weekend" with the girls.   We go to one of the girls cottages and cut down greenery for our winter pots.  (and eat ... a lot).

Have a good weekend!!!!!

More Pillows

After completing my pillow , I went on-line to see if I could find some good samples of what I am going for with pillows in my guest room.

and I realized that all the images I was drawn to were very simple.

I don't like an over exuberance of pillows, tossed willy-nilly on a bed.

I am very structured and like the look of two bed pillows, two more in front and then maybe an accent pillow.

I like a clean, uncluttered look.

All pictures from Country Living Magazine.

New Pillow

 It was dull and grey Sunday ... so I pulled out my sewing machine and made a new pillow for my guest room.

I was in Walmart a couple weeks ago and bought a full size pillow for $3.00.  I cut it in half and whip stitched the edges together to get two 13x20 inch pillows.   Pretty good price performance - 2 pillows for $3 ... you couldn't buy a regular pillow form for that price!!

  

Then I used some fabric from my headboard/bed skirt and some from the quilt I am doing for the bed. I sewed the front in three strips and the back overlapping so that I could insert for pillow into the cover.

Snip the corners on an angle, so that when you pull the cover right sides out you get crisp corners. 

Then turn it right side out ... Press.

Add a couple buttons ... and put on the bed.  It will look perfect with the new quilt I'm making.

Sam approved!

 

I Raked Leaves ...

I raked leaves ...

Ok, Ok ... these are not really mine ... I did 6 bags .. it just felt like all of these!!!

Tomorrow the 'Festive Season' begins for me ... I'm off  to the Christmas Bazaar at Port Nelson Church in Burlington.  I go with my brother, sister-in-law and niece.  It is an especially lovely bazaar, they rent out booths to artisans, so there are beautiful handcrafts, but also a book sale and the usual rummage sale.   They make a lovely lunch that we always stay for.

LET THE SEASON BEGIN!!!!

Hope you have a great weekend too.

The Christmas Cake is made!

The Christmas cake is made.   Now it gets ocassional doses of brandy to make it moist.

Some people make jokes about Christmas cake, but in my family, it's not Christmas without Christmas cake. (not so much for those who married in though - hahahaha),  I think I could do without any other Christmas food, also long as we had the cake.

This is a picture of me making Christmas cake ... not this year ... I really don't document this every year ... but I had these pictures in my scrapbook so I scanned them for you.  The cake is just ready to go in the oven.

It's the family recipe ... my mother has a copy in her mother's handwriting, and I got her to give me a copy in hers.   It's not the version I bake from ... it's just for posterity. 

And this will be my reward for being custodian of the Christmas cake recipe.   mmm..mmm..mmm......

We're Having a Party ....

I'm having a surprise party for my brothers in December.   My much older brother, Allen, turns 60 in January, and my younger brother, Bruce, turns 50 in December.  I'm in the middle - closer to the low end!!  (Don't worry ... they don't look at my blog.   They're brothers right?).

I am serving cupcakes for dessert and made some toppers from old photos.  Here's a sample:

I have about 24 different ones.   Are these the cutest?

I know that Al will especially appreciate the one when he was 16 showing off his 6 pack abs!!!

I just scanned the old photos; printed them off  9 to a page, and cut them out with my circle cutter.  I also cut red and green paper circles with my cutter.  Glued a photo to a coloured circle with a toothpick between.  Voila ... toppers!

Headboard of Rigid Foam Insulation

My guest room is a work in progress.  I'm going for a pale ethereal look.

I re-upholstered a head board I had done previously with pale blue ticking. OK, I was lazy and first put the new fabric over the old, dark one, then I had to take it apart and re-do because you could see the old fabric through the new.

A lot of people make headboards with plywood and foam ... I used rigid insulation.   It comes in 4x8 sheets and is extremely light. It's about 1 1/2 - 2 inches thick, so gives you the same look. You can cut to whatever size you want with a knife. Actually, the 4x8 piece would not fit in my trunk and the young man who was helping me at Home Depot said they only cut wood and couldn't help me with the size, so I took a house key to it in the Home Depot parking lot and roughly cut the piece to size, so it would fit in. You get a lot of those little foam beads flying around, but it enabled me to get it home; and I left all the cut off pieces in the HD garbage.

I covered the insulation with batting, and then upholstery using a glue gun because you obviously can't attach staples or nails into foam insulation.   Then because the back was looking a little ragged, I duct taped down all the edges so it would be smooth to hang on the wall.   WHAT? doesn't everyone use duct tape?  I wasn't bloggin at the time or I would have taken pictures!

I then attached the headboard to the wall with velcro. The foam insulation is very light so that is all the support it needs.  In fact as a bit of a disclaimer ... one thing you should know is that when I took the first headboard down to recover it, the velcro practically ripped the wall down. It was a good thing I was was going to paint anyway. I just spackled the tears, primed, painted and stuck the recovered headboard up with new velcro and good as new.

It is a great way to  make a headboard that doesn't weigh a lot, and you don't have to look for wall studs to hang it on.  Easily a one person job.

Spring Forward, Fall Back

We changed the clocks back last night and got an extra hour to sleep in this morning.

Why did no one tell the cat?

What are you doing with your extra hour?