Christmas 2024: It's A Wrap!

The older we get - the more we long for things to slow down.

I think I've finally accepted the part where our generation passes the torch on down to the next generation and we start filling in as a supportive role, but watching with pride and wonder as our nearing-middle-age children make it all happen.

It's a wonderful place to be!

Our holiday celebrations started out on Christmas eve with a couple of friends who came to make merry at our place.

The gents grilled steaks on the porch. We served them with baked potatoes and all the fixin's, green salad, a veggie side.  Apple pie and pumpkin custard for dessert.

And the dominoes came out.  A gift from our friends who said we needed our own set and now their set didn't need to travel.  It was so thoughtful!

Including the handmade tile boards to hold our tiles.  It was a wonderful evening shared with loads of laughter (and frustration over tiles I couldn't get rid of!) while the DVD of White Christmas played in the background and we sang along.

Something my mom painted for me back in the 1990s.

It's not a greatly in focus photo, but this wooden bracelet is one I cherish, and it comes out each December to keep my mom close to me.

While I was the one who would sew up any scrap if it stood still for long enough, she was one who would gather up wooden items at yard sales and thrift shops and repurpose them into something fun.

I love my wooden painted patchwork holiday bracelet. Especially now that her arthritis has gotten so bad that she finds it difficult to hold a paintbrush for long.

Side benefit of having company for Christmas Eve?  This house got clean! LOL!  We use the sliding door to my basement studio as the entry door to the house, which means that anyone coming through my sewing room would see what a mess it had become over the past several months. (My dust bunnies were reproducing..believe me.)

I like to get things cleaned and resituated between Christmas and New Years so I can start off the next year with peace, calm, and the ability to breathe a bit better in my spaces - so consider this one done.

Somehow while clearing off my cutting table, this basket ended up in the deep window sill, and look who claimed it?  I think it just might stay here for a while.

We spent yesterday at Jeff & Ashlyn's along with her 2 sisters, one of the sister's new husband (They got married right after Thanksgiving) and Ashlyn's grandpa known as Poppy. Add Casden and Grandpa Dave and myself to the mix and that made 10 of us in a very small cozy cottage of a house for brunch.

This was the first year what we did brunch, and it was wonderful!  Once again, Ashlyn went all out with always too much food.  Pancakes, eggs, bacon, ham, green beans, sweet potato casserole, biscuits and gravy, sausages...am I missing anything?

There were of course Christmas cookies to nibble on...and my contribution was to make yogurt parfaits, though I think everyone was too full to consume them, and they would wait to be a snack later.

We returned home mid-afternoon, and after a nap....with the house quiet and Christmas basically "over" I headed down to my newly cleaned sewing space.

More of your gifted aqua strips were waiting to be added to my string units!

This is the gift that keeps on giving, and I can't thank you enough!

I was up extra early this morning...not sure why. But I fixed my morning coffee and padded down into my extra clean creative space and began trimming up what I had pieced yesterday afternoon

Scraps too small to save.  LOL!

And this awaits me today.
When I can get back to it.
I have about 30 of these units left to make before I move on to the next unit. But first I am heading over to the QPO studio to take care of any mail order that came in over the past couple of days, and settling in to get Part Seven of our Old Town mystery ready to go live tomorrow morning.
How quickly did this Friday come around? Too quickly!
I hope everyone enjoyed - and is still enjoying - a bit of holiday slow down, however, whatever your celebration tradition is.
I'm grateful for the part you've played in my life over the past year and beyond.

Quiltville Quote of the Day -
I don't know about you, but those New Year's resolutions can wait until after New Years!
Much love from my house to yours -